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Over the past several months, Discord has been working hard to change how users view it. What began as a place for gamers has quickly expanded and changed, with Discord even changing its branding to showcase the application’s move to become more of a mainstream communication platform. While it isn’t making any big pushes towards overtaking popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, some experts believe the latest update, which adds stickers, could be the company testing the market....

Sling TV Price: Starting at $15 - $25 The folks at Sling TV have been providing an alternative to standard cable services since 2015. Offering a variety of different packages, customers can download the company’s app to many different devices to access their favorite content. Sling provides a couple of different offerings for prospective buyers so that users can always find what fits their lifestyle and viewing habits best. In addition to accessing standard cable shows, Sling TV offers some different add-ons for sports, kids, news, international coverage, and more....

Octets vs. Bytes All modern computer systems implement a byte as an eight-bit quantity. Octets and bytes are the same from this perspective. For this reason, the two terms are used interchangeably. Historically, however, computers have supported bytes having different numbers of bits; octets and bytes mean different things in this context. Network professionals began using the term octet many years ago to maintain this distinction. Computer systems engineers often use the term nibble when referring to a four-bit quantity (half of one octet or byte) rather than calling it a half octet (or quartet, as is common in music)....

What Are TIF and TIFF Files? A file with the TIF or TIFF file extension is a tagged image file. This type of file is used for high-quality raster type graphics. The format supports lossless compression, in which no image data is lost during the compression process. This lets graphic artists and photographers archive their high-quality photos in a manageable amount of storage space without compromising quality. GeoTIFF image files also use the TIF file extension....

Can You Get Better Bass in a Car Without an Amp or Subwoofer? The cold, hard truth is that you’re not going to get really good bass in a sound system that doesn’t include both a subwoofer and an amplifier to drive it. The issue is that car speakers, even really good car speakers, aren’t big enough, and built-in car stereo amps aren’t powerful enough, to reproduce deep, distortion-free bass. That being the case, upgrading your stock car speakers can still yield some pretty powerful results....

Tighten Everything Before Packing Make sure all the covers are tight on the camera before packing it: USB ports, lens caps, battery compartment panel, etc. Jostling and bumps can tear off or break loose parts. Remove the Lens If you’re flying with a DSLR camera, don’t travel with the lens attached to the camera body. Shifts during the flight can stress or damage the threads that hold the lens to the camera....

For 720p and 1080p HDTVs, the optimum viewing distance is about 1-1/2 to 2 times the width of the television screen. This means that if you have a 55-inch TV, you should sit about 6 to 8 feet from the screen. If you sit too close to a TV screen, (although you won’t damage your eyes), there is a greater chance that you may see the line or pixel structure of the image, along with any processing artifacts, which can not only be distracting, but uncomfortable....

Troubleshoot Font Installations When you add a new font to your computer, follow the steps to download the font, expand the font archive, and install it. When an application, such as a word processor like Microsoft Word, doesn’t recognize the font, it might be broken. Some font problems can be fixed by deleting and reinstalling the font. If the font still doesn’t display properly, follow these troubleshooting tips. What Is an OpenType Font?...

Overall Findings Both a TV and a monitor provide high-definition displays for movies, games, and productivity. There’s overlap in terms of price, size, and functionality. Which one you use depends on your preferences and needs. TVs and monitors can work together to give you an extra screen for your computer or a bigger display for presentations and media. Size: HDTVs Provide More Screen Overlap exists between the sizes of TVs and monitors....

Twitch officially responded to the leak Wednesday, citing a server configuration change as the reason the hackers were able to access the site’s information and steal its source code. Twitch also says the investigation is ongoing, and at this moment there is no indication that login credentials were taken in the breach. Additionally, Twitch says full credit card numbers are not stored by the site, so users shouldn’t worry about their full card numbers being exposed by the hackers responsible for the leak....

