What Are MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 Hashes, and How Do I Check Them?

Did You Know? In cultures around the world, nodding your head up and down to indicate “yes” and shaking your head side to side to indicate “no” is nearly universal, except in some Southeastern European areas such as Bulgaria and southern Albania where they indicate the opposite. Geek Trivia Milton Bradley Started His Famous Board Game Company Because Of? The Destruction Of British Factories → Catastrophic Losses In Oil Futures → Abe Lincoln Growing A Beard → Extensive Gambling Debts → Advertisement Get CCleaner Pro CCleaner Professional gives you extra features and the best value for optimizing your computer and includes the following: Complete Cleaning - cleaning across multiple users in a single click, System and browser monitoring - never forget to clean again!, Scheduled cleaning, Auto-Updating - always have the latest cleaning definitions, Priority email Support, First notification of updates, beta programs and special offers.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 Take a Screenshot on Android Wear How to Delete a Facebook Message What Are MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 Hashes, and How Do I Check Them? What Are the Eight White Squares Surrounding Resizable Objects Called? How to Create Activity Zones for Your Nest Cam’s Motion Alerts How to Automatically Hide the Windows Taskbar How to Use macOS’ Built-In “Kill and Yank” as an Alternative Cut and Paste How to Configure a Proxy Server on a Mac How to Set Up an Out of Office Reply in Apple Mail for Mac How to Restrict Background Data for Metered Wi-Fi Networks on Android How to Block Someone from Calling, Messaging, and FaceTiming You on an iPhone or Mac How to Customize Your Icons in Windows Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Jaggies Jaggies (a.k.a. Stair-Stepping and Aliasing) refers to the stair-like appearance of lines when there are not enough pixels in an image to realistically represent it or the output device (monitor or printer) does not have enough resolution to properly portray smooth lines. 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. Inside the Tech Industry's Obsession With Immortality Meet the hackers trying to solve the problem of death. [New Republic] America's Television Graveyards How millions of old CRT televisions have wound up abandoned in warehouses all over the country. [Motherboard] 'Key ingredients for life' found on dwarf planet Ceres Organic compounds were detected on the surface [The Verge] How to Take a Screenshot on Android Wear Android Wear is a useful and worthy counterpart to your mobile phone, putting notifications and Google Now right on your wrist. The thing is, sometimes you want to capture something that’s on the screen to show someone, or even document a bug. Taking screenshots on Wear isn’t as straightforward as it could be, however. Read This Article → How to Delete a Facebook Message There are plenty of good reasons to delete the occasional Facebook message. Perhaps you're planning a surprise birthday party for your partner or sharing an important password. We're not here to judge the reasons why, just to show you how. So, here's how to delete a message in Facebook Messenger. Read This Article → What Are MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 Hashes, and How Do I Check Them? You’ll sometimes see MD5, SHA-1, or SHA-256 hashes displayed alongside downloads during your internet travels, but not really known what they are. These seemingly random strings of text allow you to verify files you download aren’t corrupted or tampered with. You can do this with the commands built into Windows, macOS, and Linux. Read This Article → What Are the Eight White Squares Surrounding Resizable Objects Called? It is the kind of question that if you ask ten different people, you will likely get ten different answers, so what are those eight white squares actually called? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has some answers for a frustrated reader who wants to use the correct term in his article. Read This Article → How to Create Activity Zones for Your Nest Cam’s Motion Alerts If you only want a small section of your Nest Cam’s field of view to be subject to motion alerts, you create “activity zones.” That way, you’ll only receive notifications when motion has been detected only in a certain area—like your driveway, for instance. Read This Article → How to Automatically Hide the Windows Taskbar Every bit of monitor space is precious, particularly vertical space. But in Windows 10, the fairly large taskbar takes up real estate even when you don’t need it. Read This Article → How to Use macOS’ Built-In “Kill and Yank” as an Alternative Cut and Paste Everyone knows about cutting and pasting by now. But did you know that your Mac sort of has a second clipboard known as kill and yank? Read This Article → How to Configure a Proxy Server on a Mac When you configure a proxy server on your Mac, applications will send their network traffic through the proxy server before going to their destination. This may be required by your employer to bypass a firewall, or you may want to use a proxy to bypass geoblocking and access websites that aren’t available in your country. Read This Article → How to Set Up an Out of Office Reply in Apple Mail for Mac If you're going to be out of the office for a while, whether for a vacation or a business trip, you can automatically let people know you won't be reading or answering emails during that time using an out of office reply. Read This Article → How to Restrict Background Data for Metered Wi-Fi Networks on Android We’ve talked a lot about how to manage mobile data on Android, but what if your home internet has a data cap too? That can be an issue, especially if your phone starts chewing through your cap with background tasks. The good news is there’s an easy way to get Android to treat specific WI-Fi networks as if they were cellular networks. Read This Article → How to Block Someone from Calling, Messaging, and FaceTiming You on an iPhone or Mac There are few things more annoying than unwanted calls and texts. Even seemingly decent companies sometimes turn to scammy tactics; or perhaps you have a former friend who keeps trying to contact you against your wishes. Read This Article → How to Customize Your Icons in Windows Personalizing your icons is a great way to make a PC uniquely yours. Let’s take a look at the different ways Windows lets you customize your icons. Read This Article → Advertisement Get CCleaner Pro CCleaner Professional gives you extra features and the best value for optimizing your computer and includes the following: Complete Cleaning - cleaning across multiple users in a single click, System and browser monitoring - never forget to clean again!, Scheduled cleaning, Auto-Updating - always have the latest cleaning definitions, Priority email Support, First notification of updates, beta programs and special offers.Click here to download