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Sleep timers are available on a handful of devices that play music. Sleep timers automatically turn the music off after a certain amount of time has passed, so if you set a sleep timer for 60 minutes, the device will automatically shut off after 60 minutes as you fall asleep. Unfortunately, when you open up the Alexa app on your phone, you’ll see the sleep timer card on the main screen, but it won’t show you how much time is left on the sleep timer unlike a regular timer can....

Your iPhone now contains a “Measure” app that acts as a high-tech tape measure. Just launch the app, point your camera at something, and it will measure dimensions of objects in the real world. This is one of the many new features in the iOS 12 update. It uses augmented reality—specifically, Apple’s ARKit technology. Apps like this already existed in the App Store, but now one comes with the iPhone....

Apple’s AirPods “just work” with iPhones thanks to their W1 chip, but they’re also standard Bluetooth headphones. That means they work with any device that supports Bluetooth audio—even Android phones. RELATED: What Is Apple’s W1 Chip? The pairing process won’t be as effortless as pairing with an iPhone, and the connection may not be quite as solid, but they’ll work with anything from an Android phone or Windows PC to other Apple devices like an Apple TV....

Your Synology NAS includes a QuickConnect feature that lets you access its DiskStation Manager interface remotely. Here’s how to set it up. You were likely greeted with the QuickConnect setup page when you first installed your Synology NAS, but it’s possible that you may have skipped it. If you changed your mind, though, it’s never too late to set it up. Plus, it’s fairly easy to do. To get started, fire up DiskStation Manager, and then open up Control Panel....

Windows 10 normally displays a battery icon in the notification area, also known as the system tray, when you’re using a laptop or tablet. This icon shows the current battery percentage. Here’s how to get it back if it vanishes. Your battery icon might still be in the notification area, but “hidden.” To look for it, click the up arrow to the left of your notification icons on the taskbar....

GitLab CI’s Variables system lets you inject data into your CI job environments. You can use variables to supply config values, create reusable pipelines, and avoid hardcoding sensitive information into your .gitlab-ci.yml files. In this guide we’ll look at how you can set and use variables within your own CI system. There are several options available depending on where you want values to be surfaced and how regularly you’ll want to change them....

A Warning: Why Sideloading Is Disabled by Default Before we get started, let’s talk about why sideloading is disabled by default. The Google Play Store has security protocols to make sure the apps and games you download are safe. While not perfect, it’s a pretty decent system. When you sideload an app or game from outside of the Play Store you are bypassing some of those protocols. Google Play Protect can detect some malware and other issues with sideloaded apps, but it’s still not as secure as downloading from the official store....

As of Mac OS X Yosemite, you can mark up email attachments, including PDF files and image files, in Apple Mail on the Mac, making Mail a powerful productivity app. Now, that feature is also available in the iOS Mail app. That means you can add your signature to a document, make notes on a document or image, and otherwise mark up the file any way you want–all within the Mail app....

iOS 11 has a new feature that allows you to discreetly disable the Touch ID unlock functionality, requiring the PIN code for access to the device. Here’s why that’s important (and how to use the new locking feature). RELATED: What’s New in iOS 11 for iPhone and iPad, Available Now The new feature on iOS 11, one of many new changes, has been called the “cop button”, because the most immediately apparent and practical use of the button is to disable Touch ID discreetly when you encounter law enforcement officers, border agents, or others who wish to access your phone....

If it’s too loud around you and you can’t adequately use Siri to quickly look up something real quick, there’s now an alternative to shouting out voice commands—you can now type them out. Here’s how to do it on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. RELATED: 26 Actually Useful Things You Can Do with Siri Siri can be great to use if you’re looking for a quick answer without opening up different apps or tapping through websites to find what you need....

Apple released iOS 11 on September 19, 2017. You can upgrade by tapping “Install Now” when an update message appears, but you can also check for the update and install it immediately. iOS 11 is available for the iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, and iPhone 5s. It’s also available for the iPad Pro (all of them), iPad (5th generation), iPad Air 2, iPad Air, iPad mini 4, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 2, and iPod touch (6th generation)....

There are a ton of Alexa Skills that you can get for your Echo, but now you can create your own basic skills quickly and easily using Alexa Blueprints. We briefly talked about this before, but essentially Alexa Blueprints is an IFTTT-esque interface that lets you do things like create custom answers for specific questions, design your own trivia games, write your own adventure stories, and more. Here’s how to get started....

Mirrorless cameras are proving more and more popular. As they’ve developed in the last few years, they’ve become really useful in certain circumstances. RELATED: What Are Mirrorless Cameras, and Are They Better than Normal DSLRs? One of the really interesting features of mirrorless cameras is, due to their design, you can use new and old lenses from different manufacturers with an appropriate adapter. This is thanks to the “flange distance” which is the distance between the lens mount and the film plane....

Kubernetes Secrets let you store confidential information safely. Using a Secret removes the need to bake sensitive data into manifest definitions or plain container images. Secrets are a first-class resource type which exist independently of any Pod. You provide Pods with references to your Secrets. The architecture lets you confine secrets access to only those Pods that actually need the data. You generally use Secrets for any sensitive constants which your Pods may need....

Following a few leaks, Microsoft has officially revealed its “Game Pass Friends & Family” plan. It’s only available in Colombia and Ireland right now, but the company says “future countries/regions might be added in the next months.” In Ireland, the service costs €21.99 per month, compared to €9.99/mo for individual Xbox/PC plans and €12.99/mo for Game Pass Ultimate. The Friends & Family plan allows one person to share access to Game Pass with four other people (five members in total), which seems like a fantastic deal — based on the Ireland pricing, it’s cheaper than two individual Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions....

Solid-state drives improve the performance of aging computers and turn newer PCs into speed machines. But, when you shop for one, you’re bombarded with terms, like SLC, SATA III, NVMe, and M.2. What does it all mean? Let’s take a look! It’s All About the Cells Current SSDs use NAND flash storage, the building blocks of which is the memory cell. These are the base units onto which data is written in an SSD....

The Xbox One is shaping up to be a great console. The Xbox One S offers 4K and HDR features you can’t get on the PlayStation 4 Slim, and the even newer Xbox One X is significantly faster than Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro. Here’s everything you need to know to get the most out of your new Xbox One. Understand Xbox Live Gold and Other Subscription Services RELATED: What Is Xbox Live Gold, and Is It Worth It?...

There are so many types of light bulbs available on the market that it’s hard to keep track of them all, but each type has its own “code” of sorts that tells you everything you need to to know about it. RELATED: The Different Types of Light Bulbs You Can Buy, and How to Choose Whether you’ve shopped around for smart light bulbs or just regular bulbs, you’ve likely come across bulbs that have something like “A19” or “E26” in the name....

If you’ve turned the shutter speed dial on your camera past 30 seconds, you might have noticed the strangely named “Bulb” mode. This is a throwback from the first film cameras, but it’s still useful today. RELATED: What Is Shutter Speed? In the early days of photography, it took a long time to take a photo. Even a well lit portrait could need a few seconds; the chemicals they used just weren’t as light sensitive as a modern digital sensor....

Computers don’t understand words or numbers the way humans do. Modern software allows the end user to ignore this, but at the lowest levels of your computer, everything is represented by a binary electrical signal that registers in one of two states: on or off. To make sense of complicated data, your computer has to encode it in binary. Binary is a base 2 number system. Base 2 means there are only two digits—1 and 0—which correspond to the on and off states your computer can understand....