Category: Technologies

Not every gadget is a winner. And as it turns out, quite a few are complete losers. The massive electronics bonanza known as CES 2023 is in the books and it featured plenty of weird gadgets of its own, from pee-reading toilets to a cutting board with a screen. But what if we turn back the clock to take in the CES shows of yore?

Over the past 20-plus years, I’ve seen gadgets so stupefying that sometimes they seem to exist purely because journalists like me will write about them. But it’s time to call out the really awful ones, the worst of the worst. Vacuum shoes, toilet paper robots, MP3 weapon holsters, it’s your time to shine!

The most interesting part about this rogues gallery is that some of these products — the Pepe pet dryer, the HapiFork and the Hushme, to name a few — are still being sold today. That’s right: You blew it up, you maniacs!

Dyson Zone Air-Purifying Headphones

Not technically a CES product, as this was announced during 2022, but Dyson was demonstrating the Zone headphones in Las Vegas during CES 2023. Though the Zone looks like it should be a COVID mask, that’s unfortunately not what it does. According to the Dyson site, development on the Zone began way back in 2016 as a personal air filter — for pollution, mainly — and as such, it was never designed to protect against COVID. Furthermore, one critic has claimed the gadget’s force-driven fans could even help maximize your chances of catching coronavirus. CNET’s Katie Collins, who tried it out at Dyson’s HQ in the UK, thought it was “too brilliant and bizarre to ignore.”

Read more: Dyson Zone Air Filtering Headphones on Sale in January for $949

Charmin Rollbot

Computer peripherals manufacturer Razer is the king of creating “look at me” products specifically for CES, but toilet tissue brand Charmin became notorious for this 2020 entry. That’s right, in the year that saw the mass panic buying of toilet paper came a robot that could bring you even more! Coincidence? Yes… probably. The RollBot was never going to be a real product, but we loved/loathed it anyway.

Read more: These Charmin Robots Make Us Wonder: Is Pooping the Next Tech Frontier?

Kolibree Smart Toothbrush

Remember when we had to wash our hands for 20 seconds by singing songs to ourselves? The same methodology also applies to brushing your teeth, but why should you use your own brain and lips like a sucker? There have been many smart toothbrushes over the years, but today I’m picking on the Kolibree. Everything was just fine until the arrival of “the world’s first connected electric toothbrush.” Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…

Read more: Kolibree’s Connected Toothbrush Aims for Better Dental Health

Taser MP3 Holster

Back in the 2000s, the iPod became such a cultural phenomenon that every company rushed to create an MP3 player of its own. This culminated in what is one of the dumbest CES products in recent memory: the Tazer MP3 holster. Imagine trying to not only charge your holster but also connect it via USB to your computer to fill it up with 1GB of tunes.

Read more: What Every Taser Needs: A Music-Playing Holster

Pepe Pet Dryer

Want to find a new way to make your small dog or cat hate you forever? Lock them in a cube prison for 25 minutes (!) and subject them to gusts of hot air. This combination torture device/dryer would have set you back $660, or you could just throw a towel over your wet dog like a normal human.

Read more: At CES 2019, a $660 Sauna Will Give Your Dog the Blow Dry of His Life

HapiFork

Throughout history, there have been so many gadgets designed to limit normal human behavior, but this one takes the (pan)cake. The HapiFork is yet another vibrating gadget that tells you to eat your meals slower (over 20 minutes), with the idea being that you are less likely to overeat. Personally, I wolf my own meals down like I’m in prison, so do your worst, HapiFork. I’ll eat with my hands if I have to! You’re not the boss of me!

Read more: Bolting Your Food? Put On the Brakes With HapiFork

Hushme

The Hushme is literally a “dumb” product — it’s designed to make its user mute to other people in the immediate vicinity. It was pitched as being useful in workplaces, but… if a co-worker gave me one of these, they’d better be wearing vacuum shoes, in order to clean up the gleefully stomped-on bits.

