Random Tech Questions you want answered.

NSMike wrote:

There are a couple ways. For one, you can turn off search in the address bar entirely, and add the "Search" box back to keep an easy search solution without browsing to an engine.

Generally, though, if you add a .com or whatever to wherever you're going, it should function as an address bar and not a search. If you just type text without making it a domain, it should treat it as a search. If you're typing .com on where you're trying to go and it still acts as a search, that's weird.

A commonly forgotten shortcut is that if you type something into the address bar and do CTRL+Enter, it will add .com and go there.

That still means I have to type out the entire address. Right now I can type "g" and Firefox will autocomplete "amerswithjobs.com" but if I wanna check on WoW news and start typing "mmo-champion.com" it gives me search terms until I either type in the whole thing or go click on the URL farther down the list.

Changing the settings you linked helps. Thank you. It doesn't actually fix the inconsistent behavior, but it does mean that when Firefox doesn't auto-complete the URL in the bar I can get there with a single press of the down arrow instead of having to skip past a variable number of search suggestions.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
CaptainCrowbar wrote:

Yeah, I know about those options for individual videos or channels. I was hoping there was some kind of global "don't recommend anything I've already seen" setting so my recommendations page won't be half full of stuff I've already watched.

I know exactly how you feel. Half of Youtube recommendations are videos I've already watched.

WHY?!?!

My theory is that they tweaked the algorithm to show less controversial videos, combined with savvy users who mark tons of videos “not interested “ so they think that showing a video you watched already will pad out the recommendations somehow.

I recall a podcast host who said he blocks every ad on Twitter, and now only sees hilariously bad advertisements for hyper-local businesses for markets he doesn’t even live in.

Robear wrote:

BEP, I had a Federal customer who used Monday and was happy with it. I have not had occasion to, not my role.

Appreciate the info.

-BEP

Anyone else getting SPAM replies to their comments on youtube channels?
I'll comment on something and get a reply from
textme@mooreslawisdead
"congratulations you are among our shortlisted winners claim your PC"

Do I just report them or don't these streamers block bots?
It was just one channel at first but now it has migrated to more youtube channels.

I ran a malware scan and nothing popped up...

i think this is why so many people disable comments on their videos. spammers will constantly look for the easiest way for them to get seen. whether that's by replying or by being first.

It's a problem on Youtube. Report them it helps. LTT has talked about the problem several times on the Wan show and Youtube has yet to fix the issue. But they have recently decided to try and fix the issue.

Anyone know why a laptop would think it's charging at full speed despite not? You can see the charge rate and time remaining don't align. It should be charging at the charge rate though, so trying to deduce what the problem is. Original power brick eventually stopped charging at all, and replacing the power brick seemed to work for awhile but now it's trickle charging again.

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/HLMNYqVg/20220725-230111.jpg)

How old is the battery?

I'd say it's likely 5-6 years old. It's an Alienware M11x r3, so about 11 years old, but I replaced the original at some point. I can try swapping back in the battery I bought last year, if I can find it I'd swapped it out because it was having the same problem with the original brick. Dell obviously isn't making these anymore and I suspect the 3rd party quality is not great.

That is definitely old ;P

It is less likely but at that age, it might be neither a problem with the battery nor the charger. It may be something wrong with the circuitry between the battery and the charger.

I take it the charger has a specific connector to the laptop such that it cannot be used to charge another device? (to troubleshoot the charger)

If you cannot replace the laptop at this point, you might want to try charging with an external power brick.
Although I now realize that you may not have USB ports with power on a laptop that old. What about a dock?

Alienware is still active as a subsidiary of Dell and pulls in over $3B a year. They have not changed their manufacturing process or sourcing to my knowledge. They were not subsumed into the Dell manufacturing system.

Robear wrote:

Alienware is still active as a subsidiary of Dell and pulls in over $3B a year. They have not changed their manufacturing process or sourcing to my knowledge. They were not subsumed into the Dell manufacturing system.

oh I just meant Dell/Alienware is not making batteries for the m11X anymore.

The power connector is bog standard Dell though, so I think any 90+ watt brick would work.

Lol missed that. Sorry.

Ok swapped back in the battery I got last year and it charges properly. Fingers crossed it's just a battery thing.

I recall someone asking about a scanner a few months back. I've been using Stack, a google product, for sometime now and like it. I mainly use it to scan in instructions manuals for stuff that doesn't offer them online. It is free so is safe to try.

I need to clone my wife's phone SD card to a larger one, but i have no idea what freeware out there is actually reliable and safe. any recommendations?
edit: forgot to mention i'm on windows 10 if that matters for any of the recommendations.

Hey, anyone with aging parents or hearing loss:

Has anyone tried any "closed captioning" apps, where you have someone speak to your phone and it shows captions for the live audio? Any experiences for what apps work well or don't? (For android hopefully!)

To save some money, I'm thinking of lowering our internet subscription from 300Mbps to 150Mbps. This would save the family 360EUR/year, so at least worth thinking about. I can live with having to wait a bit longer when downloading the hot new game (especially since I usually WFH and can start it during the day).

