Sommaire pour August 2022 de TechLife

If you’re like us, you’ll want to enhance your outdoor fun with some cool gadgets. It’s pretty cold out where I am, but it doesn’t mean we’re not thinking of the great outdoors – and if you’re like us, you’ll want to enhance your outdoor fun with some cool gadgets. Whether it’s taking music with you on the go, handy devices to read books on or catch up with folks back home, or something to record those great memories, there’s something to inspire you in our round-up of great gear for the great outdoors. We’re entertaining ourselves closer to home, too, with a guide to setting up the Kayo Sports streaming service. We’ve also got a masterclass in VPNs, so you can access content and other services anywhere! And we’re…

Ever since the launch of its own streaming service, Paramount Plus, Paramount has slowly been reclaiming all of its shows and moving them off rival streaming platforms. Netflix has, at one time or another, had access to six Star Trek series, but Paramount has slowly drawn them back, one by one. This started all the way back at the end of 2019, with the departure of Star Trek: The Animated Series, which was followed in October 2021 by the exit of the original series, Star Trek: Enterprise, and Star Trek: Voyager. Then, in April of this year, Netflix subscribers said goodbye to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and now, the last of the shows has an end date. That one remaining show is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is…

A small pulsar belched out an enormous beam of matter and antimatter particles that streamed for 40 trillion miles across the Milky Way. Astronomers detected the cosmic particle trail in images captured in X-rays by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in space and in optical light by the Gemini North telescope in Hilo, Hawaii. Observations of X-ray filaments emitted by pulsars are rare – to date only a handful have been detected. Pulsars are dense, shrunken remnants of giant collapsed stars that emit radiation pulses as they spin, and they have powerful magnetic fields that are generated by their rapid rotation. This pulsar, known as PSR J2030+4415, spins about 1,600 light years from Earth and is relatively tiny – just ten miles in diameter, about the size of a city. This…

$3,299 body only, olympus-imaging.com.au The new OM System OM-1 is here. Recognise the camera but not the name? That’s because it’s a new line from OM Digital Solutions, which bought the sinking Olympus imaging division in 2021. A natural successor to the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III, the OM-1 will be the last camera to have the Olympus name etched on its body. But it’s what we hope will be the first of many bearing the new OM System branding. A warm tribute to the original 50-year-old Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR, and a fitting swansong for the Olympus name, the OM-1 is a hugely capable camera, and a joy to shoot with. Everything that we’ve loved about the Olympus Micro Four Thirds system over the years is cranked up a…

Is it time to go solar? Georgia Crumb Recouping the cost of solar installation is going to happen far more quickly today than it might have done a few years ago, and GaGu can’t see that changing any time soon. If you have the roof for it, it’s time. Of course, your specifics are going to be, er, specific, so let’s be broad. The average installation cost is between $4,000 and $6,000 for a system which generates around six kilowatts at peak – that’s cheaper than it was, and panel efficiency is slowly creeping up; look for 20 percent efficiency if you can afford it. Depending on weather, direction, and whatever fresh hell the energy companies have unleashed on us at press time, it’ll cook up an average of $600…

Marvel’s Midnight Suns leak seemingly confirms October release date, Spider-Man, and more According to the leak, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is due to launch on October 6 across PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, PS4, and PS5 (the previously-announced Switch version is not mentioned here). The info comes via retail listings discovered by Nils Ahrensmeier on Twitter, who posted images of Midnight Suns’ various editions and bonus features. Sony’s “working endlessly” to make more PS5s as console sales top 20 million Sony confirmed the sales milestone in a statement to GamesIndustry. biz. The company does not specify whether this number represents consoles sold into retailers or sold through to consumers, but given how hard it remains to get a PS5, it seems unlikely there’s a lot of unsold stock…