Read more: Hushme May Be the Weirdest, Yet Most Useful Wireless Headphones Ever Created

Belty

The original Belty was a prototype smart belt with a motor in it that adjusted itself to whether you just ate or were sitting down. Impractical as hell, but kind of cool? While there is a newer model, also called Belty, this one is even weirder — there’s no auto-sizing, but it does have a power bank charger in the buckle. OK, two things. Not only do I not want a potentially volatile compound near my nethers, I don’t want to connect a series of devices there either.

Read more: Meet Belty, the Ridiculous but Strangely Popular Show-Stealer of CES Unveiled

Xybernaut Poma

First shown off at CES 1998, the Hitachi Xybernaut wearable computer was a terrible idea long before Google Glass was even a gleam in Babak Parviz’s eye. The Windows CE-based Xybernaut Poma offered a 128MHz RISC processor and 32MB of RAM for the low price of $1,499, plus it strapped to your arm and your face and your belt!

Read more: Hitachi Fashioning Wearable PCs

Denso Vacuum Shoes

Shoes. You wear ’em. They wear out, you buy more. But that’s not exciting now, is it? They need things in them — phones, rockets, rollers and… vacuums? There are so many puns I could make about even just the name of the Denso Vacuum Shoes, but the fact that they existed at all was the biggest joke of all.

Read more: Vacuum Cleaner Shoes Show Up at CES Because Why Not

For the most part, I enjoy all the new features and settings that iOS 16 brings to the iPhone. You don’t know how happy I am to finally be able to unsend text messages and get haptic feedback whenever I type — but there’s one feature that I’m not so fond of.

I’m talking about the addition of the Search button to the bottom of the home screen, right above the dock. While the Search feature is useful for quickly finding text messages, files and settings, the new button is placed in a location where it’s easy to accidentally tap, especially when I’m scrolling through my various home screen pages.

And when I do inadvertently hit the new Search button, the Search feature blows up in full screen. Then I have to swipe out of it to go back to my home screen, which can get annoying real quick. Fortunately, there’s a fix.

Read more: Best iPhone 14 Cases So Far

And if you want to learn more about iOS 16, check out how to view all your saved Wi-Fi passwords and customize your lock screen with widgets.

How to get rid of the new Search button on iOS 16

On your iPhone running iOS 16, launch the Settings application, go to Home Screen and toggle off the Show on Home Screen button underneath “Search.” Instead of the Search button on your home screen, you’ll now see several dots indicating your various home screen pages instead. If you press on it, nothing happens.

If you want to access the Search feature after removing the home-screen button, you can access it the traditional way: swipe down from anywhere on your screen.

T-Mobile has reportedly laid off a number of employees as the carrier shifts its retail strategy. Company workers have been impacted by the retail move and have been told about their options and next steps.

The carrier declined to offer specifics on the scope and scale of the layoffs, but Wave7 Research analyst Jeff Moore told Light Reading they could amount to about 600 employees. Moore said the layoffs are mostly among territorial retail managers and retail dealers.

This would reflect the greater retail strategy change that Jon Freier, president of T-Mobile’s consumer group, outlined in a blog post Thursday. The carrier is moving away from one-size-fits-all stores and expanding to four kinds of retail formats: showrooms for events and product launches, broad-service “Experience stores,” smaller company-owned stores stocked with “top products,” and the Metro-branded “Express stores” aimed at the prepaid market .

“Is brick-and-mortar retail dead? Here’s what I think: Yes, the way we’ve known it is dead,” Freier said in the post.

On Thursday, early reports noticed by Nwida said T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile territory managers were being laid off. They were reportedly offered the option to apply for their old jobs, which would have new titles.

T-Mobile has gone through waves of layoffs in recent years. Hundreds of jobs in the carrier’s small business sales unit were reportedly cut in June 2020 as part of streamlining following finalization of T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion merger with Sprint. Absorbing the other carrier led to later rounds of layoffs, in 2021 and 2022, though T-Mobile has also hired new workers in this period as it shifts its strategies.

T-Mobile isn’t alone in cutting jobs. Verizon announced an undisclosed number of layoffs last August after a disappointing second quarter, and AT&T let go of a few hundred employees in December as part of a refocus on faster-growing segments like 5G and fiber internet.

