Finding an Android browser that works without fuss is harder than you think

With my last two cellphones, I’ve not used the default browser. I usually opted for Firefox, and in December 2018, I believe that’s what I did on my then-new Meizu M6 Note.    I don’t recall it being too problematic, but the type on some sites displayed a tad small, so I sampled a few […]

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Cellphone? What cellphone?

It’s true. I spent time on business development, answering emails, doing tech stuff on our sites, and generally kept on top of things. I often wonder if I would have become an active Facebooker or Tweeter had they been invented and come into my orbit in, say, 2002. We all may have been too busy […]

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Andrew Yang’s campaign: #YangGang was just the beginning

Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons On Andrew Yang’s run for the Democratic nomination in the US: If Mastodon ever stops supporting that Javascript, I wrote: ‘Pretty stoked at what Andrew Yang has managed to achieve. Certain forces tried to minimize his coverage, to give him as little legitimacy as possible (sounds familiar). Yet he also normalized the […]

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Human-centred peripherals should be the norm

I’ve had a go at software makers before over giving us solutions that are second-best, because second-best has become the convention. While I can think of an explanation for that, viz. Microsoft packaged Windows computers in the 1990s with Word and Outlook Express, it’s harder to explain why peripherals haven’t been human-centred.    I thought […]

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Facebook takes away user control over their own advertising preferences

Facebook’s advertising preferences are getting more useless by the day. Even a company as dodgy as Google has managed to keep its preference page working.    Over the years I’ve been telling people that they can delete their interests from Facebook if they’re uncomfortable with the targeting, since Facebook gathers these interests even when you […]

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No longer a customer, Lumino still gives me reason to be wary about how they handle my private data

An email sent by me on March 27 to the head office of Lumino (the dentists). Link added for readers’ reference. I’ll let you make up your own minds. Hi Josephine: How are you?    I hate to bother you once more, as you had done everything you could to resolve the privacy issues I […]

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Huawei without Google: isn’t that a good thing?

I see Google’s going to stop supporting Huawei as a developer. How is this a bad thing?    First, Huawei can still get the public parts of Android, since they’re open-source. Secondly, if they don’t get updates ahead of time, so what? When have western software companies rolled out bug-free updates? Based on my own […]

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The newer the Instagram, the clunkier the video

It’s been nearly one week with the new Meizu M6 Note.    It’s the “international” model, which means it’s not Chinese-spec, and there was no way to turn it into a Chinese one.    One observation is that the international one is far buggier than the Chinese one. Either that, or Android 7 is far […]

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Meizu’s made it harder to switch OSes and root the M6 Note—at least I managed the latter

Above: If phones were sentient beings, it probably is a bit mean to have the old phone take a photo of its successor. After a drop to the ground (and by that I mean the hard floor at the local Pak ’n’ Save) produced lines on the screen of my old Meizu M2 Note, I […]

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If you thought Facebook wasn’t creepy enough

How much creepier can Facebook get? How about a patent filing where signals hidden in TV broadcasts will activate the mic on your phone, the recording sent to Facebook?    Facebook claims that it might want this patent, but it will never use this technology.    A bit like how Facebook claims it wouldn’t kick […]

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