Apple reveals the sequel to the best laptop ever made. From $1,899, www.apple.com Amidst the beta software, developer tools, APIs and funky new features Apple revealed at this year’s WWDC 2022 keynote at its headquarters in Cupertino sat a gem of a new laptop: a brand-new MacBook Air (M2, 2022). TechLife was at the in-person event - one of the first in years, thanks to pandemic-related lockdowns - and was able to spend a decent amount of time kicking the tires on the new laptop in order to create our first hands-on review of the atmospherically thin new Air. The current MacBook Air (M1, 2020) is our pick for the best laptop you can buy right now, and from our brief time with the 2022 MacBook Air (powered by the…

$1,300 body only, fujifilm-x.com Launched back in 2019, the original Fujifilm X-T30 was intended as a ‘lite’ version of the Fujifilm X-T3, boasting several of the same specifications in a more consumer- or travel-friendly body. If you’re looking for a good all-rounder which doesn’t put too much of a dent in your wallet, and fits neatly into your bag for everyday and travel use, then it’s worth considering. Fast-forward to 2022, and the X-T30 II represents only a modest upgrade; although considering that the original camera was so good, that’s perhaps no surprise. If you already own the X-T30 there’s probably little point in upgrading, but, if you’re looking for a good all-rounder which doesn’t put too much of a dent in your wallet, and fits neatly into your bag…

$1,199, www.dji.com Its video capabilities have been vastly improved; and the camera can be rotated 90 degrees, enabling you to capture stills and video in both landscape and portrait format. The tiny and lightweight DJI Mini 3 Pro takes DJI’s popular Mini drone series to new heights. The original DJI Mavic Mini arrived in 2019, and was followed in 2020 by the Mini 2, which upped the video resolution from 2.7K to 4K alongside other improvements; but it’s the Mini Pro 3 that really brings the ‘wow’ factor to the sub-250g Mini series. What’s most impressive about the Mini 3 Pro is that DJI has managed to include a tridirectional obstacle avoidance system inside such a small drone – but that’s far from the only improvement over its predecessor. The…

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, it has forced Google to delist links to VPN services to prevent its citizens from viewing uncensored information about the war. But it isn’t actually illegal for Russians to use VPNs, partly because many businesses rely on them, though their usage is restricted. In November 2017, the Russian government passed a law banning the use of VPNs, Tor and proxy tools to access unauthorised content, and has targeted VPN providers that refuse to comply with its rules and hand over user data. Over the last few years, Russia has banned at least 15 services including ExpressVPN, NordVPN and ProtonVPN, but others remain operational. However, to show solidarity with Ukraine and avoid financing Putin by paying for data centres, most major VPNs have now shut…

We all know the kind of ‘boring but useful’ tasks we should carry out regularly on our computers: backing up, syncing, eradicating junk and so on. But there are lots of things in life we should do, but don’t. One of the reasons we put off such PC tasks is not knowing the best program to use. That’s a problem we aim to fix in this feature. We’ve highlighted 16 tasks that you’ll probably have attempted in the past, perhaps with mixed results because the programs were too difficult to use. We start with tools that help you manage your files: removing, renaming, searching for and converting them. Once that’s done, we move on to security – or, more specifically, encryption. You’ll learn how to hide files behind passwords, and…

Apple didn’t invent the graphical user interface (GUI); that was the work of Doug Engelbart in the 1960s. Researchers at Xerox PARC built on his work and made the 1973 Alto, the first personal computer with a GUI. It had many of the things we take for granted today: a mouse and pointer; windows for different things; icons; and menus with drop-down menus. That operating system spawned another, Gypsy, the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface. And it lead to the 1981 Xerox Star, a computer that incorporated many of these ideas. A certain Steve Jobs was particularly impressed by the PARC’s work as Apple made its own GUI, helped by many former PARC members. The first GUI product Apple shipped was the Apple Lisa in…

QUICK TIPS Your questions answered WINDOWS Add tabs to File Explorer WINDOWS Randomise your username to make online accounts more secure WINDOWS Make Windows better WINDOWS Make Office better MAC Tidy your music library MAC Set and hit your life goals LINUX Quickly track down & delete unwanted files iOS Enlarge text and objects ANDROID What makes a good Android camera? SECURITY & PRIVACY Keepin’ things patched HOME NETWORKING Locking the gate STREAMING Kayo Sports: A streaming service with a unique point of difference PHOTOGRAPHY MASTERCLASS Create stunning silhouettes DIGITAL DARKROOM Make the most of the Harmonisation Filter Will Sandbox keep Windows 10 safe? When Windows 10 support stops, would it be safe to browse in Windows Sandbox? My current PC has been excellent for browsing the web and email…

