Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Wireless SSIDs

Did You Know? Déjà vu, a feeling of intense familiarity with a situation that is brand new to you, has an opposite feeling: jamais vu—an unsettling and eerie feeling that something which should be familiar to you is not. Jamais vu is often experienced by people with amnesia and other memory-related conditions. Geek Trivia Which Of These U.S. States’ Official Mammal Is Extinct? New York → Alaska → Georgia → California → Advertisement Try The New and Improved CleanMyPC 1.8.9 with Smart Uninstaller If you want to clean up your PC the easy way, CleanMyPC is a great tool to get the job done easily, and it will even keep your computer clean automatically. The Uninstaller module can find and erase any app completely with no leftovers. The improved module includes the Safety Database to make uninstallation more accurate and safe. Free 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 How to Check Out Library Books on Your Kindle for Free How to Quickly Share Your Location in a Text Message on Android How to Hide Specific Ads on Facebook What Is an SSID, or Service Set Identifier? Is Facebook’s New “Messenger Kids” App Safe for My Kids? How to Enable the Alarm on the Schlage Connect Smart Lock How to Stop Your Mac From Automatically Connecting to a Wi-Fi Network Is Wireless Charging Slower Than Wired Charging? What Is DirecTV Now, and Can It Replace Your Cable Subscription? How to Stop Incoming Phone Calls from Ringing On Your Mac and iPad Why Rebooting Your Router Fixes So Many Problems (and Why You Have to Wait 10 Seconds) Today's Review Geek Articles Charge Your Android Phone Quicker with a Fast Charger Best Photo Calendar Services Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Thunk In PCs, Thunk refers to the conversion of a 16-bit memory address (segmented memory address) to a 32-bit address (flat address space) and/or vice versa as needed. 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. Dell, Other Vendors Start Shipping Laptops With Intel ME Firmware Disabled The controversy over Intel Management Engine has some OEMs disabling the software and using that as a selling point. [Bleeping Computer] SpaceX Falcon Heavy Tesla stunt: Elon Musk returns to his roots as an inter-planetary showman Elon is launching his personal Tesla into space, and he says it will be playing "Space Oddity" on a loop when he does it. [Quartz] Google releases "Android Go" to OEMs, along with a suite of low-end Google apps Low end phones could be faster, but it's not clear which features they'd be giving up on. We'd love to try this OS out. [ArsTechnica] YouTube: Expanding our work against abuse of our platform Google plans on hiring a bunch of human moderators to cut back on creepy fake kids videos. [Official YouTube Blog] Nvidia's Shield TV offers Wii and GameCube games in HD in China Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and New Super Mario Bros Wii will be on the Shield, but only in China. [TechCrunch] How to Check Out Library Books on Your Kindle for Free Tired of paying so much for ebooks? Most libraries these days let you check out eBooks, for free, just like regular books. Read This Article → How to Quickly Share Your Location in a Text Message on Android Let’s say your car breaks down and you have no idea where you are. You could call someone and tell them how to get to you…or you could just shoot them a quick text with your exact location from Google Maps. Read This Article → How to Hide Specific Ads on Facebook For a while, Facebook thought I was into basketball. Almost every ad was for something to do with basketball. The thing is, I’m not sure Ireland even has a basketball team. We certainly don’t have a professional one and I’ve never watched a game in my life. It was a confusing phase of my digital life and it took a few months before I started seeing relevant ads again. Read This Article → What Is an SSID, or Service Set Identifier? You’ll often see the acronym “SSID” when Wi-Fi networks are involved. A Wi-Fi network’s SSID is the technical term for its network name. For example, if you see a sign telling you to join a network with an SSID of “Airport WiFi”, you just need to pull up the list of wireless networks nearby and join the “Airport WiFi” network. Read This Article → Is Facebook’s New “Messenger Kids” App Safe for My Kids? When it comes to online safety, “Facebook” isn’t the first name any of us generally think of. But they just launched Messenger Kids, a kid-focused messaging app (similar to Facebok Messenger or Snapchat) that it claims will keep your kids safer online. But how does it work, and is it really safe? Read This Article → How to Enable the Alarm on the Schlage Connect Smart Lock The Schlage Connect smart lock includes a built-in alarm system that can deter any potential thieves from breaking into your house through the front door. Here’s how to enable it. Read This Article → How to Stop Your Mac From Automatically Connecting to a Wi-Fi Network Your Mac automatically reconnects to Wi-Fi networks you’ve previously connected to. Starting with macOS High Sierra, you can now tell your Mac not to automatically connect to certain Wi-FI networks. Your Mac will remember the Wi-Fi network’s passphrase and other connection details, but won’t connect unless you tell it to. Read This Article → Is Wireless Charging Slower Than Wired Charging? Look, Apple is making wireless charging cool again with the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X. I’m glad! But there are things you should know about this technology—like how fast it’s going to charge your phone. You know, practical stuff. Read This Article → What Is DirecTV Now, and Can It Replace Your Cable Subscription? Streaming television is getting more and more popular, allowing users to get away from standard cable packages and into something that fits their lifestyle. DirecTV is one of the first traditional “cable” companies to get in on the action with DirecTV Now. Read This Article → How to Stop Incoming Phone Calls from Ringing On Your Mac and iPad When someone calls my iPhone, it rings, as you’d expect. But so do my Mac and my iPad. It sounds like a teenage band at their first rehearsal: everyone's trying to play the same tune, but they're not doing it at the same time. Read This Article → Why Rebooting Your Router Fixes So Many Problems (and Why You Have to Wait 10 Seconds) The internet is down, but you know what to do: unplug your router or modem, wait ten seconds, then plug it back in. It’s second nature at this point, but why does it actually work? And is there some magic to the ten second number? Read This Article → Advertisement Try The New and Improved CleanMyPC 1.8.9 with Smart Uninstaller If you want to clean up your PC the easy way, CleanMyPC is a great tool to get the job done easily, and it will even keep your computer clean automatically. The Uninstaller module can find and erase any app completely with no leftovers. The improved module includes the Safety Database to make uninstallation more accurate and safe. Free Download