On the surface, Marvel Snap is a mobile card game with simple mechanics. But with hundreds of different heroes to play with, the game can get complex. Our Marvel Snap beginner’s guide will get you started and take you through higher competitive tiers.

Developed by Second Dinner, a studio filled with veterans from Blizzard’s successful digital card game Hearthstone, Marvel Snap is a refreshingly streamlined game that’s built to play well on smartphones. It plays in a vertical orientation and its quick match times typically last as long as a pop song. The mechanics are easy to learn, but there’s enough variability to keep things fresh.

Marvel Snap is downloadable from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, or on PC via Steam if you prefer. (To make it easier to port your collection between phone and desktop, sign up with your Google login when making an account.) It’s free to play, with microtransactions, but you can’t buy your way to the top in this game — everyone has to play a lot to grow their collection of cards.

Snapping superheroes down to card size

Each card represents one hero, and most of them have a special ability. In addition to snazzy comic book art, cards have an energy cost in the top-left corner and a power level in the top-right corner. Each deck you bring into a match must have 12 cards, and outside of rare cases, matches last six rounds. You start matches with one energy point per round and gain another each turn, with more powerful cards costing more energy. The goal is simple: Play your cards into three locations (each with four card slots), and the winner is whoever controls at least two locations at the end of the match.

Plenty of factors can complicate a match. Locations are randomly assigned and each has special rules, while unique hero abilities change how the match plays. Players start with three cards and draw another every turn, so you won’t get to play your whole deck by the end of the match. This randomness keeps the game fresh and can occasionally hand you victories, though it can also ruin your chances to win.

Bluffing with cubes

This uncertainty raises the stakes for the final mechanic, a pokerlike betting system around cubes (of the Cosmic variety). Marvel Snap pits players against each other as they climb the competitive ranks and earn rewards; to climb, you need cubes, which are awarded to the winner of each match and subtracted from the loser. If a match isn’t going well, you can retreat early and lose only one cube to avoid the two-cube toll when you’re defeated. But you can manually raise the stakes by tapping the cube icon at the top — now the game is worth four cubes, and your opponent can tap it again to raise it up to an eight-cube game. Yikes!

Much like in poker, you can aggressively tap the cubes (called Snapping in a reference to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s big baddie Thanos’ famous act, hence Marvel Snap). This can intimidate opposing players into retreating, though some will call your bluff. You may be confident in your hand of cards, but you have to wait to see which cards opponents play (and where) to understand their strategy and estimate whether you’ve got a winning chance. That’s the risk and the thrill — but don’t worry if you take a hard loss, as matches last only three to five minutes, making it easy to shake off losing and breeze right into the next potential win.

First steps for Snap

Don’t worry about knowing all these rules up front, as Marvel Snap has a generous tutorial. The first matches are against computer opponents who aren’t too tough to beat, offering space to learn the ins and outs of the match flow before going up against human players.

You’ll start with some basic cards, and playing matches (win, lose or tie) earns boosters, which are a currency to enhance the appearance of cards, making them look even more like they’ve sprung out of a comic book. While boosting a hero grants purely cosmetic upgrades like moving backgrounds and shiny hero names, it also ratchets up your overall collection level — which is the way you get more cards.

For the first several collection levels, you’ll get a preset series of cards that are key to simple yet powerful strategies; like silver-age hero Ka-Zar, who powers up your smallest one-energy cards, or Wolfsbane, who gains power based on how many cards are already at her location. These early cards fit into a handful of different deck strategies, from empowering minions to repeating the “on reveal” abilities with the late-game Odin card for a dramatic finish.

On reaching collection level 18, you’ll move on from the beginner slate of preset cards to a wider set. At higher collection levels, you’ll be rewarded with a random card from the first pool and face opponents with access to the same card group. You’ll enter the second card pool at collection level 222, and the third pool at 486. As time goes on, even more cards will be added to this last pool, with newer cards showing up more rarely.

Upgrading cards requires spending the in-game currency credits (which are different than boosters), gained through daily missions that typically involve playing cards of a certain cost, earning wins, or drawing cards. You can either wait to earn enough boosters for cards or head to the in-game shop and pay extra credits to upgrade cards early. Later on, you’ll also be able to gain ‘collector tokens’ to buy single cards showcased one at a time in the in-game shop.