Windows 10 & 11 Edit your videos using Clipchamp Seven months after buying online video editor Clipchamp, Microsoft has added an app version to its store. To install it, search in Windows for the Microsoft Store, open it, then search at the top for Clipchamp. Now click the blue Get button, which will change to Open when the app is ready to use. Next, choose which account to sign in with: Microsoft, Google or create a new one through your email (you’ll need to confirm this when you get an introductory email from Clipchamp). When you first use it, you’ll be asked to start with a template, or with a recording. If the latter, click the ‘Create your first video’ box, then drag and drop your video anywhere into Clipchamp.…

In this tutorial, we’ll focus on the essentials; how to create new events and new tasks in Planny, and how to bring in events from your Mac’s Calendar too. REQUIRES Planny, macOS 10.15 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to use Planny to organise big projects and little reminders IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes The Mac App Store can hardly be accused of being short of planning and productivity apps. Whether it’s Apple’s own Reminders and Calendar or third-party apps such as Things, Fantastical, and OmniFocus, there’s plenty on offer. Planny is one of the more affordable options, coming in at $20.49 for an annual subscription. It enables you to schedule one-off and repeating events, manage projects and easily find key bits of information, and it’s very easy to use:…

1 SELECTION PANEL Choose which folders to include in your hunt for unwanted files here. Tick Reference Folders to protect files in that folder from being targeted for deletion. 2 TOOLS LIST Select which of Czkakwa’s 10 tools you want to use from here. 3 RESULTS WINDOW After your scan is performed, duplicates and other potentially removable files are listed here ready for selection. 4 PREVIEW PANE When reviewing image files, click one to bring up a preview, which will enable you to perform visual comparisons. 5 NOTIFICATIONS PANE The results of your searches and actions are displayed here, together with any helpful (or unhelpful) messages. 6 ACTIONS After using the Select button to help choose which items to process, use these buttons to perform specific actions.…

REQUIRES iPhone YOU WILL LEARN How to use the Magnifier tool on an iPhone IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes One of the least heralded but most useful tools on your iPhone is the Magnifier. This handy utility enables you to use your iPhone like a magnifying glass to enlarge text and objects. It uses the back camera to capture the image and displays it on the screen so you can zoom in and out of it. However, it does more than just enlarge whatever you point it at. You can apply color filters to make text easier to read, invert the text, or adjust the brightness and contrast. And you can save a magnified object as an image to your Photos library, or share it using a share sheet. Auto-brightness…

Ashampoo UnInstaller 10 Uninstall programs without leftovers. Ashampoo UnInstaller 10 deletes programs without leftovers and allows you to install, test, and remove software without worries. Four deletion methods ensure a more thorough removal than is possible with Windows’ default means. This includes unwanted programs, e.g ones snuck into your system through nested installers or internet-based sideloading. Ashampoo UnInstaller 10 is the ultimate solution against this type of spyware/malware programs and eliminates them all! Getting rid of no longer or never wanted browser extensions is equally easy, even for those little “helpers” that browsers themselves can’t or won’t list. Download link: www.techlife.net/exclusives Ashampoo Snap 12 Windows screenshot app for images and videos. Ashampoo Snap 12 captures anything you see on your screen as images or videos. Aside from regular screenshots, the…

Archaeologists at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which caught fire nearly three years ago, have discovered a previously unknown 14th-century leaden sarcophagus along with other burials. It’s not clear who was buried in the sarcophagus, but it was likely someone important. The characteristics and location of the sarcophagus suggest that it holds the remains of a high dignitary. The iconic 12th-century cathedral went up in flames during a renovation and restoration project in April 2019. Since then, the French government has moved forward with a reconstruction that will restore the cathedral’s historic Gothic architecture, a feat that church officials hope will be completed by 2024, when Paris is slated to host the Summer Olympics. In the latest step of the restoration, workers had planned to put up scaffolding ahead of reconstructing…

