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When we purchase a computer, usually it is meant to be used by one person. Sometimes we would like to share our computer with other people, with friends and family members but we would also like to keep some privacy for ourselves in the process. Lucky for us Windows 10 will let us create multiple user accounts which then can be used by other persons with their own settings, documents, etc. The only requirement is to already have one user account which is automatically created when Windows is installed. This guide will lead you step by step in the creation of a new user account within Windows 10, so grab your favorite drink, and let's begin.

Creating new account

First thing is to click on the windows icon on the bottom left and open start menu, from start menu click once on settings. When the settings window opens, choose ACCOUNTS on it. Windows will then go to the accounts settings page. Within that page, click on the Family & other users to open the setting for the chosen section on right. On the right settings, screen navigate to the lower section and click once with the left button on add someone else to this PC When add someone else to this PC is clicked, pop up window will appear which will ask you to provide the persons email address and later on the password of his/her Microsoft account, after the required information is provided you are done, a new user has been added and he can use his Microsoft credentials on the login screen to use this computer.

Setting up a user without Microsoft ID

However, if you do not wish to add a new user via his Microsoft login credentials or the person does not have them, on the pop-up window click on I don't have this person's sign-in information. This will open yet another pop-up giving you the option to create a Microsoft account for this person, to use a phone number instead of a Microsoft account, or to create a new email address for the user. Any of these options will create a new user for this computer with provided credentials but there is the last option at bottom of the pop-up which will allow you to create a local user only without a Microsoft account. This user will be able to use this computer, will not be able to transfer his document through various devices like he/she would if using a valid Microsoft account but it could use the computer and personalize it fully to his/her liking. Once the link is clicked, you will be presented with a floating window requiring you to input needed information in order for the account to be created. You will need to provide username, password, and answers to 3 security questions. Once all information has been provided, click on next and your new non-Microsoft local user has been created. Now when you click on Family & other users you will see that Windows has added a new user with the provided name to this computer. If you wish, you can add another user in the same manner, following the previous steps. Microsoft Windows does not have a limit for how many users can be on one computer so feel free to create as many as you like.

User account options

Now, clicking on the existing created user will open user options. From there you will have options to remove the user, therefore removing him/her from this computer, note that removing the local user will remove permanently his/her settings and they would not be able to be restored, or you can change the user account type. Click on Change account type. Under account type, you will have the option to promote this user to an administrator if you wish or you can leave it as a standard user.

In some cases, a couple of Windows 10 laptops, especially the newer ones that run the NVIDIA RTX series GPUs have been experiencing some problems, particularly with their headphone jacks which seem to be malfunctioning even though the internal speakers works just fine. And despite having all the drivers updated to their latest versions, the problem still occurs. According to security experts, this kind of problem occurs on laptop computers that are manufactured by MSI and since there is still no workaround or reliable fix released by the company, in this post you will be guided on how you can resolve the problem with the headphone jack. So if you are using a laptop made by MSI and are experiencing the same issue, then you’ve come to the right place. There are several potential fixes you can check out to resolve the problem, you can try to force reboot your computer or clean your headphone jack and then plug it back in properly. In addition, you could also try to update your Audio drivers or set your headphone as default. For more information, follow each one of the given options below.

Option 1 – Try to force reboot your computer

The first thing you can do is to force reboot your computer as this simple fix could help in fixing the problem. This option is quite simple, just make sure that before you do it, you have to save all your work.

• First, turn on your computer and press and hold the power button for at least 30 seconds. You might notice the screen flashing or making any changes, just ignore it.
• After that, plug out and plug in your computer and automatically turn it on.
• Once done, check if the headphone jack is now working fine.

Option 2 – Try to clean the headphone jack and plug it properly

The next thing you can do to fix the problem is to clean your headphone jack and plug it back in properly. Make sure that you use a cotton swab in cleaning the headphone jack as there are instances where some dust might have settled in the port which results in issues like your headphone jack no working.

Option 3 – Try to update, rollback or reinstall the Audio driver

If the glitch in your audio has something to do with software, chances are it might be related to the audio driver – it could be that the newest version of your Windows 10 does not work well with the old version of the driver. This is why you have to update your audio driver to the newest available version.

• Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box and then type in MSC and tap Enter or click OK to open the Device Manager.
• Expand the section for the outdated device drivers.
• And then select the outdated driver(s) and right-click on it/them.
• From the drop-down menu, select the Update Driver option and follow the on-screen instructions to install the latest version of the driver.
• Then also click on the option, “Search automatically for updated driver software.
• Restart your PC after the installation.

Note: If updating or reinstalling the Audio driver didn’t work, you can go to the website of MSI and look for the support section where you can download the drivers for your computer. You just need to take note of your PC’s correct model and model number so you can find the appropriate driver.

Option 4 – Try to set the headphone as the default device manually

There are times when you plug a headphone, it does not toggle the default audio device. Thus, to fix this issue, you have to set the default audio device to the headphones manually. To do that, follow these steps:

• First, right-click on the volume icon located on the system tray.
• Next, select the Open sound settings option to open the Sound section in the Windows 10 Settings app.
• From there, select the Control Panel for Sound on the rightmost column. This will open a new mini window.
• After that, select your headphone under the Playback tab and click on the Set default button.
• Once done, click on Apply and then OK buttons to save the changes made.

Option 5 – Try to run the Playing Audio Troubleshooter

Since the Windows 10 operating system has the Playing Audio Troubleshooter, you can use this troubleshooter to try and fix the problem with the headphones. You can access this tool in the Control Panel or in the Taskbar Search and even on the Troubleshooters page of Windows 10.

Fooriza is a browser extension for Google Chrome. This extension offers users the latest trending news from the internet. These news widgets are usually sponsored content that the application displays based on your search history or visited links. While this extension is not that dangerous on its own, it usually comes bundled with other Potentially Unwanted Programs and Browser Hijackers that could pose a security risk.

When installed this extension changes your default search engine to yahoo. And while active you might see some additional ads injected into the search results. Due to its bundled nature with other PUP-s and the potential dangers that might come with them, several anti-virus scanners have detected this extension as a Browser Hijacker and are marked for removal.

About Browser Hijackers

Browser hijackers (also called hijackware) are a kind of malware that alters internet browser configurations without the user’s knowledge or consent. These kinds of hijacks appear to be increasing at a worrying rate around the world, and it could be really nefarious and often dangerous too. They’re made to interfere with browser functions for many different purposes. In general, hijackers are programmed for the benefit of internet hackers often through revenue generation from forced advert clicks and site visits. However, it isn’t that harmless. Your internet safety is compromised and it is extremely irritating. Additionally, hijackers can make the whole infected system vulnerable – other destructive malware and viruses would seize these opportunities to get into your PC effortlessly.

Indications of browser hijack

Signs that your web browser is hi-jacked include: 1. your browser’s home page is suddenly different 2. you find yourself constantly directed to a different web page than the one you actually intended 3. default web engine is changed 4. you’re getting new toolbars you haven’t seen before 5. you may find numerous pop-up ads on your computer screen 6. your web browser gets sluggish, buggy, and crashes frequently 7. you are blocked to access those sites of anti-malware solution providers.

Exactly how browser hijacker finds its way to your computer

Browser hijackers infect computer systems in numerous ways, including via a file-share, a drive-by download, or an infected e-mail attachment. They are usually included with toolbars, BHO, add-ons, plug-ins, or browser extensions. Also, some freeware and shareware can put the hijacker in your PC through “bundling”. Some of the most well-known hijackers are Fooriza, Babylon Toolbar, Conduit Search, OneWebSearch, Sweet Page, and CoolWebSearch. Browser hijacking could lead to serious privacy issues and even identity theft, disrupt your web browsing experience by taking control over outbound traffic, drastically slows down your personal computer by consuming lots of resources, and cause system instability also.

Browser Hijacker Malware – Removal

Some hijackers can be simply removed by deleting the freeware they came with or by deleting any add-ons you have recently added to your system. At times, it can be a challenging task to discover and remove the malicious program since the associated file will be running as part of the operating system process. You should think of carrying out manual repairs only if you happen to be a tech-savvy person since there are potential risks associated with messing around with the computer registry and HOSTS file. Installing and running antivirus software on the affected system can automatically erase browser hijackers and other malicious applications. SafeBytes Anti-Malware detects all kinds of hijackers – such as Fooriza – and eliminates every trace quickly and efficiently.

What To Do If You Cannot Install Safebytes Anti-Malware?

