1-800-273-8255 is current suicide hotline; 988 would eventually redirect to it.

By default, Chrome will now let users know if their credentials are public.

Plus an Echo Dot for $11, Switch console bundles, and Anker accessory deals.

Rise of digital subscriptions, decline in physical releases poised to continue.

The court defeat is just the latest for anti-vaccine students.

A dozen injured, others reported missing in electrical fire aboard ship damaged by sinking dock.

Consoles, headsets, collectibles, and much more to be won in our annual sweepstakes.

"Just like real rabbits, our rabbit also carries its own blueprint."

Do you have VR "sea legs"? Then it's a must-play. Either way, engage with caution.

Sens. Graham and Feinstein show united front on blaming crypto for child porn.

And consumers in major cities are more likely to take the plunge than others.

Two studies examine weather patterns and agriculture around the world.

Settlement brings refunds to customers but applies only in Washington state.

Previous attempts to curb harassment haven't succeeded, casting doubt on new try.

After E3 woes mount, Game Awards' 48-hour event is primed to shake up the industry.

And a group of Splatoon 2 fans organize their own version of the defunct "Splatfest."

Same ransomware hit security firm; operators stole data for "leverage" on ransom.

150-person layoff despite Verizon touting gains in mobile advertising.

BMW's OS 7.0 will support wired and wireless casting.

On kicking cable broadband to the curb, experts say "The answer is absolutely! Depending.”

Apple Arcade is here, and you can play some of the subscription service’s many games with select models of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controllers as well as Mfi (Made for iOS) controllers!

During Apple Arcade’s announcement, though, Apple gave the impression that all Apple Arcade games would work with gamepads (in part because the service will eventually also come to macOS and tvOS), but it turns out that’s not entirely true. Some games have interfaces solely designed for touchscreens—at least on iPhone and iPad. 

To read this article in full, please click here

Apple’s new Apple Arcade subscription-based gaming service is finally here. It’s basically Apple’s way of helping customers sort through the chaff in the App Store, as the highly curated service features premium games that are untainted by in-app purchases and ads. If all goes well, it could elevate the perception of mobile gaming in general.

Got questions? We've got plenty of answers. 

Updated 12/13/19: Added Unleash the Light to the list of available games.

To read this article in full, please click here

The marketing machine for 5G is just getting warmed up. AT&T arguably fired the first shot when it started re-labeling some of its 4G LTE service “5G Evolution,” complete with a “5G e” logo in the status bar of some phones. Soon, 5G will be everywhere you look. All four major carriers are going to spend billions of dollars hyping up “5G” and trying to convince you that, first of all, you need it, and two, you need it from that carrier.

It’s all going to be needlessly confusing, too. The carriers will bamboozle us with big bandwidth numbers, misleading coverage maps, and confusing claims that have little to do with reality.

Here’s what you really need to know about 5G and how it’s going to impact you as an iPhone user.

To read this article in full, please click here

At long last, some two and a half years after Apple declared itself serious about enticing professionals back to the Mac, the Mac Pro is finally here. It joins the iMac Pro and the new 16-inch MacBook Pro as a triptych of attractive options for professional Mac users. That’s great.

Apple

Mac mini

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Roku Streaming Stick vs. Amazon Fire Stick vs. Chromecast vs. Apple TV, and more. Which streaming device is best for cord cutters? Our buying guide will help you pick the right accessories for your TV.

Love is never having to say, “Alexa, what time is it?”

Time Machine is a great, baseline, no-fuss archiving solution for macOS. While it has many drawbacks and can be fussy, it’s far better than not having a backup and it works generally well for the vast majority of Mac owners. It’s a great solution for family members who otherwise don’t back up. (Especially coupled with convincing them to subscribe to or giving them Backblaze or another highly related secure, automated, hosted backup service.)

If you’re frustrated with Time Machine’s limitations, however, you have other options. Econ Technologies’ ChronoSync always sits at the top of my list. It’s not per se backup software. Rather, it’s an exhaustive solution for synchronizing files between two local, two remote, or one local and remote location. Backup and archiving is just one of its many features.

