Six Things Android Could Do Better

Did You Know? Easter Island, best known for its monumental statues called moai, is a special territory (province and commune) of Chile. Geek Trivia Panspermia Is The Theory That Life Was Deposited On Earth By? Greek Gods → Gas Clouds → Meteoroids → Aliens → Advertisement Free eBook: Linux All-in-One For Dummies (a $25.99 value) FREE! Eight minibooks in one volume cover every important aspect of Linux and everything you need to know to pass level-1 certification. Click here to download Want to Change Your Email Preferences? At some point in the past you subscribed to the How-To Geek newsletter, but if you'd like to change the frequency or unsubscribe, you can do so by clicking the button. Change my Subscription (or unsubscribe) Today's How-To Geek Articles By popular request, we're including a quick list of the daily articles at the top of the daily email as well as the regular format near the bottom. How to Type Ampersands (&) in Excel’s Headers and Footers How to Use the DirectX Diagnostic in Windows How to Use Zsh (or Another Shell) in Windows 10 Six Things Android Could Do Better How to Enable Intel XMP to Make Your RAM Run at Its Advertised Speeds Six Ways the Amazon Echo Makes the Perfect Kitchen Companion How to Factory Reset and Uninstall Your Nest Thermostat How to Migrate from Internet Explorer or Edge to Chrome (and Why You Should) How to Access the “Google Settings” App on the Samsung Galaxy S7 How to Invert the Colors in a PDF File in Adobe Acrobat Reader for Easier Nighttime Reading How to Make Your iOS Device Read Articles, Books, and More Out Loud to You How to Review and Approve What Appears On Your Facebook Timeline How to Turn Off and Delete Your "Ok Google" History Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Curation In the context of I.T., Curation refers to the processes of selecting, assembling, maintaining, presenting, and storing digital assets. What We're Reading This section contains what we're reading from around the web, along with commentary from our editors. Think of it like your daily digest of the most interesting things online. Why Andrew Hacker Is Wrong About 'The Math Myth' A political scientist recently argued that teaching people anything beyond arithmetic is useless, and that requiring algebra in high school drives the country's dropout rates. Here's why he's wrong. [The Atlantic] 'Chemophobia' is irrational, harmful - and hard to break On a molecular level the difference between a synthetic compound and a natural compound is nonexistent, but that doesn't stop many people from harboring a deep aversion to the "fake" stuff. [Aeon] Worms or bust: The story of Britain's most tenacious indie games company 25 years after its Amiga debut, Team17 soldiers on with Worms and indie publishing. [ArsTechnica] This Is Where The International Space Station Will Go To Die The space graveyard is a special place on Earth for all decommissioned satellites. [Popular Science] How to Type Ampersands (&) in Excel’s Headers and Footers Have you tried to type an ampersand (&) in a header or footer in Excel and seen it disappear on your printed worksheet? There's a special trick to typing ampersands in headers and footers in Excel so you don't lose them. Read This Article → How to Use the DirectX Diagnostic in Windows DirectX is a collection of APIs used in Windows for multimedia and video programs, and is especially important to gamers. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool displays a wealth of information about DirectX, and also lets you perform basic diagnostic tests on the DirectX system. If you want to check what version of DirectX you’re running–or even output a file full of diagnostic information for troubleshooting–here’s how to do it. Read This Article → How to Use Zsh (or Another Shell) in Windows 10 The Bash shell arriving with Windows 10’s Anniversary Update is deceptive. It’s not just Bash–it’s a compatibility layer for running Linux software on Windows. You can use it to run Zsh or whatever other shell you prefer. Read This Article → Six Things Android Could Do Better Android has come a long way over the last several years. What was once an ugly, sluggish operating system is now a refined, widely-used, excellent mobile OS. While it's not for everyone, it's hard to deny or ignore what Google has done with Android. But it isn’t perfect—there are things that could simply be done better. Here are five areas where Android as a whole still needs to improve. Read This Article → How to Enable Intel XMP to Make Your RAM Run at Its Advertised Speeds If you built your own PC and bought speedy RAM, there’s a good chance that RAM isn’t actually running at its advertised timings. RAM will always run at slower speeds unless you manually tune its timings–or enable Intel’s XMP. Read This Article → Six Ways the Amazon Echo Makes the Perfect Kitchen Companion One of the best places to have an Amazon Echo in your house is in the kitchen, since a lot of people spend a good chunk of time in that area eating breakfast, preparing dinner, doing dishes, and more. Here are some great ways to get the most out of your Amazon Echo while in the kitchen. Read This Article → How to Factory Reset and Uninstall Your Nest Thermostat If you’re replacing your Nest Thermostat, or are moving and want to take it with you to your new place, here’s how to factory reset and uninstall it. Read This Article → How to Migrate from Internet Explorer or Edge to Chrome (and Why You Should) Google’s Chrome web browser is now more widely used than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge combined. If you haven’t switched to Chrome yet, here’s why you might want to–and how to quickly switch over. Read This Article → How to Access the “Google Settings” App on the Samsung Galaxy S7 If you need to adjust your Google sign-in settings, Android Pay options, Google Fit data, or anything else dealing specifically with your Google account, you’ll need to access the “Google Settings” app. On most Android phones, you can find Google Settings in Settings > Google (under the "Personal" section). Figuring out where Samsung put this on the S7 turns out to be quite the pain—it's not at all anywhere that makes sense. Read This Article → How to Invert the Colors in a PDF File in Adobe Acrobat Reader for Easier Nighttime Reading The PDF format is meant to ensure the formatting of a document is preserved when viewed on different operating systems and devices. If you're viewing a document on a PC in a dark room, you might want to change the color scheme so the screen is not so bright. Read This Article → How to Make Your iOS Device Read Articles, Books, and More Out Loud to You With the “Speak Screen” feature in iOS, you can have your device read whatever’s on the screen to you just by swiping two fingers down from the top of the page. It can read just about anything, from settings pages to web sites to ebooks. While it’s obviously useful if you have some form of visual impairment, it can also be really handy when you want to catch up on your reading but don’t want your eyes glued to a screen. Here’s how to set it up. Read This Article → How to Review and Approve What Appears On Your Facebook Timeline If you’d like to maintain tighter control over what appears in your Facebook timeline (and thus to everyone you’re Facebook friends with), there’s a simple, but underused, mechanism built right into Facebook to give you approval rights over everything people tag you in. Read This Article → How to Turn Off and Delete Your "Ok Google" History It’s no secret that a lot of people use Google and its services for a wide array of things, and in the process, Google is able to collect a dizzying amount of information from and about us. Read This Article → Advertisement Download Microsoft Office 2016 -- Free Reference Card Kit This Microsoft Office 2016 reference kits includes 5 individual reference cards providing shortcuts, tips, and tricks for the most popular office productivity suite in the world. Click here to download