Driving for Uber seems like a pretty easy way to make some extra money, but there are a handful of factors that make it more complicated than you might expect. RELATED: How to See Your Uber or Lyft Passenger Rating Many Uber drivers do make a decent living from driving people around, whether they do it full-time or only part-time on top of their main income, but it’s important to keep in mind that there’s more to driving for Uber than just signing up, getting approved, hopping in your car and driving people around....

Chrome OS has a reputation for being virus-proof. Google likes to boast about how secure its operating system is compared to others. Are Chromebooks really immune to viruses, though? And, if so, how do they achieve this? Allow us to explain. What Is a Computer Virus? First, let’s consider what a computer virus actually is. Viruses fall under the umbrella of “malware.” They’re destructive because they inject a code into a file (usually, one that’s executable), and when that file is run, the malicious code is released....

Whether you’ve been using Windows 11 for a while now or you’re just getting started with a new Windows 11 PC, there are some handy new features that you might have missed. Here are ten great ones you should be using. Quick Settings Menu One of the nicest new features of Windows 11 is the Quick Settings menu, which allows you to quickly change system volume, brightness, Wi-Fi settings, power options, and more....

If you have ever heard of changing a file’s extension from EXE to COM, you may have wondered if it was only capable of working on a few rare files or if it would work on nearly any EXE file you have. Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites....

For many people, Windows seems to slow down over time. Quite a few people fix this by regularly reinstalling Windows. But do you need to reinstall Windows regularly? And, if so, how often do you need to reinstall it? Reinstalling Windows is inconvenient. You have to back up all your data, go through the install process, reinstall all your favorite programs, and restore your data. All these activities suck up valuable time....

Building your own computer is actually pretty simple. Don’t be afraid to dive right in — all you’ll need is a screwdriver, patience, and the ability to follow simple instructions. This process is about building desktop PCs, of course. It’s nowhere near as easy to build your own laptop. If you did, you’d probably end up with a pretty bulky laptop! Computer Building Demystified RELATED: How to Service Your Own Computer: 7 Easy Things Computer Repair Places Do...

Chromebooks aren’t like traditional laptops. They’re locked down by default, only booting Google-approved operating systems in their default state. They’re much more limited than traditional Windows, Mac, or Linux laptops. Chromebooks are in a traditional laptop form factor, but they have more in common with mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows RT. Unlike these mobile operating systems, Chromebooks have a developer mode that lets users opt-out of the security....

It’s easy to add email accounts, such as iCloud, Google, Yahoo, or Outlook.com, to an iOS device. However, what if you have a self-hosted email account with a custom domain? No worries. That’s just as easy. A self-hosted email account is one that’s not Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. If you registered a custom domain name (for example, mydomainname.com), you’ve probably set up at least one email address for yourself at that domain....

Your kids are the most important people in the world to you, and the Internet is a scary place that requires constant vigilance. Luckily, you can set up a child’s account in Windows 10 to make your job as a parent that much easier. We’ve talked about child’s accounts in Windows previously. Microsoft introduced the concept in Windows 8, which takes a standard user account, protects it with Microsoft Family Safety, and integrates it into the operating system....

With the release of Watch OS 2.0 you can now add custom complications from native Apple Watch apps to your watch face which opens up a whole new world of instant on-your-wrist information. Read on as we show you how to customize your Apple Watch’s complications. Why Do I Want To Do This? The Apple Watch has had complications since the beginning, bits of information on the Utility and Modular watch faces like the sunrise/set schedule, weather, and so on, but only recently with the update to Watch OS 2....

We’ve talked about all the ways you can add your own music to the iTunes/iCloud ecosystem, but did you know its closest competitor in the streaming space Spotify can do the same thing? By fuddling with a just few settings between your desktop and mobile devices, you can make any local files accessible from wherever you are in the world in an instant. Adding Local Music to the Desktop Client First, make sure the song or songs you want to add are properly synced up in your desktop client and have been either recorded yourself, or you own the DRM rights to share it among multiple devices....

If you regularly take photos on your phone or tablet, uploading them to a cloud service like Dropbox makes it much easier to access them on your PC or other devices. Dropbox actually has a feature that uploads all your photos automatically, as you take them. You can do this on both Android as well as iOS devices. On Android First, open the Android Dropbox app and tap the three lines in the upper-left corner....

You spend a lot of time in OS X’s Finder, so you should make sure it fits your workflow as well as it possibly can. Here’s how to customize the Finder’s toolbar with all the buttons you need. The Finder can be a tad confusing at first, especially for those switching over from Windows-based machines. It’s similar to File Explorer, but also very different, and these differences can cause a lot of head-scratching until you’ve figured it all out–and customized it to fit your needs....

If you’re still a dedicated RSS user, you’ve no doubt noticed some sites no longer go out of their way to cater to you. Where once an RSS logo would be prominently displayed, now it’s nowhere to be found. How are you supposed to find RSS feeds? Before you try one of the below options, try contacting the people behind your favorite sites: often they’ll get back to your with a URL....

The Ubuntu Software Center allows you to easily add and remove programs in Ubuntu. However, each Linux distribution has a different graphical method for adding and removing software. If you prefer using the keyboard, you can install and uninstall software using the command line. To use the command line to install and uninstall software, you need to know the name of the package you want to install or uninstall. The Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) is the package management system used by Debian-based Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu....

The resolution (in pixels by pixels) of your Mac’s display determines how much information you can fit on screen and how sharp the image is, so it’s important to know. If you run a full-screen game or application at native resolution, the image will look its best, so here’s how to find out what it is. RELATED: Everything You Know About Image Resolution Is Probably Wrong First, click the Apple icon in the upper-left corner of the screen, and select “About This Mac....

Late last night, Skype sent me an email letting me know that they had successfully changed my email address to thegeek@cock.li and I should visit my account to review my changes. Except I didn’t change anything. And What? UPDATE! Thanks entirely to the amazing Jon Galloway who contacted people on my behalf, I was able to get back into my Skype account. We still have a lot of work to do securing everything else, because one victory isn’t going to stop these hackers from coming after us....

Avira is one of the less intrusive antivirus programs for Windows (that’s why we recommend it), but you’ll still get occasional ads for Avira’s pro antivirus, VPN, and system speedup software. You can disable these notification and quiet Avira down as much as you like. RELATED: What’s the Best Antivirus for Windows 10 and 11? (Is Microsoft Defender Good Enough?) The following steps were performed with Avira’s Free Security Suite....

Windows features a ridiculous number of ways to shut down. You’ll find options on the Start menu, Administrative Tools menu, and the Login and Lock screens. You can also shut Windows down using keyboard shortcuts (Alt+F4 at the desktop) and even the command line. Here’s how to disable them all for specific users. RELATED: How to Remove the Shut Down Button from the Windows Login Screen So why bother removing shutdown access for users?...

With such big screens these days, it’s easy to lose track of such a tiny mouse cursor. Luckily, Apple introduced a quick way to visually locate the cursor in 2015. Here’s how to use it. If you’ve lost track of the mouse pointer arrow on your screen, quickly shake your mouse or trackpad finger back and forth. The cursor will momentarily grow much larger on the screen, making its location more visually obvious....