VLC Has Extensions, Too: Here’s What You Can Do With Them

VLC has many hidden features you might not have noticed. Among these features is a powerful add-on system that supports everything from feature-adding extensions to skins.

To view your installed add-ons, click Tools > Plugins and Extensions in VLC. The window displays your installed extensions and links you to the addons.videolan.org website where you can get more.
Installing and Using Extensions

To install an extension, download its .lua file from the VLC add-ons website. On Windows, place the .lua files in the C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Roaming\vlc\lua\extensions folder. You’ll probably have to create the “lua\extensions” folders in the vlc AppData folder on your own.

These extensions also work on Linux and Mac OS X. Each extension’s web page includes instructions for installing the extension to the appropriate folder on every operating system VLC runs on. The extensions don’t work on mobile versions of VLC like VLC for Android, iOS, or Windows 8 — just the desktop versions of VLC for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

To have VLC notice extensions you install, either close and re-open VLC or click the Reload Extensions button in the Plugins and extensions window. You can then activate and access extensions from VLC’s View menu.

VLSub
Video files you download from the web don’t always come with subtitles. But sometimes you’ll want subtitles anyway — perhaps the video is in a language you don’t understand, the audio is too quiet, or an unfamiliar accent is making it difficult to understand the audio. You can generally hunt down subtitle files on your own, including by downloading them from websites that provide an archive of subtitle files for you.

VLSub automates this process. It uses a hash of the current video file and its title to download an appropriate subtitle file from opensubtitles.org, making it quick and easy to find the correct subtitles for your current video when you want them. You don’t have to download them ahead of time and load them separately — just open VLSub while watching a video.

Resume Media V2
The Resume Media V2 extension saves the current position of a video or audio file whenever you close VLC. When you re-open VLC, the extension automatically moves the time slider to the position you stopped at. It doesn’t just work with a single previous file — it works with multiple different files and remembers your positions in all of them until you finish watching or listening to the files.

This extension works well for many different types of media files. If you listen to podcasts in VLC, you may find yourself needing to pause listening to an hours-long podcast to do something else — VLC will remember your position. It’s also useful for any other type of long file, from audiobooks and recorded lectures to long movies and TV shows.

Syncplay Interface Module for VLC
Syncplay synchronizes the playback between multiple instances of VLC and other supported media players over the Internet. In other words, if you and someone else anywhere in the world have the same video file, you can use Syncplay to watch it together at the same time. Syncplay will ensure the file’s playback is synced up.

In the past, people apart from each other sometimes watched TV movies while talking on the telephone — now you can use an Internet voice-chat program and Syncplay to watch a video file at the same time and talk about it.

This extension isn’t entirely self-contained, as it requires the Syncplay program installed. Unlike the other extensions here, it shouldn’t have to be installed manually — just install the Syncplay program on your computer and it should automatically install the VLC extension.

Click to Play/Pause
Web-based video players like YouTube often allow you to click the video screen to pause and resume playing a video. VLC forces you to press Space or click a small Play/Pause button at the bottom of the screen, which can be inconvenient if you’re controlling VLC with a mouse from a distance — perhaps while using VLC as a media player connected to your TV with an HDMI cable. With this extension installed, you can just click anywhere on the video to pause or resume playing your video file.



The extension site is full of even more extensions and plug-ins, but we wanted to highlight the best. So many other features — whether you’re thinking of transcoding or streaming — are built into VLC already.

The website also offers a variety of skins and service discovery scripts. You can make your VLC window look entirely different or add support for discovering different types of online streams — like radio stations from TuneIn Radio — to VLC’s playlist window. Take a look at the site on your own, but don’t be surprised if you don’t find an extension to do something — that feature may be hiding somewhere in VLC already.

Yes, It’s Okay to Shut Down Your Computer With the Power Button

Many computer users were trained never to turn their PCs off by pressing the power button on their desktop PC’s case. This used to cause problems in the previous millennium, but it’s now perfectly safe to shut down with the power button.

This is especially useful on Windows 8, where there’s no obvious power button unless you know to look in the charms bar or the hidden Windows Key + X menu. But there is a power button — and it’s on your PC’s case.

