TechByter Worldwide (formerly Technology Corner) with Bill Blinn

The National Institutes of Health would like to know more about you. Share some information with the All of Us project and you’ll help researchers understand more about disease treatment, control, and prevention. In Short Circuits: With the internet drowning in the proliferation of scams and fraud, staying safe involves treating any message from any source with more than a bit of skepticism. • When the plastic battery cover on my Bose TV speaker remote control broke, I contacted Bose to see if they sold replacements. What should have been a 5-minute chat went on for 40 minutes, required a 20-minute follow-up chat, and the problem involving a 5¢ part still hasn’t been resolved.

Regardless of what software came with your scanner, VueScan will do a better job and you’ll never have to worry about the scanner being orphaned by outdated drivers. In Short Circuits: Library Genesis, a source for downloading millions of books, articles, and academic papers, is controversial to say the least. Let’s consider the pros and cons. • I had a can of Stone Brewing’s FML hazy double IPA recently. Then I looked at the back of the can and learned more about those letters, which (in this case) mean “Fear Movie Lions”.

Is there a “best” browser? Of course there is, but your “best” browser may not be my “best” browser, and my “best” today at noon may not be my “best” browser this afternoon at 3. What’s “best” depends on a lot of variables. In Short Circuits: If paper sticky notes are all over your desk and computer, maybe it’s time to switch to the electronic version. • There are benefits to having an email address that obscures your identity and can be abandoned as needed without affecting your primary address.

You’re going to die someday. As a eulogy I once heard put it, “The young may die and the old must.” Dying is as easy as it ever has been but the job for survivors can be difficult if the they have no access to user names and passwords for the services we’ve used to make our lives easier. In Short Circuits: Windows has lots of hidden little keystroke sequences that can improve your life as a computer user, but first you have to find them and remind yourself to use them. • Microsoft’s Power Toys has long been one of my favorite utilities and one of its components, Power Toys Run, recently received a major update.

If you think sorting out differences between cellular plans is a challenge, try wading through information for the low-cost plans, particularly if the person who will use the plan has some unusual requirements. In Short Circuits: Microsoft has been talking about eliminating the Control Panel for about two decades and yet it remains. It may eventually be forgotten, but not gone. • A pleasant Friday afternoon was interrupted by two emails from my health insurance provider. The first said I had used the “forgot password” function and the second said my password had been changed. Stopping the scammer took only an hour, but it was an hour of frustration.

Sometimes the fastest and most efficient way to diagnose a problem with a computer involves creating a new account. In Short Circuits: When I increased storage on a tablet computer with a 1.5TB MicroSDXC memory card, I was surprised by the 10-year warranty it came with. I shouldn’t have been. • When you’re looking for a new or replacement disk drive, a quarterly reliability summary from Backblaze can help with the decision.

Canva, especially with its acquisition of Affinity’s Photo, Design, and Publishing apps, is a powerful competitor for graphic design, but don’t expect it to unseat Adobe anytime soon, if ever. In Short Circuits: Artificial intelligence for visual tasks is advancing so fast that any examination of the current state of affairs is nearly pointless, but let’s take a look at what Adobe, Microsoft, and Canva are up to.

As our computers become repositories for ever increasing numbers of files, sometimes it’s hard to find the one you’re looking for even if you try to keep them organized. The free version of Agent Ransack can save the day. In Short Circuits: Although the risk of being victimized by a SIM-swap scam is small, the damage done by such an attack could be enormous. There’s a quick, easy way to eliminate the danger. • Have you tried using side tabs in the web browser on your computer? Some browsers have that functionality built in, and there are extensions for those that don’t.

Microsoft and Adobe are gigantic, but are they as evil as some would have us believe? Big doesn’t always mean bad, so let’s take a look. In Short Circuits: What might the prosecution say in making the case that Adobe, Microsoft, or both are evil. I tried to work out what cases might be made.

Doctored images, deep-fake videos, and disinformation have us surrounded, so now it’s time to identify the ways we can protect ourselves from the lies. In Short Circuits: It’s still easy to spot some manipulated photos or videos, but increasingly we’re going to need artificial intelligence to help us identify the dreck that has been created by artificial intelligence. • And even AI analysis won’t protect us for very long. Just as we must be the final line of defense against malware, spyware, phishing, and social engineering, we need to learn how to deflect the lies being thrown at us.