Author: ryan
-
Taco Bell and more – This Geek in Review for 13 Mar 2020
When I was at Miami University, the up town Taco Bell closed, and we were stuck living life without having access to a Taco Bell. Even as it left, I never was as dedicated at these Penn State students holding vigil for closed Taco Bell. Maybe a literary magazine dedicated to Taco Bell would help?
Before Sony brought the Playstation to fruition, they were working with Nintendo for the next gen console. Nothing ever came from this joint venture although one Nintendo Play Station has been found and it recently sold for $360,000 at auction.
Do you think indoor smoking bans really protect you from 2nd hand smoker?Maybe not.
What do you do when you don’t have CGI? You film everything live action:
And finally, the Verge has put together a visual history of the Xbox Dashboard.
-
My most embarrassing web search
I was trying to find a website I used in the past, so I dug through my Google search history. And, 11 years ago I performed this search.
-
Amazon Prime members get free unlimited full-size photo storage with Amazon Photos
It was Saturday morning and I was going through my RSS feeds when I read an article talking about photo backups. That’s when I learned that Amazon Photos offers unlimited photo storage with an Amazon Prime membership.
Full resolution images
Google Photos offers unlimited photo storage too, albeit at a lower resolution of 2048×2048. While this is a pretty good resolution, my iPhone 11 can take images in the 4000×3000 range. You can purchase storage to save the full resolution images, but why do that when you can save them all to Amazon Photos.
Family vault
Another nice feature is the family vault. Currently we share a Flickr Pro account to backup and share our pictures in the family. Now we can do that at no extra cost over our Amazon Prime membership.
Family Vault offers the option of adding all pictures automatically or selecting the pictures to share. I’m going to recommend that Grace does not upload all of her pictures.
Videos aren’t free
Amazon Photos offers 5GB of storage for videos, of which I went over when I uploaded my phone. Amazon offers reasonable pricing, and for $19.99/year I purchased 100GB of space. That should do me for awhile.
Printing
Printing pictures starts at $0.12 a print with your choice of glossy or matte. I haven’t done this yet, so I don’t know the quality. The app makes it easy to order.
On the web
When you visit Amazon Drive on the web, all of your pictures show up in the
Picturesfolder, with a folder for each device backed up.
From there you can download or upload additional pictures.
Kicking myself
Amazon started this offer back in 2016. For the last 4 years I’ve been trying to make due with Flickr Pro. It’s a nice service, but doesn’t offer enough over Amazon Photos.
-
Is Amazon Photos using MS-DOS to store your pictures?
I know I like to end all of my files with COM9, because that’s 9 times better than COM1. -
Social Media Politics and more – This Geek in Review for 6 Mar 2020
Facebook has lost its luster with me awhile ago, and part of the reason was the issues with politics. Apparently, I can’t blame social media for all of our polarized politics. It’s still not enough to get me back to FB. And yes, it is ironic if you are reading this article because I shared it to my Facebook page.
A couple of years ago I looked at Vivaldi as an alternative browser. I liked it a lot, but then Brave came along. Brave has all sorts of privacy features, and now it is found that Brave is the most private browser.
Seventeen years ago, the Etch-a-Sketch became a very popular toy by being in a movie with Will Ferrell. It’s still a frustrating toy due to its reliance on right angles. Now, you can finally draw curves on the Etch-a-Sketch!
Lego bricks and Star Wars – The Total Package
I’d like to see more builds where the choice of Lego bricks is limited, but it’s exciting when you see a master build:
When you are going on a trip, you can estimate your gas costs with a calculator. But, when there is an app for everything, there is also a website for everything else. CostToDrive.com will calculate the costs of a trip for you based on the actual car you’re driving.
Back in 2015, the CEO of Gravity Payments set the minimum wage of every employee to $70,000. While the transition had some rough patches the end result 5 years later is pretty positive.
What happens when you’re 95 years old and your Gameboy breaks? You send it off to Nintendo who apparently still has new Nintendo Gameboys to use as a replacement.
The VHS Vault is a great collection of old videotapes that you can now watch on the Internet Archive.
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
I had no idea that the Cyndi Lauper song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was a cover!
