Featured Links - April 8, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A choppy bay

• The Next Coup Attempt. "And How to Stop It." An unsettling post from historian Timothy Snyder. 
• The Artemis Earth photo is incredible – but the one thing that nobody is telling you about it will blow your mind. 'The famous "Hello, World" photo by astronaut Reid Wiseman isn’t quite what you think.' I didn't figure it out until I read the article.
• How to Find Thunderbird Profile Location in Windows 11, 10, 8, 8.1, 7. I needed to figure this out because Thunderbird moved the profile folder on my wife's laptop and my backup program couldn't find it. This is a useful article for anyone using Thunderbird on Windows.
• The Lancet: Long COVID and Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Disease. "A recent study (see PLoS Med.: Association Between COVID-19 Vaccination and Sudden Death in Apparently Healthy Younger Individuals) found no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of sudden cardiac death in young healthy adults, but they did find a strong link between recent COVID infection and an increased risk of sudden cardiac death." 
• Data Centres Are on Track to Wreck the Planet. Can We Stop Them? "They will guzzle more water and power than the world can afford—for an AI video of your cat as an astronaut."
• Any USB drive or cable you plug in might be a silent killer. "As if we didn’t already have enough malware to worry about, malicious hackers and state-sponsored cybercrime teams are turning ordinary-looking USB drives and cables into weapons that can infect or fry — within a single second — any computer or electronic component you plug them into."
• Experiments refute dark matter claim. "The results of her analysis, which have excluded the dark matter explanation with greater confidence, were published in Physics Review Letters ...". 
• Canadian couple shows how a $40 weekly food budget is possible. "Michelle Nijdam, 31, has been gaining a following online after she started sharing how she sticks to a strict $160 monthly budget (or $40 weekly budget) while living in Vancouver — one of the most expensive cities in Canada. On her YouTube channel, @MichellesHomemaking, she talks about the ups and downs of having a tight budget while sharing some handy tips."
• Gambling on War and Death. "Polymarket allows anonymous accounts to bet on everything — but with increasing attention to war. Will a tanker be seized? When will the next drone strike occur? Gamblers can even look at maps of Ukrainian villages and play the odds on which neighbourhood of innocent civilians will be hit. It is literally about making a killing on killing. And it is also about manipulating the market in frightening ways."
• The 51st State Fantasy Is Over: How King Charles and Mark Carney Put An End To Trump's Desire To Invade Canada. "How Trump’s annexation campaign collapsed against 200 years of history, one king, and a prime minister who played the long game."
• Art UK. "Connecting you to art. Art UK is a unique digital experience that connects everyone with the UK's public art collections. We digitally unite one million artworks from 3,500 institutions – museums, libraries, town halls, hospitals – as well as public art in our streets such as sculptures and murals."
• Why U.S. Gatling Guns Are Not Stopping Iran’s Shahed Drones. "In any discussion of drone defense, Gatling-type guns are often presented as a trump card. These rapid-fire weapons, originally developed to defend U.S. warships against sea-skimming missiles, can easily down bigger and faster threats than a 120 mph Shahed drone. On paper they look devastatingly effective, and news reports speak enthusiastically of their “shredding Iranian drones.” But they are not a magic wand to make all drones disappear, and some Shaheds are getting through."
• America forgot how to make a classified nuclear warhead ingredient. "The U.S. government forgot how to make a classified component of its own nuclear warheads, then spent $92 million figuring it out again. The material is called Fogbank, and almost everything about it is classified — its composition, its purpose, and how it's manufactured." Just think of all the money they could have saved if they'd had a documentation library,

Featured Links - May 20, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Spring flowers

Space United Us. Putin Tore Us Apart. "Former International Space Station commander. Watching my Russian cosmonaut friends turn to the dark side was a troubling lesson in how easily normal people can be bribed into supporting a tyrant."

World’s first personalized CRISPR therapy given to baby with genetic disease. "Treatment seems to have been effective, but it is not clear whether such bespoke therapies can be widely applied." Given that the US wants to ban MRNA technology, can banning CRISPR behind?

The First Human to Undergo In Vivo CRISPR 2.0 Personalized Genome Editing. "Potentially a lifesaving intervention with major implications."  This article goes into more detail than the article from Nature.

Not saying it's aliens: SETI survey reveals unexplained pulses from distant stars. "In a recent paper, veteran NASA scientist Richard H. Stanton describes the results of his multi-year survey of more than 1,300 sun-like stars for optical SETI signals. As he indicates, this survey revealed two fast identical pulses from a sun-like star about 100 light-years from Earth that match similar pulses from a different star observed four years ago."

There's a huge Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Ontario 600 feet underground. "Buried 600 feet beneath solid granite in Ontario lies a colossal relic of Cold War military engineering — the NORAD North Bay Underground Complex, better known simply as 'The Hole.' The massive underground fortress was Canada’s front line in the defence of North America at a time when the threat of nuclear war felt imminent. Built at the height of Cold War tensions, the complex stands as the most ambitious and heavily fortified military project in Canadian history." I went on a tour of the SAGE base in 1983; it was seriously impressive.

I Went to Rome to Understand What’s Happening in America. What I Found Was a Warning. "A pilgrimage to the ruins of empire reveals a terrifying truth: America’s democracy is at the tipping point—and Trump is no Marcus Aurelius."

Scientists have been studying remote work for four years and have reached a very clear conclusion: “Working from home makes us happier.” Absolutely. I much preferred it to having to spend 2-1/2 or 3 hours a day getting to and from the office. 

Ronnie Wood: ‘I was thinking, I want to be in the Rolling Stones. Then a car pulled up with Mick and Charlie’. "Galleries, gigs and grand old friends – the veteran rocker reflects on a life of lucky timing and grit."

