Any computer wizz's here?

[Jerry_Atrick]

Sorry - meant to respond earlier.. Yep.. about the only way to do it.. And run an anti-virus.. Surprised Defender didn't pick it up

[spacesailor]

I had / have ( we will see ) a problem with my Aldi phone subscription being used to fast.

It is / was the " mobile data " being charged to just be available  , not just using .

spaceszilor

[red750]

Thanks for the tip Marty. I won't be back at the Shed till Thursday to check it out.

[red750]

Well, I'm at the Shed. Tried Ctrl, Alt, Del. It said "No Apps Running". All I had was a red rectangle in the middle of the screen, taking up about 3/4 of it, warning about emerging threats that will pinch your passwords etc. Anything I tried to open was behind the red rectangle with a white border about 3mm thick around the edge. By dragging the corner of the white border, I was able to enlarge it sufficiently to access some info, identify it was something from the PC App Store flogging the McAfee antivirus.

 

By going through File Manager I located it in the Programs folder with an Uninstall program which I ran, then deleted it all together. Back running as normal.

[Marty_d]

Had a good laugh at this. Could be apocryphal but funny anyway.

https://www.jitbit.com/alexblog/249-now-thats-what-i-call-a-hacker/

[red750]

A couple of codes I find helpful.

 

If you want to type degrees, as in 0°C, type the 0, hold down the Alt key, and type 0176 . then the C.

 

To type the degree symbol on a Mac, press Option + Shift + 8

 

When typing an area, as in 25sq m., type the number and the scale (m, ft, km, etc) then hold down the Alt key and type 0178. The result is 25m². (If you copy a text with the superscript 2 in it and paste to these forums, you will get number, m2. I encounter that when creating aircraft profiles.)  

 

To type the squared symbol (²) on a Mac, you can open the Character Viewer by pressing Control + Command + Space, then search for "superscript" and double-click on the number 2. Alternatively, you can go to the Edit menu, select "Emoji & Symbols," and find the superscript 2 there.
 

For a cubed number, use Alt and 0179.  3 m³.

 

To type the cubed symbol (³) on a Mac, use the keyboard shortcut "Option + Shift + 3." This will directly insert the cubed exponent into your text.

[onetrack]

If I want the degree sign, I hold down ALT and type 248.

If I want the English pounds sign (as in money), I hold down ALT and type 0163.

[red750]

This little trick only works in Excel. If you want to enter the current date into a spreadsheet, press Ctrl + semicolon. To enter the current time, Press Ctrl + Shift + ;

[willedoo]

On 09/03/2025 at 6:17 PM, Jerry_Atrick said:

I wil be trying the floorp.

Jerry I was just wondering if you got around to using Floorp browser. I've been using it since you made the suggestion and am fairly happy with it. While Floorp is around, I'll certainly never go back to Firefox. The only issue I have with Floorp seems to be since they had a major upgrade last year. It's no big deal, just a bit frustrating. When I right click to bring up the right click menu, I'm most often going for the 'open link in new tab' option which is at the top of the menu. When I'm just about to click that option, the menu jumps up one notch so I end up clicking the next one down 'open link in new private window', so I end up with multiple windows. I don't know if other Floorp users have the same problem. There's a Floorp group on Reddit, maybe I should ask there.

[nomadpete]

Ever wanted to prefilter your google answers?

 

Here are some handy filters :

 

https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has-a-secret-reference-desk

[Jerry_Atrick]

On 04/03/2026 at 12:50 PM, willedoo said:

Jerry I was just wondering if you got around to using Floorp browser. I've been using it since you made the suggestion and am fairly happy with it. While Floorp is around, I'll certainly never go back to Firefox. The only issue I have with Floorp seems to be since they had a major upgrade last year. It's no big deal, just a bit frustrating. When I right click to bring up the right click menu, I'm most often going for the 'open link in new tab' option which is at the top of the menu. When I'm just about to click that option, the menu jumps up one notch so I end up clicking the next one down 'open link in new private window', so I end up with multiple windows. I don't know if other Floorp users have the same problem. There's a Floorp group on Reddit, maybe I should ask there.

Hi @willedoo - Sorry - missed this post as well.. 

 

I still use floorp, but there are some sites it doesn't work great with, so I revert to firefox for those. Floorp had its fair share of niggles but the last release seemed to fix most. I haven't had that on mine that I can think of, anyway. 

 

You may also want to look here: https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp/discussions

 

 

[willedoo]

Thanks Jerry. It's not a serious glitch, just a bit of a niggle for someone like me who uses multiple tabs most of the time.

[red750]

At the Men's Shed we have two old desktop PC's which were repllaced from the organisation that runs the shed, similar to the photo below, for use by members. I spend a few hours per week using one of them.

 

The problem is so many websites now require security id by way of fingerprint or facial photograh. These machines do not have webcams or touchpads. The alternative is multi level confirmation with  security codes sent to your phone or an email inbox, which probably requires a similar level of ID. Many require you to use their AP, but apps flatten your phone battery and cost money, chewing up your data costs.

 

Surely, if you have a secure password that should be sufficient. Such passwords could be your mother's maiden name and birthday (year not necessary), a symbol, and to differentiate on different sites, a site abbreviation. As an example, for this site you could have,say, Murphy2306#SA. You are not likely to forget your mother's maiden name or birthday. This meets the requirement of 8 characters, upper and lower case, numerals and a special character. For another site such as mygov, you would use the same password up to the symbol and append MG. :- Murphy2306#MG.

 

Another alternative is the model of your car, the rego, special character and site ID :- Commodore1JV6DZ%AP (for Aircraft Pilots).

 

[onetrack]

You can easily purchase plug-in webcams for older computers, which would give the ability to take facial photographs.

[octave]

1 hour ago, red750 said:

Surely, if you have a secure password that should be sufficient. Such passwords could be your mother's maiden name and birthday (year not necessary),

The problem is that this is just not very secure.   Although I don't go by my actual name on this forum, I have in the past posted links to my YouTube channel, which does have my real name. From that, I could be found on Facebook. From there, you could find my wife's name. Then you just find my wife's mother in her friend list, and there you have it.  For logging into any site that needs to be secure, multi-factor verification is essential.   To log in to my bank, where I keep my life savings, you need my username and password.  This could be found in my saved logins on my PC. I imagine this could be hacked.    But I would be saved by the fact that I must also put input a one-off code sent to my phone.  A hacker would also need access to my phone.  It is not too onerous, in my opinion, to use multi-factor verification.  When banking on my phone whilst away from home, my fingerprint is required.