What Is the Optical Audio Port, and When Should I Use It?

Did You Know? The grade of maple syrup is not, as you might assume, based on the quality, but on the coloration and flavor instead: grade A is lighter and milder than grade B, and so on. Geek Trivia What 1970s-era Video Game System Was Manufactured Until 1992? The Atari 2600 → The ColecoVision → The Intellivsion → The Magnavox Odyssey → Advertisement Download Online Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking - FREE Video Training Course No longer will money have dominion over our ability to learn. Anyone who wants to become a penetration tester, now has the opportunity to learn to do so with this free course. Click here to download Want to Change Your Email Preferences? At some point in the past you subscribed to the How-To Geek newsletter, but if you'd like to change the frequency or unsubscribe, you can do so by clicking the button. Change my Subscription (or unsubscribe) Today's How-To Geek Articles By popular request, we're including a quick list of the daily articles at the top of the daily email as well as the regular format near the bottom. How to Refresh the Content in the App Store by Clearing the Cache What Is the Optical Audio Port, and When Should I Use It? How to Use and Configure Windows 10’s "Battery Saver" Mode How to Use Your TV or Receiver Remote to Control Your Apple TV How to Measure More Than Steps Using the iPhone’s Health App How to See What’s Taking Up Space on Your Android Device How to Set Up and Customize Email Accounts in Windows 10 How to Stream Games With NVIDIA GameStream to Any Computer, Tablet, or Smartphone Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Frankenpine Frankenpine is a nickname for a mobile phone tower that has been camouflaged or disguised to look like a pine tree. What We're Reading This section contains what we're reading from around the web, along with commentary from our editors. Think of it like your daily digest of the most interesting things online. Andy Rubin Unleashed Android on the World. Now Watch Him Do the Same With AI Rubin wants to fill the world with sensing machines that feed neural networks. [Wired] Visions Of The Future for NASA This collection of retro-futurist prints, commissioned by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, capture the spirit of the golden age of space exploration. [Invisible Creature] Game cracking group takes a year off as a "genuine sales" experiment Will the colossal group taking a break have an effect or will smaller groups fill in the gap? [ArsTechnica] Einstein's theory about gravitational waves could be confirmed tomorrow A pending announcment from the scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory has the science community abuzz. [The Verge] Skimmers Hijack ATM Network Cables The new attack vector involves hijacking the network cable with a pass-through-recorder that lifts information when the ATM phones home. [Krebs on Security] How to Refresh the Content in the App Store by Clearing the Cache Are you finding that you're not seeing new apps on the App Store, or that updates to apps won't go away even after you've installed the updates? Here’s a simple fix. Read This Article → What Is the Optical Audio Port, and When Should I Use It? Ever wonder what that trapezoidal “optical” audio port is? You’ll find these on the back of computers, HDTVs, media receivers, and more, but hardly anyone uses them. That little oft-neglected port can be a real life saver, though. Let’s look at what it is and how you can take advantage of it. Read This Article → How to Use and Configure Windows 10’s "Battery Saver" Mode Windows 10 includes  a “Battery Saver” mode that’s designed to extend your laptop or tablet’s battery life. Windows will automatically enable Battery Saver when your PC’s battery runs low, but you can control this–and choose exactly what Battery Saver does. Read This Article → How to Use Your TV or Receiver Remote to Control Your Apple TV The Apple TV remote works well enough but many people detest having multiple remote controls and prefer to control their entire media center experience from a single input. If you’re one of those people you’re in luck. Your Apple TV there can learn to accept input from your TV, receiver, cable box or other remote control. Read This Article → How to Measure More Than Steps Using the iPhone’s Health App Many people use the iPhone’s Health app or their Apple Watch to measure their steps or the distance they’ve walked during the course of the day. You may not realize, however, that it can measure much more than that. Read This Article → How to See What’s Taking Up Space on Your Android Device That 15GB phone may seem like it has a lot of space, but after taking all those photos, syncing all that music, and downloading all those audiobooks, it could dwindle pretty quickly. With so many files on your device, how are you supposed to figure out which files are taking up the most space? We'll show a couple of ways to analyze the storage on your Android device. Read This Article → How to Set Up and Customize Email Accounts in Windows 10 Windows 10 comes with a built-in Mail app, from which you can access all your different email accounts (including Outlook.com, Gmail, Yahoo!, and others) in one single, centralized interface. With it, there's no need to go to different websites or apps for your email. Here’s how to set it up. Read This Article → How to Stream Games With NVIDIA GameStream to Any Computer, Tablet, or Smartphone NVIDIA’s GameStream technology lets you stream games from a GeForce-powered Windows PC to another device. It only officially supports NVIDIA’s own Android-based SHIELD devices, but with a third-party open-source GameStream client known as Moonlight, you can stream games to Windows PCs, Macs, Linux PCs, iPhones, iPads, and non-SHIELD Android devices. Read This Article → Advertisement Download 2016 Cloud Technology Kit (a $19.99 value) FREE for a limited time! Kit includes "Hybrid Cloud for Dummies" plus 3 other resources to help you find the right combination of public, private, and data center resources to empower your business. Click here to download