For this CVS Health developer, making tech more accessible is personal. "Apple’s ‘Accessibility Nutrition Labels’ will put investments in inclusive design in the spotlight. But Cory Joseph says companies don’t need to be huge to embrace accessibility." These are a really good idea and I hope Google copies them. 

We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Lasts Thousands of Years. They need to start using this on the Gardiner Expressway. 

JerryRigEverything says 'do not buy' the Pixel 9a despite it passing a stress test. Google has made a bad design decision here and it would keep me from buying it.

Beware SVG graphics used to Bypass Microsoft 365 Security Measures. "SVG and invisible Unicode is being increasingly used to hack Microsoft 365 and Google/Gmail users even with multi-factor authentication (MFA).  It’s possible because of significant enhancements in the Tycoon 2FA platform."

Apple iPad Mini: First Impressions

A couple of years ago, I bought an Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet to use as an ereader. It's a good size for that, with a size that's in between my aging Samsung Tab A tablet and my Pixel 8 Pro. (Due to my vision issues, I find reading on my Kindle Paperwhite harder on my eyes than reading on a device with dark mode). But it hasn't been a happy experience as Amazon's forked version of Android and the tablet's slow processor make it frustrating to use. 

There aren't a lot of good, small Android tablets. Samsung has one but they have a bad track record with updates and I don't like their One UI interface. I've read good things about Lenovo's new tablet but it seems to be aimed at gamers, which I am not. So I figured it was finally time to embrace the Dark Side and get an iPad Mini.

The Good

It's a quality machine, almost luxurious, Solid, good looking, and with a beautiful screen (even if it isn't OLED). It's fairly fast, though maybe not quite as quick as my Pixel 8 Pro, but certainly fast enough. 

Apple's IOS is functional and pretty, though as a long-time Android user, it is taking more than a little getting used to. I have the basics figured out. YouTube has been my friend here. 

Since I have a Windows PC and a Pixel phone, I am continuing to use Google's apps like Calendar, Messages, and Keep instead of the equivalent Apple apps. 

I am using Apple News+ since the iPad came with a three month free trial and so far, I love it. I've been using the Libby app to read magazines on my Fire tablet, but News+ is superior in almost every respect though it doesn't have all the magazines  that I like to read. But I like it enough that I will probably pay for the subscription when the trial runs out.  

Apple's Folio cases are very expensive. I bought this Oduio case instead. It's 1/3 of the cost, looks good, and lets me stand the iPad up in both portrait or landscape mode for viewing videos. The feature I really like is the strap on the back so I can hold it securely with one hand while reading.

The Bad

Control Center is a dog's breakfast and the customization process is annoying. I much prefer Android's Quick Settings. I had to watch a video to figure it out and ven then customizing it is fussy. The method used in IOS before version 18 (which I saw in a video) looks like it's much easier. A switch to revert to the old method would be nice.

Battery life is OK but not great. I am may be keeping the screen brightness up higher than need be and will fiddle with that. I enabled the 80 percent charging limit to preserve long-term battery life (I do the same on my phone). Also, I don't know what apps and processes are running in the background. I will have to look at this

As noted above, the screen looks good. I do wish they had enabled a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz. as I can see a bit of jitter in some apps. 

I was disappointed that the iPad Mini doesn't support FaceID. I'm used to opening my phone just by looking at it and miss this on the iPad.

As much as I like Apple News+, it's annoying that I can't set a default font. I much prefer sans serif fonts for reading. Some articles come up in sans serif, others in a serif font. Sizing of fonts is hit or miss between stories. I am going to try to load the Atkinson Hyperlegible font onto the iPad. I doubt that will help with Apple News+ but would be good for my ebooks. 

I really miss not having Google's Reading Mode app, which takes the current screen, strips out all of the extraneous stuff (including ads) and reformats it as plain text. Some searching has revealed that Safari has a reading mode and I may have to start using that, which will mean importing my bookmarks and passwords from Chrome. Google's Reading Mode app works on almost anything, not just web pages.

The Ugly

The inability to resize icon text and things like the system's date, time, and battery percentage at the top of the screen is more than just an annoyance. Come on Apple: you can give us more accessibility options here. 

Apps that don't support Apple's system font size setting are a problem (Google Keep, for example). I've had to set up the Magnifier to deal with that. In fairness to Apple, this may be Google's fault. 

Since I have an Apple Care subscription, I may book an appointment at the Apple Store's Genius Bar to get some help with this.

As has been commented on in almost every review I've read, the bezels are ridiculously large for a current device. 

Finally, an Android App for Apple TV+

So for those of you like me who have only sipped a bit of the Kool Aid, Apple TV+ finally has an Android app. This is good because, although we have a subscription, the only way I could use it until now was through the Rogers TV app. It's a pain to navigate through and even with a large TV, I have trouble using it. 

Unfortunately, Apple have not seen fit to add cast capability, which means I still have to use the TV app to play shows or movies, but at least I can easily browse through Apple TV+ on my phone. I do hope they add it at some point, but Apple being Apple, I'm not holding my breath. 

It would be nice if I could get it to run on my Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet, but it won't accept my correctly typed email and password. My guess is that Amazon's brain-dead forked version of Android is too old for the Apple app. It's not a big deal as I've finally given up on Android tablets and am going to buy an iPad Mini one of these days.