Every malware is bad and the degree of the damage will vary greatly with regards to the type of infection. Some malware is designed to interfere with or prevent things that you wish to do on your personal computer. It may not allow you to download anything from the internet or prevent you from accessing some or all of the websites, in particular the antivirus websites. If you are reading this, you probably have infected by malware that prevents you from installing a computer security application like Safebytes Anti-Malware. There are a few actions you can take to get around this problem.

Get rid of malware in Safe Mode

If the malware is set to load at Windows start-up, then booting in Safe Mode should avoid it. Just minimal required programs and services are loaded when you boot your PC in Safe Mode. The following are the steps you should follow to eliminate malware in Safemode. 1) At power on, press the F8 key while the Windows splash screen starts to load. This will bring up the Advanced Boot Options menu. 2) Choose Safe Mode with Networking with arrow keys and press Enter. 3) When you are into this mode, you should have access to the internet again. Now, obtain the malware removal program you need by using the internet browser. To install the software, follow the guidelines within the installation wizard. 4) Once the software is installed, allow the diagnostic scan to run to eliminate viruses and other malware automatically.

Use an alternate web browser to download the anti-malware application

Some malware might target vulnerabilities of a specific web browser that block the downloading process. The ideal way to overcome this problem is to select an internet browser that is known for its security measures. Firefox contains built-in Malware and Phishing Protection to help keep you secure online.

Run anti-malware from your USB drive

Another option is to make a portable anti-malware program on your USB stick. Do these simple actions to clean up your affected PC using a portable antivirus. 1) On a clean PC, install Safebytes Anti-Malware. 2) Put the USB drive into the clean PC. 3) Double-click the executable file to run the installation wizard. 4) When asked, choose the location of the USB drive as the place in which you would like to put the software files. Follow the instructions on the computer screen to finish off the installation process. 5) Disconnect the USB drive. You may now use this portable anti-virus on the affected computer. 6) Double-click the antivirus program EXE file on the pen drive. 7) Press the “Scan” button to run a full system scan and remove malware automatically.

How SafeBytes Anti-Malware Keep your Machine Virus Free

Nowadays, an anti-malware program can protect your PC from different types of internet threats. But how to decide on the best one amongst plenty of malware protection application that’s available out there? As you might be aware, there are many anti-malware companies and tools for you to consider. A few of them do a good job in removing malware threats while many will ruin your computer by themselves. When searching for an antimalware program, purchase one that gives dependable, efficient, and complete protection against all known viruses and malware. Among few good applications, SafeBytes Anti-Malware is the highly recommended program for the security-conscious individual. SafeBytes anti-malware is a very effective and easy-to-use protection tool that is designed for end-users of all levels of IT literacy. With its cutting-edge technology, this application will assist you to get rid of several types of malware including computer viruses, trojans, PUPs, worms, adware, ransomware, and browser hijackers.

SafeBytes anti-malware takes computer protection to a whole new level with its enhanced features. These are some of the great features included in the software.

Active Protection: SafeBytes provides real-time active checking and protection against all known computer viruses and malware. This utility will constantly monitor your PC for any suspicious activity and updates itself regularly to keep abreast of the latest threats. Robust, Anti-malware Protection: Using its advanced and sophisticated algorithm, this malware elimination tool can detect and remove the malware threats hiding in the computer system effectively. Extremely Speed Scanning: This application has got one of the fastest and most efficient virus scanning engines in the industry. The scans are highly accurate and take a short amount of time to complete. Web Filtering: SafeBytes checks the links present on a web page for possible threats and alerts you whether the website is safe to explore or not, through its unique safety rating system. Light-weight: SafeBytes gives total protection from online threats at a fraction of the CPU load because of its enhanced detection engine and algorithms. 24/7 Assistance: You may get high levels of support round the clock if you’re using their paid software. All in all, SafeBytes Anti-Malware is a solid program as it has lots of features and can identify and remove any potential threats. You now may understand that this particular software does more than just scan and delete threats on your computer. So if you’re trying to find a comprehensive antivirus program that’s still simple enough to use, SafeBytes Anti-Malware is just what you need!