What’s the fastest way to get more cards?

Marvel Snap is geared toward granting players new cards as rewards for playing, though the rate of new cards slows in higher collection levels. There are only a couple of ways to buy new cards with real money: buying very pricey seasonal bundles that include specific cards, or paying for in-game currency to indirectly boost your collection level.

The latter is a slightly complicated sequence. You can pay real money for gold, a secondary in-game currency mostly used for buying variant versions of cards you already own, but that can also be used to buy credits. As previously mentioned, credits can be spent in the in-game store to rapidly upgrade cards to bypass boosters and climb the collection level, which earns you new cards. It’s a hassle, and you don’t get much currency for your hard-earned real money — best to save it for bundles that offer more value.

It may be disappointing to hear, but simply playing more matches is the best way to get cards.

Tips for winning matches

Winning in Marvel Snap seems simple — just secure two out of the three locations — but wild swings can happen in any of the six turns (or seven, on rare occasions). As you play, you’ll get a feel for what kind of decks you’ll face and the best strategies to counter them.

But there are several basic things about the game that aren’t immediately obvious. In a match, see whether your player handle or an opponent’s is ringed with light — that’s who’ll flip cards first next turn, which can matter if an “on reveal” effect relies on opponents having certain cards in play. Also, tapping your or your opponent’s player portraits opens up a dropdown status menu showing how many cards each has in hand and in the deck, along with how many have been destroyed or discarded during the game — key info for certain card abilities.

To win matches, you want to control locations. You probably won’t have enough power to win all three, so you’ll want to focus on the two you’re most likely to win. This might change as location abilities are revealed and your opponent plays cards, so remain flexible for the first few turns to see how the board plays out. You can even deceive your opponent by looking like you’re going to invest in one location and abandon it for the two others in later turns.

Keep refining your decks. If you’re losing, go back to the collection and see whether different cards might fit your strategy better, especially new ones that haven’t been tested yet. Remember, the worst that can happen is losing cubes and rank progress — but you can gain that back later with strategic Snapping.

Speaking of, the last tip is to know when to Snap and when to retreat. There’s no shame in ducking out if it looks like you’re not going to win. A good rule of thumb is that if you aren’t winning at least two of the locations going into the sixth and/or final turn, you might want to back out — it’s going to take too much power to flip multiple locations.

On the other hand, if you have more power in two or three locations and have a strong final play, you might want to Snap to increase your winnings, which could scare the opponent off to retreat. Like in poker, a win is a win, whether you’re bluffing with weaker cards or the opponent is too intimidated to play cards that actually would’ve beaten yours.

That’s it for now, so get out there and start building your collection. If you’re struggling, look online for guides on popular decks made of cards in your collection. And don’t be afraid to experiment, as there are many, many interactions that aren’t clear until you slam down your cards — just look at this recent combo that skyrockets a single card from four to over 600,000 power. Excelsior!

LastPass, one of the world’s most popular password managers, is yet again under the microscope after its latest security breach. In late December, LastPass CEO Karim Toubba revealed in a blog post that a security incident the company first disclosed in August had ultimately paved the way for an unauthorized party to steal customer account information and vault data. This is the latest in a lengthy string of security incidents involving LastPass that date back to 2011. It’s also the most alarming.

An unauthorized party now has access to unencrypted subscriber account information like LastPass usernames, company names, billing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses, according to Toubba. That same unauthorized party also has a copy of customer vault data, which includes unencrypted data like website URLs and encrypted data like the usernames and passwords for all the sites customers have saved in their vaults. If you’re a LastPass subscriber, the severity of this breach should have you looking for a different password manager because your passwords and personal data are at risk of being exposed.

What should LastPass subscribers do?

The company didn’t specify how many users were affected by the breach, and LastPass didn’t respond to CNET’s request for additional comment on the breach. But if you’re a LastPass subscriber, you need to operate under the assumption that your user and vault data are in the hands of an unauthorized party with ill intentions. Though the most sensitive data is encrypted, the problem is that the threat actor can run “brute force” attacks on those stolen local files. LastPass estimates it would take “millions of years” to guess your master password — if you’ve followed its best practices.