Featured Links - November 25, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The bay on a grey day

• Summary of the Hyperactive 2024 Hurricane Season. "The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season will finally come to an end on November 30, and by any measure, it was an extremely active and impactful season."
• How the 15-minute city idea became a misinformation-fuelled fight that’s rattling GTA councils. (archive link) "The idea of making cities walkable and livable has helped fuel a conspiracy theory that is throwing local meetings into chaos — and is already changing the way councils work." The article includes a section about my local city council, which has had major problems with a particular right-wing councillor and her followers.
• This Wasp Was Brought To Christmas Island In 2017—7 Years Later A Struggling Species Thrives. "Since the micro-wasp was introduced in 2017, the red crab migration has been seeing better numbers. While last year’s migration was delayed owing to a lack of timely rainfall, the crabs appear to have roared back to life this year."
• Supervolcano shows signs of waking up, which would plunge the world into chaos. "The Phlegraean Fields, now considered one massive supervolcano, are beginning to stir, making the scientific community uneasy." The article headline is a bit hyperbolic.
• Mechanically strong yet metabolizable supramolecular plastics by desalting upon phase separation. "A strong, glassy supramolecular polymer has been shown to prevent the formation of marine microplastics by slowly dissolving in salt water into metabolizable compounds." This could be important, assuming it can be made commercially at scale.
• The Gift of Preparedness 2024. Instead of giving ugly sweaters for Christmas gifts, give items that could be useful in an emergency or disaster. 
• NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix. "NASA expects it to take about four months to fully assemble the main parts of the SLS rocket." Finally!
• Jan. 6 as Foundational Event for the Coming American Autocracy. "This is the first in a series of essays about political violence and how to combat it. Here I focus on Jan. 6 as a historic event that prepared the psychological, social, and political climate for an authoritarian politics of violence by breaking taboos against assaulting the Capitol and hunting down lawmakers."

Featured Links - July 22, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

An empty playground

•  From burn scar to wetland. "After wildfires destroyed Lahaina, the battle to restore an ancient ecosystem will shape the town’s future." I hope the city can recover; it was such a beautiful place. 
• 30 More SFF Titles to Look Forward to in 2024. "Just a few more dozen upcoming releases to add to your TBR lists..." 
• How a simple physics experiment could reveal the “dark dimension” (archive.ph link). "Could the universe's missing matter be hiding in a "dark" extra dimension? We now have simple ways to test this outlandish idea - and the existence of extra dimensions more generally."
• ‘Visionary’ study finds inflammation, evidence of Covid virus years after infection. "Investigators found long-lasting immune activation months and even years after infection. And, even more concerning, they report what looked like lingering SARS-CoV-2 virus in participants’ guts. Even those who’d had Covid but no continuing symptoms had different results than those who’d never been infected." Yet another reason to keep wearing those masks.
• How Long Does an SSD Last? I need to look at some of the utilities mentioned in this article as my PC has two SSDs. 
• Elon Musk moves SpaceX and X.com Headquarter to Texas – Here’s why. "Although SpaceX and X headquarters are planning to move, the degree of this mass transfer in terms of jobs and facilities has yet to be well established. The main headquarters of SpaceX will be shifted to Boca Chica, Texas while X will be in Austin, Texas. Nevertheless, these changes imply that California will still be significant for the company as it will still serve as the engineering location."
• Real innovation vs Silicon Valley nonsense. "If there was any area where we needed a lot of "innovation," it's in climate tech. We've already blown through numerous points-of-no-return for a habitable Earth, and the pace is accelerating."

Featured Links – February 20, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about:

Cat in a window

Cannabis Extract Shows "Remarkable" Ability To Kill Skin Cancer Cells. "The results are promising, but preliminary."

Jim Collins: Discovery of the First New Structural Class of Antibiotics in Decades, Using A.I. "Starting from >12,000 compounds to find, with explainability, new drugs effective vs methicillin-resistant Staph aureus (MRSA)"

Vaccine Confidence Falls as Belief in Health Misinformation Grows. "Americans have less confidence in vaccines to address a variety of illnesses than they did just a year or two ago, and more people accept misinformation about vaccines and Covid-19, according to the latest health survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania."

Truths, Untruths, and the Realm of Belief in Between: Misinformation & Propaganda in Science Fiction. "A science fiction author looks at how the genre examines the role of truth and mistruth in the genre."

Staring At A Red Light In The Morning Improves Worsening Eyesight, Study Shows. Staring at a deep red light for just three minutes can drastically restore declining eyesight, according to a new study in the journal Scientific Reports. Impressively, improvements from a single session of light exposure lasted for a whole week, although the treatment is only effective if administered in the morning.

Router Security. "This site focuses on the security of routers. This includes both configuration changes to make a router more secure, and, picking a router that is more secure out of the box. If you are interested in faster WiFi, there is one page on extending the range of a Wi-Fi network."

The real problem with Google's new Gemini Android assistant. "The real problem with Gemini as the Android assistant is that Google's forgotten why a phone assistant actually matters — and what we, as actual users in the real world, need from such a service." He's absolutely right and I'm not installing it on my phone until they fix it.

DOJ quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses. "Feds once again fix up compromised retail routers under court order."

Researchers reveal lost library of Charles Darwin for the first time. "For the first time since his death in 1882, Charles Darwin’s impressive library has been virtually reassembled to reveal the multitude of books, pamphlets and journals cited and read by the influential naturalist."

Verifying the Capacity of a USB Drive

I've seen a few reports recently about USB drives that are not what they seem. For example, a 1 TB USB drive may actually have a capacity of only 32 MB, but the drive appears to be 1 TB to the operating system. It'll appear to load your files, but when you go to retrieve them, they aren't there.

Or, as Tech Radar reports, the drive may be using a chip of dubious quality; for example, a chip rejected by a manufacturer because it failed quality control. Steve Gibson has created the ValiDrive utility that will scan the drive and report its actual capacity. It's small, requires no installationm, and free.