Technical Details and Manual Removal (Advanced Users)

If you want to perform the removal of Fooriza manually rather than employing an automated software tool, you may follow these steps: Go to the Windows Control Panel, click the “Add or Remove Programs” and there, choose the offending program to remove. In case of suspicious versions of browser plug-ins, you can easily remove them through your web browser’s extension manager. It is also advised to factory reset your browser to its default condition to fix corrupt settings. Finally, examine your hard disk for all of the following and clean your computer registry manually to remove leftover application entries following uninstalls. Please note that only experienced computer users should try to manually edit the system files mainly because deleting any single vital registry entry leads to a major problem or even a computer crash. Moreover, some malware keeps replicating which makes it tough to remove. Doing this malware-removal process in Safe Mode is recommended.

So, you have finished with work, game, movie, music, email, or whatever on your PC, you look at the clock, it is late, you decide to go to sleep or outside, you click on the power button and choose shutdown. Now when a PC is shut down you feel good and go with your business but the next time you power it up you get the same error like the computer never really shut down in the first place. You wonder why and reboot it, just in case and all of the sudden error is gone.

If something similar has happened to you or you had the feeling that after shutting down your computer has not really felt like shutting it down, do not seek professional help, everything is OK with you because when you click on shut down, your computer does not really shut down!

Truth is that Microsoft has changed how to shut down works and how rebooting works in Windows with an update but has not publicly said anything about it so some users may experience this feeling of not shutdown phenomenon and might even think there is something wrong with their PC.

Why this change?

A few years ago shutdown button and option in Windows were really shutting down OS, but things changed when Microsoft wanted to increase boot-up speed. Now when that decision was made shutdown option was changed. So, what was changed? Well in order to increase Windows booting time, the shutdown will now turn off power to PC components and it will look like everything is indeed shutdown but the Windows kernel will actually be saved to a hard drive with all settings and just awaken once the PC is turned back ON. This will result in all errors and other stuff being just still present same as they were once the system was instructed to be turned off.

Rebooting your PC will now clear kernel and file from the hard drive and you will get a clean system startup without any issues tied with the kernel itself.

Workaround

Now that we know why and what change has been made to Windows logical question is can we shut down our PC at all properly? Luckily for us, the answer is yes and we will not need any external application to do it, we can still do it inside Windows itself and it is quite quick and easy.

Bringing back the old shutdown

In order to bring the old shutdown functionality of your PC please follow the instructions but be aware that by doing this your PC will boot a little bit slower since it will have to load the kernel from scratch each time computer is turned ON.

First thing is to go to settings and go to System

Then once you are inside the system, navigate to the power and sleep and click on it to select it. Once you have it selected to all the way to the right and click on additional power settings.

When you click on advanced power settings you should be led to the control panel's power options. Inside this panel click on top left link where it says Choose what the power button does.

Inside options, you will need to untick the box next to Turn on fast startup (recommended), this option has been ticked ON by the Windows update and probably without notifying you. Option means exactly what was described, it will save kernel state on the hard drive for faster boot time but sadly it can cause some issues since it will never be reloaded from 0.

If you are unable to uncheck the box click on the text beside the shield icon that says: Change settings that are currently unavailable (you will have to be logged in as administrator).

Conclusion

Altho turning off fast startup and shutting down the PC completely will for sure extend your bootup time I still believe that it is the right choice since sometimes a lot of clutter and bad things accumulate over time inside the OS and can cause a vast variety of problems in a long run. So stay safe and shut down that PC as it used to be in the past.

If you’ve tried resetting your Windows 10 computer using the Reset This PC option in order to restore your computer’s factory settings and the process suddenly fails for some reason and you got an error message instead stating, “There was a problem resetting your PC, No changes were made on your Windows 10 computer”, then this post might help you resolve the problem. Carefully follow each one of the options given below to resolve the “There was a problem resetting your PC error on Windows 10.

Option 1 – Try renaming the System and Software hive

• If you’re still able to boot to the desktop of your Windows 10 PC, open an elevated Command Prompt from the WinX menu.
• Now use the CD command and change the directory to Windows\System32\config folder. Simply type in the following command and hit Enter:

cd %windir%system32config

• After that, you have to rename the System and Software registry hives to “System.001” and “Software.001”, respectively. To do that, just type each one of the following commands and hit Enter after you type each of them.
  • ren system system.001
  • ren software software.001

On the other hand, if your Windows 10 PC isn’t able to boot to the desktop, you can just access Command Prompt from the Advanced Startup options or you can also boot into Sage Mode and open Command Prompt from there and then run the given commands above. Note: If you only want to use the Refresh your PC option, you must only rename System hive and not Software hive. On the other hand, if the Software hive is really corrupted, you might not be able to use the Refresh your PC option in such a case. Thus, you really need to rename the Software hive as well. Once you’ve renamed the Software hive, you won’t be able to use the Refresh your PC option but only the Reset your PC option.