If you haven’t — or if you just want total peace of mind — you’ll need to spend some serious time and effort changing your individual passwords. And while you’re doing that, you’ll probably want to transition away from LastPass, too.

With that in mind, here’s what you need to do right now if you’re a LastPass subscriber:

1. Find a new password manager. Given LastPass’ history with security incidents and considering the severity of this latest breach, now’s a better time than ever to seek an alternative.

2. Change your most important site-level passwords immediately. This includes passwords for anything like online banking, financial records, internal company logins and medical information. Make sure these new passwords are strong and unique.

3. Change every single one of your other online passwords. It’s a good idea to change your passwords in order of importance here too. Start with changing the passwords to accounts like email and social media profiles, then you can start moving backward to other accounts that may not be as critical.

4. Enable two-factor authentication wherever possible. Once you’ve changed your passwords, make sure to enable 2FA on any online account that offers it. This will give you an added layer of protection by alerting you and requiring you to authorize each login attempt. That means even if someone ends up obtaining your new password, they shouldn’t be able to gain access to a given site without your secondary authenticating device (typically your phone).

5. Change your master password. Though this doesn’t change the threat level to the stolen vaults, it’s still prudent to help mitigate the threats of any potential future attack — that is, if you decide you want to stay with LastPass.

LastPass alternatives to consider

• Bitwarden: CNET’s top password manager is a highly secure and open-source LastPass alternative. Bitwarden’s free tier allows you to use the password manager across an unlimited number of devices across device types. Read our Bitwarden review.
• 1Password: Another excellent password manager that works seamlessly across platforms. 1Password doesn’t offer a free tier, but you can try it for free for 14 days.
• iCloud Keychain: Apple’s built-in password manager for iOS, iPadOS and MacOS devices is an excellent LastPass alternative available to Apple users at no additional cost. iCloud Keychain is secure and easy to set up and use across all of your Apple devices. It even offers a Windows client, too, with support for Chrome and Edge browsers.

How did it come to this?

In August 2022, LastPass published a blog post written by Toubba saying that the company “determined that an unauthorized party gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information.”

At the time, Toubba said that the threat was contained after LastPass “engaged a leading cybersecurity and forensics firm” and implemented “enhanced security measures.” But that blog post would be updated several times over the following months as the scope of the breach gradually widened.

On Sept. 15, Toubba updated the blog post to notify customers that the company’s investigation into the incident had concluded.

“Our investigation revealed that the threat actor’s activity was limited to a four-day period in August 2022. During this timeframe, the LastPass security team detected the threat actor’s activity and then contained the incident,” Toubba said. “There is no evidence of any threat actor activity beyond the established timeline. We can also confirm that there is no evidence that this incident involved any access to customer data or encrypted password vaults.”

Toubba assured customers at the time that their passwords and personal data were safe in LastPass’s care.

However, it turned out that the unauthorized party was indeed ultimately able to access customer data. On Nov. 30, Toubba updated the blog post once again to alert customers that the company “determined that an unauthorized party, using information obtained in the August 2022 incident, was able to gain access to certain elements of our customers’ information.”

Then, on Dec. 22, Toubba issued a lengthy update to the blog post outlining the unnerving details regarding precisely what customer data the hackers were able to access in the breach. It was then that the full severity of the situation finally came to light and the public found out that LastPass customers’ personal data was in the hands of a threat actor and all of their passwords were at serious risk of being exposed.

Still, Toubba assured customers who follow LastPass’s best practices for passwords and have the latest default settings enabled that no further action on their part is recommended at this time since their “sensitive vault data, such as usernames and passwords, secure notes, attachments, and form-fill fields, remain safely encrypted based on LastPass’ Zero Knowledge architecture.”

However, Toubba warned that those who don’t have LastPass’s default settings enabled and don’t follow the password manager’s best practices are at greater risk of having their master passwords cracked. Toubba suggested that those users should consider changing the passwords of the websites they have stored.

What does all of this mean for LastPass subscribers?