To use it, open the program and insert the drive you want to scan into your PC. It will start scanning the drive, scanning 576 sectors across the memory from beginning to end, logging read and write errors, and report the total actual (as opposed to reported) size. 

It's a useful utility and I will run it on any drives or cards that get. 

My 2023 in Tech

2023 turned out to be a big year for tech upgrades here at Chez Soltys. That was partly due to getting some money from parents' estates and partly due to aging equipment needing replacement. 

• I bought a Kindle Fire HD 8 tablet primarily to use as an ereader because I'm finding it harder to read on the Kindle Paperwhite. It works well as an ereader, but it is underpowered for any use other than web browsing and Amazon's proprietary O/S is limiting compared to stock Android. 
• I upgraded my ancient HP desktop PC to a custom-built system with an AMD processor, an Nvidia 3060 TI video card, and SSD drives housed in a large and quiet Fractal Designs case (no RGB lighting, thank you). I've had no issues with the hardware but I'm finding Windows 11 to be a mixed bag. Paul Thurott's Windows 11 Field Guide and Stardock's Start11 have been a great help.
• I was happy with my Pixel 4a phone but Google stopped providing updates. I upgraded to the Pixel 8 Pro and so far I'm very happy with it. The cameras are spectacularly good and have made me reconsider my investment in Fujifilm's X-S10 camera.
• At my doctor's suggestion, I bought a FitBit Sense early in the year. Then Google offered a free Pixel Watch 2 with the pre-order of the Pixel 8 Pro, so I moved to that. It doesn't have the battery life and real-time arrythmia detection of the Sense, but it's superior in every other respect. 
• After upgrading my desktop PC, it became clear that the gaming experience was less than ideal because my Lenovo 28" monitor couldn't keep up with the video card. I bought a very nice LG 32GP750-B gaming monitor on sale. It is basic in features (speakers and USB ports would have been nice), but otherwise is just fine with excellent picture quality. 
• When I retired five years ago, we treated ourselves to a Vizio P55 TV. It was great until a couple of years ago when the active backlighting started to exhibit problems and Vizio no longer provided firmware updates to fix them. We decided it was time for a new and larger TV and bought an LG C3 65" OLED set. This is a vast improvement in picture quality and we are very pleased with it despite some minor issues noted in my first impressions post. 
• On the smart home front, we bought a smart plug for the backyard lights, that Google Home saved from the recycle bin,  and an Aosu video doorbell, both handy little devices. 

Next year should be quieter on the tech front. We have to start dealing with some long overdue household renovations which will not be as much fun. 

Kindle Fire HD 8 First Impressions - Updated

I use several devices (Pixel 4a, Samsung Galaxy Tab A, Kindle Paperwhite). for reading. Even with strong reading glasses, I can't comfortably read newspapers, magazines, or most books in their paper editions. My preference is for dark mode (white text on a black background) as I find a white screen hard to view for any length of time. 

The Kindle Paperwhite does have a dark mode but it isn't very good, because the E-ink screen doesn't have enough contrast. I've been thinking about getting a small tablet (one smaller than the Samsung), so when I saw the Kindle Fire HD 8 tablet was on sale, I decided to get one. 

The tablet is solidly built although a bit heavy compared to my Kindle. I've read complaints about performance but it is adequately fast for general use, certainly faster than my now 5-year-old Samsung tablet. Amazon uses its own version of Android and has its own app store, which is much more limited than Google's. It is possible to add the Google Play Store to the tablet; more on that later. 

There are several Amazon-installed apps that you can't remove, but it's easy enough to move them into folders and tuck them away at the bottom of the home screen. I intend to use the tablet as an ereader and won't be installing email or social media apps like Facebook on it. So on my home screen right now, I have the Kindle app and Libby for reading magazines and books from the library. 

The Kindle app works but has some limitations that I find annoying. The major issue for me is that the choices of font and font sizes are limited. For font size, the choices aren't granular enough and I would like a size in between the sizes offered. You also can't add your own fonts to the app (I prefer Atkinson Hyperlegible), something that I verified with Amazon support. You can use Calibre to embed the font into a book and transfer it to the tablet as a document. 

The Libby app works quite well and I will probably be using it more than I did on the larger Samsung tablet. 

I ordered Amazon's own case for the tablet, but have decided to return it and get something else. Their case is very slippery, and I am really afraid I will drop it, especially if I read in bed. (Update: The Moko case is better than the Amazon case: the strap makes it much more secure to hold and the stand is better, at least for keeping it in landscape mode). 

I did get the Google Play Store onto the tablet by following these instructions and installed several apps. Unfortunately, I'm having a problem with Chrome; it won't let me log into my Google account, claiming the account is already on the tablet but won't let me log in. More investigation is needed, although given the intended uses of the tablet, it's not a big deal.

I likely would have gotten more flexibility out of a Samsung tablet or an iPad, but given the cost of the tablet ($100 CDN), I don't have many regrets. 

Update: After almost six months, I've noticed that my Google account now syncs with Chrome on the tablet. Either an OS or Chrome update fixed the problem as I didn't do anything else to change it. This makes the tablet much more usable. 

LG C3 OLED TV First Impressions

We decided to upgrade our family room's TV after the 55" Vizio P55 set we've been using for the last five years started to develop some display glitches. Vizio got out of the Canadian market a couple of years ago and they aren't providing the firmware updates that could have fixed the issues we were experiencing. I also wanted a bigger screen.

After looking at several sets, we decided on a 65" LG C3 OLED TV. I wanted an OLED set for the improved picture quality and the 65" set was about as big as we could go in our room. While pricier than LED sets, the C3 is almost a budget set these days as the price has come down by about $1500 from where this level of set was a few years ago.