Why Old Computers Couldn’t Handle This
If you ever used Windows 95 on an old computer, you’ll probably remember how you had to turn off the PC. You opened the Start menu, clicked Shut Down, and waited patiently for the computer to finish up whatever it was doing. When it was ready for you to shut down, you’d see the message “It’s now safe to turn off your computer” on your screen and you’d press the power button to shut it off.

The power button wasn’t very smart in those days. When you pressed it, it immediately cut power to the computer’s hardware. Just as you wouldn’t yank a desktop computer’s power cord out of the outlet while it was running today, you wouldn’t press the power button to shut off then. A sudden power cut means the computer won’t be able to shut down cleanly. You may lose work and the file system might be corrupted. If you did this on Windows 95, your computer would have to run ScanDisk when you booted it back up, attempting to repair all the damage caused by the shut down.

When you clicked Shut Down in Windows first, Windows wrapped up everything it was doing, closing all open programs and saving all data to the disk. Your computer wasn’t doing anything at all when that message appeared on your screen, so it was safe to cut power to it.

Why New Computers Can Safely Shut Down
Old computers used a pretty low-tech solution. Instead of suddenly cutting power to the computer, why couldn’t the power button send a signal to the computer’s operating system saying “Hey, it’s time to shut down, finish up what you’re doing” and let the computer shut down intelligently? And, when you did shut down from the operating system, why did you have to sit at the computer and wait to press the power button once everything was done? Why couldn’t the operating system say to the computer “it’s now safe to shut down, power off”?

These questions were answered by the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) standard, which new computers have used for more than a decade. When you press the power button on your computer’s case, it doesn’t suddenly cut power — it sends a signal to the operating system and tells it to shut down. The operating system can also understand multiple types of ACPI signals, which is how some laptops are able to have separate power and sleep buttons. And, when you click Shut Down in Windows, it uses ACPI to send a signal to your computer’s hardware, telling it to cut the power so you don’t have to press the power button by hand.

In other words, your computer’s power button is smart enough to do the right thing. You can just press the power button on your case to shut it down. Bear in mind that this power button can be configured to do different things, so you can have your computer shut down, sleep, or hibernate when you press the power button.

Windows 98 introduced support for ACPI, but it requires appropriate hardware. If you install a modern version of Windows on older hardware, you’ll still see the “It is now safe to turn off your computer” message and have to press the power button manually.

Holding Down the Power Button Still Cuts Power to the Computer
Your computer’s power button is smart, but this might be a problem in some situations. For example, if Windows is frozen and you press the power button, the computer would send the appropriate ACPI signal to Windows, but Windows wouldn’t be able to respond. Your computer would stay frozen and not shut down.

For this reason, there’s a way to forcibly cut power to your computer in case you ever run into a problem. Just press the power button and hold it down. After a few seconds, the power will be cut to your computer and it will suddenly shut down. This is normally a bad idea, as it can lead to lost data, file system corruption, and other issues. However, if your computer is frozen and the power button isn’t working, it’s a failsafe you have available. This allows you to power cyclelaptops when you can’t remove the battery.

How to Choose What Happens When You Press the Power Button
Windows and other operating systems allow you to customize what happens when you press the power button on your computer. If you always want to shut down your computer, you can do that — or you could always have your computer enter hibernate mode when you press the power button. The choice is up to you.

To customize this in Windows, open the Control Panel, click Hardware and Sound, and click Change what the power buttons do under Power Options.



Choose options from the lists here. You can choose separate options when your computer is plugged in or running on battery. If you like, you can also set the computer to do nothing when you press the power button, effectively disabling the power button. If you have a laptop, you’ll also be able to control what happens when you close the lid — closing the lid also sends an ACPI signal, so the computer can automatically go to sleep when you close the lid.



Bear in mind that this won’t work on any ancient hardware you come across. If you turn off an extremely ancient business computer by pressing its power button, someone will probably be unhappy with you.

