Many of our members here at Null Byte are aspiring hackers looking to gain skills and credentials to enter the most-valued profession of the 21st century. Hackers are being hired by IT security firms, antivirus developers, national military and espionage organizations, private detectives, and many other organizations.
Today's smartphones and tablets offer a great way for children to learn through interactive sight, sound, and touch, but they can also provide hours of genuine fun. If you have a spare tablet laying around—or at least a nice, durable case—the only thing you need to get your child started in this world of fun and learning is a handful of good apps.
This year, Google released two Nexus phones to glowing reviews, and as we've grown to expect, the Android community wasted no time in coming up with a root method for both. In fact, legendary root developer Chainfire even devised an entirely new "systemless" method for rooting that should make updating a bit less complicated, along with a few other benefits.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers, and happy New Year! Now that your heads have recovered from your New Year's Eve regaling, I'd like to grab your attention for just a moment to preview 2015 here at Null Byte. I hope you will add your comments as to what you would like to see, and I'll try to honor as many requests as I can.
If you've read any health news in the past year or so, you've probably been bombarded with headlines announcing that frequent sitters face certain death, even when you're just relaxing and watching TV at home.
It's that time of year where you need to break out the grill and cook food over red-hot coals, whether it's the beginning, middle, or end of summer. Even if you're not a grill master extraordinaire, you can use these hacks to fool your friends and family into thinking that you're a barbecuing badass.
Whisking liquids seems somehow quaint, especially since there are good, cheap devices out there like immersion blenders and hand mixers that can whip cream, turn egg whites into meringue, and mix batters for you.
As a species, our cells are designed to use sugar for energy. Is it any wonder that as humans evolved, we grew to love the taste of sugar?
Alright, I'll admit it, iOS can be quite nice. Android loyalist that I may be, I'm not so stubborn that I can't recognize a good thing when I see it. Apple's iOS has a lot of strengths, and our Nexus 4s, god bless 'em, are growing a little long in the tooth.
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Have you ever had a neighbor that you're certain is up to no good? Maybe you've seen him moving packages in and out at all hours of the night? Maybe you've seen people go into his home and never come out? He seems like a creep and sometimes you hear strange sounds coming from his home? You know he's up to no good, but you aren't sure what it is exactly.
As people continue to upgrade their PCs to Microsoft Windows 8, more and more developers are adding content to the Windows Store. While the offerings are not as vast as Google Play or the iTunes App Store, it does have some solid apps for both productive users and those looking to just while away the time.
Belly dancing is a great way to improve fitness, gain self-confidence and enjoy music. Find out about belly-dancing costumes, such as making bras, skirts and jewelry, and learn some simple belly-dancing exercises with this free video series from a belly-dancing instructor.
Since 2020, you've been free to set your preferred web browser and email app as the default on your iPhone or iPad. Now, four years later, Apple is expanding this flexibility in the U.S., allowing even more apps to be set as defaults for specific actions. Plus, there's now a centralized menu to manage all these default app settings.
Phone in one pocket, wallet in the other? It's the classic combo guaranteed to give you more pocket bulge. But it's 2024. Half that stuff in your wallet is practically antique. It's time to finally ditch all the dead weight and get a MagSafe wallet for iPhone — and we've got the best picks to slim you down to the essentials.
In less than a month, WWDC, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, will reveal the company's plans for the upcoming iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 software updates. But we already know what accessibility features will be hitting iPhones and iPads later this year, and many of them will be helpful to everyone, not just users with accessibility issues.
Android has a new security feature that every Android smartphone user needs to start using — even you. It won't change how you use your phone, but it will make life harder for nearby thieves.
A massive new feature just hit Apple Music, and it's the biggest thing to happen to Apple Music since Apple Music was even a thing.
YouTube Music just refreshed the user interface for playlists, seemingly taking away the ability to shuffle the songs in your playlists. While the update has been rolling out for months, you might just be getting the updated look on your smartphone, and there's no giant "Shuffle" button like there was before. But that doesn't mean there's no more shuffling.
When the topic of Pokémon Go comes up, the typical response is, "Do people still play it?" The answer is a resounding yes!
Apple's Dynamic Island is an animated, interactive isle surrounding the front-facing camera on the iPhone 14 Pro series. It's a small capsule when nothing is going on but fluidly stretches across the screen for notifications, alerts, and ongoing activities like music, timers, and directions. It can even expand with controls and more information. And now, you can get Dynamic Island on your Android phone.
For years, Android has provided easy ways to view all the Wi-Fi networks you connected to in the past, and you can even see the saved passwords in plain text. With iOS 16, Apple finally gave us a similar way to view saved Wi-Fi hotspots, copy their passwords, and remove old ones without being near their access points.