Physically, the C3 is an improvement over the Vizio in several ways. The bezels are almost nonexistent, it's lighter, and the sound from the built-in speakers is better, even without LG's AI processing, which I haven't yet enabled. (We run the TV through a home theatre receiver with 5.1 speakers, so rarely use the TV speakers alone). The set does have a glossy screen, so reflections are more of an issue than they were with the Vizio; this is something we will have to keep in mind if we renovate the room, but it's not a problem right now.

Setup was straightforward and everything worked as expected (once we corrected a mismatched HDMI cable that we'd somehow mixed up). The picture quality is excellent, as we expected. Right now we're just using the default Standard or Cimema modes. The set has a gazillion options for changing the settings, but I don't intend to change the defaults; for now they seem adequate. I should note that there is one change that is important to make; turning off the power saving mode makes a noticeable improvement in the brightness level. 

There are some things I don't like that aren't related to the set itself.

• The Magic Remote (LG's name, not mine!) is not backlit, which is a major disappointment in a fairly expensive set. The onscreen cursor is more annoying than useful and can't be disabled.
• LG's ThinQ Android app is awful. It can be used in place of the remote, but half the time it refuses to connect to the TV. Setting the TV to allow power on and off using the app causes the app to refuse to connect to the TV. And it just functions as a remote; unlike the Vizio app, the menu options don't show up in the app itself, so you have to keep looking back and forth between the phone and the screen to make changes. Ridiculous in 2023. Do better, LG. 
• LG's website registration failed every time I tried to use it (including when I tried to register my new monitor a couple of weeks ago). I ended up having to call support to register the TV and monitor.

So overall it's a very nice television at a reasonable price (especially if you can get it on sale as we did) but the experience of using it is degraded by the remote and app. 

Google Home Saves the Day

Earlier this year we bought an HBN outdoor smart plug to control the light strings we set up in the backyard. The control app we installed was the BN-Link Android app, which is the one the documentation said to use. It's not a great app but it worked, at least until I got a new phone with Android 14. After that it would not work due to constant crashes and I had to uninstall it.

After thinking about it a bit, I looked up the plug again on Amazon and yes, it supports both Alexa and Google Home. So I found HBN in the "Works with Google" list in Google Home app, linked it to my BN-Link account and added the plug as a device. And yay, it works, and I can now turn the lights on and off again. 

I also noticed that our video doorbell may also be supported (at least the brand is in the list), so I may check that out later.

I guess the moral of this story is that if you have any smart home devices and their default app is flaky, Google may be your friend.

LG 32GP750-B Gaming Monitor First Impressions

For some time now, I've been thinking of replacing my Lenovo 28" monitor. I bought it at a ridiculously low price from the TSX when they were selling off excess gear so it's now more than six years old. I liked having a big monitor but as I did more with Photoshop and Lightroom, its limitations began to bother me. The final straw was when Nancy started gaming after we upgraded our PC and found that there was a lot of lag on FPS games. 

So last week we bought a new monitor, an LG 32GP750-B UltraGear 31.5" IPS gaming monitor with a 1 ms. refresh rate and a resolution of 2560 x 1440. Lag is no longer an issue.

As for using it to edit photos, it's perfectly fine. The colours are accurate (I have looked at some calibration images and they look fine) and brilliant. The monitor supports HDR, so it has excellent dynamic range. I am running it on the default settings on both the monitor and video card, and I see no reason to try an further adjustments. (I had a bad experience trying to use the Windows 11 calibration tool with the Lenovo, so I am leaving it on default settings, at least for now). 

Things I like

• The size. The extra 3.5" makes a difference.
• The increased resolution.* The Lenovo was a 4K monitor that I ran at 1920 x 1080p. I could have run it at 3840 x 2160, but I wouldn't have been able to read anything on screen. 
• The lack of lag in gaming. Nancy can get ridiculously high frame rates with no jitter when gaming.
• As mentioned above, the colours are gorgeous. 
• The matte screen has eliminated the glare problem I had on bright days. (I know some people think matte screens degrade image quality but I don't have a problem with it). 
• The joystick controls for the on-screen display are easy to use, especially compared to the Lenovo's capacitive buttons. 
• The monitor is light considering its size and was easy to set up. 

Things I don't like

• No USB ports (It has one, but it can only be used for firmware upgrades).
• No speakers. I don't need speakers in my monitor as I have a perfectly good Logitech 2.1 speaker system, but the monitor software installed a sound driver that kicked in when the monitor was turned on. It took a few minutes to figure out why we weren't getting sound and reset Windows' sound output to speakers. I've since disabled the LG sound driver as the monitor kept switching back to it when coming out of sleep mode. LG needs to fix this.
• Calibration controls are pretty basic. The Lenovo had more calibration options. Hopefully, I won't need them. 
• Despite not having speakers, the monitor must have a sound chip, because it chirps when turning on or off and when adjusting settings. It's annoying and I can't find a setting to turn it off.
• The power cord has a power brick at the plug end. I was able to rearrange the cords plugged into my power bar but this might be a problem for some users. 
• There is a very slight falloff in brightness at the left and right sides of the screen. I only notice it because I sit quite close to the screen; most people would be sitting further back, and moving back even 15 cm. makes it go away. 
• LG needs to revamp their registration process. I tried three times to register the monitor online and it failed each time. I will have to mail in the registration card.

On the whole, I'm happy with the monitor. We bought it in something of a rush because it was on sale (which was ending on the weekend) without doing a lot of research. I think we got it at a good price and I didn't want to spend more. 

