Windows 10 was released long ago in internet time, but I get asked questions about it randomly by various users, friends and clients. One of the most asked ones is about "spying" that windows 10 may be doing on the user. Initially a server called DiagTrack was present in windows that provided these "spying capabilities". Since end of 2015 they have renamed the service to "Connect User Experience and Telemetry service". I am not sure why they changed the name, maybe the word tracking was bothering some people and MS made it... "different". Connect User Experience and Telemetry service Microsoft says Telemetry is system data that is uploaded by the Connected User Experience and Telemetry component. The telemetry data is used to keep Windows devices secure, and to help Microsoft improve the quality of Windows and Microsoft services. It is used to provide a service to the user as part of Windows. Whats that mean? Only MS really knows what it means truly and if you care you should ask someone from MS for a real answer. I am simply here to tell you how to disable this IF you want to do so. Hold down the Windows key and tap the R key In the box that opens type services.msc and press the Enter key or click the OK button In the ‘Services (Local)’ section find the line with the name ‘Connected User Experiences and Telemetry’ and double-click it In the ‘Service status’ section click ‘Stop’ (highlighted blue in the screenshot below) Under the ‘Startup type’ drop [...]
Enable WebGL on Chrome or Firefox
WebGL on Chrome Enable hardware acceleration : browse to chrome://settings/advanced scroll to the bottom and look for Use hardware acceleration when available make sure Use hardware acceleration when available is checked ✓ if it tells you to then click the relaunch button Check if webGL is enabled in Chrome Copy paste the following in your browser's address bar chrome://gpu Look for the WebGL item in the Graphics Feature Status list The status will be one of the following: Hardware accelerated — WebGL is enabled and hardware-accelerated (running on the graphics card). Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable — WebGL is enabled, but running in software. Unavailable — WebGL is not available in hardware or software. You are looking for the status to be #1 from the above list i.e. Hardware accelerated WebGL on FireFox Enable WebGL Copy paste the following in your browser's address bar about:config you will be asked to accept a scary warning, I am positive this will be ok unless you start going godzilla or the hulk on unrelated settings 🙂 so.. dont do that. Search for webgl.disabled make sure that its value is set to false Check WebGL status on FireFox browser Copy paste the following in your browser's address bar about:support Inspect the WebGL Renderer row in the Graphics table The status can be either of two things the name of a graphics card manufacturer, model and driver i.e. Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0) Something along the lines of BLocked due to version or Blocked due to unresolved issues. Obviously you want #1 [...]
SwiftKey sharing users data with strangers
Swiftkey was an amazing keyboard that usurped swype as my default keyboard, I loved its predictions, its swiping to type tech and its overall layout and features. For a long time it worked great, then I grew enamored with other keyboards and moved on. Recently Microsoft bought the app for a cool $250 million. Awesome right? well it seems that SwiftKey sharing users data with strangers and just about anyone that asked... or didnt ask. Multiple swiftkey users found other people phone numbers and emails or text predictions in languages not used or installed by the user. Swiftkey has announced that this is due to a synchronization "feature". they have now disabled this bug feature and are working on fixing it. This week, a few of our customers noticed unexpected predictions where unfamiliar terms, and in some rare cases emails, appeared when using their mobile phone. We are working quickly to resolve this inconvenience. While this did not pose a security issue for our customers, we have turned off the cloud sync service and have updated our applications to remove email address predictions. During this time, it will not be possible to back up your SwiftKey language model. The vast majority of SwiftKey users are not affected by this issue. If you have any reason to believe you are seeing unfamiliar predictions, please contact [email protected] We take users’ privacy and security very seriously and are committed to maintaining world-class standards for our community. We will continue to post further updates on our blog. The SwiftKey Team users everywhere [...]