• Type “exit” to close the Command Prompt and then restart your PC and try resetting your PC again.

Option 2 – Try to disable and re-enable the Windows Recovery Environment

If the first option didn’t help, you can try disabling the Windows Recovery Environment and then enable it back again. To configure a Windows Recovery Environment or Windows RE boot image and recovery options, you have to use the REAgentC.exe tool.

• Tap the Win + S key and type “REAgentC.exe” to open the REAgentC.exe tool.
• After that, type the following command and hit Enter to disable the Windows RE:

reagentc /disable

• After disabling the Windows RE, you need to enable it back by typing the following command:

reagentc /enable

Option 3 – Try to boot the USB recovery drive

If the two previous options failed, you need to try another workaround which is to boot to the USB recovery drive > Troubleshoot > Recover from a drive. From there, follow the on-screen instructions and you should be good to go.

California's Department of Fair Employment & Housing has widened its anti-discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard and claims the publisher has been shredding vital documents relevant to the ongoing investigation. A recent report from Kotaku described the department as offering poorly paid, highly insecure positions, with a culture of hostility towards LGBTQ+ testers. The DFEH's rewording of "employees" to "workers" now hopes to take these contractors' experiences into account. "As a contract employee, I feel there's a lot of pressure to excel, impress, and move through the ranks as fast as you can before your contract ends and you're forced to go 3 months without income or find another job," Axios reports one worker saying. "I take pride in what I do, but it feels like it's never enough." Activision's contentious hiring of union-busting third-party law firm WilmerHale "directly interferes" with its own investigation, it says. By going to WilmerHale, Activision appears to be claiming that all work related to the investigation is privileged and can't be shared with DFEH. The suit also claims that Activision HR shredded documents related to "investigations and complaints", against its legal obligation to retain them during the investigation. The relevant parts of the updated lawsuit were shared by Axios reporters Stephen Totilo and Megan Farokhmanesh, the former also noting that the DFEH "fixed their misspelling of Bill Cosby's name". "DFEH is also informed and aware that documents and records have not been maintained as required by law or by the DFEH's Document Retention Notice," the complaint reads, "including but not limited to documents related to investigations and complaints were shredded by human resource personnel and emails are deleted thirty days after an employees separation."

Speculation and answer from Activision Blizzard

Blizzard employee Jessica Gonzalez suspects that the costs of fines associated with destroying these documents may have been an easier blow for Blizzard to take than any penalties drawn from their existence in helping the lawsuit go through. In an email to Kotaku, Activision denied the shredding allegations and issued a statement outlining steps it had taken to improve company culture—including the ousting of high-level executives like Blizzard president J. Allen Brack. The full statement reads: "Throughout our engagement with the DFEH, we have complied with every proper request in support of its review even as we had been implementing reforms to ensure our workplaces are welcoming and safe for every employee. Those changes continue today, and include:

•     Several high-level personnel changes
•     Revamped hiring and recruiting practices requiring diverse interview panels
•     Greater transparency on pay equity
•     Expanded and improved training and investigative capabilities for human resource and compliance staff
•     Created investigation teams outside of business units to support greater independence
•     Restructured divisions to support greater accountability
•     Enhanced review processes to include evaluation of managers by employees
•     Clear boundaries on workplace behavior with a zero-tolerance approach to harassment and other actions that diminish or marginalize.

"We strive to be a company that recognizes and celebrates the diverse talents and perspectives that lead to the creation of great, globally appealing entertainment. We have provided the DFEH with clear evidence that we do not have gender pay or promotion disparities. Our senior leadership is increasingly diverse, with a growing number of women in key leadership roles across the company. "We share DFEH’s goal of a safe, inclusive workplace that rewards employees equitably and is committed to setting an example that others can follow."

California and RIOT

Beyond Activision Blizzard, California's DFEH has also probed into League of Legends creator Riot Games, accusing the studio of dragging its heels over sexual harassment allegations dating back to 2019. Riot denied the allegations, telling us that it "will never retaliate against anyone for talking to any government agency".

