The Best New Features in Android 8.0 Oreo, and How to Upgrade Now

Did You Know? To promote their Electronic Calculators in the early 1950s, IBM advertised that each machine was like having 150 extra slide-rule-wielding engineers on staff. Geek Trivia The First Companion Character Link Has In Any Of The Legend Of Zelda Games Is? Tatl → Midna → Zelda → Navi → Advertisement Download Free eBook: 7 Ways to Make Yourself Hard to Hack While the concept is as old as IT security thinking itself, that doesn't make applying layers of security any the less relevant today. Choosing the correct layers, of course, is paramount. Think of defense in depth as being a risk mitigation construct applying multiple layers of control across the length and breadth of your IT environment, and you will be pretty much on the money. 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 Build Your Own NES or SNES Classic with a Raspberry Pi and RetroPie The Best Tools for Editing Pictures on a Chromebook What Is a Macro Lens in Photography? The Best New Features in Android 8.0 Oreo, Available Now How to Skip the Wait and Upgrade Your Pixel or Nexus to Android Oreo Now How to Randomize Your Hue Lights for Extra Vacation Security Are Smart Locks Secure? How to Middle Click on a Laptop Touchpad How to Make Phone Calls With Your Google Home What Is “SmartScreen” and Why Is It Running on My PC? How to Customize Your Command Prompt’s Color Scheme With Microsoft’s ColorTool How to Leave a Facebook Group Why You Should Replace Windows’ Default Image Viewer With IrfanView Geek Comic Today's Tech Term FSOT FSOT is a shorthand slang term used on online auction and classified ad websites that means “For Sale Or Trade”. 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. Scientists are working together to correct an error made centuries ago .05 or .005? Correcting an old error is tricky. [Quartz] Thinking positive is a surprisingly risky manoeuvre Fantasies about the future have a troubling effect on achieving actual goals. If positive thinking doesn't work, what does? [Aeon] The Camera That Will Transform Our Understanding of the Universe Brookhaven National Laboratory's Paul O'Connor explains the mind-boggling promise of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. [Atlas Obscura] How to Build Your Own NES or SNES Classic with a Raspberry Pi and RetroPie The NES Classic Edition is an official clone of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and one of the best ways to play your favorite retro games. The SNES Classic is its successor. Unfortunately, it’s so popular that it’s nearly impossible to get your hands on either. Don’t pay $300 on eBay when you can use the modestly-priced Raspberry Pi to build your own—with even more games. Read This Article → The Best Tools for Editing Pictures on a Chromebook Chromebooks have long been touted as great machines for users who “don’t need anything more than a browser.” But as time has gone on, the machines have gotten more powerful, with more program options are available than ever before. If you thought editing photos from a Chromebook wasn’t possible, it’s time to give it another look. Read This Article → What Is a Macro Lens in Photography? A macro lens is a lens designed for taking extremely close-up photos of the subject. If you've ever seen a photo of a spider's eyes or the veins of a leaf, that was a macro photo. Read This Article → The Best New Features in Android 8.0 Oreo, Available Now Android “O” is officially Android Oreo, which is beginning to roll out to compatible devices now. As with most major Android releases, this one brings a host of new features and improvements over its predecessor, Android Nougat. Here’s a glimpse of what to expect when Oreo lands on your device. Read This Article → How to Skip the Wait and Upgrade Your Pixel or Nexus to Android Oreo Now Android Oreo is here, but it’s rolling out to Pixel and Nexus devices slowly. If you still haven’t gotten the upgrade notification, here’s a little trick to upgrade sooner. Read This Article → How to Randomize Your Hue Lights for Extra Vacation Security If you want to give the illusion that you’re home when you’re really on vacation, your Phillips Hue smart bulbs now have a “presence mimicking” feature that makes crafting the illusion dead simple. Read This Article → Are Smart Locks Secure? You might think that smart locks are a security disaster just waiting to happen. After all, why would you trust an internet-connected device with the security of your house and everything in it? But consider this: locks are pretty insecure in general. Read This Article → How to Middle Click on a Laptop Touchpad Most laptop touchpads make it possible to perform a middle-click, but not all do. In some situations, you may need to enable this option in your mouse driver’s control panel or install the appropriate drivers first. Read This Article → How to Make Phone Calls With Your Google Home After Alexa gave users the ability to call other Echo owners, Google upped the ante with true phone calls. If you live in the U.S. or Canada, you can now use your Google Home to place a call to anyone’s phone. You don’t need to limit yourself to other people who have a Google Home. Here’s how to get started making phone calls. Read This Article → What Is “SmartScreen” and Why Is It Running on My PC? Windows 10 includes SmartScreen, a feature that helps protect your PC from downloaded malware and malicious websites. The “SmartScreen” process—with the filename “smartscreen.exe”—that you see in Task Manager is responsible for this feature. Read This Article → How to Customize Your Command Prompt’s Color Scheme With Microsoft’s ColorTool Microsoft created a new console color scheme for Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update, but existing Windows systems won’t get it automatically. A new, official tool allows you to install this new color scheme and other ones for easy customization of your Command Prompt windows. Read This Article → How to Leave a Facebook Group One of Facebook's most annoying features is that any of your Friends can add you to a Facebook Group. I've had several acquaintances who are selling Herbalife or similar things add me to Groups promoting their dubious products. If the same thing happens to you or you just want to leave a Facebook Group because it's no longer relevant to you, here's how. Read This Article → Why You Should Replace Windows’ Default Image Viewer With IrfanView As its feature set expanded, Windows became something of an omnibus. It now includes not one, but two built-in browsers, a defragmentation tool, and even Candy Crush. But like most do-it-all tools, just because Windows can do almost everything doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do anything. So it is with the default photo viewer. Read This Article → Advertisement Download Free eBook: 7 Ways to Make Yourself Hard to Hack While the concept is as old as IT security thinking itself, that doesn't make applying layers of security any the less relevant today. Choosing the correct layers, of course, is paramount. Think of defense in depth as being a risk mitigation construct applying multiple layers of control across the length and breadth of your IT environment, and you will be pretty much on the money. Click here to download