Online Reviews Are Getting Worse: How Sellers Trick You Into Leaving Lucrative Reviews for Them

Did You Know? “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is one of the most recognizable classical compositions in the world but, ironically, was composed by Edvard Grieg as a satire intended to reek of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and “to-thyself-be-enough-ness”. Geek Trivia A Character In Serialized Fiction Who Meets Or Exceeds The Popularity Of The Main Character Is Called A? Ladder Climber → Breakout → Show Stealer → Spot Lighter → Advertisement Free eBook: Successful Time Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition ($12 Value) FREE For a Limited Time If you always feel like there's not enough time in the day to get everything accomplished, this is the resource that can help change your workday and your life. 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. What Is “wsappx” and Why Is It Running on My PC? How to Remove Someone From Your PlayStation Friends List How to Delete All Location Information from Your Previous Tweets Online Reviews Are Getting Worse: How Sellers Trick You Into Leaving Lucrative Reviews for Them How to Back Up Your Stardew Valley Game Saves How to Get the Most Out of Your Nest Cam What Is “dbfseventsd,” And Why Is It Running on my Mac? How to Turn Off Amazon’s Personalized Ads Around the Web The Best Comic Book Readers for Windows, Mac, and Linux How to Get Sideloaded Apps to Show Up in FreeTime Profiles on Fire Tablets How to Stop Getting Notifications Every Time Someone Posts in a Facebook Group Browser Extensions Are a Privacy Nightmare: Stop Using So Many of Them Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Dingbats Dingbats is a font consisting of various symbols such as arrows, diamonds, hearts, pointing fingers, stars, etc. that can be inserted into documents. 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. Why Philosophers Are Obsessed With Brain in Jars Preserved brains have had a mysterious appeal for decades. [The Atlantic] Obsessives Have Cracked the Perfect FICO Credit Score of 850 "Super-Prime" consumers are gaming the system in their pursuit of a golden 850 rating. [Bloomberg] The Big Money—and Big Trouble—in the Eclipse Economy For some small American cities, there are financial opportunities and major pitfalls in the coming solar eclipse. Can tech companies monetize this massive natural occurrence? [The Ringer] Update gone wrong leaves 500 smart locks inoperable Fatal error leaves customers scrambling for fixes that can take a week or longer. [ArsTechnica] What Is “wsappx” and Why Is It Running on My PC? The “wsappx” process is part of Windows 8 and 10, and you may see it running in the background or even using a significant amount of CPU and disk resources. It’s related to the Windows Store and Microsoft’s new “Universal” app platform. Read This Article → How to Remove Someone From Your PlayStation Friends List It’s cool being able to add your friends on PlayStation. You can see what each other are doing, what games you’ve been playing, and even play together in some instances. Until that person isn’t someone you want to game with any longer, that is. Then it’s time to remove them. Read This Article → How to Delete All Location Information from Your Previous Tweets Where you live is a pretty private location. Worryingly, it's all too easy to leak it on social media without really meaning to. For example, it's possible to share your exact location in a Tweet. Read This Article → Online Reviews Are Getting Worse: How Sellers Trick You Into Leaving Lucrative Reviews for Them At this point, you’re probably aware that online reviews can be less than honest. Unscrupulous vendors, manufacturers, and other businesses aren’t above priming their economic pumps with a little glowing praise from people who might not be wholly impartial. Read This Article → How to Back Up Your Stardew Valley Game Saves Stardew Valley, the smash hit indie farming simulation role-playing game, is the kind of game players get quite attached to after sinking a lot of time into their farms, their relationships with the characters, and building their skills. Let’s look at how to safely backup your game so your farm is always safe. Read This Article → How to Get the Most Out of Your Nest Cam The Nest Cam is one of the most popular Wi-Fi cams on the market thanks to its ease of use. If you’re a recent owner or just someone who’s curious about what the device can truly do, here’s how to get the most of your Nest Cam. Read This Article → What Is “dbfseventsd,” And Why Is It Running on my Mac? Looking through Activity Monitor, you notice something named “dbfseventsd.” How do you even pronounce that? It’s running three times: twice by the root account, and once by you. What is it? Read This Article → How to Turn Off Amazon’s Personalized Ads Around the Web Amazon tracks your browsing history, which it then uses to advertise products to you across the web. Whether you’re tired of seeing ads for stuff you just bought, or you just don’t want Amazon creeping on you, there’s a way to turn of personalized ads. Here’s how. Read This Article → The Best Comic Book Readers for Windows, Mac, and Linux Comic books as a medium seem tailor-made for tablets, even if the timeline doesn’t precisely add up. But there are a surprising amount of comic reading applications meant for old-fashioned desktop machines, too. This stuff comes in handy for gadgets that blur the lines, like the Microsoft Surface, or for someone who’s amassed a large collection of DRM-free comic book files. Read This Article → How to Get Sideloaded Apps to Show Up in FreeTime Profiles on Fire Tablets Amazon’s Fire Tablets are an excellent choice for inexpensive kids’ tablets, and the FreeTime Profiles work really well to keep things sandboxed so little ones can’t run rampant throughout the OS. The only problem is that if you sideload apps on the Fire HD, they can’t be accessed from the kids’ profiles. Fortunately, there’s a workaround. Read This Article → How to Stop Getting Notifications Every Time Someone Posts in a Facebook Group Facebook groups are a great way for societies, organizations, or just groups of like minded people to communicate. Unfortunately, by default, you'll get a lot of notifications. Read This Article → Browser Extensions Are a Privacy Nightmare: Stop Using So Many of Them Browser extensions are much more dangerous than most people realize. These small tools often have access to everything you do online, so they can capture your passwords, track your web browsing, insert advertisements into web pages you visit, and more. Popular browser extensions are often sold to shady companies or hijacked, and automatic updates can turn them into malware. Read This Article → Advertisement Free eBook: Successful Time Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition ($12 Value) FREE For a Limited Time If you always feel like there's not enough time in the day to get everything accomplished, this is the resource that can help change your workday and your life. Click here to download