Like in Windows 10, Windows 11 will also support God mode to be enabled and used. For those readers that do know what God mode is, let me explain it in simple terms. God mode is the icon on the desktop that once clicked will open and let you adjust every option in the control panel and some hidden features for Windows inside one application. There are a lot of advantages to having this one-click fast access to features, especially if you are a power user. Luckily creating such an awesome icon and enabling God mode is very easy to accomplish, all you have to do is:

1. Create a new folder where you want to have the God mode icon
2. Rename folder exactly: {ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
3. Enjoy God mode

As you can see creating and accessing all settings at your fingertips is much easier than most people think. Enjoy your ultimate access to Windows 11 features and if you wish you can drag and drop sections from it into the desktop or anywhere for easy access to that specific topic.

Recently, several users reported an issue on their Windows 10 computers where the taskbar is not visible when they tried to connect to a computer via Remote Desktop Protocol or RDP. The Remote Desktop Connection feature uses the RDP which allows users to access a computer remotely. This is actually different from the taskbar being hidden automatically until the pointer hovers on it since, in this scenario, the taskbar is completely not accessible which makes using the remote computer entirely difficult, if not impossible. There are several suggestions you can check out to resolve this problem, you can try to restart the process of Windows Explorer via Task Manager or you could clear the cache for multiple processes. You could also try to reinstall the Shell Experience components or show the local taskbar in the Remote desktop. Moreover, you could also try to update, uninstall or roll back the display driver/graphics card driver. For more details, refer to each one of the options given below.

Option 1 – Try to restart the Windows Explorer process

The first option you have to try to fix the problem with the taskbar is to simply restart the Windows Explorer process in the Task Manager.

• Tap the Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys to open the Task Manager.
• Next, go to the Processes tab and find the process of Windows Explorer.
• Once you find it, right-click on it and select Restart to restart its process.
• After that, restart your computer and see if you can now see the Taskbar.

Option 2 – Try clearing the cache of multiple processes

The next thing you can do to resolve the problem is to clear the cache of many processes in your computer. To do so, follow these steps:

• Open the Notepad app and paste the following content in the text area:

@echo off taskkill /f /im explorer.exe taskkill /f /im shellexperiencehost.exe timeout /t 3 /NOBREAK > nul del %localappdata%PackagesMicrosoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewyTempState* /q timeout /t 2 /NOBREAK > nul start explorer @echo on

• After that, tap the Ctrl + S keys to save the changes you’ve made in Notepad and select the “All files” as its file type, and then name it “CacheClearTWC.bat”.
• Next, go to the location where you saved the file using File Explorer and then run it. This will run a couple of batch scripts which will clear the cache of multiple processes in the system.
• Tap the Win + X keys and select the “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” option to open PowerShell as admin.
• Next, execute this command in the command line: Get-appxpackage -all *shellexperience* -packagetype bundle |% {add-appxpackage -register -disabledevelopmentmode ($_.installlocation + “appxmetadataappxbundlemanifest.xml”)}
• After the command has been executed, this will reinstall the Shell Experience components and should fix the problem with the taskbar.

Option 4 – Update, uninstall or rollback the Graphics card drivers

• First, boot your computer into Safe Mode.
• After that, tap the Win + R keys to launch Run.
• Type in MSC into the box and tap Enter or click OK to open the Device Manager.
• After that, a list of device drivers will be displayed. From there, look for the Display Adapters and click on them.
• After that, right-click on each entry under the Display Adapters and select the “Uninstall Device” option from the menu.
• Now restart your computer.
• After restarting your computer, go to the Settings app and Check for Updates in the Windows Update section.

Note: You also have the option to go directly to the website of your graphics card manufacturers like NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD and go to the section called Drivers then check if there’s a new available update – if there is, download and install it.

BigTech platforms Google and Facebook were hit with a series of antitrust lawsuits by the US federal government and states on charges they are operating monopolies and abusing their power. Below is the status of the cases, as well as government probes of Apple and Amazon in their current states

Two lawsuits against Facebook

In a defeat, Judge James Boasberg said the Federal Trade Commission, which had sued Facebook in December asking that Facebook be forced to sell WhatsApp and Instagram, failed to show that Facebook had monopoly power in the social-networking market, among other problems. However, the FTC could file a new complaint by July 29. He threw out a related state lawsuit entirely, saying that the attorney's general had waited too long. They are looking at their options.