Sonus Faber Omnia $499 From sonusfaber.com A great speaker doesn’t just sound incredible, it looks so good that it becomes the centerpiece of any room it occupies. That’s the case with the Sonus Faber Omnia, a sleekly gorgeous speaker that exudes class from every angle. Its audio performance is simply sensational, with superb clarity, satisfying bass, and a wide soundstage all on offer. Never mind stereo speakers, the Omnia proves you don’t have to sacrifice quality if you want the convenience of a single-speaker setup. We also love its flexibility. There are heaps of wireless options, from AirPlay to Chromecast, plus built-in support for Spotify and Tidal. And if you prefer a wired connection, you’re well served there too. In other words, the Sonus Faber Omnia is an exemplary wireless…

There’s a bit of movement in the XR space this month with speculation that Apple could have announced some part of its augmented reality tech at the 2022 WWDC event. NFT and metaverse chatter has dropped off massively following the cryptocurrency downturn, but AI development is as prolific as ever with new drone-swarm autopilot software, and the official launch of the coding auto-complete tool known as Copilot. There will also be a distinct lack of emerging tech coming from Russia following more microprocessor sanctions by Taiwan and a new AMD-powered supercomputer breaks the Exaflop Ceiling in its first benchmark. XR Reality OS RealityOS trademarked by suspected Apple subsidiary. $NA | developer.apple.com/wwdc22/Apple seems to have trademarked the name for a new virtual and augmented reality platform that will be the interface…

Absolutely on target. $69.95, Xbox, PlayStation, PC, sniperelite.com I’m camped behind a shallow wall of sandbags in Sniper Elite 5 and I’m bricking it. Not because of the waves of advancing Nazis, I’ve slaughtered hundreds of them by this point. Not because there are snipers all around with their sights trained on my forehead, I’m quick enough to dodge their aerial fodder. Not because I’m absolutely baking under the midday Beaumont-Saint-Denis sun without, at least to my knowledge, having applied even a smidgen of sunscreen. I am crapping my covert US Rangers operation fatigues because I’ve just learned that the dreaded Sniper Jager has forcefully entered my game. Sniper Elite 5’s new ‘Axis Invasion’ mode is not only a wonderful addition to Rebellion’s latest tactical shooter instalment, but a great…

$1,249, www.lenovo.com Lenovo has some of the best Android tablets available today. The Tab P12 Pro is a good one, but it falls short of greatness, as an awkward middle child between the company’s premium and mid-range efforts. While conducting the testing for this Lenovo Tab P12 Pro review, we couldn’t help but wish we were using the company’s Yoga Tab 13 instead, because that’s a true entertainment device – and cheaper too. Design If you close your eyes and picture your average tablet, the image that pops up probably would look pretty similar to what the Lenovo Tab P12 Pro actually looks like. Compared to some other tablets currently on the market, this Lenovo has a fairly wide screen. Its dimensions are 285.6 x 184.5 x 5.6mm (yeah, it’s…

You don’t need to be paranoid or have a desperate desire to see what’s on US Netflix to enjoy the benefits of a virtual private network (VPN). As the UK Prime Minister told the Russian people in an online speech recently: “All you need is a VPN connection to access independent information from anywhere in the world” (www.snipca. com/41726). And Boris Johnson is completely right: even in less oppressed countries, where the internet isn’t censored and the media is free from state control, a VPN lets you access any content you like and prevents you from being spied on while you do so. With VPNs currently soaring in popularity (and not just in Russia), we decided that now was the perfect time to take a closer look at the subject.…

Amiga OS (1985) Commodore’s 1980s Amiga has a special place in the hearts of gamers and musicians. It was fast, did proper multitasking, and boasted arcade-quality games, but sadly Commodore couldn’t maintain the momentum. BeOS(1990) BeOS hoped to be a rival to Apple and Windows, and it courted Mac clone makers to ship it on their computers. Apple considered buying it but passed; Steve Jobs would find a better parent for Mac OS X. NeXTSTEP(1989) > While exiled from Apple, Steve Jobs set up NeXT, with hardware running NeXTSTEP OS. It wasn’t a big hit – although Tim Berners-Lee created the web browser on it. Apple bought it in 1996 and made it part of Mac OS X. Newton OS (1993) The Newton offered a mobile Apple experience that proved…

