Crash Course in Car Heater Operation Most cars on the road have water-cooled engines, and their heating systems work on the same basic principle. Hot coolant from the engine passes through a heater core, which looks and functions like a small radiator, and a blower motor forces air through it. The coolant then heats the air, and the air, in turn, warms the interior of the vehicle. This is the reason that it takes a while for heaters to start blowing warm air....

Your digital identity and protecting it has become a top concern for many people in the past few years, especially as more contactless payment systems appear in phones and stores. It has become so important that entire companies have created encrypted systems to help protect your biometric data. But just how secure is using your fingerprint to pay for your coffee? Some experts say it’s the most secure way to protect your online data, but others warn you could be opening yourself up to a massive security breach if you aren’t careful....

Currently, if you want to buy an electric vehicle (EV), there’s the potential for a tax credit of $7,500. Woohoo, right? Well, it’s great if you actually have a tax burden of $7,500. Oh, and certain automakers like GM, Toyota, and Tesla? Yeah, their vehicles are no longer eligible for the credit because they started selling tons of EVs (Or hybrids in Toyota’s case) before everyone else. Yep, punishing companies for doing the right thing early is weird....

Over the last few years, Miles has only grown in popularity. People love his comic adventures, his occasional appearances in cartoons, and Into the Spider-Verse might be a perfect movie. So imagine my surprise when Miles showed up at the end of a trailer for Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4. From that point on, I couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like for Miles to get his own game....

Film photography continues to grow in popularity, with Kodak even looking to hire more film technicians to keep up with demand. Meanwhile, the only newly-built film cameras you can buy are Leicas for $5K+, and junky plastic-lensed toy cameras from your local store. Fans are stuck with buying up used models, while qualified repairpersons enter retirement age. But now, thanks to Ricoh Pentax, there’s hope. “To produce a quality film camera requires an intricate understanding of both analog and digital components; something which many companies lack due to their previously exclusive focus on developing digital products,” Jacob Richard, founder of Camera Prism, told Lifewire via email....

A group of diehard Pebble owners love the watch’s simplicity and long battery life and work to keep the timepiece and its software going. A community-run software project recently released an updated app to keep Pebble watches functional on newer devices. Pebble lovers say it’s worth the hassle of dealing with older technology. “With archaic technology inside, it still does everything I need,” Pebble owner Charles Duffield said in an email interview....

Most mixers are either built for the stage or to record bands, with lots of microphone inputs, or they’re more like USB interfaces, with stereo inputs and USB, but no physical controls. The Big Six is both; SSL quality but with a ton of useful stereo ins and outs. It’s pretty perfect for the home or small pro studio, and you won’t need anything else. But, of course, not everyone is satisfied....

A lawsuit aimed at Apple and its AirTags tracker claims the device has “become the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers.” The suit accuses Apple of failing to introduce effective safeguards that would prevent stalkers from using AirTags to track people. Experts say that electronic tracking devices are a growing problem. “Generally speaking, all our mobile devices are problematic,” Mark Kapczynski the CMO of OneRep, a company that helps users erase their data from the web, told Lifewire in an email interview....

It’s easy to write off something in “early access” as an unfinished product that doesn’t have much to offer, and there are many Steam games that meet that expectation. With Valheim, however, developer Iron Gate Studio created something special; a game that almost seems to defy all expectations. That’s what experts say has helped it continue to break records, despite being out for less than a month. “I can’t say enough that the game’s sudden success is based on its own merit....

Women working in cybersecurity right now make up only 24% of the workforce, according to a report from the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC)². While that number is growing, it’s still not enough. With the low percentage of women cybersecurity professionals, there are even less of them in leadership roles. Only 7% of women are reaching positions such as chief technology officer, 18% are in IT director roles and 19% reach vice president of IT positions, the (ISC)² report shows....

The new Slack Connect feature is, says Slack, “designed to replace email outside your company.” Adding a new conversation is easy. You just paste in the contact’s email address, write a few words, and send the invite. If accepted, you and the invitee now can converse in a Slack chat, just like you do with your coworkers. It looks great. But email is still involved. “Many thought that email would die, and what do you know—it’s more popular than ever,” online marketer Stephen Montagne told Lifewire via email....

Overall Findings Knowing your needs for an operating system helps in your decision between Windows 10 Home versus Windows 10 Pro. If you’re a home user, Windows 10 Home will take care of your computing needs. If you need complex features, such as a network domain or the ability to manage group policies on several computers (such as a small office), Windows 10 Pro has these advanced features to make management easy and centralized....

Muting your audio in a video conference call is good practice. Nobody wants to hear the trash truck outside your window or the washing machine hitting its spin cycle. But we also use muting to let us have a private aside with somebody right there in the room with us, and we might expect that mute means mute, and that no audio is leaving the computer. But it turns out that our private conversations might get a lot further along before being silenced....

On the surface, it’s a shooting game with giant mechs—something that sounds like you could switch your brain off and simply rely on your instincts to shoot anything that moves. In reality, though, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries offers a lot more depth than that. It stands out among a generally more accessible PlayStation 5 catalog because it’s so awkward at times. That’s not always a good thing, of course, but if you’re looking for a slower and more considered game than your usual ‘it moves, kill it’ experience, this one is a grower....

Decide Whether You Want a Public or Private Profile Twitter is an open and public social network where anyone can see your posts and interact with you. By default, your profile is public. However, you can make your Twitter activity private so that only people who follow you (which requires your approval first) can interact with you. Observe How Users Interact on Twitter Before you jump into tweeting, consider checking out other user profiles to see how they use Twitter....

Updated 2018: 2Do has drastically changed its pricing. After raising the price to $14.99 in 2016, the developer has now made the app free, but with in-app purchases that unlock pro features such as sending to-dos to the app via email, syncing content with Dropbox and the iOS Reminders app, time- and location-based alerts, and more. The app also offers an Apple Watch app and an iPad app. Download 2Do Any....

Internet connectivity on mobile devices is now more necessity than luxury, but even the 4G standard is not without its downsides. In this article, we take a look at the pros and cons of 4G mobile networks. Pros of 4G Mobile Networks The most obvious advantage of the 4G mobile network is its amazing speed. Increased bandwidth leads to much faster data transfer speed, which is especially advantageous for mobile devices....

Each of those three important improvements listed above might not seem world-changing in and of themselves, but together they will make possible major shifts in just about every industry. Wide availability of 5G may even create some new industries. From super-ultra-fast broadband to smart and autonomous cars, to enormous networks of Internet of Things (IoT), 5G could be the catalyst that brings about a much smarter and more connected planet....

You don’t need one to get music or software or whatever else you’re after—your browser handles that job pretty well for the most part—but in some special situations, they can come in handy. Some can even speed up the download process by grabbing your file from multiple sources at once. These programs also often support pausing and resuming of downloads—something many browsers actually do already. Here’s a list of completely free download managers and music downloaders that we think you’ll like: You can create batch downloads, download torrents, preview ZIP files before they’re downloaded and even deselect files you don’t want from the compressed folder, download entire websites, resume broken downloads, run automatic virus checks on downloads, quickly control the bandwidth allocation for all downloads, and download all links from the clipboard....

The College Info Geek Podcast Want to build a freelance career as a student? Or learn how to study abroad, or how to turn your life into a video game? This podcast helps listeners become more effective students and improve in several areas of life. The host, Thomas Frank, interviews tons of interesting people, including scientists who study the brain to the U.S. Secretary of Education. Episodes are a little longer than one hour and are released approximately every week....