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Google has introduced significant new features to improve battery life on Android over the last few years, with Oreo bringing the best improvements yet. Here’s how it’s looking to improve that even further with Android P. A Little History on Android Battery Life Android’s battery issues have always been sort of an uphill battle—how do you build an operating system that allows for background services and quick multitasking without limiting users to only three hours of battery life?...

We’ve shown you how to link your Google Calendar to Alexa, but now we’re back to help iCloud users get the same functionality. In order to use your iCloud calendar with Alexa, you need three things: two-factor authentication enabled on your Apple account, an iCloud app-specific password just for Alexa, and, naturally, your Alexa device to accept the voice input. Step One: Create an App-Specific Password for Your Apple ID RELATED: How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication for Your Apple ID...

Cryptocurrency miners are a new scourge on the web. Web pages can now embed JavaScript code that runs in your web browser to mine themselves Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies using your computer. The website keeps the cryptocurrency, and you get higher electric bills, 100% CPU usage that drags down your computer, and reduced battery life. RELATED: What Is Bitcoin, and How Does it Work? This problem first came to popular attention with the CoinHive script, which ran when you visited The Pirate Bay, but there are other mining scripts and other websites using them....

Does your neighbor have an obnoxious Wi-Fi network name? You can hide it from the Wi-Fi menu on your computers, preventing it from showing up. You could go even further and block all other Wi-Fi networks, too, only allowing your PCs to see and connect to the Wi-Fi networks you allow. This is handy if a neighbor has decided on a network name that’s inappropriate for small children, or a neighboring network is open with no parental controls....

Cancel Apple Arcade on Your iPhone or iPad The easiest way to cancel a subscription is on your iPhone or iPad. All of your subscriptions are managed from a single, central menu, whether they’re Apple services (like Arcade or Music) or subscriptions for third-party apps. To do this, open the Settings app and tap on your name at the top of the screen. In the menu that appears, tap on “Subscriptions,” and wait for Settings to load information about your active subscriptions....

If you’re a regular Discord user, you may want to personalize your profile by adding a custom profile picture. This image will represent you on Discord, appearing next to messages you send on the platform. Here’s how to change it. Rules for Discord Avatars Your Discord profile picture (or Discord avatar) is completely customizable, but there are some rules you’ll need to consider first before you change it. There are no size limitations to the image you upload, but the image that Discord will show as your avatar is capped at 128×128 pixels....

This trick should work on all Debian-based Linux distros, including Ubuntu. To get started, type ifconfig at the terminal prompt, and then hit Enter. This command lists all network interfaces on the system, so take note of the name of the interface for which you want to change the IP address. To change the settings, you also use the ifconfig command, this time with a few additional parameters. The following command changes the network interface named “eth0” to use the IP address 102....

When you open Microsoft Word, a list of recently-opened documents appears on the left side of the screen. You can clear documents from this list or, if you’d rather not see recent documents at all, disable the list entirely. RELATED: How to Clear Recent Items from a Jump List in Windows The recent documents list also shows up when you select the “Open” option from within Word, and on the jump list for the Word taskbar button....

PostgreSQL, also referred to as Postgres, is the leading object-relational database system. It’s popular because of its high level of compliance with the SQL standard and inclusion of additional features that simplify working with complex datasets at scale. PostgreSQL uses a traditional client-server architecture so you need to run it independently of your application’s code. In this guide, you’ll deploy a PostgreSQL server instance as a Docker container. This avoids adding packages to your host machine and helps to isolate your database from the other parts of your stack....

Windows 10’s Nearby Sharing feature can be easily enabled with one click in the Share dialog, but can only be disabled from the Settings app. Here’s how to hide the “Looking for nearby devices” message and stop incoming share notifications. Launch the Settings app to get started. To do so, click the Start button and click the gear-shaped Settings button (or just press Windows+I). Click or tap the “System” category in the Settings window....

Firefox 60 adds “Sponsored Stories” from Pocket, a new type of advertisement that appears on Firefox’s New Tab page. This is Firefox’s second try with ads on the New Tab page, after sponsored tiles. Here’s how to hide them. Mozilla provides you with personalized recommended and sponsored stories by sending a list of interesting stories to your browser every day. Firefox than compares your local browsing history and the list of interesting stories to find the ones most interesting to you....

Everyone needs to find a Wi-Fi hotspot every once in a while. Almost everyone has Facebook. If you have the Facebook on your phone, you can use it to find local businesses that offer public Wi-Fi. Here’s how to use this tool. Facebook’s Find Wi-Fi tool is one of a bunch of built-in mini-apps that you might not even realize is on your phone. Facebook keeps a listing of businesses that offer public Wi-Fi hotspots, many of them free....

Each device on your network has a private IP address only seen by other devices on the local network. But your ISP assigns you a public IP address that other devices on the Internet can see. Here’s how that works and how you can find those IP addresses. An IP address (or Internet Protocol address) identifies each networked computer and device on a network. When you sign up with Internet service and connect your modem, your ISP assigns you a public IP address....

Microsoft’s “Meet Now” feature in Windows 10 appears as an icon in the notification area of the taskbar that includes links to Skype teleconferencing functions. Here’s how to hide or disable the Meet Now icon and notification. What is Meet Now? The Meet Now icon looks like a small video camera symbol with curved lines above and below it. By default, it appears in the notification area of the Windows 10 taskbar....

A long time ago in the far-off year of 2015, Bethesda tried to copy the incredible variety of user mods for its big RPG franchises, and make money off of them. It was a bad idea, so they stopped doing that. In 2017, Bethesda had the exact same idea, and it’s still bad, but this time they don’t seem to be listening to anyone. So now we’ve got paid mods from the “Creation Club” in Fallout 4, and soon to come in the Skyrim Special Edition....

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, which uses the GNOME Shell desktop by default, doesn’t include a way to change your desktop theme. Whether you’re looking for a bright blue theme or a nice dark theme, here’s how to customize your desktop. While it doesn’t include many customization options by default, the GNOME Shell desktop is very customizable. For example, you can even use extensions and themes to make Ubuntu look a lot like Windows....

It’s likely that you receive a ton of irrelevant false positive motion alerts from your Nest Cam—a car driving by, a bug flying through the frame, or a bush off to the right waving around in the wind. Here’s how you can limit those kinds of notifications using Activity Zones. RELATED: Nest Cameras Are Useless Without a Nest Aware Subscription Keep in mind that you’re not going to be able to get rid of every false positive motion alert, but by creating Activity Zones and customizing your notifications, you can at least keep them to a minimum....

Turn off Touch ID and Face ID for App Store and iTunes Store If you’re using any modern iPhone with Touch ID or Face ID, you won’t be prompted to set your password preference in the App Store app. Touch ID and Face ID will override your previous preferences (if any). As such, if you don’t want to be prompted for authentication for buying apps, you’ll still get a Touch ID or Face ID prompt....

Facebook is a great tool, but it isn’t without its issues. Anyone can create a Facebook Group for any purpose. While lots of sports teams and clubs use Groups to organize things, there are also Groups that are used to coordinate abuse, sell illegal substances, and generally just violate Facebook’s Terms of Service. If you find one, here’s how to report it to Facebook. Head to the offending Group and click on the three dots....

To rotate text in your documents, Google Docs has no official option but you can use a workaround to do that. You can use Docs’ Drawing tool to draw a text box and rotate it, rotating the text within. We’ll show you how to do just that. The Drawing tool’s rotation option allows you to rotate your text (the text box) at any angle you want. When you’ve done that, you can add the resulting text to your document....