Any computer wizz's here?

[Dax]

5 hours ago, willedoo said:

I just read on the news that Google is urging users to delete Chrome browser due to hacking vulnerability.

I'd delete it, like all propriety junk it's full of holes and designed to mine your data, they have to make a profit out of every aspect of their operations, otherwise they wouldn't be making such huge profits.

 

The best approach in my opinion is to use firefox or brave, delete google and all other search engines, except for duck duck go, it's the safest and best search engine around and is very fast.

[willedoo]

Firefox has always been my main browser since Adam was a boy. Chrome is a real dog, but I've used it to stream video which for some reason, Firefox struggles with on my computer. I also use Yandex browser a bit, so will try it with the video and see how it goes. I'll check Brave out as well.

[spacesailor]

Sluggish videos is the reason l dropped Firefox, Chrome seems the best for streaming.

spacesailor

[willedoo]

I was at a mates place yesterday and he was showing me his new flight sim virtual reality goggles. He's got that new Microsoft  flight sim programme with really good graphics. Had a fly around Sydney with the goggles. They take a bit of getting used to and were a little bit jerky as he hadn't had time to set them up right. But they were an amazing effect and the in cockpit sharpness and detail was incredible. They were at the cheaper end, but still a few hundred dollars to buy. You can pour a lot of money into flight simming if you want to.

[Marty_d]

1 hour ago, willedoo said:

You can pour a lot of money into flight simming if you want to.

You can pour even more into the real thing!

[red750]

Here's an interesting simulator story from right here in Oz:

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-23/gold-coast-simulator-inventor/100560112

[Jerry_Atrick]

Well, it looks like QLD is the new innovation hub. Not high tech.. but who would have thought?: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-06/charleville-knitted-knockers-for-breast-cancer-patients/100573836

 

 

[willedoo]

I was reading that since China banned bitcoin mining, a lot of it has moved across the border into Kazakhstan, causing a power shortage. Electricity consumption has increased 6 to 7 percent causing them to import electricity from Russia.

[Marty_d]

14 hours ago, willedoo said:

I was reading that since China banned bitcoin mining, a lot of it has moved across the border into Kazakhstan, causing a power shortage. Electricity consumption has increased 6 to 7 percent causing them to import electricity from Russia.

Now they have 2 industries!

 

"This my sister, she number four prostitute in all of Khazakhstan.  Verrrry nice!"

 

(From Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Khazakhstan, if you don't recognise the quote.)

[willedoo]

1 minute ago, Marty_d said:

Now they have 2 industries!

 

"This my sister, she number four prostitute in all of Khazakhstan.  Verrrry nice!"

 

(From Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Khazakhstan, if you don't recognise the quote.)

I seem to remember reading around that time that the Kazaks liked Borat. He boosted their international tourism industry quite a bit.

[Marty_d]

They certainly didn't like him at first, given how he portrayed their country - but yes when the tourist dollars started rolling in his image improved.

[willedoo]

The capital, Nur-Sultan, formerly Astana is a flash city. I've never been there, but a mate spend a few years there lecturing in robotics and megatronics at the uni and speaks very highly of the place and his time spent there.

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

I have an old HP Pavilion P6 (almost a Leyland, they tell me). It has a quad code I7, 4th Gen, I think - or even third gen.. 6gb of DDR3 memory (2600-ish mhz), so while it  was a rocket in in its day - about 8 or 9 years old now -  the last Win10 update, along with the software and bloatware on it became a little too much. It chugged away like an old steam train going up a slippery mountain track.

 

I decided to put all the data on my NAS drive (I have an 8TB NAS server) and reinstall a totally fresh Win10 to clear out all the crud, including games software my son had installed, which took a lot of resources. I had about 1TB of data to download and it took almost two weeks! That's right - The actual copy was slow - couldn't get the Win10 box to get more than 3mb/s out of a gigabit (1000 mb/s) cable direct to the gigabit port in the hub. So, it took around 5 days to copy - once I was able to get it to reliably copy - which basically meant using FTP rather than a network mount. The networkdisk  mount was flakey and kept cutting out.. it was a real pain..

 

Finally, got the data across and reinstalled Windows 10. It took over 3 hours! And I installed Wordpress, and it ran like a dog out of the box. Stuff it! Time to go back to Linux, after all, Linux is much better written. So I created an Ubuntu desktop USB and... then I found out that HP and Windows must have colluded as getting the box to boot Linux from the USB took a little bit of work. Yes, HP put a few impediments in the way, but with the help of the Internet, it was resolved in about 10 minutes.. Time to install the desktop version of Ubuntu - 15 minutes until I was logging in.. then about another 10 minutes to download the latest versions.

 

Yes, despite what @Daxsaid, additional codecs still had to be downloaded.. Some proprietary ones are available during download, but .MOV and .AVI - nope.. at least not this distro.

 

And, yes, it runs like a dream so far.. Wordpress loads nicely across the local network..

[Jerry_Atrick]

This is an interesting vid that I think many may find interesting

 

 

 

[onetrack]

Right there is a good reason for blocking pop-ups that are on unknown and untrusted sites. The vast majority of viral threats, trojans, etc, come via highly the highly insecure email system.

That's why I use Mailwasher, I can examine every incoming email to see if its genuine or shonky, I can even check the header details to see if the sender address has been forged.

The only time I've had virus problems was way back in the Windows 98 days, when security levels were low and no-one expected viruses or hacks or trojans.