BUT I would like to test whether 150Mbps is enough on a busy workday, when I'm having Teams calls while my wife and/or kids might be streaming video's.

So is there a way to "throttle" our home internet to 150Mbps for a few days to test this? Plan B would be to monitor bandwidth consumption during a week, see whether normal family behavior (anything besides big file downloads) ever even hits that cap. Is there any app you could recommend for this?

If you have an old 100baseT switch laying around (we all have old tech like that in a bin in the spare closet right?) you could hook that up and simulate 100Mbps.

Some routers have a feature to limit certain devices to a maximum throughput. Was handy in the Napster/Limewire days to keep your roommates from hogging all the bandwidth.

Also be careful of lowering upload speeds when you lower your internet package. Going from 20 to 15 megabit can have an impact with teams and other video conferencing.

fangblackbone wrote:

Also be careful of lowering upload speeds when you lower your internet package. Going from 20 to 15 megabit can have an impact with teams and other video conferencing.

Good point, and that's exactly what the impact would be (20Mbps to 15Mbps).

Rykin wrote:

If you have an old 100baseT switch laying around (we all have old tech like that in a bin in the spare closet right?) you could hook that up and simulate 100Mbps.

Some routers have a feature to limit certain devices to a maximum throughput. Was handy in the Napster/Limewire days to keep your roommates from hogging all the bandwidth.

I actually might have something lying around, but not 100Mbps ones. The use case I had in mind was for Plan B actually: hook up an old laptop to the switch in between and monitor consumption throughout a week.

I might check with our ISP's customer service as well, I could start with the lower subscription tier and "upgrade" when it turns out to be too slow. Apparently we are entitled, at the same price, to get 1Gbps download instead of our current 300Mbps. Funny how our ISP never reached out about that

dejanzie wrote:

Apparently we are entitled, at the same price, to get 1Gbps download instead of our current 300Mbps. Funny how our ISP never reached out about that ;-)

Good to know it isn't just the ISPs in America that suck

Yah I just ran into something similar with Comcast. I wanted to get rid of TV and just have internet. The 800 mb was 95$. But the 600 mb was 90$.

The person on the phone told me that 800 mb was up and down. I promptly hung up because I wanted to talk to someone with a clue.

fangblackbone wrote:

Yah I just ran into something similar with Comcast. I wanted to get rid of TV and just have internet. The 800 mb was 95$. But the 600 mb was 90$.

The person on the phone told me that 800 mb was up and down. I promptly hung up because I wanted to talk to someone with a clue.

Don't call Comcast, then.

Upload speed is why I switched to T-Mobile Internet from Comcast. Download speeds fluctuate from 50-400, but upload is pretty consistently 20-30, which has worked well enough for two of us working from home with regular video calls. For $50 it works for us.

I just wondered if the T-Mobile thing is reliable for gaming. Have been tempted too because I just hate Spectrum and the near monopoly they have in my area.

I considered T-Mobile Home Internet as a secondary Internet connection for redundancy. But then I did the availability check, and discovered I can only get "Home Internet Lite" in my area, which is where they give you a 100GB data capped connection FOR THE SAME $50 PRICE as their normal unlimited service.

But while typing this out, I decided to check once again if Frontier fiber internet is available at my address. They've blasted me with ads on Instagram for years, only to say "psych, not in your part of town!" when I clicked on the ad and did the service area check.

Well what do you know, my address now apparently qualifies for their 1Gb up & down fiber, for only $60. I've been paying $130 to Comcast for 1Gb down / 35Mb up ($100 base price + $30 extra data cap removal shakedown fee).

So now I think I'm gonna order Frontier fiber, then knock my Comcast service down to about $60 for my redundant connection (600 down / 15 up), eschewing the data cap unlock option since it won't be my primary connection. I know the big question mark with Frontier has been reliability, so I'll feel better about giving it a shot if I have a redundancy in place (which, as alluded to earlier, is something I wanted anyway - I'm 100% remote work, and workdays with Internet connection downtime are SUPER NOT FUN.) And I'll be saving $10 versus what I'm paying Comcast now for the single connection.

I just set up a pfSense router for my home network, so I shouldn't have any problem setting up multiple WAN devices. Should be able to toggle between them pretty easily and/or set up automatic failover.

Just had a call with the ISP... It's fairly trivial to upgrade to a higher internet tier should we encounter issues, and it's activated within hours and invoiced pro rata within that month. So I will try to make due with the 150Mbps/15Mpbs speeds for the extra savings! If we use their TV-box to stream Netflix/Amazon Prime/etc. it doesn't count towards the bandwidth either, so it should work just fine.

And if I ever venture into online gaming again, at least I'll be able to blame the lag for my inevitable failure

Verizon FIOS offers at least 300d/300u, 500/500 and 940/880. I'm sure there are other plans but if you can get FIOS, you can get symmetrical speed plans, no problem. Nice low latency too on most of them.