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If you are not yet using a password manager, it’s time. It’s past time, actually. You are way overdue. Protect yourself There are three big things you can do to protect yourself online. Use a different password for every website. If someone gets hold of your username and password for, say, gmail, the first thing they’ll do is try that username/password combination at more lucrative websites, such as bank websites. Having a unique password for each site guarantees they won’t be able to get into any of your other accounts. Use a long password—at least 16 characters—that includes lowercase letters, capital letters, numbers, and specialRead More →

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The clipboard manager I’m thinking about is not a manager who stands around holding a clipboard. Your computer clipboard holds onto things you’ve copied, making them available for you to paste. Apps that manage this clipboard are called clipboard managers. A little history Historically, computer clipboards have not been very useful. The clipboard could hold one item. You would copy something, such as text or an image, and it was available for you to paste, until you copied something else. And then that first copied item would no longer be on your clipboard. From what I can suss out, this is how Macs still work,Read More →

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Zoom has two kind of updates: prompted and manual. With the prompted updates, when you run Zoom on your computer, Zoom will give you a pop-up that says, “Hey! There’s a new version of Zoom. Download it.” With the manual updates, Zoom doesn’t tell you that there’s a new version. You have to hear about it on the street. Or through a local tech newslettery-type publication, such as this one. The manual updates are for minor changes. Some of those minor changes bring useful features, so it’s usually worth doing the manual updates. Which version of Zoom do I have? Run Zoom on your computer.Read More →

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I have three screens, and one of them is relatively small. Sometimes I’ll have browser tabs open on all three screens. For the tab that’s open on the smaller screen, I want to zoom in to make the text bigger. CTRL + will zoom in CTRL – will zoom out CTRL+0 will reset the zoom to the default. Chrome treats each tab as its own individual entity. Zooming in on one tab does not affect the zoom settings on another tab. With Firefox, however, zoom in on one tab, and you zoom in on them all. These days, Firefox is my primary browser, and withRead More →

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The problem: I have a file folder that contains assignments that I have not yet updated for next term. How do I remember that I have not updated these, besides using a clunky README file? There are a lot of sticky note programs out there, but almost all of them only put sticky notes on your desktop. I have enough stuff on my desktop—albeit corralled by Fences, but still. Frankly, I needed something that was more context dependent. I only need a reminder about these particular files when I’m looking at the folder they’re in. I don’t need the sticky note anywhere else. If youRead More →

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You’re happily using your web browser. Thinking you are done with a page, you close a tab. But you were wrong. You were not done with the page. Option 1: Open the last-closed tab This keyboard combination will open your last-closed tab in a new browser tab. Works in all browsers. Windows: SHIFT + CTRL + T Handy mnemonic: “SHIfT. Wait. I’m in CTRL. Open the T(ab) I just closed.” Mac: SHIFT + COMMAND + T Handy mnemonic: “SHIfT. Wait. I’m in COMMAND. Open the T(ab) I just closed.” Option 2: Open browser history This keyboard combination will open your web browser history in aRead More →

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You’ve typed something into a box in your web browser—something very well written, perhaps the first page of what will become the Great American Novel. You close the webpage before clicking the “submit” button. When you go back to the page, everything you had typed in that browser box is gone. You gouge your eyes out. Or perhaps you’ve spent an hour crafting the perfect Canvas announcement when your computer suddenly reboots. Your announcement is gone. Forever. You gouge out someone else’s eyes. Been there? In this week’s Porta Potty Picayune, we are going to make sure you never have those experiences again. Recovering contentRead More →

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What is the web cache, what are cookies, and why does clearing them solve so many browser issues? How do web browsers work? Websites are collections of code—that code is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The code is stored on servers (servers are just big fancy computer storage units—think of the hard drive on your computer multiplied by millions and millions). The Internet is what we call the network that links those servers together. When we enter the URL for a website in our browser’s address bar (or click on a link in a webpage), we end up connected to that webpage’s server, wherever itRead More →

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Let’s take a look at your home Internet setup. With many of us working at home and sharing our home wifi with kids, spouses, ex-spouses, extended family, and the mysterious person you suspect might be living in your basement, here are a few suggestions for evaluating and improving your speed on your home network. Let’s get some data, first. Using your wifi-connected laptop, tablet, or phone, move close to your modem/router.* On your device, go to Speedtest.net, and click the Go button. Once speedtest is done running, you’ll have two numbers. The first will be your download speed—how quickly information moves from the Internet toRead More →

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The “Type here to search” box in the lower left corner of Windows 10 is handy for searching all kinds of things. Except the Internet. Windows forces you to use their Bing search engine inside of their Edge browser. But I’d rather use Firefox as my browser and use Shortmarks (see this blog post) as my search engine. Thanks to the $1.99 Search Deflector available from the Microsoft Store, now I can. [Shout out to Ashwin at ghacks.net!] (There is an identical free version available via GitHub, but for such a useful tool, I’m happy to pony up a couple bucks.) After installing and runningRead More →