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Lenovo’s been shipping Superfish on their PCs for months. This is a security disaster, and it shows how little PC manufacturers actually care about your PC’s security. There’s only one way to ensure your new PC is actually safe to use. Superfish is just the tip of the iceberg. PC manufacturers include all kinds of junkware on their new PCs, and there are probably other horrifically vulnerable bits of junk software on other manufacturer’s PCs....

While poking around Windows 10 we noticed that you can pin the Recycle Bin to the Start Menu… and then from there you can pin it to the Taskbar, something that people have been asking about for a long time. Sadly, it doesn’t quite work the way it should. RELATED: How to Get a Fully Functional Recycle Bin in the Taskbar on Windows 8 or 10 The only problem with doing it this way is that the Recycle Bin isn’t fully functional — meaning you can’t drag and drop files to put them into the trash....

One of the easiest methods to access your data is to simply boot off an Ubuntu Live CD… and it’s completely free (except for the cost of a blank cd). Burn an Ubuntu Live CD If you have another computer, you can download and burn the Ubuntu Live CD using a very simple application called ImgBurn. Otherwise, you can bug one of your friends to help you burn a copy....

Suppose you are having a bad day and in a hurry to login to a favorite website, then accidentally submit your password in the username text box instead. Should you be worried and change your password for that website, or is it just groundless fear? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader agentnega wants to know what the dangers of typing one’s password into the username text box and accidentally submitting it could be:...

Imagine a perfect world, where you can buy the thinnest, lightest, and sleekest laptop around, but still get the same amount of gaming horsepower out of it that you’d expect out of a full-tower desktop. For years, the idea of supercharging a regular old laptop by plugging in an external graphics card was stuck in the realm of fantasy, a task that only the most hardcore DIY-ers would take on after a weekend in their garage and enough circuit board soldering to make anyone’s head spin....

A Forward-Looking Desktop Experience GNOME stands for GNU Object Model Environment. Properly pronounced “guh-nome,” it is one of the most popular free and open-source desktop environments used in some of the major Linux operating systems like Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Fedora, etc. In simple terms, a Linux desktop environment is everything you see on your screen. From lock screen to home screen, as well as individual elements like app launchers and app icons, when tied together, form a desktop environment....

Newer processors are able to contribute to the security of your system, but what exactly do they do to help? Today’s Super User Q&A post looks at the link between processors and system security. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Photo courtesy of Zoltan Horlik. The Question SuperUser reader Krimson wants to know what the link between processors and security is:...

Your home network is likely packed with various Wi-Fi devices transmitting back to the Wi-Fi node; how does the the node handle all the traffic without all the incoming transmissions colliding? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question Superuser reader Zequez is curious how his Wi-Fi node seems to function so smoothly and why the data does appear to collide, he writes:...

New Native Memory Manager Arguably the biggest change for the Kotlin ecosystem is the arrival of the new memory manager for Kotlin Native. While it’s still labelled as a developer preview, the updated manager is representative of the direction Kotlin will take in the future. The revised design is better equipped to deal with the different compilation backends used to transform Kotlin into native platform code for iOS and Android. Sometimes the platforms require different optimizations for a specific operation....

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader User wants to know why he can’t interchange disks easily: Why indeed? If it was a case of neither operating system reading the opposite systems disks we could write it off as fundamental incompatibility. Why is that? Why does Linux recognize Windows but not the other way ’round?...

Microsoft’s Games Explorer — also known as the Games folder — is only a single click away every time you open Windows 7’s Start menu. It’s Microsoft’s interface to your PC games, but not every game appears here — and what is a “Game Provider,” anyway? The short answer is that the Games folder is yet another forgotten Microsoft project. Microsoft included this feature as part of Windows Vista, left it alone in Windows 7, and buried it in Windows 8 — although it’s still there....

Forget the Windows Store. Microsoft is working on a Linux-style package management framework for Windows, and it’s included with Windows 10. It’s being tested with Chocolatey’s existing packages, and allows you to easily install desktop applications and other software. This is huge news. If you’ve ever used Linux, you’ve probably wanted a package management system for the Windows desktop ever since. Now it’s finally arriving! Note: in the RTM release OneGet has been renamed to PackageManagement....

Apple revealed an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro earlier this month, with the company’s new M2 chip, and now it’s available to purchase. The new 13-inch MacBook Pro has the same design as the previous M1-powered model, with the same Touch Bar and notch-less screen. However, it does have the new Apple M2 chip, which promises faster performance (CPU is 18% faster, GPU is 35% faster) over the M1. Apple is also selling the new MacBook Pro with up to 24GB RAM, an improvement from the 16GB maximum of the previous model....

The Windows Task Manager is an important tool for every Windows user. It can show you why your computer is slow and help you deal with misbehaving and resource-hungry programs, whether they’re draining CPU, RAM, disk, or network resources. Windows 8 (and now Windows 10) has the best built-in Task Manager yet, but even Windows 7’s Task Manager is a powerful tool that every Windows user should familiarize themselves with....

So, you have a shiny new hard-drive and want to install multiple operating systems on it, but just how many partitions can you create for those systems? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to one reader’s partitioning dilemma. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Screenshot courtesy of Luis M. Gallardo D. (Flickr)....

CCleaner used to be one of the most popular applications around for deleting cached and unnecessary files on PCs. Even though it’s not as popular these days, it just received a helpful update. CCleaner announced this week that the utility can now properly detect files from applications installed through the Microsoft Store. The company said in a blog post, “CCleaner remains a forward-thinking, dominant cleaner, which is why we’re officially including the cleaning of modern Microsoft Store apps....

I have to be honest. I love the look of pixelated graphics! If you’re also a fan of jaggies or old school video game graphics, here is a simple trick to relive a little bit of that low pixel-depth goodness in any version of Photoshop. I start with an iconic image, but use any you prefer. Lisa will be recognizable in any pixel depth, so she’s a good candidate....

Official replacement batteries can be expensive. Whether you’re looking at a laptop or smartphone battery, you may be tempted to take the cheap route and buy an aftermarket battery. But this decision could blow up in your face — literally. Aftermarket batteries made by other manufacturers can often be found for significantly cheaper. In reality , they’re not worth the savings. Cheap aftermarket batteries could catch fire, explode, and even burn down your house or physically injure you....

Are you just getting started with learning PowerShell or tired of looking up less frequently used commands? Then this terrific set of PowerShell quick reference guides from Microsoft is just what you need! The first guide focuses on commonly-used Windows PowerShell commands and is available in a single .doc format document. The other guides are available as a set (six files) in .pdf format and focus on: tips, shortcuts, and common operations in Windows PowerShell 3....

Delegates, Actions, and Funcs are all C# types focused around a similar concept: storing references in a variable to functions and methods, which can be invoked later on to execute the method it points to. We’ll discuss the differences between the different types, and how to use them. What Are Delegates? Delegates are essentially type-safe pointers to functions. The delegate is just the variable, which points towards a method and “delegates” execution to it....