Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
John Luttig / luttig's learnings:
The internet tailwinds that propelled meteoric growth in Silicon Valley are stalling, which will accelerate zero-sum games between startups and incumbents — The Internet tailwinds that propelled Silicon Valley's meteoric growth for decades are stalling out. The ripple effects will jolt the tech industry.
Christopher Miller / BuzzFeed News:
How activists are protesting online, like dropping pins with protest messages beside Russian government buildings on Yandex.Maps, holding Zoom conferences, more — Lockdown measures have stopped many protesters from going outside. So they're getting creative.
Tom Krazit / Protocol:
Interview with Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, on rearranged priorities due to the COVID-19 crisis, competition, his evolving strategy around M&A, and more — More than a year after he joined Google Cloud, the CEO has made little headway against AWS and Microsoft.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
While others like Disney and WarnerMedia change schedules to try to salvage part of the year, Netflix says it has enough content to not move its 2020 slate — The streamer's 2020 slate won't move around, exec says — The most pressing issue entertainment companies around the world …
Gerry Smith / Bloomberg:
A look at Luminary Media, a year after its launch as “the Netflix of podcasting”: company says subscriber base grew by 14% in the past six weeks amid lockdown — No ads. No Axelrod. No problem. New CEO is gung-ho on subscription model — When Luminary Media launched in April 2019 …
The frustration in Marc Andreessen’s post on our failure to prepare and respond competently to the coronavirus pandemic is palpable, and his diagnosis is adamant: “a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to ‘build.’” Why don’t we have vaccines and medicines, or even masks and ventilators? He writes: “We could have these things but we chose not to—specifically we chose not to have the mechanisms, the factories, the systems to make these things. We chose not to ‘build.’”
Forgetting for a moment that this is coming from the same guy who famously explained in 2011 “why software is eating the world,” Andreessen, an icon of Silicon Valley, does have a point. As George Packer has written in the Atlantic, the coronavirus pandemic has revealed much of what is broken and decayed in politics and society in America. Our inability to make the medicines and stuff that we desperately need, like personal protective gear and critical care supplies, is a deadly example.
Silicon Valley and big tech in general have been lame in responding to the crisis. Sure, they have given us Zoom to keep the fortunate among us working and Netflix to keep us sane; Amazon is a savior these days for those avoiding stores; iPads are in hot demand and Instacart is helping to keep many self-isolating people fed. But the pandemic has also revealed the limitations and impotence of the world’s richest companies (and, we have been told, the most innovative place on earth) in the face of the public health crisis.
Big tech doesn’t build anything. It’s not likely to give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. We don’t even seem to know how to make a cotton swab. Those hoping the US could turn its dominant tech industry into a dynamo of innovation against the pandemic will be disappointed.
It’s not a new complaint. A decade ago, in the aftermath of what we once called “the” great recession, Andrew Grove, a Silicon Valley giant from earlier era, wrote a piece in Bloomberg BusinessWeek decrying the loss of America’s manufacturing prowess. He described how Silicon Valley was built by engineers intent on scaling up their inventions; “the mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production.” Grove said those who argued that we should let “tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die” were wrong: scaling up and mass-producing products means building factories and hiring thousands of workers.
But Grove wasn’t just worried about the lost jobs as production of iPhones and microchips went overseas. He wrote: “Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.”
The pandemic has made clear this festering problem: the US is no longer very good at coming up with new ideas and technologies relevant to our most basic needs. We’re great at devising shiny, mainly software-driven bling that makes our lives more convenient in many ways. But we’re far less accomplished at reinventing health care, rethinking education, making food production and distribution more efficient, and, in general, turning our technical know-how loose on the largest sectors of the economy.
Economists like to measure technological innovation as productivity growth—the impact of new stuff and new ideas on expanding the economy and making us richer. Over the last two decades, those numbers for the US have been dismal. Even as Silicon Valley and the high-tech industries boomed, productivity growth slowed.
The last decade has been particularly disappointing, says John Van Reenen, an MIT economist who has recently written about the problem (pdf). He argues that innovation is the only way for an advanced country like the US to grow over the long run. There’s plenty of debate over the reasons behind sluggish productivity growth—but, Van Reenen says, there’s also ample evidence that a lack of business- and government-funded R&D is a big factor.
His analysis is particularly relevant because as the US begins to recover from the covid-19 pandemic and restart businesses, we will be desperate for ways to create high-wage jobs and fuel economic growth. Even before the pandemic, Van Reenen proposed “a massive pool of R&D resources that are invested in areas where market failures are the most substantial, such as climate change.” Already, many are renewing calls for a green stimulus and greater investments in badly needed infrastructure.
