Web/Tech

It wasn't that long ago when "Googling" became synonymous with searching for something on the internet. Sure, there were other search engines, but Google was so dominant, few people used them. These days a search engine is coming to sound archaic, like a VHS recorder or a floppy disk. There are a couple of reasons for this, both of which should worry Google, especially the second one. First, I rarely look at the usual search results after I type in something in the Google search bar. The AI Overview that typically pops up at the top of the search results…

Recently the 1Password extension for Safari disappeared on my MacBook Pro. The extension wasn't showing in Safari settings, so most of the tips for getting it back that I found via some Googling didn't apply. Nothing else worked either. I was down to the tip of uninstalling 1Password on my computer, then installing it again. I was reluctant to do that, because I didn't want to risk screwing up my much-beloved 1Password, which I use a lot and had been workin fine until the extension disappeared. So I asked 1Password support for help. Soon I got an email from a…

I don't post a lot on Twitter, just links to my blog posts, basically, but I follow many people on Twitter and have liked it as a great way to stay informed about subjects I'm interested in: politics, Ukraine war, Oregon news, local weather, and such. However, after Elon Musk bought Twitter it's become annoying. Musk keeps making arbitrary changes to what once was a successful product. So along with a great many other Twitter users, I've been hoping that a viable alternative to Twitter would come along. In short, a Twitter killer. Now it has: Threads.  Instagram’s much-hyped new…

This tale of my three phone calls to Apple Support a few days ago has a happy ending. My wife and I are enjoying the iPhone 14 Pro Max devices that we decided to get after using iPhone 8's since 2017. So we were six freaking iPhone generations old, something that hasn't come close to happening since we joined the iPhone cult way back when. (Too long ago for me to remember.) When the new phones arrived in the mail after ordering them from Verizon, our cellular carrier, I waited a day before taking the plunge into setting them up.…

It wasn't so long ago that I looked upon Elon Musk with admiration. Maybe even with a bit of adoration. After all, his Space X Starlink satellite internet system had rescued me and my wife from the hell of 7Mbps CenturyLink DSL, bringing our rural south Salem home into broadband heaven.  And I visualized owning one of his Tesla cars someday. Though they have their downsides (don't like relying so much on a touchscreen rather than normal controls), Tesla jumpstarted the electric car revolution that's bringing the internal combustion engine closer to a well-deserved global goodbye. When he bought Twitter,…

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but for a while today I was taken in by this (now) obvious Facebook scam. My excuse is that I did indeed purchase a Facebook ad/promotion last weekend to support a petition asking the Salem City Council to include in an upcoming $300 million bond measure the Salem Bike Vision proposal for spending $10 million to build a network of protected bike lanes. (Sign the petition! If you're reading this before August 2022.) So my eye was caught by "your ad has been reported," since some commenters on my Facebook post are crazily anti-bicycle, and…

After we got Starlink satellite internet at our home in rural south Salem, Oregon in early 2021, I stopped complaining about CenturyLink after we dumped their crappy 6-7 Mbps DSL "broadband" and started enjoying 50-150 Mbps Starlink download speeds. But today a CenturyLink repair guy came to our house to fix an annoying buzz on our landline, which got me thinking about rural broadband again. (Yeah, we're old-fashioned, since we still have a landline, in part because the Verizon cellular connection on our iPhones is pretty poor, two bars at most, unless we take a hike up our long driveway.)…