Spotify is one of the most popular streaming music—and podcast—platforms around. A big part of that success is the ubiquity of the Spotify app. It’s available on every phone, tablet, and computer you can imagine, including web browsers. The great thing about the Spotify web player is it functions exactly like the desktop apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The only thing it can’t really replicate is playing music in the background— you’ll need to keep the tab open....

Privacy Let’s first address the elephant in the room: The question of how private ExpressVPN and IPVanish really are. There’s a lot of speculation surrounding both that may make either of them seem a less-than-ideal choice. ExpressVPN The questions surrounding ExpressVPN are the most recent. In September 2021, ExpressVPN announced that it was being taken over by Kape Technologies for close to $1 billion. That’s good news for ExpressVPN, of course, but commentators were quick to point out that Kape is a company with a shady past....

The latest ThinkPad X1 Carbon will still put a significant dent in your wallet, and some of what you’re paying for is the premium feel (the lowest retail price on the company’s website is $2,329, outside of sale discounts). But in my time with the X1 Carbon Gen 10, I can see why my model, the 21CB0070US, has a starting price in the $2,000 range. This laptop will surprise you with its speed and flexibility as an on-the-go business laptop....

Lossy Compression Makes Files Smaller Lossy compression discards as much data as possible in a bid to make file sizes as small as possible. This is achieved by targeting data that is deemed to be less noticeable so that the file itself still largely resembles the original. The more compressed a file, the more the quality will suffer. Two good examples of lossy compression are JPEG images and MP3 audio files....

We were very excited about the Windows 11 emoji when Microsoft first showed them off, so we’re definitely disappointed to see that the company has reverted to a more traditional flat design. Granted, at the end of the day, the idea of emoji is to express your emotions, and flat ones will do it just as well as 3D ones. That doesn’t make the change any less disappointing, though....

Removing Default Taskbar Buttons in Windows 11 Microsoft has a bunch of options pinned to the Windows 11 taskbar by default. You can quickly access Search, Task View, Widgets, and Chat. But not everyone wants to have these pinned to their taskbar at all times, and Windows 11 came with a handy right-click to unpin option that made getting rid of them quick and painless. In the latest build, Microsoft nixed the right-click option, forcing users to go to Windows 11 Settings to change the items on the taskbar....

If you’re looking to make the switch to Firefox on Windows, Mozilla has made it easier than ever to change your default browser thanks to some clever reverse engineering. Mozilla’s new way has you changing the default in just a single click instead of Microsoft’s clunky, multi-step method. Changing to Firefox on Windows The issue with changing browsers is that Microsoft has created a simple one-click process that switches to Edge but not for other browsers....

Google Assistant-powered Smart Displays can do a lot of powerful things, but people also just love the simple photo frame feature. If you use Google Photos on Android, you can get a similar effect on your home screen. The photo frame feature on Smart Displays is essentially a screen saver. You choose the Google Photos albums you want to see and it randomly rotates through all the photos. You can get the same feature on Google TV/Android TV devices as well....

Antimalware programs like Malwarebytes pop up warnings when they detect “potentially unwanted programs” you might want to remove. People call PUPs many other names, including “adware” and “crapware.” You almost certainly don’t want these programs on your computer, but they’re categorized differently for legal reasons. Malware is a type of malicious software that infects your computer without your permission. “Potentially unwanted programs” often arrive bundled with other software and often have a EULA you probably clicked right through....

RELATED: The Best Halloween Movies on Netflix in 2022 Beetlejuice Play Video Director Tim Burton honed his signature spooky-cute style with supernatural comedy Beetlejuice. Michael Keaton plays the title character, a mischievous ghost who offers to help a recently deceased couple (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) rid their home of its new inhabitants. Burton creates a wonderfully phantasmagorical world that is creepy but never scary, full of endearingly morbid characters....

Football season is almost upon us. That means one thing: expensive cable or satellite TV packages. Okay, it also means beer commercials and overpriced stadium tickets and quarterbacks trying to sell you car insurance. But in terms of immediate costs, premium TV is up there. If you’re part of the online-only cord-cutting trend, sports can be a real pain. Luckily, the last few years have seen a rapid expansion in live TV streaming services....

How Did the Internet Get Tricked? A fake press release started making the rounds claiming that Walmart would begin accepting the currency as a form of payment. Several publications reported the press release as fact, and it was even posted (and deleted) by the official Litecoin Twitter account. Because the coin would suddenly be far more useful if a major retailer like Walmart accepted it, the price jumped by an impressive 20%....

Self Install Versus Professional Install The Base Station and Keypad As with most home security systems, this one all starts at the base station. Available in either black or white, the cylindrical unit plugs into a standard outlet and requires no wiring. It can connect to your home’s WiFi system, has a backup battery that the company says can last up to 24 hours, and features a SIM card that allows the unit to operate even if power and Wi-Fi get knocked out....

RELATED: The 6 Best Screen Protectors for the Nintendo Switch What Is Oleophobic Coating? While it’s a complex-sounding name, an oleophobic coating is designed to handle a simple job: keeping fingerprints off of your screen. Before smartphones shipped with these coatings, our devices were fingerprint magnets that could look old and heavily used after only hours out of the box. You’ll increasingly find oleophobic coatings on any device with glass that is meant for people to interact with....

Optimizing HDR for Your Room’s Lighting The lighting conditions of a room can significantly impact your HDR content viewing experience. For example, if you are watching a dark scene in a brightly lit room, you might miss out on some darker details. And a filmmaker or a TV show creator can do little about it without compromising on their vision. Dolby has understood this problem since the launch of Dolby Vision, which is the company’s proprietary HDR format....

The Wired Connection Ethernet (technically known as IEEE 802.3) is a communications technology that is used to connect devices in a local area network (LAN). It defines the rules using which computing devices communicate over a network. Unlike Wi-Fi, which is a wireless networking technology, Ethernet uses cables to transmit data. So when experts talk about using Ethernet, they basically want you to go wired. Although Ethernet was invented almost 50 years ago in 1973, it’s still used widely around the world....

Another Smart TV Platform XClass TV is a smart TV platform developed by Comcast, the telecommunication conglomerate behind Xfinity, Sky, and NBCUniversal. It’s built upon the company’s X1 operating system that already powers the Xfinity Flex streaming box and the Xfinity X1. As a result, it offers all the bells and whistles that one expects from a smart TV platform. Like many other smart TV platforms on the market, it makes it easy to reach the content you love and enjoy....

While AMD is making inroads, Intel is by far the number one choice in computer processors. Core processors are great chips for a desktop or laptop, but what’s the difference between Core i3, i5, i7, i9, and X? What’s a Core Processor? Intel Core processors first came to the desktop in mid-2006, replacing the Pentium line that had previously comprised Intel’s high-end processors. The Core “i” names are primarily “high level” categorizations that help differentiate processors within a given generation....

As Google tightens security, this has become more difficult on modern versions of Android. But there’s always a way to make your phone usable again, as long as you remember your Google account’s username and its password. Modern Versions of Android (5.0 and Up) Android used to have a way to bypass your PIN or password, but that feature was removed in Android 5.0. Unfortunately, this means there’s no built-in way to simply reset your pattern, PIN, or password and gain access to your phone or tablet....

Microsoft has just announced a new Windows 11 Insider Preview build for the Dev channel. Version 22504 is not the most exciting update, but it does bring a keyboard shortcut to the new taskbar mute button. There are a lot of small features tucked in this Windows 11 Insider Preview build, such as improvements to the Your Phone app, personalized emoji, and more. But the thing that really caught our attention is the keyboard shortcut to toggle the new mute icon in the Taskbar when it’s showing....