I always use 2 step phone verification for anything involving banking, payment transactions, or credit cards. Credit card fraud is rife, and the CC companies don't care about it too much, because their massive profits cover any CC losses. 

 

https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/card-industry-faces-400b-in-fraud-losses-over-next-decade-nilson-says/611521/

[willedoo]

I've got Windows 10 and was wondering if anyone uses task view. There's a task view icon in the bottom task bar; clicking on it produces a blank screen with  minimised windows of whatever browser pages and programmes are open. I use Firefox browser and have tabs at the top of the browser to access open browser pages. Also, I access open programmes by clicking on their respective icon in the bottom taskbar.

 

For me, that method is better than using task view. Maybe task view is handy for graphic artists and the like, where they are working on different programmes.

[red750]

I use Win10 and have done for a few years. I use Brave browser, and occasionally Chrome for anything not compatible with Brave. I have four tabs permanently open, and seven task buttons on the task bar at the bottom. If I open another app from the Start menu, its button appears on the task bar till I close it. I have never used the task view icon.

 

Two other points. 

 

I don't particularly like Paint 3D. Much prefer the old MS Paint. Although it does not appear on the Start menu (Windows icon), the app is still on my system. I access it by clicking the Start icon, and typing "P". This gives a list of all apps starting with P. Open Paint, right click on its task bar icon, and select Pin to Task Bar. You can open the app at any time with a single click. If there are any other apps you like which have disappeared with Windows updates, you may be able to do the same.

 

Secondly, when my son opens his system daily to work at home (laptop with two added monitors), he opens about 25 tabs, then has instant access to any information he requires during the day.  

[old man emu]

I don't know what's going on, but my downloads are as slow as a wet weekend. Even logging into my emails is a frustratingly slow activity. I was wondering if I should stay with Chrome, or go to Firefox. 

 

Any advice?

[octave]

As first step I would determine what speed your internet connection is giving you  Telstra Speed Test 

[Marty_d]

Clear your cache too.  Possibly run some cleanup tools if you've got them.

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Run a virus scan, too. You may be suffering a man in the middle attack

[willedoo]

I'm no tech guru, but the first thing I would do is determine if it's only internet related activities that are slow. If offline activity is cracking along at normal pace, then octave's advice is a good place to start. If the connection speed is ok, and offline activity is ok, but browsing is slow, Marty's advice might work. If you're using Windows, it's bloatware and is continually constipating itself with temp files, memory dumps and all sorts of carp. As for cleanup tools, BleachBit seems to cater for most browsers. CCleaner is another widely used one. If using Clean Disc Security, be aware that selecting the option 'clean history records' will delete your bookmarks. To be on the safe side, it's always a good idea to back up browser bookmarks before using any cleaning software for the first time.

 

If everything online and offline is slow. as Jerry said, run a virus scan. Also check that the hard drive is not too full. The swapfile needs it's room to breathe. There's a million and one tweaks to speed up a computer, but if it's just started doing it all of a sudden, there's only a certain amount of things it can be.

 

I recon I got hacked once, or somehow ended up with a nasty trojan. The computer was normal, but I forgot to switch it off when I went to bed. When I woke up, it was virtually unusable. Just to open a folder, you could click on the icon and go away and make a cup of coffee in the time it took to open. For three days I struggled with it, trying everything I could think of. Then all of a sudden it was back to normal. I got an email from my server saying I'd used 75% of my data limit, which had only clocked over for the month the day before it slowed down. In that three days, 17 gigabytes of data had been downloaded on my account. I would have only been the cause of a couple of hundred megabytes out of that lot.

[willedoo]

Every now and then my laptop goes crazy. All sorts of uncommanded actions start happening with windows, files and apps opening and closing, total mayhem really. At times I've rebooted to find the same thing happening. I don't use the touchpad and have a connected mouse which often gets blamed for having a sticky left click. I've cursed the mouse and at times resorted to the old trick - if it doesn't work, then thump it a couple of times.

 

 Recently, the last time it happened, I figured it was the mouse which I thought odd as it's fairly new and should have no wear in the button mechanism. I swapped to another brand new mouse I had as backup to no avail. The laptop was still going crazy as if the mouse left click was stuck on. Whenever the mouse cursor was over a file, folder, or app, it would open the application as my computer is set to single click to open.

 

I finally figured out the problem. I have a bad habit of resting my spectacles on the touchpad area, and they put pressure on the left click function of the touchpad. That little revelation is going to save me a lot of time in the future.

[red750]

My mouse problem is that,with my right forefinger on the left button, my middle finger rests on the right button. Therefore I get a lot of right click actions (dropdown menus, etc) when I don't want them. The best solution I have found is a plastic bread bag clip inserted under the right button. Problem is when I want to use both, as in copy and paste.

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, red750 said:

My mouse problem is that,with my right forefinger on the left button, my middle finger rests on the right button. Therefore I get a lot of right click actions (dropdown menus, etc) when I don't want them. The best solution I have found is a plastic bread bag clip inserted under the right button. Problem is when I want to use both, as in copy and paste.

Because of my desk/computer/ seating arrangement, I use the mouse with the left hand, despite being right handed. That means middle finger on the left button and index finger on the right button. Once used to it, it works ok. When my peripheral neuropathy was much worse, it was a bit of a problem with uncommanded finger twitches. I used to get it more in the middle finger, meaning accidentally bumping the left mouse button.