So yes, let’s build! But as we do, let’s keep in mind one of the most important failures revealed by covid-19: our diminished ability to innovate in areas that truly count, like health care and climate change. The pandemic could be the wake-up call the country needs to begin to address those problems.
David Pan / CoinDesk:
A look at Beijing-based Red Date, the company responsible for the tech of China's upcoming Blockchain Service Network, and BSN's alliance with AWS, China Mobile — A driving force behind the scenes of China's ambitious blockchain infrastructure project says he used to be skeptical of the technology.
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Profile of Josh Zimmerman, a life coach for influencers, who says his clients' careers have become more consuming, uncertain, and scrutinized during COVID-19 — Josh Zimmerman is a life coach for creators, whose careers have become ever more consuming, uncertain and subject to scrutiny under coronavirus.
Ian Sherr / CNET:
A look at the challenges workers of Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Facebook, and Google encounter working from home and how the companies are responding — Apple, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Uber set new policies for employees working from home as tech culture clashes with family life.
Linda Kinstler / Protocol:
Interview with IBM's Executive VP John Kelly III on the company's plans to build ethical AI systems during and after the COVID-19 pandemic — IBM's Executive Vice President John Kelly III tells Protocol how the company has ramped up its efforts to build ethical AI systems and tracking tools in the wake of a pandemic.
Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg:
E-commerce stocks soar amid pandemic as analysts expect upcoming results will reveal a potentially permanent shift in consumer behavior toward online shopping — - Online retail is making in-roads into categories like grocery — Amazon, eBay, Wayfair and Shopify among the outperformers
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Research: ~150 new domain registrations starting with “reopen”, and many ending with US place names, are tied to state GOP orgs and other conservative groups — The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word “reopen” and ending with U.S. city or state names.
Shannon Vavra / CyberScoop:
In court documents, WhatsApp claims that NSO Group used US-based servers to direct malware to WhatsApp user devices — The legal battle between software surveillance vendor NSO Group and Facebook continues (Greg Otto/Scoop News Group) — Lawyers for WhatsApp's parent company alleged …
Google refines Search every year, training its algorithms to understand language and context to help you find exactly what you’re looking for online. However, Google will, on occasion, fail. And now, rather than leave you in the dark, it’s going to admit its failings.
In a post on The Keyword, Google details how it’s now going to admit defeat on certain web searches. On the very few occasions that Google fails to deliver solid results, you’ll now see, “It looks like there aren’t any great matches for your search”.
This message will be accompanied by some tips to help you further refine your search. The idea being that by providing more (and clearer) information, Google will be able to turn its failures into successes. It will even provide alternative search terms to try.
Starting today in the US, we’re rolling out a new message for when Google hasn’t been able to find anything matching your search particularly well. The message may also provide some alternative searches & tips on how to reformulate your query. Learn more: https://t.co/76TAzYWfMg pic.twitter.com/pY3ePEi3lx
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 23, 2020
Google will obviously also still provide results, and it’s up to you whether or not you use them. It’s just that the company will be admitting upfront that they may not deliver what you were looking for. Potentially saving you from time-consuming disappointment.
Google is keen to point out that it already employs several methods to avoid this happening. As an example, if you spell something incorrectly, Google Search will detect the misspelling and provide results for the words and phrases it thinks you meant to type.
To be fair, Google is usually brilliant at helping you find what you’re looking for on the web. Which means you’re unlikely to ever see this message. However, on the odd occasion that Google cannot provide solid results, it’s nice to know that Google will admit as much.
If Google does let you down, here’s how to find anything and everything using Google Search. And if you want even more ways to find what you’re looking for on the web, be sure to check out our Google Search cheat sheet packed full of tips and tricks.
Read the full article: Google Will Now Admit When Its Search Results Suck
One very easy way to bring text to life in logos, page headers, and other parts of your branding is to add texture to it.
Whether it’s a watercolor effect, metal, flames, or something else, texture can bring interest to otherwise flat type.
Here are the steps you need to add a texture to text in Adobe Photoshop…
Using the Text tool, type out your text in Photoshop. You need to use a thicker font to make sure the full effect of the texture is visible—at the very least choose a bold variant of your chosen typeface.
Also, try and match the font to the kind of texture you want to use. A handwritten font works well with a watercolor texture; a slab font goes well with a metallic effect, and so on. Check out our guide detailing where to download free fonts to increase your options.
The color of the text doesn’t matter as it will soon get covered with a texture.