Safari in iOS 15 If design is how it works, the resdesign of Safari in iOS 15/iPadOS 15 was a big step backwards; it was confusing to use and it made everyday tasks more difficult. And if design is how it looks, it failed on that front too. It was hastily redesigned. Big Sur We’re used to it now, but the radical redesign of macOS Big Sur really upset a lot of people who felt it prioritised style over functionality. It was definitely prettier, but alerts and dialogs were cramped and many felt Apple had gone too far. iOS 7 Control Centre The combination of light colours, thin lines and transparency in iOS 7 made the Control Centre almost unreadable on iPhones with light wallpaper, and the newly flat design…

Sketch (sketch.com) is where developers and designers turn their ideas into apps and, over the years, Chief Design Officer Emanuel Sá has seen many interface design trends come and go. Where do you think we’re headed now? “Design is a living thing that’s evolving a bit slower than in the past,” he says. “User interfaces today aren’t as plastic and exaggerated as in skeuomorphism days, but nor are they as plain as iOS 7 was.” Instead of past extremes, “I believe we’re on the path to finding balance: where interfaces don’t get in the way, but merge with hardware more organically.” What crime design would you ban? For Sá that would have to be any kind of revival of skeuomorphism. “I get why designers miss skeuomorphism,” he says. “But I…

WHAT YOU NEED Files App; Windows 10 or 11 TIME REQUIRED 30 minutes File Explorer is about to receive an upgrade – but only if you’re running Windows 11. Microsoft is adding tabs to the latest version of its file-navigation tool, so if you’ve upgraded to Windows 11, you’ll be able to keep several folders open at the same time and switch quickly between them. Thankfully, if you’re stuck with Windows 10 – or you simply don’t want to upgrade – you can get the same feature for free using an alternative tool called Files App. It works in Windows 11 too. 1 Download Files App from the Microsoft Store (www.snipca.com/41679),then launch it. We think it’s good enough to use as a full-time replacement for Windows’ File Explorer. So, when…

Libreoffice Writer & Microsoft Word Use keyboard shortcuts to add double space between lines There are several ways to double-space entire documents in Word, so that there’s extra room between lines. The most commonly used is to click the Home tab followed by the ‘Line and Paragraph Spacing’ icon in the Paragraph section, then select 2.0 (or a smaller or larger number to match the amount of space you want between lines). You can set this at the beginning of a document, before you start writing, or change it when you’ve finished. A quicker way of doing the latter, though, is to highlight the text then press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-2. The text will change instantly to double spaced. There’s no equivalent shortcut built into LibreOffice Writer, but you can…

Keeping your hard drive clean can feel like an uphill struggle as it fills up with detritus. Weeding through your files by hand is a painstaking task, and this is where a search-and-delete tool like Czkawka comes riding to the rescue. Czkawka can do so much more than find duplicated files. It can also track down similar images and videos, music duplicates, broken files (and symlinks), empty files and folders, and more. It’s written in Rust, uses caches to speed up follow-up scans, and is available both via the Linux desktop and as a CLI application. Getting started Czkawka can be installed in various ways: via snap, Flatpak (https://flathub.org/apps/details/ com.github.qarmin.czkawka) or you can download the AppImage (https://github.com/qarmin/ czkawka/releases). If you install it through snap, you’ll need to give Czkawka access…

As noted over in this month’s Privacy and Security column, routers are currently one of the primary vectors of attack against home users. A hacker who takes control of your router has the capacity to monitor and modify all unencrypted data going into and out of your home. They can watch you and gather information for days, weeks or months, without you ever knowing. There are real attacks of this nature that have compromised tens of thousands of routers, and we’re here to make sure that you don’t suffer the same. So here are the seven questions you should answer before you can be certain that your router is secure (or at least as secure as it can be). Do I have access to the full administrative web interface? This…