The initial breach ended up allowing the unauthorized party to access sensitive user account data as well as vault data, which means that LastPass subscribers should be extremely concerned for the integrity of the data they have stored in their vaults and should be questioning LastPass’s capacity to keep their data safe.

If you’re a LastPass subscriber, an unauthorized party may have access to personal information like your LastPass username, email address, phone number, name and billing address. IP addresses used when accessing LastPass were also exposed in the breach, which means that the unauthorized party could also see the locations from which you used your account. And because LastPass doesn’t encrypt users’ stored website URLs, the unauthorized party can see all of the websites for which you have login information saved with the password manager (even if the passwords themselves are encrypted).

Information like this gives a potential attacker plenty of ammunition for launching a phishing attack and socially engineering their way to your account passwords. And if you have any password reset links stored that may still be active, an attacker can easily go ahead and create a new password for themselves.

LastPass says that encrypted vault data like usernames and passwords, secure notes and form-filled data that was stolen remains secured. However, if an attacker were to crack your master password at the time of the breach, they would be able to access all of that information, including all the usernames and passwords to your online accounts. If your master password wasn’t strong enough at the time of the breach, your passwords are especially at risk of being exposed.

Changing your master password now will, unfortunately, not help solve the issue because the attackers already have a copy of your vault that was encrypted using the master password you had in place at the time of the breach. This means the attackers essentially have an unlimited amount of time to crack that master password. That’s why the safest course of action is a site-by-site password reset for all of your LastPass-stored accounts. Once changed at the site level, that would mean the attackers would be getting your old, outdated passwords if they managed to crack the stolen encrypted vaults.

For more on staying secure online, here are data privacy tips digital security experts wish you knew and browser settings to change to better guard your information.

Going into 2023, you don’t have to spend a fortune for a decent set of noise-canceling earbuds. With solid sound quality, active noise cancelation and a transparency mode, the Beats Studio Buds are a great option to consider. And right now, they are back down to their best-ever price of $90 at Amazon. That’s $60 off the suggested retail price, though the discount only applies to gray color at present, with other options seeing a $50 price break.

Beats Studio Buds are small, lightweight, comfortable to wear and fit most ears securely. Despite being made by Apple these days, Beats products work great with both iPhones and Android phones and there are plenty of features to love, including quick pairing and sound quality that CNET’s David Carnoy said beats out AirPods Pro and Powerbeats Pro in his review.

Unlike some other Apple-made Beats products, the Studio Buds lack a few of the fanciest features like in-ear detection and the ability to pair to all of your Apple devices via iCloud and switch between them automatically. That probably won’t be a deal breaker for most folks, especially given the price differential between the Studio Buds and something like the AirPods Pro.

The Beats Studio Buds provide up to 8 hours of listening time on a single charge, with up to 24 hours when combined with the charging case. They are also IPX4-rated sweat and water-resistant, so they’re a solid option to use on your commute or at the gym.

And if the Studio Buds aren’t quite the right fit for you, check out the other Beats headphones deals currently available.

Apple’s 5K monitor, the Apple Studio Display, debuted in March last year. It’s currently the most budget-friendly external display in Apple’s lineup, and while Apple rarely discounts its own products, there have been a few deals on this display at some third-party retailers.

Right now Amazon has discounted the standard glass version of the Apple Studio Display by $100 and the nano-texture glass version by $150 for a limited time, bringing the cost to $1,499 and $1,749, respectively. Both discounted displays are the models with the tilt-adjustable stand.

Each of these monitors feature a 27-inch 5K Retina screen, an A13 chip, a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera with Center Stage and a high-fidelity, six-speaker sound system. Their three-mic array makes for clear audio on calls and voice recordings. More than 14 million pixels and 1 billion colors at 600 nits of brightness make for a phenomenal display. And an antireflective coating also ensures better readability, while the nano-texture glass option further minimizes glare.

They each have one Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) port with 96-watt charging capability to connect your Mac, and three standard USB-C ports. Plus, you can pair your Studio Display with Mac notebooks and desktops, as well as Magic accessories (sold separately).

It’s important to note that this monitor doesn’t play nice with Windows computers — but if you’re already an avid Mac user, these deals at Amazon can help you score a solid monitor for less than you’d pay at the Apple Store.