4 Geeky Tricks That Reduce An Android Phone’s Security

Android geeks often unlock their devices’ bootloaders, root them, enable USB debugging, and allow software installation from outside the Google Play Store. But there are reasons why Android devices don’t come with all these tweaks enabled.

Every geeky trick that allows you to do more with your Android device also peels away some of its security. It’s important to know the risks you’re exposing your devices to and understand the trade-offs.

Bootloader Unlocking
Android bootloaders come locked by default. This isn’t just because the evil manufacturer or cellular carrier wants to lock down their device and prevent you from doing anything with it. Even Google’s own Nexus devices, which are marketed towards Android developers as well as users, come with locked boot loaders by default.

A locked bootloader ensures an attacker can’t simply install a new Android ROM and bypass your device’s security. For example, let’s say someone steals your phone and wants to gain access to your data. If you have a PIN enabled, they can’t get in. But, if your bootloader is unlocked, they can install their own Android ROM and bypass any PIN or security setting you have enabled. This is why unlocking a Nexus device’s bootloader will wipe its data — this will prevent an attacker from unlocking a device to steal data.

If you use encryption, an unlocked bootloader could theoretically allow an attacker compromise your encryption with the freezer attack, booting a ROM designed to identify your encryption key in memory and copy it. Researchers have successfully performed this attack against a Galaxy Nexus with an unlocked bootloader.

You may want to re-lock your bootloader after you unlock it and install the custom ROM you want to use. Of course, this is a trade-off when it comes to convenience — you’ll have to unlock your bootloader again if you ever want to install a new custom ROM.

Rooting
Rooting bypasses Android’s security system. In Android, each app is isolated, with its own Linux user ID with its own permissions. Apps can’t access or modify protected parts of the system, nor can they read data from other apps. A malicious app that wanted to access your banking credentials couldn’t snoop on your installed bank app or access its data — they’re isolated from each other.

When you root your device, you can allow apps to run as the root user. This gives them access to the entire system, which allows them to do things that wouldn’t normally be possible. If you installed a malicious app and gave it root access, it would be able to compromise your entire system.

Apps that require root access can be especially dangerous and should be scrutinized extra carefully. Don’t give apps you don’t trust access to everything on your device with root access.

USB Debugging
USB debugging allows you to do things liketransfer files back and forth and record videos of your device’s screen. When you enable USB debugging, your device will accept commands from a computer you plug it into via a USB connection. With USB debugging disabled, the computer has no way to issue commands to your device. (However, a computer could still copy files back and forth if you unlocked your device while it was plugged in.)

In theory, it would be possible for a malicious USB charging port to compromise connected Android devices if they had USB debugging enabled and accepted the security prompt. This was particularly dangerous in older versions of Android, where an Android device wouldn’t display a security prompt at all and would accept commands from any USB connection if they had USB debugging enabled.

Luckily, Android now provides a warning, even if you have USB debugging enabled. You have to confirm the device before it can issue US debugging commands. If you plug your phone into a computer or a USB charging port and see this prompt when you’re not expecting it, don’t accept it. In fact, you should leave USB debugging disabled unless you’re using it for something.

The idea that a USB charging port could tamper with your device is known as “juice jacking.”

Unknown Sources
The Unknown Sources option allows you to install Android apps (APK files) from outside Google’s Play Store. For example, you might want to install apps from the Amazon App Store, install games via the Humble Bundle app, or download an app in APK form from the developer’s website.

This setting is disabled by default, as it prevents less knowledgeable users from downloading APK files from websites or emails and installing them without due diligence.

When you enable this option to install an APK file, you should consider disabling it afterwards for security. If you regularly install apps from outside Google Play — for example, if you use the Amazon App Store — you may want to leave this option enabled.

Either way, you should be extra careful of apps you install from outside Google Play. Android will now offer to scan them for malware, but, like any antivirus, this feature isn’t perfect.



Each of these features makes it possible to take full control over some aspect of your device, but they’re all disabled by default for security reasons. When enabling them, be sure you know the risks.

10 Ways You Can Customize Your Windows Taskbar

Most people don’t spend much time customizing their taskbar, even though it’s something every Windows user uses every day. It seems almost set in stone — but it isn’t. The Windows taskbar is actually very customizable.