Four lawsuits against Google

The US Justice Department sued Google in October, accusing the $1 trillion company of illegally using its market muscle to hobble rivals. A trial date was set for September 12, 2023. A lawsuit by 38 US states and territories accuses Google of abusing its market power to try to make its search engine as dominant inside cars, TVs, and speakers as it is in phones. This was consolidated with the federal lawsuit for purposes of discovery. Texas, backed by other states, filed a separate lawsuit against Google, accusing it of breaking antitrust law in how it runs its online advertising business. Dozens of state attorneys general sued Google on July 7, alleging that it bought off competitors and used restrictive contracts to unlawfully maintain a monopoly for its app store on Android phones.

Justice Department investigates Apple

This probe, revealed in June 2019, appears to focus on Apple's app store. Some app developers have accused Apple of introducing new products very similar to existing apps created by other developers and sold in the Apple Store, and then trying to banish the older apps from the store because they compete with Apple's new product. Apple says it seeks to have only the highest-quality apps in the app store.

Justice Department probing Facebook and Amazon

In July 2019, the Justice Department said it was expanding its Big Tech probes to include "search, social media, and some retail services online", an apparent reference to Facebook and Amazon.

Federal Trade Commission on Amazon

In its investigation of Amazon, the FTC is likely looking at the inherent conflict of interest of Amazon competing with small sellers on its marketplace platform, including allegations that it used information from sellers on its platform to decide what products it would introduce.

Virtual Reality or VR for short has come a long way from its infant stage and as 2022 is in half period we are looking at the VR market and reflecting on what has changed in one year. For starters, games have increased in quality and quantity while the hardware price has decreased making the whole VR experience a little closer to a wider audience.

Many companies have tried to get on the VR bandwagon but also many have failed. What remained are staples in VR hardware from large companies that have started with VR early and kept improving their headsets.

So with great pleasure, we are presenting the remaining best 3 virtual headsets so far of 2022 brought to you from Sony, Valve, and Meta.

SONY PLAYSTATION VR

If you want VR on consoles then there is really one option, and that is SONY VR. Premium Virtual Reality solution from SONY, sadly you can do this only on Playstation 4 and Playstation 5. Sony managed to pull off great quality hardware and packed with its exclusives on playstore at a very affordable price that is still cheaper than other products.

While waiting for the Sony PlayStation VR2 headset this one is still a great option and quality is still among the top of the game. From the time of its release until today, many AAA titles have been released for it as exclusives that you can not play any other way and some of them are really worth it.

VALVE Index

Altho there are headsets like HTC Vive Cosmos Elite that have some features that place it as a better solution than Valve Index, Index is still an overall better VR headset as a whole product but its price is something that is keeping it still way out of reach of your standard user. The price, however, is really an illusion since it applies only when buying the system first time, you see Valve has created this headset as a modular design system making it upgradable meaning that you can, for example, buy newer controllers only and they will work perfectly with rest of hardware.

The modular design will save you money when you want to upgrade your VR system but as said entry price is steep. Besides its somewhat higher price than competitors, it is also notable that Index is a positional tracking VR set which means that it relies on a base station in order to locate the user. This means that once set, it is not so easy to change its location of use.

However, its quality and steam use are unmatched, high-quality games and compatibility that no other headset with steam will even pull off probably make Index one of the 3 best headsets out there. Half-life Alyx, arguably and currently one of the best VR games ever made so far was specifically designed for Valve Index and other games are behaving also incredibly nice with this headset, so if you want a great powerhouse for PC VR gaming, you will no go wrong in purchasing Valve Index.

META QUEST 2

Cheapest of the three and coming in various iterations, Meta has established itself from the beginning as a leading player in VR technology with its oculus line of products. Quest 2 is the next product in their line and it comes with 128GB and 256GB versions.

Meta has removed the need for the Facebook account for its VR systems and now you can use them without the need to send any kind of data to meta. Priced fairly for its entry 128 models this standalone VR set improves in any way possible from its previous iteration and sets the bar for what will come in VR's future.

Offering both wired and wi-fi connection with its standalone battery Quest 2 also is packed with a large library of games and it is user friendly as your typical game console but still allows some under-the-hood tinkering if you wish so.

Also, Meta's Vr solution since it uses inside-out tracking makes it incredibly easy to just pick it up and carry it with you wherever you go.