* The increased resolution is a mixed blessing. Windows 11 is pretty dumb when it comes to scaling up the size of Ui elements. I can get bigger text without too many  problems, but trying to get larger dialog boxes is hit or miss. (Windows' settings warn you about trying to increase the scaling factor and they're right.) I occasionally have to resort to my reading glasses. I will have to look into this in more detail later.

Google Pixel Watch 2 First Impressions

Until very recently I had no plans to get a smartwatch. Early this year, I got a Fitbit Sense which is a fitness tracker with limited smartwatch features. I enjoyed using it and unlike most smartwatches, the battery will last several days between charges. But Google threw in a Pixel Watch 2 with Pixel 8 Pro pre-orders, so now I have one. 

My first experience with the watch was not encouraging. I jumped into setting it up without following Google's (rather perfunctory) instructions and got into an update that wouldn't complete. Finally, I decided to wait for my Pixel 8 Pro to arrive and start over from scratch. 

Setting it up by pairing with the Pixel 8 Pro worked much better and I was up and running within an hour. The watch did insist on being connected to the charger before it would continue, despite having almost 90 percent charge, and it also installed a system update that took a surprisingly long time to complete.

The watch is quite comfortable and most of the time I hardly notice I'm wearing it. I do wish Google had not used a proprietary design for the band as the ones I have for my Fitbit sense won't fit on it, and while we're on that subject, the watch has yet another proprietary charger that isn't even compatible with the original Pixel watch much less any standard wireless charger.

I was worried that the small size of the watch (41 mm. diameter) would make it hard for me to read the screen, but the Wear 4 OS lets me set a font size that I can (barely) read. I can also set a comfortable brightness level, which helps for readability.

I was able to easily connect the watch to my Fitbit app, although I was disappointed to see that I had to unregister the Fitbit Sense. I would have liked to have the option of easily switching between the two devices. In my limited use so far, it seems that the Pixel watch has more fitness tracking features than the Sense, but I only need the basics. 

Limited battery life was a complaint about the first Pixel watch. The new one is better but still not great. I have set my watch to not use the Always On display and keep the brightness level low indoors and after one day of use, I'm just above 50 percent battery level. The Fitbit Sense was usually good for between 4 and 5 days of use before it got down to the point where I had to charge it. 

There were also concerns about the durability of the first Pixel Watch. I will probably order a screen protector for it as the screen is not replaceable if it cracks. The watch itself is aluminum, which is probably durable enough though it might scratch more easily than stainless steel. 

I'm still exploring the features and apps. I like Wear OS compared to the OS on the Sense. However, given the small size of the watch, it's likely that I won't be using a lot of apps. 

I wouldn't have bought the Pixel Watch 2 if I'd had to pay full price for it, but I'm glad I got it as part of my phone purchase. 

Wired has just published a review of the watch and I agree with most of the writer's conclusions, so look at that if you want a more detailed take. 

Google Pixel 8 Pro First Impressions

I wasn't going to upgrade my Pixel 4a this year. Although I've had it for three years, it's served me well and is running without problems, other than a slightly degraded battery. But I found out in September that Google is no longer providing updates for this phone, so continuing to use it without security patches is not something I wanted  to risk.  

Given that I wanted to continue with a Pixel phone, my choices were the Pixel 7a or either the just announced Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro. After some thought and no little trepidation, I ordered a Pixel 8 Pro. It was more than twice what my Pixel 4a cost me, but by pre-ordering I got a Pixel Watch 2 at no extra cost (more on the watch in a post tomorrow). The deciding factors were that the new Pixels come with seven years of updates, and I really wanted a phone with multiple camera lenses. I did spend extra to get the model with 256 GB of storage. 

To my pleasant surprise, the phone arrived last Thursday, well ahead of the original shipping date of October 31. 

It's big, though still a comfortable fit in my hands. I ordered the Bay colour, which is very pretty, but now hidden by a Spigen case. Without a case, it's rather slippery, and I would strongly recommend using it with a case. The camera bar on the back is quite pronounced, which I assume is because of the 5x telephoto lens.

Getting the phone set up was straightforward and took about an hour. Most of my apps and settings came over from the Pixel 4a, although there were a few that I had to find my passwords for. Bluetooth pairings did not come across, so I have a few devices that I have to pair to the new phone.

I am seriously impressed with the camera. Pictures are sharp with accurate colour and good dynamic range. It isn't a sharp as my Fujifilm X-S10, but it is good enough that I don't feel the need to have a walkaround camera. Here's a picture of Frenchman's Bay taken with the ultra-wide lens straight out of the camera. 

Frenchman's Bay with Pixel 8 Pro ultra-wide lens

The Pro mode of the camera is a huge plus and I will be testing it more soon. Here's a quick grab shot taken through our car's window as we were waiting for a stop light. I was able to dial down the exposure to get a nearly perfect match to what I was seeing outside. The Pixel 4a would have drastically overexposed this shot.

Night shot with the camera's Pro mode

The screen is sharper than that on the Pixel 4a and can get quite a bit brighter, even in bright sunlight. By default, it comes with the resolution dialed down and I've left it at that, both because it uses less battery power and with my vision I probably wouldn't notice the difference.

I haven't found the larger size of the phone to be a problem, even with the addition of the Spigen case. It does (just) fit in the belt holster I was using, though it is a tight fit. Like most modern phones, the 3.5 mm. headphone jack is gone, so I've ordered a dongle so I can use wired headphones. (I don't usually use my Beats Studio 3 headphones when I go walking because I like to be able to hear cars coming when I'm walking on a street with no sidewalks). The extra screen real estate does make a difference when reading books or articles on the web. The phone isn't a lot wider than the Pixel 4a, but it is somewhat longer.

