12 March 2019 | Computers |
Recently, Mozilla introduced a fabulous new feature to Firefox: Content Blocking!
The idea is that Firefox will automagically block the tracking processes of web sites to increase your privacy.
By default, this tracking should only be enabled in Private Browsing Mode, which makes sense. You don’t want everyone’s web site experiences to be suddenly broken.
One minor detail: It appears that for many people, “broken” is exactly what Content Blocking is…
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5 March 2019 | Computers, How Does it Work?, Networking, Video |
We hear a lot of about “THEY”. Big data violates our privacy, new potentially dangerous tech like 5G is pushed by “them”, and so on.
But just who is this “they“, anyway?
It turns out, the answer is: It’s complicated!
The best place to look is the big data/spying nonsense. The real history of the internet gives a pretty good idea of just how it all works.
When you lump greedy CEOs together with power-hungry (and often paranoid) politicians, and then toss in some Tech Evangelists for good measure, you get exactly what we have today…
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12 February 2019 | Computers, How Does it Work? |
When the time comes to upgrade your puter, you may end up with a leftover hard drive or SSD.
Obviously, you’re going to need to recycle the drive…
But what about the data on it?
There are a million ways out there to erase a drive before sending it to the great bit bucket in the sky…
But which one is best?
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15 January 2019 | Computers |
Regular readers are aware that I have been doing battle with re-activating Windows 10 after performing numerous major upgrades on various puters.
I had another opportunity recently to upgrade yet another machine… This time, the entire computer was replaced – except the graphics card and power supply.
Once again, I was confronted with an activation error after the upgrade.
Out of desperation, I tried something crazy… and it WORKED!
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1 January 2019 | Computers |
It’s that time again!
A new update to Windows 10 was re-released a few weeks back, and it appears that it’s FINALLY rolling out to end users.
You may have heard that this update was the October 2018 update. It was, but then there were “a few problems” like people’s files disappearing.
I finally got the update on my desktop and lappy, and I’m happy to report zero problems.
It seems this bad boy is finally ready for prime time. So, what’s new in the features and privacy departments??
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11 December 2018 | Computers, Do-It-Yourself, SuperSaver, Video |
Has your laptop ever started to sound like a vacuum cleaner?
Cooling fans start spinning like crazy. If things get bad enough, your CPU can even overheat, halting the laptop and giving you a scary-looking error message.
To avoid such mayhem, you should dust inside your laptop twice a year.
It’s pretty easy. Should your laptop be REALLY clogged up inside, you may need to get a little crazy and start opening things up.
But don’t panic! YouTube will save you…
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4 December 2018 | Computers, Do-It-Yourself, SuperSaver, Video |
We all know what happens when your puter gets all dusty inside: it gets noisy!
Cooling fans start spinning like crazy. If things get bad enough, your CPU can even overheat, halting the system.
To avoid this mayhem, you should dust inside your computer twice a year.
But what to use? Dishwasher? Washing machine? Garden hose? Hydrochloric acid?
Just kidding!
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20 November 2018 | Computers, Gizmos, Networking, Video |
You know the drill: you try to tell someone about some study showing the health effects of WiFi, 5G, or whatever, and then it hits…
Maybe they come back with one of several standard cop-outs, maybe you’re called crazy, maybe they ask what happened to your tinfoil hat, or maybe they even get angry and abusive!
So, what to do?
In this video, I give some tips and tricks and information that hopefully you will find useful in spreading the word.
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13 November 2018 | Computers |
Oh for the love of Pete…
Yes, I ran into even more Windows 10 activation issues recently.
I didn’t even do anything wrong.
This time, it was a spontaneous message that my Win 10 Pro on my main desktop puter was not activated – just, well, because…
It turns out this was a known bug that MS has supposedly fixed.
Yes, I’m afraid I’ve had it…
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30 October 2018 | Computers |
With Chrome version 69, Google was very naughty.
It was quite easy to miss this little tidbit, but it seems Google decided to make Chrome automatically log you in to Chrome itself if you used the browser to log in to any Google web service.
Before, you didn’t have to log in to Chrome itself in order to log in to Google services. With Chrome 69, that changed.
Fortunately, Google introduced the ability to turn off this annoying feature in Chrome 70.
While you’re at at, there are a few other browser “features” you may want to turn off…
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