Your texture can come from two places. You can either make it manually on a separate layer in your Photoshop file, or you can import it from an external image file.
It’s easy enough to create your own textures in Photoshop for simple things, like adding a color gradient to your text. However, in many cases you’ll be better off using an existing texture from another file. You can find many ready-made ones on some of the best free stock image sites.
The next step is to place your texture. If you’ve made your own, make sure it’s on a layer that is directly on top of your text layer.
If you’re importing a texture from another file, go to File > Place Embedded. Then navigate to the texture you are using and hit the Place button.
If the image is fully covering your text, hit Enter. If it isn’t, you can enlarge the texture using the handles at the corner of the image to change its size. (Be sure to hold down the Shift key if you want to maintain the proportions of the image.) Now hit Enter to move on.
Go to your Layers panel. (If it isn’t displayed, go to Windows > Layers.) You should see three layers in your file—the background, the text, and the texture.
Make sure that the layer containing the texture is placed right above the text. Now right-click that layer and select Create Clipping Mask.
The full texture layer will disappear, and only be visible where there’s text below it.
Both the text and texture layers remain fully editable, just as normal layers are. This means you can go back in and edit the text without needing to remove or reapply the texture. Add more text and the texture will automatically be placed on it.
If the texture isn’t placed exactly where you want it, select the layer and open the Marquee Tool, or hit M on your keyboard. You can move the texture around by holding the Ctrl key on Windows or Cmd on Mac and dragging the image around with your mouse.
If you want to resize it, right-click anywhere on the text, and click Free Transform. This will reactivate the bounding box around the texture and you can resize it in the same way detailed in Step 3 above when placing the image.
By now your image should be looking pretty good, and you can leave things there if you’re happy. But there’s one final, optional step you can try.
Depending on the type of effect you’re going for, you might not always want hard edges on your text. A flame texture, for example, could extend beyond the edges of your characters, or a corrosion effect could eat into them. Fortunately, this is easy to achieve.
To cut away the edges from your text, select the Text layer and click Add Vector Mask. Now choose the Brush tool (B), and select a brush that fits the style you want.
Next, set the Color to black, make sure you’ve selected the vector mask, and paint over the edges of the text. Paint white to restore any parts you’ve removed by mistake. It should look something like this:
To add more texture beyond the edges of your text, select the Text layer, then grab the Brush tool. Double-click on the canvas. You’ll be prompted to convert the text to a raster layer. This means you’ll no longer be able to edit the text, so you might want to duplicate the text layer first to create a backup. Click OK to continue.
Select an appropriate brush and set the paint color to white. Now start painting around the edges of the text and you’ll see more of your texture appearing. Because we aren’t using a mask here, you have to use the Undo tool to remove any mistakes.
The result will look something like this:
The final step is to save or export your image. Save it as a PSD file to save a master copy with all the editable layers in tact. Or save it as a JPEG to save a flattened copy of the image with a white background.
To save the text with a transparent background, perhaps for use on the web or in another graphic design document, remove or hide the white background layer, then save the image as a PNG file (or a GIF).
As you can see, it’s quite easy to add a texture to type in Photoshop. The most important thing is to get the right texture and the right fonts. If you need help picking fonts for your projects, our article on font pairing tips will help.
The clipping mask that we’ve used in this tutorial is a very versatile tool that lends itself to a lot of cool uses. It enables you to crop images in unique ways while making sure they’re still fully editable. You can learn one of the best uses in our guide detailing how to crop images using shapes in Photoshop.
Read the full article: How to Add Textures to Text in Adobe Photoshop
If you’ve ever set foot in a bookworm’s bedroom, the first thing you’ll notice are the books. In fact, there are probably so many books that the dusty shelves are creaking under the weight of limited edition hardcovers and dog-eared paperbacks.
This lack of space can lead people to wonder what they should do with their own books. Fortunately, there are a host of brilliant ereaders available, with the Amazon Kindle being the best of the bunch. And these devices solve the problem of space.
And that’s far from the only reason to buy a Kindle, even if you’re a fan printed books. So, in this article, we tell you why you should buy a Kindle, even if you love “real” books.
Forget the Kindle Store. Forget the convenience of having thousands of books on a single device no thicker than a pencil. Put aside the robust, well-built hardware that survives even the most careless of users.
The single biggest reason why the Kindle is awesome is because it’s really easy to use. There’s no learning curve and very few bells or whistles.
Front and center of this reading experience is the screen itself. The Kindle Paperwhite, the most popular Kindle model, uses E Ink Carta technology. With a visual appearance similar to printed words on a sheet of paper, the Paperwhite also has a dimmable screen for reading late at night, and no glare on sunny days.