Even geeks often seem to forget just how customizable the taskbar is. The taskbar at the bottom of your screen doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s — it doesn’t even have to be at the bottom of your screen.

Choose a Start Menu
On Windows 8, you can install third-party Start menus that give you a classic Start menu back. On Windows 8.1, Microsoft has restored the Start button, but it just goes to the Start screen — for a traditional desktop Start menu, you’ll still need to install a third-party Start menu.

If you’re using Windows 8.1 and would like to get rid of the Start button to free up taskbar space and use Windows 8 the way Steven Sinofsky intended it, you can use the StartIsGone utility to hide the Start button again. Microsoft doesn’t provide a built-in option to disable the Start button.

Choose Any Edge of the Screen
The Windows taskbar appears on the bottom of the screen by default, but it doesn’t have to. You can easily place your taskbar at any edge of the screen — at the left, top, or right. Placing it on the left edge of the screen can help on modern laptops, which often use widescreen resolutions with much more horizontal space than vertical space. This will give you more vertical space for web pages, documents, and everything else.

To do this, right-click your taskbar, select Lock the taskbar, and then drag it to any side of the screen. Right-click your taskbar and lock it again afterwards. You can also right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and select a location from the Taskbar location on screen box.

Enable Auto-hide
The taskbar doesn’t have to appear on screen all the time, either. You can make it automatically hide itself and only appear when you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen. This can help if you want to use your precious screen space for your programs, particularly on old netbooks with a very low screen resolution.

To toggle auto-hide, right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and click the Auto-hide the taskbar box.

Use a Traditional Taskbar
Windows 7 introduced a new style of taskbar that combined program-launching and window-switching with a single taskbar icon. However, you can still use the previous style of taskbar. This can be useful if you just use a few programs — let’s say you mostly use your browser and like having different browser windows that you can easily switch to from your taskbar.

To choose the type of taskbar you want to use, right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and choose one of the options from the Taskbar buttons box.

Use Small Icons
Along with customizing the type of taskbar entries you use, you can select whether to use large or small icons. Large icons are probably ideal if you’re using a high-resolution screen, but if you have a tiny screen — here come the netbooks again — choosing small icons will give you more of your display back.

To make taskbar icons smaller, right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and enable the Use small taskbar buttons checkbox.

Re-enable Quick Launch
Remember the “quick launch” area that was used on Windows XP and Vista? It gave you shortcuts that you taskbar shortcuts that you could click to launch your favorite programs. On Windows 7, this is less useful because programs you use frequently can be pinned to the taskbar.

However, you can still re-enable the quick launch toolbar. This is particularly useful if you want to use the old-style taskbar from Windows Vista and XP.

Create Toolbars With Shortcuts
You can also create other toolbars with shortcuts. This can be useful on Windows 8, as it allows you to make a Start menu-like program launcher without installing any additional software. You can also enable toolbars included with Windows — for example, the Address toolbar allows you to type web page addresses into a box directly on your taskbar to access them.

To use this feature, right-click your taskbar, point to Toolbars, and select New toolbar.

Hide the Clock
The clock seems like a permanent part of the taskbar, but it’s not. You can actually hide the clock fairly easily, freeing up space on your taskbar for other things.

To do so, right-click the clock, select Customize notification icons, click Turn system icons on or off, and set the Clock to Off.

Customize Your Notification Area
The notification area — also known as the system tray — has become such a mess over time that Windows hides most notification icons by default. However, you’re free tocustomize which icons will and won’t be shown.

You can do this in a simple way — just drag and drop the notification area icons between the hidden area and the main taskbar and they’ll be made always-visible or always-hidden. You can also open the notification area dialog to perform more detailed customizations.

Create Custom Jump List Shortcuts
The jump list feature allows you to right-click a taskbar program and quickly access important functions. For example, Chrome’s jump list entries allow you to access frequently-visited websites or open new browser windows.

Some programs don’t include jump list shortcuts or may not include one you really want. You can create your own custom jump list shortcuts with a third-party tool.