To read this article in full, please click here

If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re thinking about buying a new Mac computer and may be in need of a little guidance. Fortunately, we’re quite familiar with Apple’s Macs, and we’re happy to help you choose the right Mac for you.

This buying guide provides an overview of all the Mac models available, and what each model is best suited for. To get more details, you can read the full review by clicking the product name in the product boxes that have mouse ratings.

MacBook Air

Models for sale were originally released July 2019.

What is it? The MacBook Air is Apple’s affordable line of laptops. Apple currently offers two 13-inch models.

To read this article in full, please click here

This guide was most recently updated on December 10, 2019.

Picking out an iPhone used to be easier—just get the newest one with all the storage you can afford. We still recommend plenty of storage, but the choice of which iPhone to get it on isn’t quite so cut-and-dry. Do you want the phone with the best camera, the one with the lowest starting price, or maybe size is a big factor in your decision?

Apple’s latest iPhone release includes three new models to choose from: The iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, and the iPhone 11. And the iPhone 8 is still in the lineup.

To read this article in full, please click here

Cleer's Enduro 100 are stylish, sound expensive, and offer state-of-the-art features, including Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD, Google Fast Pair, Siri invocation, and USB-C connectivity.

Which streaming media player has the best remote control? Let's compare.

23andMe and AncestryDNA are the two most popular DNA tests in the world. But there are some key differences you should know before buying one or the other.

You probably have a general idea of which iPhone you have—iPhone 7, SE, 5s, X, and so on. But behind the marketing names, each iPhone configuration has its own model number. You normally won’t need to know this number, but it could come in handy if you ever need to get more technical details about your device. Here’s where you can find your iPhone’s model number—and what that number means.

Which number is which?

Apple uses two numbering schemes for its devices. The first, which we’ll call the “A” number (hat tip to The iPhone Wiki for the name) is a five-digit alphanumeric string that starts with the letter A followed by four numbers.

To read this article in full, please click here

Does Apple think that a single port is still one port too many? That’s a possibility according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, a relatively reliable source on Apple’s supply-chain plans, who reports that in 2021 Apple will launch a high-end iPhone without a Lightning connector.

Apple pushing Lightning out of the equation isn’t surprising—the USB-C port on the iPad Pro could be a portent for such a move—but that’s not what Kuo is actually suggesting. He’s suggesting the Lightning port will be removed, to be replaced by a “completely wireless experience.”

To read this article in full, please click here

You probably don’t need to buy a HDMI cable to go with your new TV, but here’s how to tell for sure.

Buying a super-cheap 4K TV this year? This is the soundbar to go with it.

The Mac Pro is here. Let’s talk about Apple’s new Mac. Plus, iPhone rumors, the Golden Globes, and your hot takes. All this and more on this episode of the Macworld Podcast.

This is episode 679 with Jason Cross , Leif Johnson, and Roman Loyola.

Listen to episode 679

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Earbud makers have been busy doing away with wires—a good thing whether or not your phone still has a headset jack. You no longer have to deal with cords if you don’t want to. True wireless earbuds connect to one another and your audio source via Bluetooth.

No wires mean no inline microphones or controls, but truly wireless earbuds sound just as good as traditional Bluetooth counterparts (for better or worse). They also boast all of the features we’ve come to expect from earbuds designed to work with your smartphone, tablet, or PC.

Since Apple’s AirPods became a runaway hit, an endless stream of companies have rolled out their own true wireless earbuds and earphones. As you might expect, not all of them are worth your time or money—so we’ve got your back with buying suggestions to meet a wide variety of needs.

To read this article in full, please click here

While iOS 13.2 delivered the last of the features Apple promised when it first introduced iOS 13 back at WWDC, it’s not like the company is just going to kick back and relax until iOS 14 next year. We can expect at least one or two more point-releases with minor new features, and a few bugfix releases, as well.

iOS 13.2 brings a handful of minor interface tweaks, like the ability to disable memoji stickers suggestions in the emoji keyboard. It may also address the memory management issue reported by some users, where apps are too aggressively purged from memory and have to be reloaded often.

