Semi finished products

Microsoft Teams does a great job of informing you about new messages and other activity, but it can get a bit overwhelming if you’re in lots of teams. Here’s how to turn off or customize Microsoft Teams notification. Teams will provide notifications about chats, meetings, direct messages, mentions, other people’s status, and even when someone you know joins your team. It will do this by adding a number to the Teams icon on the taskbar, making that same icon flash, playing a noise, and popping up a banner notification in the bottom-left corner of your screen. And if you miss any of that, it will send you a missed activity email. If you work somewhere that uses Microsoft Teams a lot, this can become a barrage of alerts that constantly interrupt you with information that you don’t need to know. Getting pulled out of your focused zone by an alert telling you that Geoff from Accounts has just come online is really not helpful or productive. You should decide what’s worthy of … [Read more...] about How to Configure Microsoft Teams Notifications

The sun sets depressingly early during certain times of the year, and this can have a big effect on your mood. What if you could control when the sun rises and sets with a fake natural light window? We’ll show you how to tackle this DIY project. Why a DIY Natural Light Window? If you live in a location where there are extended periods of darkness, you know how important natural light can be. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is very common during these times of the year, and lack of sunlight is part of the cause. There are plenty of products designed to help with this problem . However, if you want window-sized light, you’ll probably have to spend several hundred dollars . We wanted to add some extra light to our dim basement office and decided to go the DIY route. We’ll show you how to make a faux window with natural light that changes to match the sun, all for less than $100. What You’ll Need Before we go any further, just a heads up that we’ll be using … [Read more...] about How to Build Your Own Artificial Natural Light Window

You might not realize it, but every time you purchase a new desktop CPU, you also get a ticket for a giveaway called the “silicon lottery.” Two CPUs of the same model can perform differently when pushed to their limits thanks to something called “CPU binning.” What Is Binning? Binning is a sorting process in which top-performing chips are sorted from lower-performing chips. It can be used for CPUs, GPUs (graphics cards), and RAM. Say you want to manufacture and sell two different models of CPU: one that’s fast and expensive, and another that’s slower at a bargain price Do you design two different models of CPU and manufacture them separately? Why bother when you could just use “binning?” The manufacturing process is never perfect, especially given the incredible precision necessary to produce CPUs. When you’re manufacturing those speedy, expensive CPUs, you’ll end up with some that just can’t run at the top-end speeds. You can then tweak these to run at slower speeds and … [Read more...] about What Is “Binning” for Computer Components?

The Apple Watch should have enough charge to last you a full day with moderate-to-heavy use. If you don’t use it a ton, you might even get more than a day out of it! But what do you do when your Watch battery just doesn’t last long enough? Here are some tips for making your Apple wearable last longer. Disable Always-On Display (Series 5 and Later) The Apple Watch Series 5 and later (except the SE) boasts an always-on display. This means there’s no need to flick your wrist or tap the screen to see the time. Apple uses some clever tricks to reduce power consumption to make this possible, including lowering the display’s refresh rate from 60Hz (60 refreshes per second) to just 1Hz. You can save even more power by simply turning off the always-on display, and then just raising the Watch to wake it. To do so, open the Watch app on your iPhone, tap General > Display & Brightness, and then uncheck “Always On.” Use a Dark Watch Face and Reduce Brightness The display in … [Read more...] about How to Improve Your Apple Watch’s Battery Life: 12 Tips