This newsletter has many short items. If you feel cheated here are a few long reads:
If you want to know everything about how Netflix makes recommendations read this article
from The Atlantic.
And if you want to know everything about how Facebook decides what’s in your news feed, read this article
from Slate.
If the Facebook article freaks you out, check out this article
to change your Facebook settings.
I’ve warned before about updating your Window’s system from old versions of XP and Vista for security reasons. Now, if you are a Chrome user, you also need to upgrade your old Mac operating system. If you are on any version less than OS X 10.9 — or Windows XP or Vista, Chrome will no longer be supported. This is a serious issue. Chrome may still run but it will be less secure. Read about it here
. It’s time to upgrade your operating system.
If you have Windows 7 you may have noticed the icon for updating to Windows 10, or you may have received periodic messages about doing so.
Up until now, upgrading to Windows 10 has been optional
, now it is a recommended
update. What this means, is that Windows 10 may install on your computer automatically. Surprise!
If you are using Windows 7 and want to stick with it, you need to change your update settings. Importantly, you want to select the option to be asked before any install takes place. Read about it here
.
Using Chrome you may have noticed that if you navigate to a “bad” website you get a big red warning screen warning. If you’re lucky you’ve never seen this. Google tries to warn you about sites that may contain malware.
Google is now going a step further — you may have seen sites where you want to download something but it’s confusing because there are three or four download buttons and only one of them is the correct one. Google will now warn before taking you to a site like this. This is a good thing. Read here
to see what this will look like.
In the native Mail app on your iPhone you may have notice that if you swipe a message left it is Archived. If you have a Gmail account this means that the message is moved out of your Inbox into the All Mail folder, which I bet you never look at. The effect is the Archived mail never disappears, it just goes to live somewhere else.
If you truly want the option to delete email, this is how you change the swipe option:
Go to Settings
→ Mail, Contacts, Calendars
.
Select the Gmail account in question.
Select Account
→ Advanced
.
In the second section called “Move Discarded messages into” change Archive Mailbox toDeleted Mailbox
.
The messages will then be deleted instead of archived.
Unfortunately, a few clients have suffered from identity theft. Some forms are very high-tech break-ins to email accounts. And some are very low tech like a stolen wallet. No matter how it happens, it’s a disturbing and horrible experience, and it’s happening often enough that the FTC has set up a special website
to aid victims.
On this site you report the incident and are provided a plan to protect yourself. To get an idea of what they offer you can see the initial plan here
.
As I am writing this we here in NYC are experiencing our first real cold spell of the winter. If you’ve walked around outside on a day like this you may have noticed that your phone battery drains faster than usual. It’s physics. Batteries are less efficient in cold weather. Here’s
a non-techie explanation.
I have found that I am using my iPhone more and more and my computer less and less for all kinds of activities. One frustration has been Netflix. The Netflix app for some inexplicable reason can only manage the streaming queue, not the DVD queue.
My mode of operation is that I read about a new movie and if I like what I read I put it on my DVD queue. It’s my way of remembering what I want to watch. Finally I found a way to do this on my iPhone.
Open Safari on your iPhone.
Go to the site dvd.netflix.com/Mobile/Queue
At the bottom of the screen select the share button. That’s the square with the up arrow in the middle.
Scroll the bottom list until you see Add to Home Screen
. Select that.
And that is it!
