Microsoft's latest Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 devices won't come with USB-C or Thunderbolt 3, the latest and fastest standards for connecting accessories and charging your computer. Meanwhile, Apple's recent MacBook Pros have taken the opposite approach by only including USB-C ports - alienating those who don't necessarily adopt the latest tech the moment it rolls out. Neither company has the right idea.

If Gmail’s spam and newsletter filters are letting too much slip through, or if you use a private email service with a bad spam filter, then try this solution: quarantine all email until the sender has confirmed that they’re not spam. This is your homemade spam filter.

USB-C is a hot mess of confusion that can leave even the savviest tech geek scratching their head. Some cables are good for charging laptops while others will only work with phones. What's going on? Here are all the facts in one place.

An increasing number of Samsung Galaxy Note 9 owners are experiencing problems with the home, back and recent buttons on the bottom of the smartphone's screen. According to the reports, these touch screen buttons have intermittently stopped working, forcing users to restart their devices. Samsung is currently working on a software update to fix the issue, but in the mean time, here's a quick way to get the buttons' responsiveness back.

Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. (AKA every office jerk's favourite day of the year.) If you're sick of hearing multiple exclamations of "shiver me timbers", "matey" and "arrrrr!", you need to take matters into your own hands. Here are some methods to kill vernacular piracy dead.

Facebook and other companies routinely track your online surfing habits to better target ads at you. Two web browsers now want to help you fight back in what's becoming an escalating privacy arms race.

Every music streaming service kind of sucks, we already know this. One of the ways Spotify sucks is that it limits how many songs you can download on each device. But the service just raised its download limit from 3333 tracks per device up to 10,000 per device, for up to five devices. Great news for anyone who needs to keep their data use down, or use Spotify anywhere with bad reception. You can finally listen to the music you pay $11.99/month for!

As any bargain hunter worth their salt will tell you, eBay 'price jacking' is a depressingly common problem. As an online marketplace, eBay does not set the prices of goods it sells - which makes it easy for third-party sellers to rip people off. This is especially prevalent during site-wide sales, with merchants regularly inflating the "RRP" to fool uninformed customers.

It's a pretty scummy practice, but thankfully one that is easily avoided. Here's what you can do about it.

All is fair in love and browser wars. In a bid to claw back some much-needed market share, Microsoft is implementing a rather cheeky "feature" in its Edge browser. When users attempt to download Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, they are now confronted with a pop-up window warning them that Edge is "faster" and "safer". No, really.

Australians are on the look out for new jobs as a way to a decent pay rise. They're losing confidence in the business and political environment - and aren't putting as much effort into their roles as they used to.

September is the peak of Australia's own version of "home-grown terrorism" (as memorably described to me by a distraught and bleeding school principal, valiantly attempting to protect his pupils), when a small but conspicuous proportion of magpies throughout the country begin to attack otherwise innocent passersby. It is certainly the most significant human-wildlife conflict in the towns and cities of this country. Here are some tips on how to survive.

Woolworths’ and Coles’ bans on plastic bags have been applauded by environmental groups, but were reportedly met with abuse and assault and claims of profiteering. This reaction is due to supermarkets breaching their “psychological contract” with customers - and when both major supermarkets appeared to back flip in the face of irate customers it only compounded the problem".

Of course, you may not need all 60 of these, but knowing them will make you flexible, fast, and ready to work with whatever tool you're presented with, whether it's a Windows PC, a Mac, an Excel spreadsheet, or a Powerpoint slideshow. Plus, there are extras in here for Gmail and Chrome to boot.

It feels like every website today wants to send you notifications, regardless of how big or small they are. Visit a page in Chrome, for instance and you'll often start to see a popup box notifying you of new content even when you're not on their website. If you're sick of seeing these, it is possible to rid yourself of them forever... or selectively, depending on your mood.

In recent months Google Maps has gotten pretty persistent about letting me know where there are restaurants it thinks I should try or new places opening up in my neighbourhood — and I hate it. As it turns out, I don't really need the app to tell me what's going on around me and with each hot tip I get more and more annoyed.

It’s harder than it used to be to accidentally lose all your work. Apps come with auto-save, and Chrome tries to warn you before you close a tab with unsaved work. But hit enter too fast, or suffer a crash, and you could still lose a lot of writing. It can happen to a Facebook update, an application form, or a blog post.

It's tempting to think that the "plink" sound produced by a falling water droplet on a liquid surface is caused by the droplet itself, but new research points to an unexpected source of this familiar, yet annoying, sound. Excitingly, the researchers have also identified a neat hack to stop it.

The My Health Record (MHR) opt-out period has begun, and you have until October 15 to decide whether or not to be part of the scheme. Unless you take action to remove yourself from the My Health Record (MHR) system, the federal government will make a digital copy of your medical record, store it centrally, and, as the default, provide numerous people with access to it.

If you don’t opt out during this period and later choose to cancel your record, you will no longer be able to access that record but the government will continue to store it until 30 years after your death. You will need to trust that it will not be breached.

For the last month, much of Australia has been gripped in an insane tempest of petulance and stupidity because single-use plastic bags aren't available in supermarkets any more. This is so first-world problems it's almost as embarrassing as our national energy policy, but for anyone who is still stressing about this, I'm here to tell you IKEA can save you.