Today is Sunday, November 20th: time for the weekly roundup of the good, the bad and the ugly tech news of the week! For those in the US happy Thanksgiving week. The Good It is bad enough that in many parts of the US Broadband service is nearly a monopoly with one or two providers controlling the market. However, it gets worse when you try shop on their sites. The price you see is likely not even close to the price you will pay. New customer, introductory price, requires a longer commitment than a health club or cell phone contract,…
2022
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Shortly after Musk bought Twitter, he had talked about gutting 75% of the Twitter workforce. The number later became closer to 50% of the total 7500 employees. However, many of those who survived the initial wave of lay-offs at the beginning of this month later quit (including several key executives). To add more fuel to the fire Musk announced an out-right ban on remote work (with a few exceptions). It is not certain how many more employees quit when he announced the new policy. Then there is the Twitter 2.0 Ultimatum email Musk sent out Tuesday night/Wednesday morning of this…
When it comes to Broadband service, the price you see on a provider’s site is NOT the price you are going to pay. Add in equipment rental, surcharges, fees, taxes, etc. and you are looking at another $10-$20 a month above the listed price. Furthermore, that price may be an introductory rate and then goes way up when the period ends (been there with my ISP). What about speed? Do they throttle your speed (or worse charge a fee) if you exceed your maximum allotted monthly bandwidth? The FCC want to make Broadband speed and pricing more transparent. As part…
As expected to cut down on fake verified accounts and scammers/spammers from impersonating verified accounts, Twitter has announced a 90-day waiting period for new Twitter accounts before they can subscribe to Twitter Blue. Twitter has published a policy change saying that newly-created Twitter accounts will have to wait 90 days before being allowed to subscribe to the new Twitter Blue plan and get verified. This is likely to avoid impersonation and spam from verified accounts. “Newly created Twitter accounts will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 90 days. We may also impose waiting periods for new accounts in…
It is a running Tech Support joke: The user is asked if they have restarted their device. It is recommended you restart your devices (phones, tablets, music players and even PC’s) at least once a week. The 2-5 minutes it takes for the device to restart will save you a lot of time in the future with the increased performance. This is even more important for PC’s. A little background: Last week as I normally do towards the end of the week I pre-order our weekend pizza on Dominos. However, this time around Chrome refused to load the site and…
Chief Twit sent out an email late Tuesday/early Wednesday with the subject Fork in The Road. The email was an ultimatum to employees who planned on staying be expected to work hardcore or else take three months of severance. The deadline was 5:00 PM ET today. “lf you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” Musk wrote. “Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance. Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.” Elon…
Microsoft Corporation 423,08 +6,52 +1,57% has released Windows 10 KB5020030 optional cumulative update preview (“C” update) for admins to test fixes rolling out to all users with the December 2022 Patch Tuesday (December 13th). This update will be released for the following Windows 10 builds 20H2, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2. Also a reminder Windows 10 21H1 will no longer be updated after this December’s Patch Tuesday. The Windows 10 KB5020030 cumulative update preview includes ten improvements or fixes, with the four highlighted ones listed below: The search box now appears, by default, on the taskbar when the taskbar is at…
For those too young to know about Clippy (Office Assistant) from Microsoft Office ’97 here’s a brief history. As an annual holiday tradition, Microsoft Corporation 423,08 +6,52 +1,57% features an ‘ugly sweater’ for sale and this year’s features Clippy. Microsoft’s now-yearly tradition of releasing ugly sweaters with retro Windows patterns printed on them. Two years ago, the patterns were MS Paint- and Windows logo-themed. Last year’s pattern paid homage to Windows 3.1-era Minesweeper. And this year’s brings back an old frenemy: Clippy. The Clippy sweater is available in sizes small through 3XL and costs $75 no matter what size you get. That’s a bit on the…
Amidst all the chaos and what lately has been doom and gloom coming from Twitter is some good news. The ability to easily create long Tweets (280+ characters) by having them broken into threads automatically. According to a tweet posted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, twitter’s composer will automatically break the text into a thread when it crosses the 280-character limit. Twitter is working on making Tweet composer automatically expand into a thread when the characters count is approaching the 280 characters limit https://t.co/nigChFZ2Yn — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) November 17, 2022 As she explained in a reply to a…
This was the subject line of an ultimatum email Chief Twit (Elon Musk) sent to the remaining Twitter employees during the night Tuesday (does he ever sleep?) “lf you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” Musk wrote. “Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance. Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.” The email, sent late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, was first reported by The Washington Post and later by CNN. A screenshot…