Critical Situations Search Results

How To: Charge Your Cell Phone with Fire

There are plenty of times when we need to charge our phones but don't have access to electricity. Whether the power is out do to storms, you're camping and run out of juice, or you're in a Tom-Hanks-like Castaway situation, it's important to have a charged phone in case of an emergency.

How To: Spot a Liar Through Text Messages

While text messaging has become one of the most frequent ways we communicate with our friends, the missing body language, tone of voice, and eye contact can make it difficult to tell when someone is being dishonest. That said, it's not impossible. There are a number of subtle hints you can train yourself to recognize that will to help you detect written lies hiding in your SMS and iMessages. Here's what you should look out for.

News: Twitter (Sorta) Buys a Lock Screen

Earlier this morning, Twitter announced (through a tweet, naturally) that it has acquired Cover, roughly a minute after Cover made the same announcement. Cover Lock Screen, a lockscreen replacement app, has been vastly popular during its first year. The app places relevant shortcuts on your lockscreen that adapt to your habits, so whether you're at home, work, or in the car, you'll find the apps you use the most in these situations readily available for you. For more information on Cover, inc...

How To: How the Headrest in Your Vehicle Can Potentially Save Your Life One Day

If you ever find yourself in a car that's submerged under water, your first instinct should be to try and open either the window or the door in the first few seconds of touching water. Unfortunately, if you wait any longer than that, the lopsided ambient water pressure subjected to the car will make it impossible to open the car door, and the now ubiquitous power windows will likely short out. Sure, you could wait until the pressure has equalized on both sides of the car, but this usually hap...

How to Hack Wi-Fi: Getting Started with Terms & Technologies

Welcome back, my hacker trainees! A score of my readers have been begging for tutorials on how to hack Wi-Fi, so with this article, I'm initiating a new series dedicated to Wi-Fi hacks. This will probably be around 6-9 articles, starting with the basics of the technologies. I can hear you all groan, but you need to know the basics before you get into more advanced hacking. Then hopefully, developing your own hacks.

How To: Automatically Connect to Free Wi-Fi Hotspots (That Are Actually Free) on Your Samsung Galaxy Note 2

A free Wi-Fi hotspot can be a lifesaver. Whether it's because you have shitty reception, need faster connectivity, or just don't want to go over your monthly data plan, free Wi-Fi in public areas is greatly appreciated. While connecting to these free hotspots is fairly easy, finding them can become a whole nother issue. I've been in plenty of situations where I wasted my data plan instead of taking a few steps to the right, where free Wi-Fi would have been waiting for me and my Samsung Galaxy...

How To: Access Files, Manage Apps, & Get Remote Camera Access to Your HTC One Wirelessly from Your Computer

The first thing I do when I get a new phone is ditch the USB cable. At least, when it comes to data transfer. My brand new HTC One came with a USB cord that feels sturdy, but like any other cable, it will eventually fall apart from overuse. It will probably still charge just fine, but at that point it will be unreliable for transferring data. Lucky for me, there's a solution. Transfer files over the air. This will let you save that USB cord only for charging and the occasional situation when ...

How To: Don't Get Burned! How to Prevent Your iPhone from Overheating

A few months ago I was driving around trying to find a store using Apple Maps (a terrible situation in and of itself), when my iPhone decided to shut off in the middle of giving me directions. I had no idea what happened, and when I looked at the screen, I saw this: My phone had never overheated and I really didn't know what to do. Needless to say, I couldn't really get to where I was trying to go without those directions. I pulled over and waited for the phone to cool back down, which took a...

How To: Gain Mass XP Using the Black Hat PDA in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Creating a class in Black Ops 2 is kind of like an art form. Every player has an insane amount of options for creating a character for all sorts of situations. Combining perks, with secondary weapons, and attachments allows for a wide range of killing options. But in order to unlock a lot of these perks and attachments, you need to gain XP. Gaining XP and collecting tokens is the lifeblood of the online gaming experience.

How To: Burner Protects Your Real Phone Number with Disposable Aliases on Your iPhone

There are tons of situations that require you to give out your phone number, and I think just about everyone has regretted doing so at some point. It can be incredibly convenient to have a secondary or temporary number on hand, so if you don't want to provide your real digits, you can still get the call without revealing your true numbers. And that's where Burner comes in. Burner is a mobile app for iPhone and Android that lets you create alias phone numbers that you can take out of service a...

How To: Pay Off Your Car in Half the Time by Renting It Out with OnStar

Most of the time, asking to borrow someone's car will elicit a really long string of excuses. But unlike letting your buddy use your car, which usually gets you nothing more than an empty tank, GM has found a way to make car sharing beneficial for everyone involved. If you're one of the 6 million people who have a GM vehicle that's connected to OnStar, you're in luck: according to an OnStar employee, you can make up to $1,000 a month just by letting other people rent out your car when you're ...

How To: Use the paddle shifter in the 2010 Ford Flex

Not sure what a paddle shifter is? Well, if you own the 2010 Ford Flex, you are at least aware of its existence. You can switch your vehicle from automatic transmission to manual transmission in the 2010 Flex, and there's these things on the steering wheel called paddle shifters, which allow you to shift between gears without ever taking your hands off the wheel. Learn how to use them.

How To: Completely format a hard drive

In this video tutorial, viewers learn how to completely format a hard drive. Begin by downloading the Knoppix Live Boot CD. Then burn the newly download ISO onto a CD as a bootable disc. Use your BIOS to tell your computer to boot from the CD-ROM instead of the hard drive. With the Knoppix CD still in your CD drive, restart your computer to load up Knoppix. Once loaded, use Knoppix to run the “dd” command and reformat your hard drive. This video will benefit those viewers who want to learn ho...

How To: Heave to when sailing in heavy weather

This video talks about the principles of heaving to, which is nothing more than stopping your boat in the water with the sails fully up, without making the boat create much forward motion. There are multiple reasons why you would want to heave to, and one is when the seas are getting rougher and the winds are becoming too strong to safely continue sailing. Watch to learn more about these situations and to see diagrams of everything.

How To: Unbrick Your OnePlus 6T When All Else Fails

When flashing files through TWRP, ADB, or Fastboot, there's a slight chance for things to go wrong. Whether it's user error related or something else entirely, it's always good to have a backup plan. In most cases, you'll be dealing with a semi-brick or soft-brick, which can usually be solved by wiping the data of the device using TWRP. However, it can be more severe than that in some cases.