Windows 11 glitch that made printers seem like theyre possessed is one of the strangest bugs Ive even known but its been banished now.

At the beginning of the hit 2003 movie Love Actually, Hugh Grants character muses that whenever he gets gloomy about the state of the world, he redirects his attention to the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. Another remedy would be to consider the vast natural wonders of space, but perhaps thats more of a William Shatner move. Regardless of your leading-man preference, if you are in need of some wonder this week, there will be a partial solar eclipse early Saturday morning visible in certain parts of the world. Heres what that all means and where and how to best see it.What is a partial solar eclipse?The moon orbits the Earth while our home planet orbits the sun. When the moon travels between the sun and Earth, an eclipse takes place. The type depends on how the three moving objects line up. If it is not in a perfect line, a partial eclipse occurs.If it is a perfect line, the sun is completely blocked and a total eclipse occurs. (Cue Bonnie Tyler.) When the moon travels between the sun and the Earth while at its farthest point away from Earth, this is called an annular solar eclipse. (No great pop songs have yet been written about this phenomenon.)When and where can you see the partial solar eclipse?The eclipse will take place on Saturday, March 29, 2025. According to NASA, people in the northeastern United States, Europe, western Africa, eastern Canada, and over the Atlantic Ocean are in for a show. Shortly after a beautiful sunrise, those on the East Coast of the United States will witness a partial solar eclipse.Those in New York City should expect it to begin at 6:44 a.m ET. Things kick off even earlier in Boston at 6:31 a.m. The folks at NASA have compiled a handy list of major cities and the exact timeline for your convenience.NASA.govWhat is the best way to view the eclipse? The first rule of viewing a partial solar eclipse is safety. You cannot look directly at it without damaging your eyes. You need solar eclipse glasses. The American Astronomical Society has a list of approved vendors, which can help you procure some.Other than that, set multiple alarms to ensure you dont sleep or work through it. If you need a hand waking up, brew some coffee. Then look up and marvel at the sky and for a moment feel a small part of a larger universejust like Captain Kirk.

Youve heard of burner phones. What about burner email?So much of the internet now requires that you hand over your email address before youre able to use any servicesfrom an app youve downloaded to signing up for a newsletter or redeeming a special offer online.But who says you have to give your real email address? Next time youre asked, consider using an email mask.There are a growing number of services that give out disguised email addresses and relay any messages to your actual address. Experts say this can be a powerful tool to safeguard privacy and security.Here are some pointers on the whys and hows of email masking:Mask onThe idea behind email masking is simple. The masking service gives you a randomized address you can use as a decoy instead of your actual email. It can be a series of unrelated words, or a string of letters and numbers. When someone sends a message to the burner email, it will be automatically routed to your address without anyone knowing.Providers include privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGos Email Protection service, Firefox Relay from browser maker Mozilla, email service FastMail, and independent services like Addy.io. The encrypted service Proton Mail offers email masking with its password manager and standalone SimpleLogin service. There are many others.Its one of the features Apple offers users subscribing to its iCloud+ or Apple One services. When youre using the Safari browser app on your iPhone and need to input your email, you can tap the field above the onscreen keyboard to Hide My Email, which then creates a random address as a substitute.Its also available on Mac computers with the desktop Safari browser or Mail app. If youre using a different browser or app, you can still manually create a random email address by going into your iCloud settings.A Key FeatureMost services have a free version with basic options and a premium tier with more features.Some free services can only receive emails but not reply to them. However, an important feature users should look for is the ability to do both, said Proton CEO Andy Yen.Maybe you never reply to a newsletter and thats fine, said Yen. But its a problem if, for example, you used your email alias to buy something online and theres an issue with your order that the site needs to ask you about.Then the ability to reply is actually pretty important, he said.Most masking services have a dashboard control panel where you can view the various alias addresses youve activated. If you notice one starting to get a lot of spam, just turn it off.When should I use it?Mask your email when you want to add an extra layer of privacy or protect yourself from data leaks or unauthorized information sharing.An email mask is a general-purpose tool that can be used in any context, says Santiago Andrigo, principal product manager at Mozilla.However, he recommends using it in two key situations. The first is when youre unsure what a website will do with your email address.Masking your email gives you controlif you start receiving unwanted messages, you can easily block any emails coming to that email mask, Andrigo said.The second scenario is when your association with a service could reveal sensitive personal information, he said. For example, if you join an online community for a specific medical condition or a minority group, a data breach could expose your participation.Email failThere are myriad reasons not to give out your email address to anyone who wants it.It could be sold to marketers or shady data brokers, eroding your privacy by helping them build a profile of you for legitimate or nefarious purposes.If your address ends up on the wrong mailing list, it could result in more junk or phishing emails. And if an online service is hacked, attackers could make off with logins, passwords and other personal information.Using unique passwords for all your online accountstypically with the help of a password manageris good cybersecurity practice. But the real pain point for any user is actually not the password getting leaked, but actually the email getting leaked, said Yen.Changing your password after a data breach is standard practice but its a lot harder to change another piece of sensitive information, your email addressunless youre using a mask.False solutionsThere are other so-called hacks that you might have heard about.You could set up a throwaway account with a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo. But its tedious to do this.Some Gmail users add a plus sign and an extra phrase or combination of characters between their username and the @ sign. It helps track whos sharing your address as well as filter messages.But from a privacy standpoint, that does nothing, said Yen. Because people can just simply take away the plus and get your original address.What about the man in the middle?Email masks use their servers to relay message traffic between the sender and the recipient. So how can you be sure those servers are private?Look for reputable providers that promise not to keep your messages. If youre shopping around for an email masking service, Yen advises checking if it has proper terms and conditions, a privacy policy and is based in a jurisdiction where it could be legally held accountable.We state very clearly were not keeping a copy of anything that passes through our servers, Yen said.Firefox Relay says in its FAQs that it does not read or store any of your messages.In the event that an email cannot be delivered to you, we will keep it on our servers and delete it after it has been delivered (in no event will we hold onto it for more than three days), it says.Apple says it doesnt read or process any of the content in email messages that pass through Hide My Email except for standard spam filtering.All email messages are deleted from our relay servers after theyre delivered to you, usually within seconds, the iPhone maker says.AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, Calif. contributed to this report.Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer

If you hear the term "Reefer Truck," you might think it has something to do with weed. But that's the colloquial term used in Japan for refrigerated ("reefer") cargo trucks.Vehicle manufacturer Nippon Trex Co. learned of a problem faced by their clients in the cold-chain cargo business: Not enough drivers, not enough trucks. They thus designed this Swap Reefer truck, which features a long cargo-carrying chassis and has a special trailer that can be detached and stands on its own legs. This has several advantages. Typically, a reefer truck driver shows up to the loading point. The cold cargo, which might be perishables or pharmaceuticals, is loaded as the driver waits. During the loading process, the temperature of the refrigerated cargo cabin naturally drops. Once everything's loaded and the container is sealed again, the driver must wait for the cargo cabin to work its way back down to temperature before they can leave.Once they get to the destination, the driver must of course wait for the truck to be unloaded.The Swap Reefer is a far better system. The cargo container is loaded and set to temperature beforehand, so all the driver does is show up, then attach it. At the destination, they detach the trailer and don't need to wait for the unloading; instead they can take off to do another job. Furthermore, if it's a long haul, the cargo container can be carried there by multiple short-haul drivers, relay-style.I've cued up the video below so you can see how the trailers are detached. It looks pretty straightforward:I'm glad they solved the problem using a physical solution and human drivers, rather than focusing on autonomous trucks.

Desk accessories manufacturer Practiko got their start in 2020, after making an observation: Modern desks are often drawer-free slabs. Yet people still have a need for drawers. Practiko thus released this Otis line of add-on drawers:The demand was there, and five years later the company continues to improve the design. After considering customer feedback, the Otis 3.0 versions have more substantial handles that are easier to grab, as opposed to the old cutouts; there are more perforations in the drawer sides to provide more positions for the dividers; the drawers themselves have been made both beefier and larger in capacity; the Otis Tower now has leveling feet for coping with uneven surfaces, and also offers a double-height drawer for larger objects.Otis HangerOtis Tower This category of remedial design products wouldn't exist, if desk manufacturers simply designed desks with useful features, rather than chasing aesthetic trends. Practiko saw a gap in the market and plugged it. Good for them.

