Kind: Notes

short content: a post or status update with just plain content and typically without a title

Posted on
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    Photo auto-import/upload straight to cloud?

Greetings Chromies,

Advice sought please.  Is there any Chrome app or extension which runs on ChromeOS and auto-imports/uploads photos straight from USB-camera or SD Card to the cloud?

Background: Got a senior relative a Chromebook about 18 months ago and she’s been loving it… until recently.  What changed?  Not being able to auto-upload photos to Photos, and instead having them upload to Drive.  When photos used to import straight from USB camera/SD Card, things were so straightforward.

The issue here is that this change is not understood.  How do you explain “well, Google used to provide this on your Chromebook, but then decided to remove that feature and there’s nothing you can do about it, despite paying good money”…?

Thanks.

Posted on
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    Keeping life perfectly private: backup offline

Free software such as Linux is great at many things, including keeping your data very safe.  That is, if you are in relative control of it yourself. Linux is also used by the likes of Google, Facebook, et al., not to mention most western governments.  In…

http://stevedowe.me/2015/09/keeping-life-perfectly-private-backup-offline.html

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    <img class="alignnone" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VX6GdlIv_JQ/VdowckFdpiI/AAAAAAAF2TM/g9p1T-9VJ2Q/s0/fb.webp" alt="" />

What’s going on with Facebook’s suggested friends feature…?

I use my phone for personal and business reasons, so I have a number of contacts on my phone relating to work, most of whom I would never “friend request” on Facebook.

Also on my phone is my Google+ “following” list – i.e. people I follow.  These people too I would never befriend on Facebook because, well, there’s no point!  

Yet, recently, people have started appearing in my Facebook “suggested friends” list, the details of which can only have come from my phone’s Contacts.  For instance, an old neighbour’s profile has appeared, whose only details I had were his mobile phone number – NO other social connection.  

Then, people only in my G+ circles who I would have absolutely no connection with on Facebook, even in an extended network, started making an appearance.  This seems to be people who are also quite prominent on G+; those who make a number of posts a week, or even per day.

Now, even a client’s profile has made a recent appearance.  This is decidedly awkward, not to say infuriating.

I had never permitted the “Continuous Upload of Contacts” feature in Facebook, nor uploaded manually any contacts.  I do acknowledge and accept that the app used the Contacts permission in order to access my addressbook, for writing to, but I am now wondering, was it uploading my addressbook without my knowledge or consent?

It seemed to get worse when I removed the Facebook app from my phone, but the problem was already present.  How else could this be explained?  Is Facebook scraping the web for my other social connections?  How could it otherwise know about my client or my old neighbour?!

I posted these thoughts on Facebook and at least one friend on there has confirmed he has observed the same change in his “suggested friends” list.

Very interested to know if anyone else is seeing this…

   

_(Img via: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.katana&hl=en_GB)_

Posted on
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    Improving typing accuracy with gtypist

Looking for a free software program to help me learn to touch-type, and shortly after my search started I found GNU Typist.  And GNU Typist (gtypist) is a gem. The instructions are simple and the purpose of the program is equally simple: to “condition”…

http://stevedowe.me/2015/08/improving-typing-accuracy-with-gtypist.html