Stated Power Ratings Can Be Deceiving When it comes to real amplifier power output, especially with surround sound receivers, you can’t take a manufacturer’s amplifier power rating statements at face value. You need to look closer at what they base their statements on. For example, for home theater receivers with a 5.1 or 7.1 channel configuration, is the stated wattage output specification determined when the amplifier is driving one or two channels at a time?...

Printer DPI Is Dots Per Inch Printers print by applying ink or toner onto the paper. Inkjets use nozzles that spray tiny drops of ink, while laser printers melt dots of toner against the paper. When more dots are squeezed into a square inch, the resulting image is sharper. A 600 dpi printer squeezes 600 dots horizontally and 600 dots vertically in every square inch of the sheet. Some inkjet printers have a higher resolution in one direction, so you might also see a resolution like 600 by 1200 dpi....

Isolation is an integral part of database transactional properties. It is the third property of the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) standards that ensure data remains consistent and accurate. How Isolation Works If Joe issues a database transaction at the same time that Mary issues a different transaction, both transactions should operate on the database in an isolated manner. The database should either perform Joe’s entire transaction before executing Mary’s or vice-versa....

What is USB? The Universal Serial Bus standard has been extremely successful. USB ports and cables are used to connect hardware such as printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, flash drives, external hard drives, joysticks, cameras, monitors, and more to computers of all kinds, including desktops, tablets, laptops, netbooks, etc. In fact, USB has become so common that you’ll find the connection available on nearly any computer-like device such as video game consoles, home audio/visual equipment, and even in many automobiles....

One major difference between the USB-C cable connector when compared to USB Type-A and USB Type B, is that it’s completely reversible. This means that there isn’t a ‘right side up’ way in which it has to be plugged in. USB-C supports USB4, 3.2, and 3.1 but is also backward compatible with both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. See the USB Physical Compatibility Chart for details. The USB-C 24-pin cable is capable of relaying video, power (up to 100 watts), and data (as quickly as 10 Gb/s), which means it can be used for not only connecting monitors but also charging high-powered devices and transferring data from one device to another, like from a phone to a computer or one phone to another....

What Is a Font Family? Font families usually include a regular, italic, bold and bold italic version of the font. For example, the Times New Roman family, a popular serif font that appears in many newspapers, usually ships with Times New Roman Italic, Times New Roman Bold and Times New Roman Bold Italic. Font families are multitaskers designed to function together as one font. Some type families even include light, condensed and heavy versions....

Do USB-to-Aux Cables Exist? USB-to-aux cables exist, and they work for the purposes that they were designed. However, they don’t work as a conduit for digital music files to your car radio. If you plug a USB thumb drive into a USB-to-aux cable and plug the cable into a head unit, nothing happens. The same is true, in most cases, if you plug a USB-to-aux cable into a phone and connect it to a head unit....

South Africa has proposed collecting biometric information from people when they purchase SIM cards in order to thwart SIM swap attacks. In these attacks, scammers request replacement SIM cards they use to intercept legitimate one-time passwords (OTPs) and authorize transactions. According to the FBI, these fraudulent transactions totaled over $68 million in 2021. However, the privacy implications of South Africa’s proposal don’t sit well with experts. “I sympathize with the providers looking for a way to stop the very real problem of SIM swapping,” Tim Helming, security evangelist with DomainTools, told Lifewire via email....

One easy solutions is to concert an old Mac into a file server. This allows you to back up files, share printer access, replace a network router, and share attached peripherals, among other tasks. If you would like to have a file server on your network, so you can share files, music, videos, and other data with other local devices, you can follow this step-by-step guide to repurpose an older Mac....

While these features provide a welcome level of convenience, they may also present privacy concerns for some users. Whatever your stance on this functionality, it helps to understand how it works. Accessing Chrome’s Privacy Settings A variety of settings and services can be toggled on or off in Chrome’s privacy settings section. This tutorial explains some of these features, as well as how to enable or disable each of them....