The world of portable gaming has exploded in recent years, with handheld PCs sporting impressive specs that can run demanding modern titles. However, these devices often stretch the definition of portable with their substantial size, weight, and battery requirements, necessary compromises to deliver high-performance gaming on the go. For many gamers, these bulky handhelds represent a far cry from the pocket-sized Game Boys and other classic portables that defined mobile gaming for generations.Enter the Pi Tin, an ingenious DIY project that takes portable gaming in the completely opposite direction. This ultra-compact retro gaming system packs everything needed to play classic 8-bit and 16-bit titles into a container no larger than a small Altoids mint tin. The project represents a fascinating intersection of retro gaming nostalgia, modern miniaturized computing, and the maker communitys endless drive to push creative boundaries through clever engineering and design.Designer: jackw01The brains of this tiny gaming marvel is the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, a remarkable piece of miniaturized computing that delivers surprising performance despite its diminutive footprint. Even smaller than its credit card-sized sibling, the computer provides enough processing power to emulate classic gaming systems while consuming minimal power, making it perfect for ultra-portable applications. The RPi serves as the foundation upon which the entire project builds, handling both the gaming emulation and interface management.The custom PCB (printed circuit board) represents perhaps the most impressive technical achievement of the Pi Tin project. This specially designed board connects all components in an incredibly space-efficient manner, accommodating the tiny 320240 TFT LCD display, a surprisingly capacious 2,000mAh battery, and a complete set of gaming controls including directional buttons and action keys.While the Altoids tin provides a ready-made enclosure with the perfect retro aesthetic, working with metal containers presents certain challenges for DIY enthusiasts. Cutting precise openings for the screen and controls requires specialized tools and careful handling to avoid sharp edges or structural weaknesses. Many builders opt instead for 3D-printed enclosures that mimic the iconic tin shape while offering greater flexibility for customization and easier modification.Battery life emerges as another surprising strength of this tiny system, with the 2,000mAh capacity providing several hours of gameplay despite powering both the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and the display. This endurance makes the Pi Tin genuinely practical for everyday carry, allowing gamers to enjoy quick sessions during commutes, lunch breaks, or any moment when modern smartphones feel too connected to the demands of daily life.The compact dimensions of the Pi Tin create an undeniably authentic retro gaming experience that perfectly matches the bite-sized nature of classic games. Unlike modern titles that demand hours of continuous play, many vintage games were designed for quick sessions, perfect for a device that prioritizes portability over ergonomic comfort. The slight hand cramping after extended play sessions might even trigger nostalgic memories for veteran gamers who grew up with similarly compact handhelds.The post Tiny DIY retro gaming handheld fits inside a small Altoids tin first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Neoclassical Apartment feels light, airy, and timeless. The tone is set with light neutral hues throughout the apartment. Simultaneously, the clean lines keep it feeling modern. Visual interest is factored into the space with intricate moldings and polished stone surfaces. Expansive windows allow natural light to flood the interiors. This beautifully reflects off the marble accents and crisp architectural details, creating a space that feels both majestic and serene.The living room in the Neoclassical Apartment uses two expansive two-seater sofas. An organic wooden coffee table and rug add warmth. We love the entertainment complex, which uses a marble block and dark wooden cabinetry. This forms a subtle statement in the living area, as does the multi-globe chandelier hanging above.As a part of the open floor plan, we see a round glass-top dining table paired with soft upholstered chairs towards the back of the living area. The same chandelier also hangs above here, tying the two spaces together. The kitchen in the Neoclassical Apartment is simple and sleek with a marble backsplash. The white cabinetry features clean lines.The bedroom features a simple upholstered bed and gray-and-black artwork depicting branches. The entertainment complex is placed in front of the floor-to-ceiling window (which is paired with light draperies). We also see dark wooden cabinetry adding a visual punch. In one corner is the opening to an ultra-modern walk-in closet.The bathroom in the Neoclassical Apartment may be compact, but it goes big on marble accents. A freestanding tub and vessel sink add luxury to the space, while the dark wooden vanity adds contrast. The rectangular mirror has a sleek LED strip, providing interesting illumination. The toilet is segregated with a glass partition.

SNK veterans Nobuyuki Kuroki and Yoichiro Soeda reveal what goes into updating a retro gaming icon for a new generation.

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