Posted on April 26th, 2021 by Joy Schwabach
There have been lots of complaints about Google’s new “FLoC” tracking system. You may be wondering what the fuss is all about. Here it is, in a nutshell. “FLoC,” which stands for “Federal Learning of Cohorts” replaces third party cookies that track you on the web. Instead of being followed individually, your anonymous browsing activity gets lumped with thousands of similar users. Then the whole group is given an identifier. For example, if 3,000 users visit a bunch of furniture websites, a group identifier will allow advertisers to send furniture ads their way Despite the complaints, FLoC seems less intrusive than the current system. Significantly, Google says there won’t be any identifiers on sensitive activities. These include searches for personal […]
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Filed under: apps, books, browsers, drones, gadgets, Internuts, Windows | Comments Off on HAVE YOU BEEN ‘FLoCed?’
Posted on April 18th, 2021 by Joy Schwabach
Worldwide shipments of desktop computers have dropped in half since 2010, while tablets and laptops have surged, but I still like the feel of a good desktop. I just have to remember to clean the inside occasionally. This is the perfect time of year for that, before summer starts to fry everything. I’ll never forget the time my husband cleaned my sister’s desktop computer for her. No wonder her machine was slow! The dust bunnies were thick and still multiplying. Dust never sleeps, especially inside a desktop. The cooling fans bring in air from the outside, clogging the parts with dust. If it gets hot enough in there, the central processing unit (CPU) as well as the graphics processing unit […]
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Filed under: Android, apps, computers, email, facebook, security, troubleshooting | Comments Off on SPRING CLEANING
Posted on April 12th, 2021 by Joy Schwabach
Did you hear about the New York Times article, still online, that sold for $560,000? How about the digital cat in a pop tart? It sold for $590,000. Or the 5,000 online images that sold for $69 million? They’re part of the brave new world of “Non-Fungible Tokens.” “Non-fungible” means “can’t be copied, unique,” much like the items on Antiques Roadshow. In the digital world, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are sold in online auctions. If you buy a token, you own a link to a unique piece of digital art, music, video clip or what-have-you. Recently, a video clip of LeBron James’s basketball dunk was tokenized. The buyer paid over $200,000. Before NFTs, digital files weren’t considered unique because they’re so […]
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Filed under: apps, crytpocurrency, education, Internuts, security, trends | Comments Off on NON-FUNGIBLE IS ALL THE RAGE
Posted on April 4th, 2021 by Joy Schwabach
After 11 years, my friend’s computer conked out, due to a hard drive failure. I tried to talk her into replacing it with a refurbished PC. No dice. Her first thought was taking it to a repair shop. Angie’s List said it would cost $300 for the drive and installation. Not only did that sound like too much, but an 11 year-old all-in-one PC with a bad hard drive is likely to have other problems. So she got an HP Elitedesk 800 G1 desktop, which came with a monitor and mouse for $324 from Walmart. I was glad to see it had eight gigabytes of RAM and an Intel i5 processor. (You can compare processors at CPUboss.com.) Unfortunately, the Elitedesk […]
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Filed under: computers, email, Gmail, Internuts, photos, TV | Comments Off on BUYING A RENEWED PC