The under-screen fingerprint sensor works but I would have preferred having it on the back. I also have face unlock set up. It doesn't work well in dim light although it does work when I'm wearing my sunglass clip-ons.

Battery life is quite good, as I expected. I can get through a day and a half of normal use before getting down to the 25 percent range. I don't play many games or watch many videos on my phone, so your mileage may vary. The sound quality of the speakers is OK and comparable to my wife's Samsung, but don't expect a lot of bass. 

I still have several apps I need to get working (I really need to start using a password manager!) and there are some things I want to tweak, but getting the most frequently used features and apps set up was easier than I expected. This YouTube video has been very helpful and I've found some features I didn't know about. So far, my first impressions are highly positive.

Reading on the Fire HD 8 Tablet

A couple of months ago, I bought an Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet to use as an ereader. I had intended to use it for occasional web browsing, mostly to read news sites, but I've found that Amazon's proprietary version of Android limits its use for me. So I'm using it mostly as a replacement for my Kindle Paperwhite. I do use the Paperwhite when reading outdoors because neither my phone or tablet are great for reading in bright sunlight.

There are four apps that I've used for reading.

Amazon's Kindle app

Given that this is an Amazon tablet, you might think that the Kindle app would be the best for reading books. That turned not to be the case for me, primarily due to an annoying feature (or possible a bug) in the app. There are 12 or 13 possible font sizes but there's a significant jump in size between the 6th and 7th. The 6th is too small and the 7th too large. I can read the smaller size if I use my reading glasses, but that's not always convenient and the larger font size drastically slows my reading speed. 

The app has other limitations. It won't expand or collapse subheadings in the table of contents if the book has them, margins are too wide, it doesn't offer control over justification in many books, and I can't add custom fonts. Some of these limitations can be worked around by formatting the book in Calibre, but then the app treats them as documents instead of as books, so it won't sync between the tablet and my phone.

The app is also cluttered and generally not as pleasant to use as the Kindle Paperwhite.

Google Play Books

I now use Google Play Books as my default for reading books. It addresses most of the limitations of the Kindle app mentioned above. I do have to format the book in Calibre if I want to use my preferred font (Atkinson Hyperlegible), but unlike the Kindle app, Play Books will sync between the tablet and my phone. 

The font selections available in Play Books are more limited than those in the Kindle app and it doesn't have the excellent fonts (like Amazon Ember) that Amazon designed for online reading. I haven't found a way of adding the Atkinson Hyperlegible font to Android's font list, either on my phone or on the tablet, which means I still need to format the book in Calibre to use that font. 

Kobo Books

I've purchased quite a few books from the Kobo bookstore. I run them through Calibre and then read them on the Kindle or in Play Books because the Kobo app is very basic and doesn't offer the many of the options available on Kobo's ereaders.

Libby

Libby, produced by Overdrive, is an app that you can use to download magazines and ebooks from your local library. I use it mostly for magazines, although I have read a couple of ebooks with it. (The three-week loan period isn't long enough for me to get through most books). 

I used to use an app called RB Digital for reading magazines, but that was shuttered after it was bought by Overdrive and the magazine collection folded into Libby. That was unfortunate, because Libby's selection interface is cluttered and harder to use than that of RB Digital. Fortunately, the app offers a usable text mode, which means that I can use it on the Fire 8 HD. (The 8" size is too small for comfortable reading when using the full-page view). I would like to have a larger font selection and a higher brightness level in text mode or more control over text contrast.

Conclusion

The Fire HD 8 is hobbled by Amazon's proprietary version of Android, which means that it's not great for general use as a tablet. However, it works well enough as an ereader now that I've found workarounds for some of the limitations of the various apps. I do regret not spending more money and getting an 8" Samsung tablet. 

Featured Links - June 26, 2023

Links to things I found interesting, but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

CJ relaxing

• 7 Ways Google Has Ruined Fitbit. "Since acquiring the wearable device maker, Google has frustrated many Fitbit users by removing features and delivering lackluster updates." As the owner of a Fitbit Sense, I am really disappointed in how Google has handled Fitbit after they purchased the company. 
• Original six' who painted iconic Garden River bridge reveal how they did it. "The six men who helped paint the words 'This Is Indian Land' on the side of the rail crossing are being revealed publicly — 50 years later — after breaking their vow of silence." The slogan is still painted on the bridge, and you can drive by it on your way to the Sault.
• Firehose quantities. "Generative AI has the potential to lock us into an ecosystem of empty stories." An excellent post by Andrew Liptak on how generative AI is affecting the science fiction and fantasy genres, both literary and film/TV. 
• Tale of the tape. 'Listen to Roger Nichols's long-awaited "Second Arrangement" cassette.' A long-lost Steely Dan song is rediscovered.
• Mass Shootings, Firebombings, and Death Threats: The Anti-LGBTQ Hate Spike Revealed. "A joint report from GLAAD and ADL puts hard numbers behind the rise in hate against America’s queer communities."
• Why Malware Crypting Services Deserve More Scrutiny. "If you operate a cybercrime business that relies on disseminating malicious software, you probably also spend a good deal of time trying to disguise or “crypt” your malware so that it appears benign to antivirus and security products. In fact, the process of “crypting” malware is sufficiently complex and time-consuming that most serious cybercrooks will outsource this critical function to a handful of trusted third parties. This story explores the history and identity behind Cryptor[.]biz, a long-running crypting service that is trusted by some of the biggest names in cybercrime."
• Here’s how we could begin decoding an alien message using math. "A new mathematical approach looks for order in strings of bits."
• Bluesky is just another Twitter clone and that isn't a good thing. "The much hyped social media app Bluesky is meant to be doing things differently, but can its approach to content moderation really build a new social sphere, asks Annalee Newitz."