To read this article in full, please click here

The Mac Pro is Apple’s workstation. It’s designed for professionals who need a powerful and flexible machine, and is ideal for applications that use as many processing cores as possible—video-editing applications, image-editing software, 3D programs, and the like.

The Mac Pro is getting a revival of sorts. The company released a brand-new, redesigned Mac Pro in December 2019, after years of stagnation with the previous, cylindrical Mac Pro.

Apple

Apple doesn’t offer a standard configuration choices for the Mac Pro. It’s really meant to be customized by the customer. To give you an idea of where pricing starts: if you configure the Mac Pro with the base components, it’s $5,999. Learn more about the Mac Pro by reading about its main features below.

To read this article in full, please click here

...So consider rerouting your journey through that

Scientists have discovered a dangerous hotspot in Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts that spews so-called “killer electrons” that can knacker satellites and spacecraft.…

Car smash-and-grab ends with loss of payroll details for 20,000 employees

Facebook has lost a copy of the personal details of 29,000 of its employees after hard drives containing unencrypted payroll information were stolen from an employee's car.…

Pending tariffs on notebooks, phones, monitors shelved as super powers strike 'prelimary' deal

Chinese officials have announced a preliminary agreement on phase one of negotiations with the United States - and of course US President Trump has leapt onto his favourite digital soap box to add his cents worth.…

Launch opportunities per year now over 130. Actually launched in 2019: 6

Peter Beck, boss of upstart small-sat flinger Rocket Lab, gave himself an early Christmas present this week as he declared the company's second launch complex, this time in the US, operational.…

Probably a better investment than WeWork

If you thought the service at your local Starbucks was robotic and impersonal, you might want to give Softbank’s newest Tokyo cafe a miss. Working alongside the company’s meatbag workers are a small army of Softbank Robotics’ droids, who’ll help serve and entertain the punters, and will even clean up after them.…

Plus: Meg Whitman and Co had 'buyer's remorse' over $11bn purchase

Autonomy Trial Mike Lynch was "thoroughly unreliable" and "willing to lie" to the High Court about the $11bn purchase of Autonomy by Hewlett Packard, according to HPE's lawyers in court yesterday.…

The 'experience' will be available from mid-January, 2020

Microsoft has been alerting admins today to changes to its Microsoft Teams Exploratory "experience", which effectively allow users to sign up for a trial rather than requiring admins to grant the privileges.…

Maker of cloudy PDF and services software ... yes, that's Perpetually Dosh Forming

It was ho-ho-ho and a kerching for reassuringly expensive graphic design software maker Adobe last night as it danced all the way to the bank, reporting double digit spike in Q4 revenues (PDF) and an upward swing in profit.…

Redmond tears wrapping on new retro-look gaming console

It's always interesting to see where industrial designers source their inspiration. Tesla, in creating the futuristic CyberTruck, looked to the dystopian world of Blade Runner. Iconic '80s movie Back To The Future directly inspired Nike’s self-lacing MAG kicks. And in creating the upcoming Xbox Series X console, Microsoft's muse was presumably a Gateway tower PC from the 1990s.…

Flexible workforce look to pre-election promises

Contractor organisations are insisting the Tory government sticks to promises to revisit IR35 reforms as it emerges that GlaxoSmithKline is ordering contractors to switch to pay as you earn tax arrangements or leave the company.…

Like Trump’s Twitter feed, except not

Her Majesty the Queen is after a head of digital engagement to run a small team of specialists based at Buckingham Palace.…

Arbitrary code execution in a controller, what could go wrong?

