What Is USB Debugging, and Is It Safe to Leave It Enabled on Android?

Did You Know? The red and white stripes on a traditional barber pole are a nod to the history of the industry; they represent the color of blood and bandages, alluding to the role of barbers as early surgeons. Geek Trivia The Mempo Was A Distinctive Piece Of Armor Worn Where? Victorian England → Ancient Greece → Feudal Japan → Renaissance Italy → Advertisement Free eBook: The Data and Internet Security Guide, Vol 2 (FREE eBook!) Regularly $9.95 This eBook takes computing security to the next level. It starts with a quick review of security basics and then delves into advanced topics such as encryption, password recovery, and malware removal – important knowledge for anyone who wants or needs to keep sensitive information truly secure. 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 Delete Cookies in the Most Popular Web Browsers on Windows How to Cancel Google Play Music and Other Android App Subscriptions What Is USB Debugging, and Is It Safe to Leave It Enabled on Android? How to Disable Player vs. Player (PVP) Damage In Minecraft How to Install and Set Up the Ecobee3 Smart Thermostat How to Teach Your iPhone to Stop “Fixing” Irregular Words How to Enable or Disable Your Computer’s Touch Screen in Windows 10 How to Make the Windows 10 Taskbar More Transparent Should You Buy a Kinect For Your Xbox One? What Does It Even Do? How to Make Your Samsung Galaxy Phone Feel More Like Stock Android Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Data Lake A Data Lake is a massive, easily accessible centralized storage repository filled with vast amounts of raw, structured, and/or unstructured data. 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. Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created? - The New York Times Netflix practically invented the post-cable television landscape, driven by flexible, self-created, and internet-delivered content... but can it survive competition? [NYT] Coffee no longer comes with cancer warning—it may actually prevent it World Health Organization reviews the data and reverses an old warning. [ArsTechnica] How to Delete Cookies in the Most Popular Web Browsers on Windows Cookies are small files that websites put on your computer to store small bits of information. A cookie can keep you logged into a website by writing ID information to a cookie file. Cookies can also be used to store the items in your shopping cart. Read This Article → How to Cancel Google Play Music and Other Android App Subscriptions Android allows apps you to subscribe to apps and services, including Google’s own Google Play Music, through Google Play. If you subscribe to an app, Google will automatically bill your saved payment method until you cancel the subscription. Read This Article → What Is USB Debugging, and Is It Safe to Leave It Enabled on Android? If you’ve ever tried to do anything advanced on your Android phone, you’ve likely heard (or read) the term “USB Debugging.” This is a commonly-used option that’s tucked away neatly under Android’s Developer Options menu, but it’s still something that many users enable without giving it a second thought–and without knowing what it really does. Read This Article → How to Disable Player vs. Player (PVP) Damage In Minecraft If you’re tired of accidentally killing your buddy while fighting enemies in close quarters, or your kids are screaming because one of them 8-bit-murdered the other again, this is the tutorial for you. Read on as we show you how to disable player vs. player damage in Minecraft once and for all. Read This Article → How to Install and Set Up the Ecobee3 Smart Thermostat A smart thermostat is a great accessory to have in your house, not only to be able to adjust your home's temperature from your phone, but to also save money on your utility costs. Here's how to install and set up the Ecobee3 smart thermostat in your own home. Read This Article → How to Teach Your iPhone to Stop “Fixing” Irregular Words You probably have had experience when you’re trying to spell an odd word that isn’t in the dictionary, and your iPhone keeps autocorrecting it to how it thinks it should be spelled. It might be time to teach it what you’re trying to say. Read This Article → How to Enable or Disable Your Computer’s Touch Screen in Windows 10 We're all familiar with touch screen tablets, but some laptops also have touch screens. We think they’re pretty useful, but if you tend to use your laptop with the standard keyboard and mouse combination, you can disable the touch screen on your Windows 10 device pretty easily. Read This Article → How to Make the Windows 10 Taskbar More Transparent The taskbar in Windows 10 is highly configurable, and Windows 10 already includes an option in its personalization settings to make the taskbar transparent. But, with a little Registry magic, you can enable a setting that gives the taskbar an even higher level of transparency. Read This Article → Should You Buy a Kinect For Your Xbox One? What Does It Even Do? When Microsoft first announced the Xbox One, the Kinect was an “essential” part of the console. In fact, the Xbox One wouldn’t even function unless the Kinect was plugged in. That’s changed, however–today, the most popular Xbox One bundles don’t even include a Kinect. Read This Article → How to Make Your Samsung Galaxy Phone Feel More Like Stock Android The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are some of the best Android phones available right now—maybe even the best Android phones of all time. But TouchWiz has a bad rep for being ugly and "bulky" (especially with Android elitists). If this is the only thing holding you back from giving one of these otherwise excellent phones a shot, we've got you covered. It's actually pretty easy to get a near-stock experience on most Samsung phones—you'll just need to download and tweak a few things. Read This Article → Advertisement Free eBook: The Data and Internet Security Guide, Vol 2 (FREE eBook!) Regularly $9.95 This eBook takes computing security to the next level. It starts with a quick review of security basics and then delves into advanced topics such as encryption, password recovery, and malware removal – important knowledge for anyone who wants or needs to keep sensitive information truly secure. Click here to download