The 2018 internet resolution everyone should have: Bring back your browser bar

The 2018 internet resolution everyone should have: Bring back your browser bar: "Facebook created the newsfeed, and then turned to publishers/media outlets, and said: Guess what? Everyone's on Facebook. You want a piece of the action? You're gonna play ball with us. You'll put share buttons on all of your stories. You'll participate in our Facebook Instant Articles program. You'll advertise with us! When we tell you that we're going to start promoting video over articles, you're going to start making video. And then when we tell you what kind of video, you'll make that video too! And if you don't want to play ball, fine. Your competition will.  As a result, everyone started writing click-ier headlines. Maybe even misleading ones! Then, they started making video. You hate video on the internet? Tell that to Facebook, which realized it could charge advertisers more money for running video ads. "

How to know you're guilty of 'sidebarring' people

How to know you're guilty of 'sidebarring' people: "Sometimes we prioritise these electronic connections over what's happening in real life. In fact, if you're always messaging someone else when you're having dinner with a friend, at an event, or on a date (shame on you), there's a word for that. It's called "sidebarring.""

"...we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric..."

"I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. You are being programmed"

How to Protect Yourself After the Next Big Corporate Hack

Wired releases a digital surveillance self-defense guide

Email Is Broken. Can Anyone Fix It?

"The brutal truth seems to be that the only way to fix email is to fix our insecurity, neediness, and faux sense of urgency. Which seems unlikely. All developers can do in the meantime is try to help you climb the email mountain a little more easily."
https://www.wired.com/story/email-is-broken-can-anyone-fix-it/

Ciao, Chrome: Firefox Quantum Is The Browser Built for 2017

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Step-by-step guide to locking down your Facebook account

"If you're still using Facebook (I don't), your data is being used to profile you in seriously creepy ways; the best thing you can do is delete your Facebook account, but second-best is locking down your account, using the deliberately confusing, overly complexified privacy dashboard."

7 Tips for Presenting Bulleted Lists in Digital Content

"Summary: Bullet points help break up large blocks of text, make complex articles and blog posts easier to grasp, and make key information stand out."

Flat UI Elements Attract Less Attention and Cause Uncertainty

"Summary: Flat interfaces often use weak signifiers. In an eyetracking experiment comparing different kinds of clickability clues, UIs with weak signifiers required more user effort than strong ones."

The Ignorance of the Crowd

"Our social networks are like the biosphere: we don’t fully understand them; they’re changing rapidly; and these changes could lead to global collapse"

Batch file to check for new or changed files in a folder (including subfolders)

I created this batch file to check for new or changed files in a folder including subfolders.

• It uses Robocopy to build a local representation of the files and directory structure, but all files are 0-byte files for speed and storage efficiency
• It shows results on the screen, and adds everything to a log file for later perusal. 
• This example contains 4 blocks of the checker code, and only the first is set up to check one folder (my desktop), but you may add more as you wish (my real one monitors 4 folders). 
• I use Task Scheduler to run it every day; that could be less or more often as you wish.

The code is below, and is somewhat ::commented for your ease of understanding; you can place all this into a text file, change the things that need to be changed, rename the file to anything.bat, and there's your batch file.  Beware of line-wrapping from Blogger here. I'll number the lines so you know when that happens, please remove before use.

1. ::Written by Jeff Gillman
2. @echo off
3. MODE CON COLS=172 LINES=50
4. color 3e

5. ::define the log file
6. set log=C:\Users\[username]\filechecker\checker.log
7. ::write a date/timestamp to the log file
8. date /t >>%log%
9. time /t >>%log%


10. ::text that will be displayed at the beginning 
11. echo.
12. echo FileChecker: checks for new/udpated/deleted files in specific folders
13. echo    New = new file
14. echo    Newer = file updated since previous scan
15. echo    *EXTRA = file deleted at source
16. echo.
17. echo.


18. ::block 1 (first folder)
19. set source=c:\users\[username]\desktop
20. set target=c:\users\[username]\filechecker\desktop
21. echo.
22. echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%
23. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"
24. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%

25. ::color change to help user detect progress
26. color 4b

27. set source=\\[server1]\[folder1]
28. set target=c:\users\[username]\filechecker\[folder1]
29. echo.
30. echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%
31. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"
32. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%

33. color e5

34. ::block 2 (second folder)
35. set source=\\[server2]\[folder2]
36. set target=c:\users\[username]\filechecker\[folder2]
37. echo.
38. echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%
39. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"
40. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%

41. color f9

42. ::block 3 (third folder)
43. set source=\\[server2]\\[folder3][folder3]
44. echo.
45. echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%
46. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"
47. robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%


48. ::final display of info
49. echo.
50. color 4f
51. echo \
52. echo \\
53. echo \\\ The above is also logged to %log%
54. ::reset variables to null
55. set log=
56. set source=
57. set target=
58. echo.
59. echo Press any key to exit.
60. ::wait for keypress, hide text because we're using custom text above
61. pause>nul

62. exit

We are slaves to our smartphones — we are the Facebook Zombie Army. We are the Walking and Tweeting Dead

Beginner's Guide To Blockchain

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How to Track and Monitor Every System Change in Windows

I just used this to track where Chrome saved a web page with the To Be Read Light extension. I used to use InCtrl5 for this, but it doesn't work so well on Windows 10.

Android Guide: How to Use Android Effectively

Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows 7

Antivirus companies cause a big headache to small developers.

The linked article is depressing, because I have come to rely on VirusTotal to keep me safe. So I guess now I can only count on VirusTotal if it indicates something is completely clean. [sigh]

Stop the Endless Scroll. Delete Social Media From Your Phone

Google opens up 'Family Link' parental controls for Android

Three Questions to Ask Yourself About Fair Use Before Using Copyrighted Material

Is beaming down in Star Trek a death sentence?