Of course, you can also pin taskbar icons to make them always-visible by right-clicking them and selecting Pin this program to taskbar or drag and drop them to rearrange them on your taskbar. That’s the one bit of taskbar customization many Windows desktop users seem to do.

How to Search Google Like a Pro: 11 Tricks You Have to Know

Google is a powerful tool, but you’re missing out on a lot of that power if you just type words into it. Master Google and find the best results faster with these search tricks.

Whether you’re an inexperienced user or a seasoned professional, you’ll probably find at least one search operator you weren’t aware of here. Many of Google’s search operators aren’t very well-known.

Exact Words and Phrases
One of the most basic and widely known search tricks is using quotation marks to search for an exact phrase. For example, perform the following search and you’ll only get pages that contain the word “Hello” followed by the word “World.”


“Hello World”



This same method now works for exact-word queries. For example, if you search for “mining,” Google will also show pages that contain the words “miners.” Previously, you’d use a plus sign and search for +mining, but now you have to enclose the word in quotes:

“mining”

Excluding a Word
The minus sign allows you to specify words that shouldn’t appear in your results. For example, if you’re looking for pages about Linux distributions that don’t mention Ubuntu, use the following search:

linux distributions -ubuntu

Site Search

The site: operator allows you to perform a search in a specific site. Let’s say you’re looking for information on Windows 7 on How-To Geek. You could use the following search

site:howtogeek.com windows 7



You can also use the site: operator to specify a domain. For example, if you’re looking for high-quality references, you could use site:.edu to only pull up results from .edu domains.
Related Words

The tilde (~) operator is the opposite of enclosing a single word in quotes — it searches for related words, not just the word you type. For example, if you ran the following search, you’d find search results with words similar to “geek”:

~geek



Apparently, “Linux” is the most similar word to geek, followed by “Greek.” “Nerd” comes in third. (Hey, no one ever said Google was perfect.)

The Wildcard
The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that can match any word. For example, if you wanted to see what companies Google has purchased and how much they paid, you could use this search:

“google purchased * for * dollars”

Time Ranges
A little-known search operator allows you to specify a specific time range. For example, use the following search to find results about Ubuntu from between 2008 and 2010:

ubuntu 2008..2010

File Type
The filetype: operator lets you search for files of a specific file type. For example, you could search for only PDF files.

filetype:pdf how to geek

One Word or the Other
The “OR” operator lets you find words that contain one term or another. For example, using the following search will pull up results that contain either the word “Ubuntu” or the word “Linux.” The word “OR” must be in uppercase.

ubuntu OR linux

Word Definitions
You don’t have to Google a word and look for a dictionary link if you want to see its definition. Use the following search trick and you’ll see an inline definition:

define:word

Calculator
Use Google instead of pulling one out or launching a calculator app. Use the +, -, * and / symbols to specify arithmetic operations. You can also use brackets for more complicated expressions. Here’s an example:

(4 + 2) * (6 / 3)

Unit Conversions
The calculator can also convert between units. Just type “X [units] in [units]”. Here’s an example:

5 nautical miles in kilometers



Combine these search operators to create more complex queries. Want to search a specific website for a PDF file, created between 2001 and 2003, that contains a specific phrase but not another phrase? Go ahead.

Stupid Geek Tricks: Restart Windows 8.x Using Just the Keyboard

Everybody knows that to shut down Windows you’ve always had to click on the Start button… but what if you don’t want to click? What if your mouse broke or you are just feeling lazy and don’t want to reach over? Here’s how to restart or shut down Windows 8 using just the keyboard.

In previous editions of Windows, you could easily do this by popping up the Start menu and navigating with the Windows key and then the arrow keys, but Windows 8.x has that really annoying Start Screen that they are thankfully removing in the next version. So how do you manage it in the meantime?

It’s really simple.

First, use WIN + X to pull up the power tools menu.



Then use the U key on the keyboard to pop out the “Shut down or sign out” menu.



Now you can use the U key to immediately shut down, or R for restart, S for sleep, or I for sign out. You are now a keyboard ninja. Be proud of yourself.

