How to play Facebook Messenger's secret basketball game

On Thursday, Facebook released an update to its iOS Messenger app. Normally such updates are accompanied with a change log that reads to the effect of "various bug fixes." It's never clear what's new -- if anything -- when Facebook updates its apps. The Android app was updated on Wednesday.

Only this time Facebook offered some advice in the change log: "Shoot Some Hoops: Want to see what's hiding behind the basketball emoji in Messenger? Just send one and tap to find out!"

Following the directions will result in Messenger launching an arcade-style basketball game, where you flick a basketball towards a hoop. As you continue to make or miss baskets, fun emojis and Facebook stickers cheer you on.

To start a game, open a Messenger conversation and send a basketball emoji. Once the message is sent, tap on the emoji and Messenger will launch the basketball game. If it's not working for you, make sure you have the latest version installed. In the screenshot above, I mention double-tapping the ball to get it to work. The first few times I tried opening the game, I had to double-tap. Subsequent tries worked with a single tap.

High score updates will show up in the conversation thread, letting your friends know who has the high score

After hitting 10 in a row the basket will begin moving across the screen, just like it does in an arcade; making the game that much harder.

This isn't the first game Facebook has built into its chat platform. Just a last month we covered how to play a chess with a friend in Messenger.

Make sure your online accounts get deleted when you die

Not everyone wants to leave this earth with their online accounts being managed by relatives and next-of-kin, or just floating around on the Internet forever. If you're the kind of person who likes your privacy -- even in death -- you should probably make some plans to have all of your online and social media accounts nuked when you pass away.

Some services, such as Google and Facebook, let you set up your eventual account deletion before you get anywhere close to death. Other services will keep your account forever unless an immediate family member or the executor of your estate requests it be removed. Here's how to make sure all your loose ends are tied up, and that nobody ever gets hold of your top-secret/possibly incriminating emails and Twitter direct messages.

Google

Google's Inactive Account Manager lets you choose what happens to your account when it becomes inactive for a certain period of time. You can set up the Inactive Account Manager to delete your Google account and all products associated with that account, including Gmail, Blogger, AdSense, and YouTube.

To set this up, log in to your Google account and go to this page. You will need to provide Google with a phone number for alerts -- Google will send a message to this number before your account times out, so you know your account is about to become inactive. You will then need to select a timeout period (3 months, 6 months, 9 months, one year, 15 months, or 18 months).

Then, under Optionally delete account, turn on Delete my account. Click Enable to turn the Inactive Account Manager on, and you're set. If you fail to log in to your account for the timeout period you selected, Google will delete your Google account and all data associated with it.

Facebook

Facebook is one of few online services that lets you set a legacy contact -- someone who can manage parts of your account and memorialize your page -- for when you die. Facebook also lets you delete your account when you die (though it doesn't use inactivity to determine that you've passed away).

To make sure your Facebook account is deleted when you die, open Facebook and go to Settings > Security > Legacy Contact. Check the box next to Account Deletion.

You will see a pop-up box asking if you really want to delete your account in the future. Click Delete After Death and then re-enter your Facebook password to save your changes. Your account will now be deleted when Facebook is notified of your death -- this means that if anybody tries to memorialize your page, it will be deleted instead of memorialized.

Use a digital legacy service

Google and Facebook give you the power to delete your account when you die, but many sites and services -- such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Microsoft, and Yahoo -- do not. These sites will delete the account of a deceased person at the request of an immediate family member or the executor of an estate (by the way, you can and should delineate how you want your digital life to be handled in your last will and testament). If you want to take full control, you can use a digital legacy services like Perpetu

Perpetu is an online service that covers Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Flickr, LinkedIn and GitHub. You connect your accounts to Perpetu, and then you outline your final wishes for each service -- for example, you can request that Perpetu delete certain emails from your Gmail account, delete tweets and direct messages from Twitter, or delete files from your Dropbox account.

The service can't really delete actual accounts, but it can delete data and leave final updates for your friends and family to see. Perpetu's service kicks in when the company receives a report of your death from a trusted contact with your reporting code, so it's still a good idea to put this in your will.

Meter your Ethernet connection in Windows 10

Meter your Ethernet connection in Windows 10

A Registry Editor hack lets you limit your data usage over a wired connection.