The 'internet of things' is sending us back to the Middle Ages

Equifax Security Breach Is A Complete Disaster... And Will Almost Certainly Get Worse

How to Offer or Ask For Help (or Offer It) During An Emergency With Facebook

My Attention Disorder Was Brought On by my iPhone

"But I have a condition just as debilitating, marked by an inability to remain focused on a single task without getting distracted by something that catches my eye or floats to the top of the running to-do list in my head."

Cory Doctorow: Demon-Haunted World

How to Create a Full-Disk Backup of Your PC with Macrium Reflect

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With CrashPlan getting out of the consumer cloud backup game, what’s next best?

With CrashPlan getting out of the consumer cloud backup game, what’s next best? | Ars Technica:

'via Blog this'

You Don’t Need a Product Key to Install and Use Windows 10

How To Block Super Annoying Website Notification Requests In Chrome

Caution: salty language.

How to Find or Create an RSS Feed for Any Website

How to Use a Multimeter

The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

"Summary: Modal ads, ads that reorganize content, and autoplaying video ads were among the most disliked. Ads that are annoying on desktop become intolerable on mobile."

Batch file to check for new/changed/deleted files in folders

I created this batch file to check for new or changed files in a folder including subfolders. 

• It uses Robocopy to build a local representation of the files and directory structure, but all files are 0-byte files for speed and storage efficiency

• It shows results on the screen, and adds everything to a log file for later perusal. 

• This example contains 1 block of the checker code, to check one folder, but you may add more as you wish (my real one monitors 3 folders). 

• I use Task Scheduler to run it every day; that could be less or more often as you wish.

• I use a shortcut to it, with some changes made in Properties, to make it look better:
• Font tab:
       Size=16
       Font=Consolas
• Layout tab:
       Width (both)=196 (this is edge to edge on my display)
       Screen buffer height=3000 (so I can scroll back if many results)
       Window size Height = 40
       Window position= zero and zero, with "Let system position window" unchecked
• The code is below, and is somewhat ::commented for your ease of understanding; you can place all this into a text file, change the things that need to be changed, rename the file to anything.bat, and there's your batch file. Make the shortcut to it if you want and style it in the way mentioned above, and use that shortcut to run the file (either manually, or scheduled via Task Scheduler).
  

::Written by Jeff Gillman

@echo off

MODE CON COLS=172 LINES=50

color 3e

::define the log file

set log=C:\Users\[username]\filechecker\checker.log

::write a date/timestamp to the log file

date /t >>%log%

time /t >>%log%

::text that will be displayed at the beginning 

echo.

echo FileChecker: checks for new/udpated/deleted files in specific folders

echo    New = new file

echo    Newer = file updated since previous scan

echo    *EXTRA = file deleted at source

echo.

echo.

::block 1 (first folder)

set source=c:\users\[username]\desktop

set target=c:\users\[username]\filechecker\desktop

echo.

echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%

::color change to help user detect progress

color 4b

set source=\\[server1]\[folder1]

set target=c:\users\[username]\filechecker\[folder1]

echo.

echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%

color e5

::block 2 (second folder)

set source=\\[server2]\[folder2]

set target=c:\users\[username]\filechecker\[folder2]

echo.

echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%

color f9

::block 3 (third folder)

set source=\\[server2]\\[folder3][folder3]

echo.

echo ........... Checking for new files in %source%

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /l /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed"

robocopy %source% %target% /s /e /create /njh /njs /ndl /ns /purge | find /v "    Changed" >>%log%

::final display of info

echo.

color 4f

echo \

echo \\

echo \\\ The above is also logged to %log%

::reset variables to null

set log=

set source=

set target=

echo.

echo Press any key to exit.

::wait for keypress, hide text because we're using custom text above

pause>nul

exit

26 Google Maps Tricks You Need to Try

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Web developers: Stop Shaming Your Users for Micro Conversions

"Manipulinks make users feel bad about themselves in order to convince them to accept an offer or sign up for a newsletter."

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Web developers please read: Modal & Nonmodal Dialogs: When (& When Not) to Use Them

Reset Windows Update Client using PowerShell Script

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7 Tips for Presenting Bulleted Lists in Digital Content

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"Technology is becoming a force that surrounds humans—but not necessarily in the service of human ends."

How to Create a System Image Backup in Windows 7, 8, or 10

Why Social Media is Not Smart for Middle School Kids

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Social media hurting Americans' mental health, study says

Taking Notes By Hand May Be Better Than Digitally, Researchers Say

How to Encrypt Your Windows System Drive With VeraCrypt

These Commute-Friendly Phone Apps Don’t Require a Data Connection

How to go on a digital detox

Why and how to take a phone-free vacation.

How to Fix a Computer that Keeps Waking Up

SFCFix comes to the rescue when SFC /Scannow cannot repair Windows file corruption

BIOS/UEFI Setup Guide: Boot from a CD, DVD, USB Drive or SD Card

How to Digitize Old Photos with Your Smartphone

What You Need to Know When Buying Glasses Online

I'll just put in a plug here that we've had good luck with Zenni Optical.

How to Get Rid of AVG’s Notifications and Bundled Software

How to add Encrypt or Decrypt item to right-click context menu in Windows 10/8/7

This is only for professional/enterprise versions of Windows that support EFS encryption.

Here's how you can still get a free Windows 10 upgrade

How to Get Rid of Avira’s Notifications, Sounds, and Bundled Software

A Soft Murmur - build your own ambient soundscape

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The Real Name Fallacy

"People often say that online behavior would improve if every comment system forced people to use their real names. It sounds like it should be true – surely nobody would say mean things if they faced consequences for their actions?"