Additionally, the latest version of Amazon’s E Ink screens refresh almost immediately, so there’s little to no lag.
The Kindle battery can also run for weeks on end while slowly sipping electricity. This makes reading on a Kindle just as easy, if not easier, than reading a printed book.
Moreover, unlike old-school books:
This winning combination of easy-to-use features has people reading far more than they otherwise would.
Lots of us read late at night, but hardcover books aren’t always great for reading in bed. Having a lamp on for too long can also cause eye strain.
This is why Amazon Kindle is great for night owls.
The reason for this? In all modern Kindle devices (ranging from the Paperwhite to the Oasis), there are small LED lights located beneath the screen. This LED system makes sure the screen is lit up just enough for you to read late at night, but not enough that the backlight can disrupt your sleep schedule.
Sleep disruptions caused by backlights are common with phones and laptops, but with Kindle devices, the LED system has a natural, soft white light. It can be manually adjusted for the amount of illumination you require, which ensures that you get the best of both worlds: sleep and entertainment.
Because you can buy even more books through the Kindle Store, that’s why.
Before we praise the Kindle Store, we want to say that we’re well aware that book lovers enjoy the act of browsing a bookstore to find new content. There’s something magical about wandering the aisles, only to find the perfect book on sale.
It’s hard to replicate that feeling of nostalgia and adventure in an online setting. Fortunately, having a Kindle doesn’t stop you from browsing the shelves. In fact, it will actually increase your ability to hunt for the best book.
The Kindle Store is much larger than most physical buildings. At the last count, it had millions upon millions of titles available, which is huge.
Additional facts about the Kindle Store:
Seriously, Kindle is by far the best platform to impulse buy books at all hours of the day, and find new content.
In 2013, Amazon acquired the book-based social network Goodreads for an undisclosed sum. While this move was initially quite controversial within the Goodreads community, since then, Amazon has largely maintained a hands-off approach to running the site.
The only thing that’s really changed? Amazon has slowly integrated support for Goodreads into all of its Kindle devices, making Goodreads one of the must-have mobile apps for book lovers around the world.
So long as you bought your Kindle from a supported Marketplace, your device should automatically have a Goodreads icon at the top of the screen. Through this integrated app function, you can:
This is a huge plus for book lovers, especially if you’re looking for ways to easily contribute to this millions-strong community of bibliophiles.
The Amazon Kindle isn’t perfect, but then, what is? However, we personally feel the advantages of owning a Kindle far outweigh the disadvantages.
For the majority of people, a Kindle offers the ideal way to read ebooks. They’re easy to use, have a low physical footprint, boast a long battery life, and a large storage capacity. And they’re pretty affordable too.
There are also plenty of apps and sites that can improve your Kindle experience. So, if you have the time, we suggest you read up on them too.
Read the full article: Why You Should Buy a Kindle (Even If You Love Real Books)
Factory resets are the nuclear solution for many Windows issues. If your computer is far slower than it once was, you have a malware infection that won’t go away or plan to sell your machine, a factory reset is the most convenient solution.
Depending on your setup and installed version of Windows, you have a few different ways to factory reset a Windows laptop or desktop. We’ll show you how to reset a Windows 10, 8, or 7 computer as easily as possible.
Before we look at how to reset Windows, you should ensure you have a recent backup of your files. Performing a factory reset will wipe out all your installed programs and files, so you don’t want to leave anything behind.
Check out our ultimate Windows 10 backup guide for all the available methods.
Factory resetting Windows was once an inconvenient process, but Microsoft introduced a much easier way to do so in Windows 8. It’s also included in Windows 10 and is the best way to factory reset a computer for most people.
To access it, head to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery. You’ll see a Reset this PC header; click the Get started button underneath this.
You’ll have two options to choose from when you reset Windows 10 this way: Keep my files or Remove everything.
The first option sets your options back to default and removes all your installed apps (like browsers, Microsoft Office, and games), but keeps your data. True to its name, Remove everything is a factory reset: it brings all options back to factory defaults and removes your files and apps.
Though the Keep my files option will retain your data, you should still back up before using it in case something goes wrong.
If you picked Remove everything, Windows will display some Additional settings for you to review. By default, the process will remove your files, but doesn’t securely erase them. It also only clears data from the drive where you have Windows installed.
Select Change settings to adjust these options. If you enable Data erasure, Windows will obliterate everything on the drive to reduce the chances of data recovery. Though this process takes some time, you should use it if you’re getting rid of your computer. It’s not necessary otherwise.