After nearly two months of beta testing, Apple is finally pushing the iOS 15.6 software update to all iPhone users. While it's not as feature-rich as the iOS 15.5 or iOS 15.4 that came before it, there are still a few things you'll want to know about it.
In our review of Amazon's non-augmented reality Echo Frames smartglasses, we made the case for audio virtual assistants being the linchpin for AR wearables.
Snapchat's first foray into augmented reality started with the selfie camera and face-tracking technology, with the app's AR capabilities expanding from there.
On May 17, Apple announced that Lossless Audio playback for Apple Music was finally coming to subscribers in June. The long-awaited option will let users stream songs at a much higher quality than ever before. Still, in the fine print, Apple noted that you wouldn't be able to listen to the best sound quality — Hi-Resolution Lossless — on your iPhone without a DAC.
When an iPhone is lost or stolen, it's imperative to start tracking it via Find My as soon as possible, whether that's from a computer, tablet, or someone else's phone. However, if it's stolen, there's a good chance the thief or robber turns on Airplane Mode, blocking all communication with the iPhone. If this is a scary thought, you can prevent thieves from accessing Airplane Mode altogether.
The Metaverse, or AR cloud, has been a sci-fi dream for decades, but only recently have companies begun to actually develop the technology to build it. With its latest funding round, Epic Games is suddenly a front-runner in this pursuit.
Snapchat parent company Snap took a huge step towards the realm of smartglasses with the third iteration of its camera-equipped Spectacles sunglasses.
The iOS 14.4 developer beta was pushed out a day ago, and now the iOS 14.4 public beta is out and ready for your iPhone. At first glance, there's not much to look at in the new beta release, and it's not yet known if it lays out the groundwork for missing features such as 5G data with dual SIMs, shared third-party app subscriptions, and Xbox Core Controller.
The Pixel 5 is a bit of a departure from previous Pixels. Gone are the Pixel 4's Soli-based Motion Sense gestures, the Pixel 3's dual front-facing speakers, and the glass back panel of previous generations. But perhaps the most notable omission for long-time Pixel users is the lack of a squeeze gesture to trigger the Google Assistant.
It's Black Friday time, and in 2020, that means a lot of online deals to make up for more stores closing on Thanksgiving, as well as everyone avoiding in-person shopping because of the coronavirus. But while you may wish to grab a better 65-inch 4K TV, the new PlayStation 5, or some hacker hardware on sale, Black Friday is also the best time to invest in your programming and cybersecurity education.
For all of its many perks — from the best iPhone camera system money can buy, to arguably the best smartphone display on the market — the iPhone 12 Pro Max is undeniably huge. It has the largest iPhone screen to date despite being 0.46 cubic inches smaller than the iPhone 11 Pro Max in overall size. If you're finding it a little too much to handle with one hand, there are ways to make it much easier to use.
Using your iPhone for a smart home remote just keeps getting better and better. Apple has consistently improved its HomeKit platform since the Home app came out, adding new features, tweaks, and refinements to the system with each update. And iOS 14 continues this trend with a few changes to help make your home even smarter and easier to use.
While Google Play Music fans mourn its demise, its replacement, YouTube Music, is gaining some neat features that its predecessor never had.
After years of complaining about rising prices, OEMs are finally listening to consumers. It couldn't have come at a better time thanks to potential recession due to COVID-19. As evident with the poor sales of Samsung's Galaxy S20 series, consumers are not looking to spending $1,000+ on a smartphone just for the latest specs.
The Pi-hole project is a popular DNS-level ad blocker, but it can be much more than that. Its DNS-level filtering can also be used as a firewall of sorts to prevent malicious websites from resolving, as well as to keep privacy-killing trackers such as Google Analytics from ever loading in the browser. Let's take a look at setting a Pi-hole up and customizing a blacklist to suit your needs.
Using a strong password is critical to the security of your online accounts. However, according to Dashlane, US users hold an average of 130 different accounts. Memorizing strong passwords for that many accounts is impractical. Fortunately, password managers solve the problem.
So far, iOS 13's major point updates have all been pretty exciting for iPhone. We've seen iOS 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 come and go, offering more than 60 new features and changes combined to that very first version of iOS 13. While iOS 13.3.1 was a minor update, its successor, iOS 13.4, is a return to form.
It's safe to say that we can call the annual ranking of AR investments a holiday tradition at Next Reality.
Advancements in technology have made it perfectly possible to make a short film or even an entire movie with your iPhone or Android — as long as you've got the right gear. Lenses, stabilizers, tripods, lighting, microphones, chargers, and cases can make the difference between a good movie and a great film, all of which can make a great gift for those aspiring (or current) filmmakers in your life.
