Technics

Many users have reported seeing a rather worrying notification when they load up Google Chrome, which reveals that Chrome will start showing them ads that rely on data from your browsing history.  This immediately rang alarm bells for users as it’s essentially accessing your private log of online browsing activity to show you ads specific to you, without being clear about how often your history will be accessed.  Many users, as well as experts on internet privacy, see this as a pretty huge violation of privacy by not giving users the ability to give their informed consent.  What’s Google been up to? Simply put, Chrome takes the accumulated personal data, profiling users, and flagging up topics of interest, basing it on the most recent weeks of browsing history. When you visit a website within Chrome, it can then ask you to personalize the ads presented to you while you’re on the page. Google claims that it shares […]

YouTube may be held hostage by its own TikTok competitor, Shorts, as staffers are worried that the short-form content may cannibalise its long-term videos, which have been the key driver of views for almost two decades.  The Financial Times reports that YouTube’s ad revenue may have improved recently, but has been in a downward slide year over year for three consecutive quarters. A few years ago many social video platforms were concerned about the rapid rise of TikTok, leading YouTube to introduce Shorts.  The short-form video content on YouTube is still relatively new, and the company is still figuring out how to reap more financial gains from Shorts. Longer, more traditional, YouTube videos show more ads per video, but with shorter clips steadily taking over our feeds, content creators are uploading fewer longer videos.  Damned if you do … A few friends of mine who are modestly successful content creators on YouTube have said a few times […]

Meta could introduce a new subscription tier for Facebook and Instagram that’ll remove ads in users’ feeds – at least in Europe, to begin with.  According to an article from The New York Times, Meta is considering the paid subscription to curb concerns by EU institutions surrounding data privacy and ads. So far, there’s no information about any potential pricing or release dates, or even if the ‘product’ will actually be launched and released to the public.  The tech giant has been splashed across newsfeeds in a fight with EU regulators about privacy violations from ad-tracking services and how private data is handled. Earlier this year Meta was slapped with a record $1.3bn fine for the alleged mishandling of EU data, the third time Meta has been admonished by European regulating bodies.   Avoiding EU wrath The Verge notes that Meta has started offering users the ability to opt out of targeted advertising in the EU. It […]

It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.  Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s good fun, but also difficult. What’s more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a new variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.  But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints, you’ll probably need some for this game too.  I’m a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who’s been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #588 and the answers to the main […]

It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.  Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s good fun, but also difficult. What’s more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a new variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.  But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints, you’ll probably need some for this game too.  I’m a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who’s been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #587 and the answers to the main […]

It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.  Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s good fun, but also difficult. What’s more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a new variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.  But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints, you’ll probably need some for this game too.  I’m a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who’s been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #586 and the answers to the main […]

Google is regularly pushing out new features and functions for its Chrome browser, and the latest bunch of upgrades include a tool that makes it much easier to grab frames from videos that are streaming in the browser. As outlined on the Google Keyword blog (via The Verge), the newly added feature means all you need to do is pause a video, right-click on it, and then choose Copy video frame from the menu that pops up to get a still image. That image is copied to the system clipboard rather than saved anywhere, so you then need to paste it into your photo editing software of choice. It looks as though the grab is taken at the full resolution that the video is streaming at. Previously, you would’ve had to take a screenshot to capture a video frame: that works well enough, but you don’t necessarily get the highest resolution, and there might be overlays (such […]

It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.  Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s good fun, but also difficult. What’s more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a new variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.  But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints, you’ll probably need some for this game too.  I’m a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who’s been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #585 and the answers to the main […]

Microsoft has sneaked in a feature under the radar with the latest version of its Edge browser, one that allows you to easily capture screenshots of YouTube videos at their native resolution. Windows Latest spotted that this feature is now available in the stable (finished) version of Edge (116), but Microsoft didn’t announce it in the release notes for some reason. When playing a YouTube video (or with it paused), all you have to do is double-right-click on the video, and from the context menu that appears, select ‘Copy video frame.’ This puts a copy of the current frame being played (or paused) into the clipboard, and you can then paste it into your image editor (or wherever) to use it. Why not just hit ‘Print Screen’ to take a screenshot? As Windows Latest points out, if you take a grab this way, the resolution of the resultant image will be that of your desktop. However, if […]

It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.  Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s good fun, but also difficult. What’s more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a new variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.  But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints, you’ll probably need some for this game too.  I’m a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who’s been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #584 and the answers to the main […]

Microsoft’s latest bid to compete with the dominant Google Chrome browser is to remove features from its own Edge browser – rather than adding them. Since 2020, Edge has been based on the same Chromium engine as Chrome, and since then, Microsoft has been trying to tempt users of Google’s browser to switch to Edge by adding a considerable amount of unique features to differentiate the product. While some of these features have been welcome additions, such as the handy Split screen view, others have been less successful. Not only have these additional features failed to win over Chrome users, but it’s left Edge feeling bloated and overcrowded. It seems like Microsoft has realized that an over-stuffed Edge is doing more harm than good to its ambitions to increase its market share of web browsers, which may be why, as Neowin reports, Microsoft is killing off some of the less-used features in Edge. Slimming down In an […]

We’ve been treated to another Chrome leak which shows exactly how a previously leaked feature – the option to share your passwords with other Chrome users – will work. This again comes from a font of much browser-related knowledge on X (formerly Twitter), Leopeva64. Previously, Leopeva64 discovered the ability to share passwords on Chrome’s password management page (in testing, back at the end of June), and now they’ve found out how this works. If you don’t have a family group, the dialog will inform you that (for now) it is only possible to share passwords with members of those groups, and there will be a link to the website where you can create the family group.August 30, 2023 See more You’ll be able to click and share passwords – the ones you have stored within Chrome – but only with those who are a member of a Google ‘family group’ apparently. If you haven’t set up a […]