Because Windows 10 is a "universal" operating system -- that is, an operating system for both mobile devices and PCs -- Microsoft has made limiting your data connection easy. Well...easy if you happen to be using a non wired connection, such as Wi-Fi or cellular data, 

If you're hooked up to the Internet via Ethernet, you apparently have no reason to limit your data usage, according to Microsoft. But what if you want to anyway? One reason to consider metering your data connection is because you can control Windows 10's mandatory updates -- Microsoft will not automatically download updates on a metered connection, allowing you to update the OS at your own pace (to manually download an update on a metered connection, just go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and click Download).

Because Microsoft hasn't built metering Ethernet connections into Windows 10, you'll need to take a trip into the Registry Editor to change this setting. Messing around in the Registry Editor can break your computer, so the usual warnings apply -- do not try this hack unless you're comfortable using the Registry Editor!

1. Right-click the Start button and choose Run to open the Run window. In the Run window, type regeditand press enter to open the Registry Editor. If prompted by the User Account Control, click Yes.

2. In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\DefaultMediaCost.

3. Right-click on DefaultMediaCost and click Permissions...

4. In the Permissions for DefaultMediaCost window, click Advanced.

5. In the Advanced Security Settings for DefaultMediaCost, click Change next to the owner.

6. In the text box labeled Enter the object name to select, type in Administrators and click Check Names.

You should see a name pop up that looks similar to this. Click OK.

Check the box next to Replace owner on subcontainers and objects and click OK

7. Back in the Permissions for DefaultMediaCost window, click Administrators to select the group and then under Permissions for Administrators make sure the Full Control Allow box is checked. Click OKto exit this window.

8. Right-click on Ethernet and click Modify. An Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value window will open.

9. To set the connection as metered, change the Value data to 2.

To set the connection as non-metered (default), change the Value data to 1. Hit OK to confirm, exit the Registry Editor, and restart your computer to save the changes.

How to enable or disable hibernate in Windows 10

Hibernation is a state you can put your computer in instead of shutting it down or putting it to sleep. When your computer hibernates, it takes a snapshot of your system files and drivers and saves that snapshot to your hard drive before shutting down. This allows your computer to start up faster, because it doesn't need to re-establish those files and settings.

Hibernate is enabled by default, and it doesn't really hurt your computer, so it's not necessary that you disable it even if you don't use it. However, when hibernate is enabled it reserves some of your disk for its file -- the hiberfil.sys file -- which is allocated at 75 percent of your computer's installed RAM. If you have 8GB of RAM, your hiberfil.sys file will take up 6GB of your hard drive space; if you have 16GB of RAM, your hiberfil.sys file will take up 12GB.

So, the main reason you might want to disable hibernate on your computer is if you really need those extra gigs of hard drive space back. If you turn hibernate off, you won't be able to use hibernate (obviously), nor will you be able to take advantage of Windows 10's fast startup feature, which combines hibernation and shutdown for faster boot times.

Here's how to disable and then re-enable hibernate in Windows 10:

1. Right-click on the Start button and choose Command Prompt (Admin) from the pop-up menu. If you are prompted by the User Account Control asking if you want to allow this program to make changes to your computer, click Yes to proceed.

2. In the Command Prompt window, type powercfg.exe /hibernate off and press the Enter key. Exit the Command Prompt window.

3. To enable hibernate in Windows 10, open the Command Prompt again and type powercfg.exe /hibernate on and press the Enter key.

How to remove personal information from photos in Windows 10

There's more to your digital photos than meets the eye. Embedded in each file is EXIF data, or metadata, that contains information on your camera's make and model, the time and date the photo was taken, and even GPS coordinates if you happened to take the photo from a camera (or, more likely, a phone) that has geotagging enabled.

Luckily, Microsoft lets you remove this sensitive information in Windows 10 in just a few easy steps. Of course, if you'd rather not bother running all your photos through your desktop before posting them online, you can also turn off geotagging at the source.

1. Open the folder that contains the photo you want to remove metadata from. Right-click on the photo and click Properties. (You can also select several photos, right-click them, then click Properties.)

2. In the Properties window, click the Details tab to see the photo's metadata. At the bottom of the window, click Remove Properties and Personal Information.

3. If you would like to remove metadata directly from this file, select Remove the following properties from this file and select all of the property values you want to remove. Click OK to remove the data.

4. If you want to retain a copy of the file with metadata, select Create a copy with all possible properties removed -- this will create a copy of the file with metadata removed, but you will still have original metadata-filled file.

5. Windows 10's metadata-removal tool isn't perfect, unfortunately, and it may not be able to remove all the personal information from your photos. If you run into issues removing metadata with Windows, you'll need to try a third-party tool such as BatchPurifier Lite.