-
Keybase offers encrypted storage, encrypted instant messaging, teams support, and web hosting
More and more of life leaves bits of digital information about us on numerous devices and services. This may include cloud services. Keybase is a service I’ve been checking out as way to securely save and share information, encrypted.
Sell it to me Goz
Keybase provides messaging services, cloud storage, and team messaging services, along with encryption to support everything. Nothing leaves your machine unencrypted. There is no way for anyone at Keybase to look at anything you’ve said or stored in Keybase.
The cloud storage shows up as a drive on your operating system of choice (Windows, macOS, and Linux). Inside of this storage is a private area for your use, or there can be shared folders. Files placed in the drive are encrypted before leaving your machine. No one can read your data, not even anyone at Keybase.
The public folder in your Keybase drive is available over
https://. Files placed in the public can be shared with a simple web link. You can even host full websites.Even if you don’t use Keybase, you can use the website to encrypt data meant for my eyes only. On the Keybase website there is a form that allows you to encrypt data for a Keybase user.
Once the data is encrypted you can safely email it or send it through a messaging service. Only the recipient will be able to decrypt the message. No one else will be able to read it.
I am Spartacus!
A key piece of Keybase is the ability to authenticate people. Well, you’re not guaranteed that the person you are talking to is who you think it is, but it is pretty close. A user of Keybase can prove to Keybase that the user is in control of various accounts and domain names (or websites). If you visit my profile on Keybase, you can see that I verified several different accounts. For an attacker to masquerade as me, they would have to take over several accounts on different services. I secure most of the sites with two factor authentication, which would make the task even harder.
Using
After installing the software, you can immediately start using it for chatting and storage. Be sure to save your pass phrase somewhere safe. If you lose it, you will lose your account and everything in it. Keybase cannot restore any information because all of your data is encrypted. Additional devices can be approved from any device that is already signed in. You can set up the software on your desktop, and then approve your smartphone from the desktop.
Files can be stored securely in the mounted drive. I’ve started to use this storage for sensitive documents such as tax returns and medical forms & bills.
There isn’t a search function to find others, you’ll have to know their name to add them and start chatting.
Teams
Everyone talks about Slack and Discord, but Keybase also lets you set up teams and channels. The teams also can share data.
Git
I haven’t played around with the Git features. Git is a distributed version control system, and with Keybase, you can store your repository in an encrypted form and share it with your team or selected others.
This seems complicated
Security is tough, and encryption adds another layer of complexity. Keybase takes away a lot of the difficulties on staying safe and secure. Also, any security assumes your machine is not infected with any sort of malware or viruses. If someone has control of your machine, then all bets are off.
Feel free to shoot me a message if you sign up. Even if you’re not going to use it for chatting the other encrypted features make Keybase useful.
-
The passing of the creator of copy & paste and more – This Geek in Review for 28 Feb 2020
Technology has become ubiquitous, and it’s hard to imagine some of the foundations of how things work. Copy and paste is one of them. The creator of copy and paste passed away this past week. Xerox Parc had no idea what they had, but I don’t fault them. Back then, personal computers was the wild west. People and companies didn’t know what to think, and problems were all new. Mr. Tesler created something that we take for granted. One of the complaints of the original iPhone was the lack of copy and paste. The iPhone didn’t get copy and paste for two years with iOS 3.0. The New York Times has more information.
Oh my goodness
As a parent, you learn not to give in to cuteness because sometimes kids are playing you. But, the new Baby Yoda from Hasbro has grown my heart 3 sizes in one day
I can’t imagine editing photos on a black & white Macintosh, but version 1 ran on the Macintosh Plus.
Steve Jobs practiced mindfulness, and researchers estimate that when Steve Jobs died at 56, his brain was only 27. I’m hoping playing violent video games will do the same for me.
One of the reasons I haven’t gotten a Nintendo Switch is how Nintendo handles app purchases. Their treatment of saved games isn’t but better. This past week they’ve shown even more contempt for their users with the handling of saved games with Animal Crossing.
Google is putting up quick little games in in HTML 5. Head on over to Gamesnacks for a quick play.
Huey Lewis and the C64
In the 80s, Jma Mitch had a Commodore 64 and Electronics Arts Music Construction Kit. Although I don’t approve of the C64, I can’t not share this. Jma Mitch only did Huey Lewis songs recently found his disks. Enjoy!