Siemens industrial control systems designed specifically for energy plant gear are riddled with dozens of security vulnerabilities that are, luckily enough, tricky to exploit from the outside.…

But Danish boffins tapped cans on the side, not the top – we demand a retrial

Should you be faced with the horrors of a shaken can of beer and an urgent need to open it, science has solved the question of whether or not tapping the can helps reduce the fizz when it is opened.…

Will no one think of the SMEs? Oh, actually some have made the grade

The UK's central government is dangling up to £6.5bn under the noses of resellers to supply commodity hardware, software and services across the British public sector for the next four years.…

A tale of entry-level electrical skills

On Call There's just one more day to get through before the weekend is upon us so burn a few minutes by chortling at the misfortune of others with On Call.…

We want to hear you share your insights, experiences, and plans

Event Our machine-learning conference MCubed returns to London next October, and we’d love to hear about your latest adventures in the worlds of artificial intelligence and analytics.…

Either way, we'll take a one-way ticket, please. Now. Thanks. Good

A hundred red objects blinking in and out of existence across Earth’s skies over the past 70 years have left scientists giddy: they believe this could be evidence of previously unseen astronomical phenomena or – and hold tight, now – alien civilizations.…

Trio of vulnerabilities made registry full of uncertain code even more of a risk

On Wednesday, NPM, Inc, the California-based biz that has taken it upon itself to organize the world's JavaScript packages into the npm registry, warned that its command line tool, the npm CLI, has a rather serious security vulnerability. Version 6.13.4 has been rushed out with a fix.…

Think of a number, triple it, add seven, multiply by zero, and that's pretty much this tech giant's Q2 revenue growth

Oracle's financial figures were more or less flat in its latest financial quarter compared to a year ago.…

Let's grab a nice cold drink on the Red Planet. Don't forget to pack a shovel

There’s water ice buried below the surface of Mars, and all you’ll need is a shovel to dig some up, according to research published in Geophysical Research Letters this week.…

November 30th, the official "Blue Beanie Day," has come and gone. I'm not sure I ever grokked the exact spirit of it, but I've written about what it means to me. Last year:

Web standards, as an overall idea, has entirely taken hold and won the day. That's worth celebrating, as the web would be kind of a joke without them. So now, our job is to uphold them. We need to cry foul when we see a

… Read article

The post Blue Beanie Day 2019 appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

I think Adam's first prediction is his boldest, even beyond his Hail Mary prediction. CSS grid is awesome and gap is perhaps one of its best qualities, but gap superseding spacing things out in other ways (e.g. margin) is a bold prediction indeed, especially with Firefox being the only browser supporting it in flexbox.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink… Read article

The post Adam Argyle’s 2020 CSS Predictions appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Interesting idea for a "chat room" from Postlight:

1. Create a Yap chat room.
2. Invite others to join and talk.
3. Share a URL of just about anything.
4. Everyone gathering can comment on what you’ve shared.
5. If you think your conversation deserves an audience, share the URL of your chat publicly.
6. Only six people can join. Lots of people can observe if you invite them. But just six chatters.

Yap.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink… Read article

The post Yap appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Most of the time you don’t really care about whether a user is actively engaged or temporarily inactive on your application. Inactive, meaning, perhaps they got up to get a drink of water, or more likely, changed tabs to do something else for a bit. There are situations, though, when tracking the user activity and detecting inactive-ness might be handy.

Let’s think about few examples when you just might need that functionality:

• tracking article reading time
• auto saving form or

… Read article

The post Detecting Inactive Users appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

A standard copy-and-paste YouTube embed lands on your page as an <iframe> which loads a big ol' pile of other stuff to play that video. But the UX of it is still essentially an image and a play button. Click the play button and the video plays. You can build essentially the same thing with an anchor link wrapping an image!

Not long ago, we covered a very clever "lazy load" technique doing exactly this from Arthur Corenzan that was … Read article

The post lite-youtube-embed appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

In this week's news: Firefox gets strict, Opera goes to the dark side, and Chrome plans to let web apps run in the background.

Let's get into the news.

Firefox for Android will block tracking content

Mozilla has announced that the upcoming revamped Firefox for Android (currently available in a test version under the name "Firefox Preview") will include strict tracking protection by default.

On the phone or tablet, most users care much more about performance and blocking of annoyances

… Read article

The post Weekly Platform News: Strict Tracking Protection, Dark Web Pages, Periodic Background Sync appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Did you know there is a well-supported browser API that allows you to interface with interesting and even custom-built hardware using a mature protocol that predates the web? Let me introduce you to MIDI and the WebMIDI API and show you how it presents a unique opportunity for front-end developers to break outside the browser and dabble in the world of hardware programming without leaving the relative comfort of JavaScript and the DOM.