Update: Mr Wizard in the comments points out that you can also click on the desktop (or just make sure the desktop is the active window) and use ALT + F4 to bring up the shutdown dialog.

How to See What Web Sites Your Computer is Secretly Connecting To

How to See What Web Sites Your Computer is Secretly Connecting To




Has your Internet connection become slower than it should be? There may be a chance that you have some malware, spyware, or adware that is using your Internet connection in the background without your knowledge. Here’s how to see what’s going on under the hood.

It’s worth noting that most third-party firewalls will probably give you this same type of information as well as block things that are trying to connect… unless the applications managed to add an exclusion already. Better check anyway.

How to Check What Your Computer is Connecting To
So, how do you find out what the problem is? There is an easy method using the netstat command from a command prompt window. This works with Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP. If you’re still using XP, make sure you are running at least Service Pack 2, and just assume that somebody already hacked your computer because your operating system is now a teenager.

We will use the netstat command to generate a list of everything that has made an Internet connection in a specified amount of time. To use the netstat command, you must run the command prompt window as administrator.

If you are using Windows 8.x you can right-click on the Start Button and choose the Command Prompt (Admin) option.



If you are on Windows 7 or Vista, open the Start menu and enter “cmd.exe” in the Search box. When the results display, right-click on cmd.exe and select Run as administrator from the popup menu.



If the User Account Control dialog box displays, click Yes to continue. Note: You may not see this dialog box, depending on your User Account Control settings.



At the command prompt, type the following command and press Enter.

netstat -abf 5 > activity.txt

The –a option shows all connections and listening ports, the –b option shows you what application is making the connection, and the –f option displays the full DNS name for each connection option for easier understanding of where the connections are being made to. You can also use the –n option if you wish to only display the IP address. The 5 option will poll every 5 seconds for connections to make it more easy to track what is going on, and the results are then piped into the activity.txt file.

Wait about two minutes and then press Ctrl + C to stop the recording of data.



Once you’ve finished recording data, you can simply open the activity.txt file in your favorite editor to see the results, or you can type activity.txt at the command line to open it in Notepad.

The resulting file will list all processes on your computer (browsers, IM clients, email programs, etc.) that have made an internet connection in the last two minutes, or however long you waited before pressing Ctrl + C. It also lists which processes connected to which websites.

If you see process names or website addresses with which you are not familiar, you can search for “what is (name of unknown process)” in Google and see what it is. It may be a system function you don’t know about or a function of one of your running programs. However, if it seems like a bad site, you can use Google again to find out how to get rid of it.

Using TCPView to Check What Your PC is Connecting To
The excellent TCPView utility that comes in the SysInternals toolkit will let you quickly see exactly what processes are connecting to what resources on the Internet, and even let you end the process, close the connection, or do a quick Whois lookup to give you more information. It’s definitely our first choice when it comes to diagnosing problems or just trying to get more information about your computer.



Note: When you first load TCPView, you might see a ton of connections from [System Process] to all sorts of Internet addresses, but this usually isn’t a problem. If all of the connections are in the TIME_WAIT state, that means that the connection is being closed, and there isn’t a process to assign the connection to, so they should up as assigned to PID 0 since there’s no PID to assign it to.

This usually happens when you load up TCPView after having connected to a bunch of things, but it should go away after all the connections close and you keep TCPView open.

Using CurrPorts to Check What Your PC is Connecting To
You can also use a free tool, called CurrPorts, to display a list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer. It is a portable program and doesn’t need to be installed. To use it, extract the .zip file you downloaded and run cports.exe.

For each port that CurrPorts lists, information about the process that opened the port is displayed. You can select connections and close them, copy a port’s information to the clipboard or save it to an HTML file, an XML file, or a tab-delimited text file. You can reorder the columns displayed on the CurrPorts main window and in the files you save. To sort the list by a specific column, simply click on the header of that column.



CurrPorts runs under Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and 8, and probably 9. There is a separate download of CurrPorts for 64-bit versions of Windows. You can find more information about CurrPorts and how to use it on the website.