What is 3D Touch and Why it Will Change How you Use Mobile Devices

Did You Know? There are more Scottish people living in Canada than in Scotland. Geek Trivia In Response To Complaints Of Slow Elevators Designers Installed What? Per-Floor Chimes → Mirrors → Faster Mechanisms → Music → Advertisement Download Exclusive Enterprise Security Kit (a $26.99 value) FREE for a limited time! Kit includes "Enterprise Security: A Data-Centric Approach to Securing the Enterprise" plus 3 other resources to help you understand how to secure enterprise data. Click here to download Thoughts from the Geek This is a daily column written by Lowell Heddings, the founder and owner of How-To Geek. If you prefer, you can read this column in a web browser instead. Newly found TrueCrypt flaw allows full system compromise The Google researcher hasn’t disclosed details about the two bugs yet, saying that he usually waits seven days after a patch is released to open his bug reports. Since TrueCrypt is no longer actively maintained, the bugs won’t be fixed directly in the program’s code. However, they have been fixed in VeraCrypt, an open-source program based on the TrueCrypt code that aims to continue and improve the original project. If you’re using TrueCrypt, it might be time to upgrade to using VeraCrypt instead. We talked about VeraCrypt in our alternatives to Truecrypt article, and the one important thing you should note is that you’ll have to decrypt your TrueCrypt volumes and then create new VeraCrypt volumes, because they aren’t strictly compatible. Google Pixel C hands-on: A well-built but clunky convertible Android tablet Overall, the Pixel felt clunky. The lack of a trackpad on hardware like this is really disappointing, but Android’s trackpad support is awful anyway. If this is the start of a new tablet push by Google, where it will update a ton of its apps with a dual pane tablet mode and enable split screen functionality in Android, we might change our tune. We’ve thought that with every new Nexus tablet though, and Google’s tablet support never seems to get any better. We’d rather have a Chrome OS laptop. So now Google has joined the Surface-copying party along with Apple’s iPad Pro and a lot of other vendors. It’s clear that the new large tablet is going to look a lot like a Microsoft Surface from now on. Which makes a lot of sense. Phones have become so large that they are like small tablets — I usually write this column on my iPhone 6s Plus — and there is little need for a bigger screen on a touch device for anything but watching videos. Sure, it’s nicer to do things with a bigger screen, but you don’t really need one. When you are trying to really get something done however, whether it is composing a lengthy document, working on a spreadsheet, editing a movie, or doing your taxes, you are going to want a larger screen. And probably a keyboard for quicker input. And that’s where the Surface form factor comes in. You get a tablet for sitting on the couch and a laptop if you are sitting at your desk. In my experience the Surface is uncomfortable to use in your lap, and the iPad Pro will be even less likely to work well as a laptop. The new Pixel sounds like it will be lousy as a tablet. It’s probably best to stick with a laptop and a large phone for the time being and wait until they iron things out. We’ll be getting our hands on an iPad Pro to see whether it can really function as a desktop replacement or not. Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Osborne Effect The Osborne Effect refers to the consequences of announcing a new or updated product too far in advance of its actual release date. The premature announcement creates a negative impact on the sales of current products and overall revenue because customers have decided to cancel current orders or chosen to delay making a purchase until later (all in anticipation of the announced product). What We're Reading from Around the Web Ditch Linux for Windows 10 on your Raspberry Pi with Microsoft's IoT kit [ArsTechnica] Google Chromecast now supports Spotify [The Verge] Google's new Chromecast has a new look, catches up to modern Wi-Fi standards [The Verge] OS X 10.11 El Capitan: The Ars Technica Review [ArsTechnica] Google Maps Comes To Apple Watch Five Useful Cooking Techniques No One Teaches You [Lifehacker] What is 3D Touch and Why it Will Change How you Use Mobile Devices The new iPhone 6S is out and with it all the hub-bub that usually accompanies a new iPhone release, but there is one standout feature that we want to talk about today that is well worth the hype: 3D Touch. Read This Article → How to Use a Cellphone Without Any Service These days, it seems like pretty much everyone you know has got a mobile phone tucked away somewhere on their person. This also means that everyone is paying massive telecom companies a monthly premium for the chance to use it… but what if you could own a phone complete with all the same features, but no activated plan? As long as you’re near a local Wi-Fi connection, iPhones and Androids can perform all the same tricks as they usually do, except at a fraction of the cost of what your monthly bill comes out to. Read This Article → The Beginner’s Guide to Nano, the Linux Command-Line Text Editor New to the Linux command-line? Confused by all of the other advanced text editors? How-To Geek’s got your back with this tutorial to Nano, a simple text-editor that's very newbie-friendly. Read This Article → Do Wi-Fi Router Antennas ‘Rotate’ in Relation to the Wi-Fi Devices Connected to Them? If you are new to using Wi-Fi in your home, then you may find yourself curious about how it all works when your devices are connected to your router. With that in mind, today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a curious reader’s questions. Read This Article → How to Uninstall Java on Mac OS X Java is, and always has been, the source of many woes. And security holes. Lots of security holes. There’s really no reason to have it installed anymore, especially now that Minecraft has its own bundled Java for both OS X and Windows. So today is the day you remove it. Read This Article → What is Wi-Fi Assist and How Do You Turn it Off? Wi-Fi Assist is a new feature on iOS 9, which is garnering a lot of attention. We want to discuss Wi-Fi Assist today, explain what is does and, most importantly, disable it if necessary. Read This Article → The New Apple Maps vs. Google Maps: Which is Right For You? When Apple Maps first debuted in 2013, it was universally panned by the press and public alike. Maligned for its laggy interface, poor directional capabilities, and downright broken business directory, the move into mapping was seen as one of the first real stumbles that the Cupertino technology giant had made since it first debuted the iPhone itself over half a decade earlier. Read This Article → HTG Explains: Why Deleted Files Can Be Recovered and How You Can Prevent It When you a delete a file, it isn't really erased – it continues existing on your hard drive, even after you empty it from the Recycle Bin. This allows you (and other people) to recover files you’ve deleted. Read This Article → The Beginner’s Guide to Shell Scripting: The Basics The term "shell scripting" gets mentioned often in Linux forums, but many users aren't familiar with it. Learning this easy and powerful programming method can help you save time, learn the command-line better, and banish tedious file management tasks. Read This Article → Advertisement Download Salary & Skills Roundup for Today's IT Professional This exclusive kit will teach you how to make more money in your career as an IT professional. Click here to download