Brendan Hesse

Want to help researchers understand and find a vaccine for the coronavirus? Help them out by playing this video game. Foldit is a free puzzle game that tasks players with folding protein chains to change the way they behave. It was originally…

If you live in the U.S. and own any Alexa-supported devices, you can earn one free movie ticket during the second half of March. It’s the little things, right? In order to get the free movie ticket, you’ll have to enable the…

Picture-in-picture (PIP) video playback is a near-universal feature for many people—unless you own a Chromebook, that is. There, the feature only works for a couple of apps, unlike the experience you’d get in web browsers and video streaming apps on Android, iOS,…

There’s an incredible deal on refurbished 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pros on Amazon’s Woot site for today and today only. The pre-owned models are on sale at drastic price cuts—$600 to $900 off the full retail prices, and hundreds of dollars cheaper…

The second big Pixel Feature Drop rolls out this week, adding a handful of new features to each of Google’s Pixel phones. Some of the new features included were already spotted in preview builds of Android 11, and a few even leaked…

The newest models of Amazon’s standard Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite ebook readers are on sale at their lowest prices in months. You can snag the basic 4GB Kindle model for just $60 (normally $90), while the 8GB Kindle Paperwhite is on sale…

With so many Android devices still waiting on Android 10, it’s hard to believe the first preview builds of Android 11 are already available. There’s currently no official release date for Android 11 and it’s going to be a while before general…

Yet another major firmware bug has been found that leaves billions of phones, routers, and other wireless devices from Apple, Google, Amazon open to spying. The bug, known as “Kr00k,” was discovered by the ESETt data security firm and disclosed in a…

Google has quietly reinstated the ability to batch-create and import multiple contacts to your Google account at once. This time-saving feature was removed when Google began switching its mobile and web apps over to the material theme design last year, and Google…

You might have seen that Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra are the first smartphones to receive “fast charging” certification from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). Many smartphones claim to have “fast charging” batteries, but if the Galaxy S20 line…

There’s not one, but three big ol’ security bugs in the latest versions of Chrome, one of which is being actively exploited by hackers. You can read the technical details of the bug in Google blog post, but it basically affects Chrome’s…

One of the most baffling setbacks of Google’s game-streaming service, Stadia, is its strict controller requirements. Stadia games can only be played with the official Stadia controller, which must be plugged in via USB in order to work—even on portable devices like…

Google recently announced it banned over 600 apps from the Play Store for using aggressive advertising practices. Buzzfeed reports that many were published by relatively popular developers like Cheetah Mobile, which had 45 apps available on the Play Store—some with billions of…

Windows 10 will soon be getting a host of new system icons, giving the operating system’s look a much-needed refresh (in advance of Windows 10X). The icons are slowly showing up in test builds of Windows 10, and you can check them…

Did you get a weird notification on your Samsung phone last night? You’re not alone. Reports of a mysterious notification have been hitting the internet over the past day after some Samsung phones received a “Find my Phone” push notification that simply…

Mozilla launched the beta for its long-planned VPN, Firefox Private Network, adding yet another VPN service for both mobile and desktop users. There’s currently a waitlist for beta access, so we haven’t had the chance to test the new service, but there…

Ring home security devices are supposed to help keep your family and home safe, but it turns out the company uses its products to sell your personal data to third-party advertisers and marketers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently published a report…

Here we go again: The latest Windows 10 patch, KB4532693, might stick you with an annoying bug. Some Windows users who have installed it have reported that their Windows user profile—and all the data and apps therein—weren’t loading when they logged in.…

Hotels can be stingy about what guests are allowed to do with their TVs. For example, if you try to plug your own device into your room’s TV to watch your own content, odds are good that are nothing will happen. Hotel…

Few things eat through data caps as quickly as a new season of your favorite Netflix show, but Android users can now reduce the app’s impact on their monthly data limits without reducing video quality. That’s all thanks to the the open-source…

Samsung’s February 11 “Samsung Unpacked” event featured several new devices, including its next attempt at a foldable smartphone: The Galaxy Z Flip. Unlike the Galaxy Fold’s vertically folding screen, the Z Flip folds horizontally like old-school flip phones—not to mention Motorola’s recently…

Emojis add a little personality to your messages and social media posts, and there are so many of them to pick from that they’re practically their own language at this point. Even then, sometimes you’ll find that there isn’t one that quite…

January 14th, 2020, was supposed to mark the end of official Windows 7 support, but new bugs keep popping up and demand Microsoft’s attention. The latest one prevents users from shutting down or restarting their PCs, with the OS claiming that you…

Anyone with an older Android device running Android 8 or 9 needs to be wary of using Bluetooth. A bug was discovered by cyber-security firm ERNW that allows anyone within range of a Bluetooth-enabled Android device to gain access to the device’s…