What are MIDI and WebMIDI exactly?

MIDI… Read article

The post Dip Your Toes Into Hardware With WebMIDI appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

We’re sliding into the roaring twenties of the twenty-first century (cue Jazz music &#x1f3b7;). It’s important that you and I, as responsible people, follow the tradition of looking back on the past year and reflect on the things that went right and wrong in the hopes of becoming the best version of ourselves in the year ahead.

I never do New Year’s resolutions, except for when I was ten years old and wanted to open a local self-run detective agency … Read article

The post How I’ve Improved as a Web Developer (and a Person) in 2019 appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

I don't see image sprites used that much anymore, but it's still a good technique for reducing downloaded decorative image assets when you have multiple on a page. The big idea is combining all the graphics into one and then shifting around the size and background-position to reveal one at a time.

Say you're site needs dozens or hundreds of country flags — that's a perfect opportunity for a sprite. Michael P. Cohen has built a generator site to help … Read article

The post Freak Flags appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Seemingly out of the blue, the Gulp processing I had set up for this site started to have a race condition. I'd run my watch command, change some CSS, and the processing would sometimes leave behind some extra files that were meant to be cleaned up during the processing. Like the cleanup tasks happened before the files landed in the file system (or something... I never really got to the bottom of it).

Nevermind about the specifics of that bug. … Read article

The post Just Sharing My Gulpfile appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

We just covered The Current State of Styling Selects in 2019, but we didn't get nearly as far and fancy as Julie Grundy gets here. There is a decent chunk of JavaScript that powers it, so I'm still very much eyeballing browsers' recent interest in giving us more powerful selects in (presumably) just HTML and CSS.

I tossed a fork on CodePen in case you just wanna see the final result.

See the Pen
Custom Select Input by … Read article

The post Making a Better Custom Select Element appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

(This is a sponsored post.)

Have you ever looked at a site and knew exactly what CMS powers it? You might see a distinctive design aesthetic that gives it away. Or maybe it's something even less obvious and even harder to articulate, but you know it when you see it.

That seems true with just about any platform, especially those that rely on a set of templates. If you were to jump from one site ot another on the … Read article

The post WordPress.com: One CMS, Infinite Possibilities appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

It’s all too common to see the incorrect HTML used for quotes in markup. In this article, let’s dig into all this, looking at different situations and different HTML tags to handle those situations.

There are three major HTML elements involved in quotations:

• <blockquote>
• <q>
• <cite>

Let’s take a look.

Blockquotes

Blockquote tags are used for distinguishing quoted text from the rest of the content. My tenth grade English teacher drilled it into my head that any quote of four … Read article

The post Quoting in HTML: Quotations, Citations, and Blockquotes appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Dylan Paulus:

Facebook actually hides 'dummy' DOM nodes between the 'Sponsored' text. These values are entirely random characters, with a random number of DOM nodes between them. Invisible characters. At this point our CSS ad blocker is completely broken. There is no way for us to possibly code every possible value in CSS.

We've covered this before when Mike Pan noted it. Looks like it's evolved a bit since then, getting even a little tricker.

I just opened my … Read article

The post How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Brad has a long history in music outside of being a web designer, and draws some interesting parallels. One is that he had reached for more complex music in an effort to become a better musician — and developers can do the same thing. The other is that the composition of music can be seen from very large parts down to very tiny parts, just like atomic design.

I have two go-to connections between music and web design … Read article

The post Music and Web Design appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

For those who may not come from a design background, selecting a color palette is often based on personal preferences. Choosing colors might be done with an online color tool, sampling from an image, "borrowing" from favorite brands, or just sort of randomly picking from a color wheel until a palette "just feels right."

Our goal is to better understand what makes a palette "feel right" by exploring key color attributes with Sass color functions. By the end, you will … Read article

The post A Handy Sass-Powered Tool for Making Balanced Color Palettes appeared first on CSS-Tricks.