My iPhone‘s flashlight isn’t just a tool I casually fire up if something accidentally rolls under the couch, it’s a feature I use daily to light up the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, scan my backyard when animals make weird sounds and… OK, yeah, find something I’ve lost under my couch. And since I use the iPhone flashlight so often, I’ve turned on a tool deep in the iOS settings menu that makes it faster to light up the torch — no more fumbling with the lock screen for the flashlight icon or unlocking the phone first.

I don’t exaggerate when I say this hidden iPhone feature has changed the flashlight for me.

Don’t miss: Here’s How to Track Any Flight From Text Messages on Your iPhone

Back Tap for the iPhone is an accessibility feature that Apple introduced with iOS 14,. It lets you quickly perform certain actions — say, taking a screenshot or launching your camera — by simply tapping the back of your phone. Essentially, it turns the entire back of your iPhone into a button.

This is an important benefit for all kinds of people, and for me, enabling Back Tap has let me turn it into a customizable button to quickly trigger the iPhone flashlight. I’ll tell you exactly how to set it up for yourself, and you can of course customize Back Tap to trigger other actions.

Also, if you want to learn more about other iPhone and iOS features, check out these 10 next-level iOS 16 features and how to find the “secret” iPhone trackpad.

How to set up Back Tap on iPhone

Whether you want to link Back Tap with your flashlight, camera or launch a different iPhone app, the path through your iPhone settings begins the same way.

On your compatible iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), launch the Settings application and go to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Now you have the option to launch your action (in this case, your flashlight) with either two or three taps. Although two taps is obviously faster, I would suggest three taps because if you fidget with your phone, it’s easy to accidentally trigger the accessibility feature.

Once you choose a tap option, select the Flashlight option — or a different action if you prefer. You’ll see over 30 options to choose from, including system options like Siri or taking a screenshot, to accessibility-specific functions like opening a magnifier or turning on real-time live captions. You can also set up Back Tap to open the Control Center, go back home, mute your audio, turn the volume up and down and run any shortcuts you’ve downloaded or created.

You’ll know you’ve successfully selected your choice when a blue checkmark appears to the right of the action. You could actually set up two shortcuts this way — one that’s triggered by two taps and one that’s triggered by three taps to the iPhone’s back cover.

Once you exit the Settings application, you can try out the newly enabled Back Tap feature by tapping the back of your iPhone — in my case, to turn on the flashlight. To turn off the flashlight, you can tap on the back of your iPhone as well, but you can also just turn it off from your lock screen if that’s easier.

For more great iPhone tips, here’s how to keep your iPhone screen from dimming all the time and cancelling all those subscriptions you don’t want or need.

Your computer’s mouse and keyboard are packed full of hidden features that make it faster and easier to perform tasks. Even if you’ve been using these devices for years, there may still be functions you weren’t aware of. Whether it’s reopening a closed tab or permanently deleting a file without ever hitting the recycle bin, there are plenty of tricks to help you be a little more efficient on your computer.

But in my personal experience, the one computer trick people are most consistently surprised about is an action you can do with your scroll wheel.

Scroll wheel’s hidden function

The internet is a great place to collect random tidbits of information, but sometimes you see something you want to investigate later. You don’t want to click on the link and have to go back to the previous page, because it would interrupt your current read. But you want to keep the trail open for later.

What do you do? You have a variety of options here, but this is the slickest and most efficient: If you’re using a mouse, just use your scroll wheel to click on the link. It’s not the most intuitive motion, but if you push your scroll wheel down while hovering over the link, you’ll automatically open that link in a new tab.

This little trick is great for when you’re reading something that links out to other interesting stories — just scroll-wheel click to open new tabs and check them out after you finish reading the current story.

If you want other ways of opening new tabs, we’ll walk you through it. We also have tips on keyboard shortcuts, like Ctrl + Shift + T, and taking Windows screenshots (which you can open in new tabs with a scroll-wheel click).

How to open links in new tabs

Opening pages in new tabs is a convenient browsing technique, and there are a few different ways of doing it.

