Chrome now lets you mute a tab and all its annoying sounds.

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My biggest pet peeve online is when a background tab suddenly starts playing some kind of video ad (with sound) or even worse, starts playing lousy music.

Your only choice was to mute your whole computer. No longer!  If you’re using the version 46 or greater of Chrome, just right-click on the tab and you can mute it. Yippie!

Now instead of hunting for the mute button on autoplaying videos or looking for the audio player on the website of that restaurant who feels the need for mood music, you can just right-click on the guilty tab, select mute, and kill sound on the entire page.

Source: Chrome now lets you mute individual tabs | The Verge

New flagship Android Nexus phones from Google released

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I long switched to iPhone but my wife and others understandably swear by Android phones for many good reasons. If you’re in that category, take a good look at the Nexus 5X and 6P if you’re in the market for an upgrade to your existing Android phone.

The Nexus 5X and 6P are two of the best Nexus devices ever produced. It’s a common line that people say every year, but these are the first Nexus devices that don’t have a huge deal breaker attached to them. Google and its partners have finally nailed two of the things Nexus devices have traditionally been poor at. The camera is actually good—great, even—and can hold its own against the best mobile shooters out there. And the battery life is just as good as any other flagship as well.

Source: Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P review: The true flagships of the Android ecosystem | Ars Technica

Best practices on charging your phone (or any lithium ion batteries)

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  1. Don’t keep it plugged in when it’s fully charged
  2. In fact, try not to charge it to 100%
  3. Plug in your phone whenever you can
  4. Keep it cool

The full article is linked below. For most of us, #1 is most relevant. Don’t leave your phone plugged in overnight or all day long at your desk.

If you want to keep your smartphone battery in top condition and go about your day without worrying about battery life, you need to change a few things.

Source: The best way to charge your phone – Tech Insider

Backblaze publishes hard drive reliability stats

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Let’s cut to the chase. Get either the Seagate or HGST 4TB drives.   Personally, I’d go for the 3x more reliable HGST drive that costs 30% more than the Seagate.

The 4TB drives continue to rock, with both Seagate and HGST 4TB drives performing well. The Seagate 4TB drive has a current cumulative failure rate of 3.0% and has a street price of $131.58 each on Amazon. The HGST 4TB drive has a higher street price of $174.99 on Amazon, but a lower cumulative failure rate of 1.18%. Both drives have been in service for over a year and we currently own 17,000+ Seagate and 11,000+ HGST 4TB drives and continue to purchase more.

Source: The Most Reliable Hard Drive 2015

PC on a stick for $130

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I’m going to have to try this. Just plug this stick into an HDMI port of any modern monitor/TV, bring your bluetooth keyboard & mouse, and you’re up and running. Combine this with a cloud-based service platform like Google Apps or Microsoft Office/365 and you are up and running for next to nothing.

Lenovo’s new HDMI dongle is basically a PC in stick, and though we’ve seen this type of devices before, the Ideacenter Stick’s price might make it quite attractive. The device starts at $139 and comes with the following specs:Intel Baytrail Z3735F CPUUp to 2GB of RAMUp to 32GB of storageSpeakersWiFI 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.01 x HDMI, 1x Micro USB 2.0, SD card readerWindows 8.1 with Bing

Source: Lenovo unveils the Ideacenter Stick 300: a $130 PC on a stick running Windows

Did you get your Windows 10 Free Upgrade notification today?

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This morning I saw an interesting desktop notification for the first time:

desktopNotification

After opening it, was somewhat surprised to see that Microsoft determined I was ready for the free Windows 10 upgrade.

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Very smart marketing. Got to admit that I’m intrigued. So I started the upgrade process. I’m a little nervous as I really can’t afford to “break” anything but right now, I’m proceeding with the download.

 

 

This may be the next car that drives you around town

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A world of self-driving cars is right around the corner and I couldn’t be more excited. Google’s car is going to start driving itself on public streets and it will have a “safety driver” aboard to take over if anything goes wrong.

Each prototype’s speed is capped at a neighborhood-friendly 25mph, and during this next phase of our project we’ll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving if needed.

Source: Official Google Blog: Green lights for our self-driving vehicle prototypes

Nasdaq is experimenting with Bitcoin technology

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We’ve just seen the beginning of applying the technology developed by Bitcoin. If indeed NASDAQ has a successful implementation, the implications will be far and wide.

The blockchain ledger is seen by some in the financial industry as the most compelling aspect of bitcoin because it can be used beyond merely buying and selling goods or services with a new currency.

Source: A Bitcoin Technology Gets Nasdaq Test – WSJ

How to fix the chrome 37 Facebook ugly font problem

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I was excited about upgrading my Chrome browser to version 37, as it was supposed to make my fonts look better.  After the upgrade, however, Facebook ends up looking absolutely awful, essentially unreadable.

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The initial workaround was to magnify to 150%.  Ouch.

Better solution: disable the DirectWrite “feature” that got installed.  go to chrome://flags/ and “Enable” the “Disable DirectWrite” setting (I know, it’s weird, you enable the disablement) and things will get back to normal until Google/Facebook figures this out.

disableDirectWrite

 

FYI: I’m using (2) 1920×1080 monitors and one 1280×1024 monitor all connected as one.

Hope they fix this soon.

 

I’ve got a public discussion thread on my Facebook page.

If you’ve been holding off buying a Macbook…maybe now it’s right

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Upgraded processors and RAM come with the newly-released Macs.

Post by Peter Kay.