From $4,549, www.razer.com The Razer Blade 15 (2022) is the latest refresh of Razer’s iconic gaming laptop and is unquestionably one of the best gaming laptops released this year, though the price tag remains as steep as ever. To start, the refresh comes with all-new Intel Alder Lake mobile processors, Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti and Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPUs, and DDR5 RAM, so this is a big step up from the Razer Blade 15 (2021) in terms of performance. That performance comes at the price of battery life, though, which is all but non-existent thanks to that voracious Alder Lake processor and 105W TGP GPU. The price is as eye-watering as ever. While there are cheaper gaming laptops in this class, the Blade 15 is a premium piece of…

Located about 730 million light years from Earth, Abell 3667 is a galaxy cluster in chaos. It’s composed of two clusters of colliding galaxies. This has created an enormous disturbance in the region: a gargantuan shock wave flaring out either side of the merging cluster and visible only in radio wavelengths. A recent study offers the most detailed picture ever of this enormous wave. Using the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa, researchers imaged both halves of the shock wave’s radio component, also called ‘radio relics’. The shock wave first blasted into being about 1 billion years ago, when the two galaxy clusters that make up Abell 3667 first collided. Galaxy clusters are the most enormous gravitationally bound structures in the universe; when two of them merge, they release…

Wylde Flowers STAR-WITCH VALLEY. Subscription (Apple Arcade), iOS The resurgence in popularity of farming sims has grown since the breakaway success of Stardew Valley, a brilliant and accessible RPG that lives on almost every platform and even has a board game rendition. At its core, it focuses on building both relationships with the local townspeople as well as expanding your farm business and exploring the local mine. Wylde Flowers takes this theme and removes some of the complexity of the system – Stardew Valley isn’t a difficult game, but there are lots of options and your farm can be exceptionally intricate in its design and operation. That said, there are still plenty of recipes, seeds, animals and activities like fishing and mining to complete. The twist in this game is,…

$1,262, store.planetcom.co.uk With all respect to Planet Computers, Astro Slide 5G sounds like one of those enclosed theme park rides that present with a CGI video synchronised, or maybe not, with a clunky hydraulic movement system. The makers hint at its true nature by also calling it a ‘Transformer Smartphone’, but this is clearly not making reference to any film franchise featuring giant robots. Before we transform, at this device’s heart is an Android smartphone that uses reasonably high specification parts to justify a relatively high price. Anyone expecting the complete retro experience with the Symbian OS will be disappointed. Equally, those that prefer slim and elegant phones won’t be excited by the Astro 5G, as the transformation ability has expanded its waistline. At 18.7mm thick, this phone is a…

$TBC, www.realme.com The Realme 9 5G slots in neatly below the Realme 9 Pro 5G, with a similar clean design and 5G connectivity at a more affordable price point. Compromises have been made in the process of squeezing in that 5G connectivity, as illustrated by the presence of a non–5G model available for the same money. You get an LCD display here rather than OLED, albeit a crisp, accurate, and fluid example. You also get an 18W charger in place of the 4G model’s 33W equivalent, which means you’ll realistically need to charge it every night. Thankfully, a 5,000mAh cell should provide a full day of juice even for frequent phone fiddlers. Another trade-off comes with a 50MP camera rather than the 4G model’s 108MP equivalent.You don’t get any form…

Tor Browser (www.snipca. com/41693, pictured) is undoubtedly the best alternative to using a VPN, but though it similarly hides your location, encrypts your data and lets you unblock restricted content, it works in a different way – with its own pros and cons. Rather than offer you a choice of servers, Tor redirects your internet connection through a series of randomly selected relays around the world. Its network is run by volunteers, which means that – unlike a VPN – there’s no central service to trust and no risk of your data being logged or sold. The browser also disables unsafe plug-ins and scripts, and deletes cookies and browsing data automatically. On the downside, Tor slows your connection even more than a VPN and it only encrypts what happens in…

