The General thread for Computers And Internet

#76

Yes Foggy was being clever. I caught it right away.

I was being snarky. Yes some people use ergonomic keyboards. So they say, they are supposed to be better on the hands and wrists (ie carpal tunnel). I just always found them awkward. But I'm weird.

#77

Yeah, the problem for me generally with ergonomic keyboards is, I use a lot of keyboards that aren't ergonomic (but I like them), and the ergonomic has a totally different feel. None of the keys are in the right place! And that would be a surmountable issue if all I used was the ergonomic, and I could fully adjust. But I don't, so I can't. I can just never get used to it.

And the problem in particular with this ergonomic that I bought for ol' Wifehorn is, it's enormous, and I mean literally more than 9 inches (23 cm) front to back. Not side to side, front to back. I'm not willing to give up that much real estate on my desk.

Numbah One Son had a gaming keyboard, unused. I bought it for $20.

#78

I learned to type in middle school. (may have made me gay-ish) Old-school manual typewriter. (you had to actually depress the keys with force). It was an elective course. Neon doesn't need to hunt and peck on a keyboard.

The ergonomic keyboard does not work for me. But if it works for others -- that's fine.

#79

Wait, learning to type in middle school made you gay-ish?

Whoa. I'm glad I waited until I got into community college. 'Course, there was not a high demand for typists at the nude beach in California where I spent the summer of '73. I don't think there was a single typewriter, manual or electric, anywhere near there.

'Course, like most of us geezer/codger types today, my handwriting, which was very readable back in the day, has become a pathetic shell of its former self.

If I don't have a keyboard of some sort, well ... well I guess I can dictate to Alexa or something.

#80

Foggy wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 2:45 pm Wait, learning to type in middle school made you gay-ish?

Whoa. I'm glad I waited until I got into community college. 'Course, there was not a high demand for typists at the nude beach in California where I spent the summer of '73.

OMG, I also took an elective in cooking (they called it home economics or something0. Made me even more gay-ish.)

Speaking of your time on the beach, there is a self-serve car wash that has a very old VW bus as a advertisement -- there are even a couple surf boards on the roof! I meant to take a picture of it -- thinking of you, pal. It's just a mile down the road..

#81

Mine was a '68 VW bus, and I was sitting in it when I read that Ralph Nader said, if he had known about my car before he wrote Unsafe At Any Speed, he would have written the book about it, and not the Corvair. He said my car was, hands down, the worst car in the world. I would have been safer in a Yugo.

Nothing but a thin bit of sheet metal between my legs and the car in front of me.

The gas line to the engine tended to dislodge and start a fire in 5 mph fender benders.

But I survived the experience.

#82

I had awful wrist pain which I think was a combination of carpel tunnel and sports injuries. I once fell on my wrist and ended up in a wrist brace which caused me to use my mouse with my left hand. I switched the buttons, didn't just move the mouse to the left; it took about a week to get proficient. And after an ergonomics lecture at a conference I got my company to buy me an ergonomic keyboard similar to the one posted earlier in the thread. Basically, I made my workstation secure because no one else wanted to use it.

(I still use a left handed mouse. It's actually more efficient, since as a right hander I can use the mouse and take notes at the same time.)

New Turtle · #83

I use a trackball mouse where you move the ball with your thumb. It is interesting watching people try to use it. Always they try to move the mouse around, a couple folks try to pick it up and shake it. They get confused because moving the mouse will jar the trackball and make the pointer on the screen move slightly.

#84

I use several pointing devices, but as I said, I use Mouse Without Borders, so any device works on either of my main machines.

I use:

1. A vertical mouse, had to get a size Large, but it fits my hand and I like it.

2. A Kensington trackball smart mouse - I use this a lot. See those four buttons around the ball? All programmable, plus any combination of two of them. This thing is awesome.

3. An Intuos Wacom pen tablet, BUT I don't use the pen much, just my fingers. This is my favorite, it's so incredibly easy to use, but it doesn't do right clicks.

You just slide your fingers around on it and tap to click, it is SO AMAZINGLY EASY TO USE.

#85

When my mom was getting up in years, we found it easier for her to use a trackball rather than a mouse. Just something to think about if any of you see the same problem developing with your parents.

#86

My dad had an interesting computer waiting for him when he was released from the rehab in his retirement community this week - a Mac Mini. My brother the software engineer at HP is a Mac person, and bought it for him.

It has the exact same ports as my Lenovo ThinkPad, except his has a network cable port and one extra USB-C (on a Mac, they call it Thunderbolt 4). Other than that, identical ports. HDMI, speakers/headphones, USB-A x2, network cable, USB-C x2. You can hold it in one hand, but it's a "desktop" because no monitor, no keyboard or mouse, just a box with ports.

And I don't know how he's going to migrate his current Mac Mini to the new one, but he has a PhD. in computer science and a lot of years working with Macs, so I have no doubt he'll get 'er done.

#87

Foggy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:22 am It has the exact same ports as my Lenovo ThinkPad, except his has a network cable port and one extra USB-C (on a Mac, they call it Thunderbolt 4).

For the record, "they" don't call it Thunderbolt 4. While Thunderbolt and USB-C use the same connector, Thunderbolt is faster.

#88

I wasn't gonna say that part.

RTH10260 · #89

Foggy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:22 am
And I don't know how he's going to migrate his current Mac Mini to the new one, but he has a PhD. in computer science and a lot of years working with Macs, so I have no doubt he'll get 'er done.