Beats Studio3 Headphones - Review

I've been looking for a pair of wireless headphones ever since the Sony headphones I was using broke a couple of years ago. I bought the Sony's to cope with the noisy open-concept office at the TMX Group, but as it turned out the noise cancellation was not very good (these were a mid-range pair, not the top-of-the-line WH1000). They also weren't good outside because the mic picked up too much wind noise. 

I did look at the top-of-the-line Sony and Bose headsets, but they were both expensive and large. My preference is for headphones that fold up so I can carry them in my book bag or small knapsack. While shopping last week, I stopped into The Source and found the Beats Studio 3 headphones on sale and ended up buying them. 

I'd describe these as midrange headphones. The sound quality is good but not audiophile quality. Noise cancellation is good enough. It's not total but it doesn't suffer from the annoying noise that plagued the Sony's outside on windy days. (There is some wind noise, but at a tolerable level). They are comfortable and the earcups fold up under the headband so the folded size is fairly compact. 

Setting up pairing to my phone and computer was straightforward, once I found a YouTube video showing how to do it. (As with my recent smart plug purchase, the manual was pretty much useless). There is a companion Android app, but it has few features. I haven't been using them long enough to verify the claimed battery life (40 hours without noise cancellation), but in the week I've had them I haven't yet had to charge them and I'm still at 3/5 battery.

The controls are basic. A power button on the right earpiece also turns noise cancellation on and off. Tapping parts of the left earpiece pauses playback, controls volume, and advances music tracks. Control is via a physical press and not a swipe, so the controls aren't capacitive. That may be a durability issue in the long run, but reduces the chance of accidentally doing something you don't want to do. 

It would be nice if the power button had more relief. I would also prefer it if the noise cancellation defaulted to off. I mostly wear these indoors at home and don't usually need it, so I turn it off to save battery life. It would also be nice if the app offered equalization settings. 

Given the price, I'm happy with my purchase. The top-of-the-line Sony or Bose headphones would have cost me twice what I paid for the Beats with only a small improvement in sound quality. 

Featured Links - April 24, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Frenchman's Bay

• Sci fi author Lavie Tidhar: Using Midjourney to explore ethics of AI. "AI tools can explore the ethics of AI itself, says Lavie Tidhar.  His new dystopian film uses AI image-generation program Midjourney to tell the story of a well-meaning artificial intelligence trying to help the last surviving human." Do watch the video. It's quite good and very unsettling.
• Nearby Supernovas Pose An Extra Previously Unconsidered Threat To Life. "Having a star in our vicinity go supernova poses three threats to life, not two, and the worst one may be the one we haven’t been thinking about."
• Starship OFT Thoughts. An article about last week's Starship launch from someone who was there. He was overwhelmed by the launch but thinks that SpaceX is going to have major problems with the launch systems. 
• Users Claim the Latest Windows 10 Update Breaks Some Printers. "Microsoft’s most recent update was meant to fix Windows incorrectly labeling printers, but it appears to have introduced new problems." If you are using Windows and suddenly can't print, this may be the source of the problem.
• A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics. "So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of complex quantum systems."
• The Bicycle Is Nothing. "Today the Netherlands has a reputation as a kind of bicycling paradise. Dutch people own more bicycles per capita than any other place in the world. The country has more than 20,000 miles of dedicated cycling paths. International policymakers make pilgrimages to the Netherlands to learn how to create good bike infrastructure. But none of that was inevitable. It wasn’t something that magically emerged from Dutch culture."
• Cracking the Chess Code: A Groundbreaking Study Reveals Hidden Patterns in Openings. "In a study analyzing millions of chess games, researchers identified ten distinct clusters of chess openings, developed a method to determine player skill and opening game difficulty, and found potential applications for their classification system in other strategy games."
• 2023 TV Update. A post from Tim Bray with much useful information about setting up and using a modern TV with a receiver and Google Chromecast (which is similar to my setup). 

Featured Links - April 3, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The first flowers of the spring

The Best Password Managers to Secure Your Digital Life. "Keep your logins locked down with our favorite apps for PC, Mac, Android, iPhone, and web browsers.

Blue Origin Works Out How to Turn Moon Dust Into Solar Power. "Although our vision is technically ambitious, our technology is real now, Blue Origin says.""

"Predicting significant weather events a growing challenge: Shields".  'I’ve talked to other forecasters, and they say if you can forecast for Sault Ste. Marie, you can forecast anywhere,' says SooToday meteorologist Jerry Shields." Last weekend, when I was up in the Sault for my mom's funeral, they forecast 20+ cm. and got 5. This weekend, they forecast 30 cm. and got maybe 40. I would not want the forecaster's job up there.

China To Overtake US In Key 21st-Century Tech In 10 Years, Says Harvard Report. "The authors looked at a number of core technologies that are set to define the 21st century — artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, quantum information science (QIS), semiconductors, biotechnology, and green energy — to see how the US is faring against China in these fields."

New documentary explores how one Ontario man started a patriotic ketchup war. This "war" was fought with bottles, not bullets. How Canadian, eh?

The dark web isn't for everyone, but some of it is worth exploring. "Here are the best dark web websites worth checking out.

How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps (printer companies hate this!). "I moved across the ocean and took my printer with me. Then I discovered it was region-locked. A wiser man would have bought a new one." After reading this,  I will never buy an HP printer, and I suggest you don't either.

A new flu is spilling over from cows to people in the U.S. "How worried should we be?" Answer: very.