Finally, enable Data drives to erase everything on all drives you have connected to your computer. This includes external hard drives and recovery drives. Because you probably have backups and files on those drives, you shouldn’t use this unless you want to permanently erase everything associated with your computer.
Otherwise, if you picked Keep my files, you’ll see a summary of what Windows is about to do. Click the List of apps to be removed link to see what apps it will uninstall.
Starting with the Windows 10 20H1 update, Microsoft will offer a Cloud download option at this point. This lets you reset Windows 10 by downloading a fresh copy from the internet, which could come in handy if your current installation is corrupted or you have a fast network connection.
Finally, confirm the operation by clicking Reset and wait for the process to complete. If you’re factory resetting a laptop, make sure you plug it in to avoid losing power during the operation. You’ll need to walk through the setup procedure once it’s done—make sure you take the right steps after installing Windows 10 too.
In a past update to Windows 10, Microsoft added a new way to factory reset your computer. It’s similar to the above, but has a few small differences that make it worth a look.
On the Settings > Update & Security > Recovery page, click the link text Learn how to start fresh with a clean installation of Windows at the bottom. This will open a Windows Security window to the Fresh start option. Click Get started to proceed.
Compared to the above reset option, Fresh Start has the following differences:
To summarize, Fresh Start downloads a fresh copy of the most recent Windows 10 version, keeps your files and some settings, and doesn’t leave any bloatware aside from Store apps. In comparison, the standard reset option lets you choose whether to keep your files, doesn’t save any settings, and will reinstall Windows and apps based on your recovery partition.
Keep in mind that after doing this, you may need to enter license keys again for premium apps and will likely need to update system drivers.
If you’re not using Windows 8 or 10, want to know how to factory reset Windows 10 without the Settings menu, or don’t want to use the methods above for some reason, you can always factory reset Windows using installation media. This allows you to install a fresh copy of Windows on your computer and wipe out everything currently on it.
For Windows 10, check how to install Windows 10 using Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool, which is free and easy.
If you want to reinstall Windows 7 or 8 from scratch, you can use Microsoft’s Windows 7 download tool or Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 download tool. These let you download an ISO to burn onto a flash drive or DVD so you can reinstall Windows. You’ll need to provide a valid Windows 7 product key to do so, but that’s not necessary for downloading Windows 8.1.
Either way, simply insert the USB drive or disc containing your install media, then boot from the removable device. You’ll be greeted with the Windows setup screen, which you can proceed through to install a clean copy. Remember that doing this will remove everything currently on the drive where you install Windows.
While the three methods listed above will work for the most users, there are a few advanced ways to reset Windows if you’re interested. To run a Windows 10 factory reset from boot (in case you can’t get into Windows normally, for example), you can start a factory reset from the Advanced Startup menu.
To launch this if Windows is working properly, visit Settings > Update & Security > Recovery. Under the Advanced startup section, click Restart now to reboot into Advanced Startup. Alternatively, hold down the Shift key as you click the Restart button on the power menu.
In case you can’t do either of these, try pressing F11 as you boot, which will open Advanced Startup on some systems. Failing this, Windows will launch Advanced Startup on its own after three failed boots.
Once it’s open, choose Troubleshoot, then select Reset This PC to begin the same factory reset procedure as #1 above. You can pick Advanced options for more choices, but none of them let you factory reset Windows 10 unless you have a saved system image.
Otherwise, you may be able to boot into the BIOS and directly access the recovery partition on your hard drive, if your PC manufacturer included one. However, if you factory reset with this method, you’ll reinstall all the manufacturer bloatware. While it’s not ideal, it can work if you have no other options.
You can also type “create a recovery drive” into the Start menu to access a tool that lets you make your own. However, this requires a fair bit of space, and you’ll have to do it before you have a problem. If you didn’t already make one, you’re best off making a new Windows 10 install disk as described in #3.
Overall, if you’re using Windows 8 or 10, one of the built-in reset options is your best bet. Windows 7 users should download an image from Microsoft and perform a clean installation that way.
You have several options for factory resetting a Windows computer. Whether you need to full reset your laptop before you sell it or just want to refresh your PC for a performance boost, one of these methods will have you on your way as fast as possible.
In case you run into problems, we have help on fixing issues that occur when installing Windows.
Read the full article: 4 Ways to Factory Reset Your Windows Computer
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Sources: China orders ByteDance to temporarily remove its Slack-style office app Feishu, after discovering content from banned sites like Facebook and Twitter — - Regulators found the app allowed access to Facebook, Twitter — The decision deals a blow to ByteDance's internet ambitions