IIRC the magick of owning more than a single Apple device happens when one signs them up to the same iCloud account, they ought to synchronize^(*), or the backup of one can be retrieved by the other. Your Dad may need some handholding to get that done correctly.

^(*) I seem to remember that the data will be synced, and I seem to remember that the same signup is used for the Apply AppStore and it remembers what was once downloaded.

#90

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 3:18 pm
Foggy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:22 am
And I don't know how he's going to migrate his current Mac Mini to the new one, but he has a PhD. in computer science and a lot of years working with Macs, so I have no doubt he'll get 'er done.
IIRC the magick of owning more than a single Apple device happens when one signs them up to the same iCloud account, they ought to synchronize^(*), or the backup of one can be retrieved by the other. Your Dad may need some handholding to get that done correctly.

^(*) I seem to remember that the data will be synced, and I seem to remember that the same signup is used for the Apply AppStore and it remembers what was once downloaded.

All true. I have three Apple devices and all see the same thing in iCloud. Just have them signed in with the same idea and allow syncing. I don't think hand holding will be required unless he forgot his email ID or password.

#91

I was shocked he already had a Mac Mini. He has this ancient old desktop Mac, I think maybe a G-5(?), anyway it is a dinosaur, in the biggest can I've seen this century, probably weighs 50 lbs. But I thought he was still using it.

"Oh, no, I haven't used that thing in probably 10 years." But it's visible, whereas the Mini is buried under stacks of paper. I had no idea. He wants to keep the behemoth, for whatever reason.

He definitely has an Apple account, and my brother for any tech support he needs.

Danraft · #92

My two mouses …. Love the trackball programmable
The Tourbox is for video editing with 14 buttons and three dials that can be used in combinations and you preset all the settings for Adobe or whatever editing software you use … Technically a mouse, but the only one I’ve ever know that has a thirty minute how-to instructional video.

: Tourbox; 9F679CFE-99B5-4865-8A00-DED7CD055C99.jpeg (359.79 KiB) Viewed 4607 times

: Trackmouse; 54AF1BF8-14A4-41DC-B863-D68386D5ACE3.jpeg (325.6 KiB) Viewed 4607 times

And, that price is crazy wrong on Amazon… much much less than that in the real world.

#93

Man, that is just too much for me.

I don't like the touchpad or whatever it is as all too often I do something inadvertent to screw up what I am doing. So, I just buy a $12 plug-in mouse and am happy as a clam.

Proudly a Luddite.

tek · #94

fun fact: the original Mac Mini hardware was designed by a very good friend of mine (now retired).

We had worked together (years earlier) on a major project for some other computer company, and wrote a paper about it. One of the things we were faced with was the fact that most of the senior technical people at said company said what we had set out to do was impossible.

We wrote:

Sometimes, the best way to show that something is possible is to build a demonstration unit.
Nonbelievers found it difficult to defend their position in the presence of a working computer.

RTH10260 · #95

BetterHelp banned from sharing customer data with advertisers, social media giants
BetterHelp may have to pay $7.8 million back to customers

By Craig Hale
published 9 days ago

Online counseling platform BetterHelp has been sharing users’ data with companies like Facebook and Snapchat for advertising purposes without explicit consent, alleges the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The company, which trades under a series of other names, has agreed to a $7.8 million payout to consumers who signed up for its services between August 1, 2017, and December 31, 2020.

Subject to a 30-day public comment period, the FTC will make a final decision to instruct BetterHelp to carry out a series of responsibilities that could see BetterHelp having to stop sharing personally identifiable information with third parties.

BetterHelp data sharing

According to an FTC document(opens in new tab), email addresses, IP addresses, and health status and histories - including current and previous therapies - had been shared with third parties. It explains that BetterHelp “has repeatedly promised to keep [this data] private and use it only for non-advertising purposes”, which has since been found to be false for a seven-year period dating from 2013 to 2020.

It was also found that employees were lacking adequate training for handling sensitive data, and that third-party companies had been given permission in a number of cases to use the data for their own research and product development.

The data sharing took place in numerous instances for a prolonged period of time. Between 2017 and 2018, for example, BetterHelp had uploaded more than 7 million email addresses to Facebook. The platform later matched 4 million of these to existing Facebook user accounts.

IP address sharing had also been used to re-target previous users with more ads in an effort to drive revenue.

https://www.techradar.com/news/betterhe ... dia-giants

Chilidog · #96

Am I the only one dealing with funky internet iss7es?

A lot of sites seem to be running on reduced functionality.

#97

Chilidog wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 4:31 pm Am I the only one dealing with funky internet iss7es?

A lot of sites seem to be running on reduced functionality.

Not really. My '7' key normally doesn't get mixed with the nearby 'u' key.

But just doing a restart tends to fix things up on connectivity iss7es.

.

Chilidog · #98

It's a keyboard thing. If I drag my finger it gets wonky

neeneko · #99

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 3:18 pm IIRC the magick of owning more than a single Apple device happens when one signs them up to the same iCloud account, they ought to synchronize^(*), or the backup of one can be retrieved by the other. Your Dad may need some handholding to get that done correctly.

^(*) I seem to remember that the data will be synced, and I seem to remember that the same signup is used for the Apply AppStore and it remembers what was once downloaded.

You can also just plug them into each other, the setup process allows you to migrate from one machine to another pretty automagically.

Chilidog · #100

Specifically, reddit is a mess today.