Apple says Microsoft’s Windows shamelessly copied the Mac; Bill Gates says he was inspired by different software long before. But there’s no doubt that when the Mac launched with its GUI, Microsoft’s only OS was the text-based MS-DOS. Its first GUI, the half-baked Windows 1.0, didn’t arrive until 1987 and Microsoft didn’t really get it right until Windows 3.1 in 1992. Windows 95 made the PC cool, eclipsing the Mac, but Microsoft fell into a design rut that it didn’t escape until the launch of Windows 10 in 2015.…

As personal computing moves from your desk to your wrist or your head, its interface won’t be like your PC or iPhone. Your Apple Watch’s interface is very different from those devices, and your Apple augmented reality (AR) headset will be even more dramatically different. Does an Apple AR device – or a Facebook VR or a Microsoft Mixed Reality one – mean interacting with the kind of interface you’ve only seen in Iron Man, Minority Report or, in the case of Facebook’s Metaverse, VRML websites from 1997? The short answer is: probably not. Simplicity is the key here. To take a real-world AR example, a reversing camera that overlays parking directions or the heads-up display in a car is an AR device; if it more than simply shows the…

WHAT YOU NEED Bitwarden software and browser plug-in TIME REQUIRED 30 minutes Password manager Bitwarden has added a handy new feature that lets you create random usernames to go with your random passwords. This makes a lot of sense – randomising the account name you use to log into sites makes it even more difficult for criminals to hack your account as they’ll have to get lucky twice. Although you can’t generate usernames using Bitwarden’s browser plug-in at the time of writing, you can do it through its desktop program, as we’ll show you here. 1 Go to www.snipca. com/41821 and download Bitwarden for Windows, and install the Bitwarden extension for your browser. Now click ‘Create a Free Account’ 1 , and fill in the form to set it up.…

REQUIRES Apple Music YOU WILL LEARN How to backup and move your music library, and run two libraries IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes In the final part of our Apple Music tutorial series, we’re going to deal with libraries. In Apple-speak, your music library is where Music stores details of all the files you have imported, downloaded, or added from Apple Music’s streaming service – as well as information about your playlists. The library is not, as we’ll see, necessarily where the music itself is stored. That could be on Apple’s servers, in a different folder on your Mac, or on an external drive. It’s likely that the music you play in Apple Music is stored in multiple places. And if you use iTunes Match, everything will also be stored…

1 SET SEARCH OPTIONS Select Similar Images and choose the folder or folders containing all your images using the Add button. Above the results window you’ll see a series of options – the three drop-down menus at the top affect the speed (and quality) of the scan process. Leave the defaults as they are for now (see the body copy for tips on tweaking these). 2 FINE-TUNE YOUR SEARCH SETTINGS The Similarity slider enables you to determine how closely matched each image must be. Leave it set to ‘Very high’ for now. Tick ‘Ignore same size’ only if you want to ignore exact duplicates, and leave ‘Fast compare’ unticked, too. Click Search and wait while Czkawka performs its initial scan of your files to determine potential matches. 3 SCAN AND…

In last month’s column, we looked at the first thing that every cyber expert will tell you when asked about the best thing you can do to secure your stuff – implement two-factor authentication. This month, we’ll take a look at the second thing they will tell you: make sure all your software is up to date. In most cases, when a new exploit is found, the software makers will produce an update as soon as they can. On mobiles, the Play Store or iOS App Store will then push the updated copies down to devices. On PCs, however, that doesn’t always happen automatically, and most of us don’t religiously check on the availability of new versions of every one of the dozens of apps we use daily. Things are…

For as long as photography has existed, silhouettes have been popular – during the Victorian era, they were even seen as an affordable way of capturing a portrait. It’s easy to assume the process of creating a silhouetted image is straightforward. We spend so much time producing balanced exposures and avoiding reducing subjects to silhouetted outlines so to shoot one intentionally, you may assume that all you have to do is underexpose. However, this represents only half of the procedure. If care is not taken, the main subject can become lost in the frame. Overlapping of elements in the scene can cause a loss of shape and therefore impact, while even choosing an ideal subject for this treatment can prove a challenge. The best candidates have a variety of discrete…