• Click with your scroll wheel to automatically open the link in a new tab.
• Or right-click a link and choose “open in new tab.”
• You can also hold down Ctrl (or command on Mac) when you click the link and it will open in a new tab.

Opening things in a new tab means you don’t have to interrupt your current read, and you don’t have to wait for pages to load as you bounce back and forth. I use it all the time for comparison shopping — just pull up the things I’m considering in a few different tabs and quickly compare by tabbing through my browser. It’s also good for when you’re reading a story that references another story that you want to check out without interrupting your current read. Just click the link with your scroll wheel and check it out when you’re done with this story.

Bonus tip: You can use Ctrl + Tab to move forward and Ctrl + Shift + Tab to move backward through your open tabs.

For more computer tips, check out how to factory reset a laptop before gifting it, and essential settings for your MacBook.

Having a VR headset is hardly a necessity in life. But it can be a useful luxury and a comforting way to escape the feeling of being trapped at home during the winter months.

I’ve found myself escaping into VR a little more often, but it’s not easy. Family responsibilities and real-world obligations make it hard to find time to put on a headset. It’s not a social activity I can share with anyone else in the house. It’s total me time, but sometimes I need that.

If you’re lucky enough to have a VR headset (and these are some of the best ones), there are some great games worth your time right now. Here are some of my favorites. Also, be sure to check out some other great VR game suggestions.

Valve

Half-Life: Alyx

Valve’s long-awaited epic is a spectacularly produced Half-Life game made entirely for VR. It works with a large number of PC-connected VR headsets, too. It’s single-player only, and its dystopian horror might not be a great fit for everyone right now, but it’s the must-play VR game this year and a sign of where VR could be heading next.

Read the review.

See at Steam

Fireproof Games

The Room VR: A Dark Matter

It’s an escape room brought into VR, with a ton of mysterious puzzles to solve and a creepy Lovecraft vibe. This VR-only entry in the long-running “The Room” series of games is a special gift right now. It’s available for multiple platforms, including the stand-alone Oculus Quest.

Read the review.

See at Oculus

Tender Claws

The Under Presents

The immersive theater-meets-game universe of The Under Presents mixes live actors, who are performing through the end of May, with recorded cabaret and storytelling elements. Time bends, stories loop. It’s a place to get lost in with others, and it’s worth a dive right now. There’s even a Discord group where communities are discussing the game’s deepest secrets. It’s now available on Steam, too.

Read the review.

See at Oculus

Oculus

Eleven Table Tennis VR

Ping-pong, in VR. It’s my favorite way to transform my room into a way to play surprisingly real table tennis, and it works with AI or against online opponents. It’s close enough to the real thing to border on practice.

See at Oculus

Enhance, Inc/PlayStation

Tetris Effect

The hypnotic VR-optional puzzle game has been around for a while, but it’s a great way to focus, meditate on blocks and feel yourself surrounded by landscapes and lush soundtracks. It’s like taking a musical bath. Available on PSVR and PC.

See at GameStop

Sony

Astro Bot: Rescue Mission

If you haven’t played Sony’s stellar VR take on Mario-style platforming, now’s the time to find out what it’s all about. Each level has tons of secrets to uncover, which makes for some replay value too.

See at Amazon

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Beat Games/PlayStation

Beat Saber

This has been VR’s killer app for years, but now it’s also a great stay-at-home exercise game. The music-rhythm-dance-with-lightsabers levels are a helpful way to blow off steam, and it’s infinitely replayable.

See at Steam

Steam

Down the Rabbit Hole

One of the best little VR games, Moss, lets you explore little worlds as a mouse. The new Alice in Wonderland-themed Down the Rabbit Hole has a similar feeling of visiting tiny worlds, but laid out as you’re moving down a hole in the ground. Leaning into each room is magic. (Available on Quest, Oculus Rift, Steam, PSVR)

See at Steam

PlayStation

Paper Beast

I was late to discover this recent, beautiful game, and it’s hard to describe: It’s an alien odyssey in a minimalist world where you have to figure out what things do. It feels like art, and almost like a VR version of the classic game Journey. It’s a PlayStation exclusive for VR.

See at PlayStation

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The 51 Best VR Games

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