Ubuntu & Bash tutorial & basic utilities
An introduction to the CLI (Command Line Interface) and Bash on Ubuntu Linux aka a bash tutorial The default shell that is installed on Ubuntu Linux is bash. Alternatives exist, but they’re beyond the scope of this tutorial (check our post here for more info on how to isntall a better alternative to bash called Zshell or zsh). Bash is available on almost all Linux distributions, so this tutorial will work on most Linux distributions as well. What is a shell? Simply put, the shell is a program that takes your commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. In the old days, it was the only user interface available on a Unix computer. Nowadays, we have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in addition to command line interfaces (CLIs) such as the shell. Bash is the most popular shell application for Linux, and is the default on Ubuntu and hundreds of other Linux distributions, Mac OS X, and soon Windows 10. The basics are: You type one or more command(s), hit enter, and it runs the command(s). Use the up/down arrows to go through your bash history. Ctrl+P also works Use Ctrl+R to search the history of commands used previously. Hitting tab will autocomplete commands. Instead of typing cd ~/myfolder1/ you can just type cd ~/my<tab> and it'll either autocomplete fully or if there are still more folders (like my234 and myfolder1), it'll show you your options. You can enter multiple commands by separating them with “;” or “&&”. ; allows commands [...]
Why you should switch to ZShell ( zsh )
Why use ZShell It has some amazing features, but right out of the gate in no particular order: Context based tab completion that puts most others out there to shame. Shared history among tabs. Dynamic Load modules Spelling correction that out performs most others out there. Globbing that works on magic. I am positive of this. Themes that work wonders, there are tons of them out there and they fit everyone's needs or just write your own! Global aliases I'm going to be an elitist and say bash is for the cavemen 😐 any machine you have a personal user account on: install zsh. life just became pretty... and pretty awesome. why zsh? well its powerful and configurable.... its awesome! and you can change a LOT about it and extend it via plugins. sudo apt-get install zsh curl git-core ruby wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/raw/master/tools/install.sh -O - | sh this should switch you to zsh and install an awesome script for zsh. if not then do the next two steps. They can be repeated at will. Note where your zsh is, most likely /bin/zsh. which zsh chsh After that comes customization time! yay... etc. (pick a theme, I prefer dallas so) edit ~/.zshrc ZSH_THEME="dallas" Heres my plugins, you can remove the ones you dont need plugins=(git ant cpanm debian github mercurial node npm svn) Install rvm : user$ bash -s stable < <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer ) add the following to your ~/.zshrc [[ -s $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm ]] && source $HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm more to come later.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]
Creative Lawsuit against LG HTC Samsung Sony ZTE Lenovo Motorola Blackberry
[et_pb_section admin_label="Section" fullwidth="on" specialty="off"][et_pb_fullwidth_post_title admin_label="Fullwidth Post Title" title="on" meta="on" author="on" date="on" categories="on" comments="off" featured_image="on" featured_placement="background" parallax_effect="off" parallax_method="on" text_orientation="center" text_color="dark" text_background="on" text_bg_color="rgba(255,255,255,0.9)" module_bg_color="rgba(255,255,255,0)" title_all_caps="off" use_border_color="off" border_color="#ffffff" border_style="solid"] [/et_pb_fullwidth_post_title][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section admin_label="section"][et_pb_row admin_label="row"][et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text admin_label="Text" background_layout="light" text_orientation="left" use_border_color="off" border_color="#ffffff" border_style="solid"] Creative is suing LG HTC Samsung Sony ZTE Lenovo Motorola and Blackberry. Why SumGuy and what is this Creative lawsuit about? I will circle back to that in just a bit, first and foremost lets respond to the unasked question majority of you are asking; Who the hell is creative? well little Timmy, the ill-fitting name belongs to a Singapore based outfit that designs and makes computer peripherals mostly in the audio realm e.g. headphones, microphones, audio players etc. Ring any bells? no? didn't think so. They were popular back in the wild days of late 90s and have been stuck in their little bubble for a long time now. Now back to the question of why the lawsuit, and why against such a massive list of the who's who of Android OEMs. Most likely because their coffers are beginning to run a little low for their tastes thanks to being utterly mediocre. Creative has filed the lawsuit with the ITC ( US International Trade Commission ), claiming that all the OEMs are stealing their basic design and infringing on their patent that allows a mechanism to show hierarchical categories and songs. Yes. Creative is saying they invented displaying things in a hierarchy based menu. Creative is asking ITC to ban all infringing devices in the US. That's a LOT [...]