BRUCEB NEWS
Zero Click Searches & Google AI Mode
AI is taking over online searches. At the moment, that’s good news - the AI summaries are increasingly reliable and helpful. In the long term, they might be so good that paradoxically, they contribute to the enshittification of the internet. It’s a big, complicated,...
Dropbox Smart Sync Included With All Paid Plans
Dropbox Smart Sync is now included with all paid plans for individuals and businesses. It's not a feature of Dropbox's free account, but that plan is so limited that the lack of...
The Nine Billion Windows Keyboard Shortcuts
There are monks in a Tibetan lamasery working patiently to list all nine billion possible names of God, according to a 1953 story by Arthur C. Clarke. By an extraordinary...
Power And Cruelty In George Orwell’s America
Power Eric Lutz / Vanity Fair, April 3, 2020 Tierney Sneed / Talking Points Memo, May 13, 2020 Yahoo News, May 13, 2020 George Orwell on power: “Now I will tell you the answer to...
Tech Tidbits
As we enter into the twentieth year third month of the global pandemic, technology news has slowed down as much as everything else. There aren't many things to tell you about!...
The Outlook Search Bar Is Changing, Whether You Like It Or Not. (You Won’t Like It.)
If you use the Outlook desktop program for Windows, the search bar is going to change and move around and grow and grow and grow like a mutant chicken heart from an old horror...
What’s Wrong With Office 365 Junk Mail Filtering?
Too many important messages are going into my Outlook Junk Email folder, and I can't figure out why. Seriously, I don't know how to explain it. Several of my clients have...
How To Turn Off The Dropbox Desktop App (And Why Is There A Desktop App, Anyway?)
Dropbox started as a drop-dead simple product for individuals: a folder on your computer that seamlessly syncs with the cloud so you can work with the identical folder on all...
Outlook Tip: How To Turn Off “Top Results”
When you search your email in Outlook, you might see three messages chosen as "Top results" by sophisticated AI & machine learning algorithms. Well, it's supposed to be smart...
Windows Tip: How To Stop The Disappearing Scroll Bar
Have you noticed that scroll bars in Windows 10 get squeezed to a thread or disappear? It's one of those small annoyances that the authorities slip into our lives to keep us on...
Is Zoom Safe To Use?
The world has adopted Zoom for video chats with friends and family while we shelter, for good reasons: it's free or inexpensive, it's easy to use, and it works very well....
Shooting Fish In A Barrel: Microsoft Is Rebranding Office 365
Shared communication is one of the underpinnings of civilization. It sets humans apart from animals. Microsoft is engaged in a long-term effort to prevent us from being able to...
A Few Nice Things
We can all use some nice things. The illustration above is from Charlie Mackesy's book The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse, a gentle book about love and friendship and how...
Covid-19 Is Straining The Internet
Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people are using their Internet connection more intensely than they did just a few weeks ago. Usage ramped up so quickly that the...
The Dangers Of Location Tracking
Having government and big companies track our locations is a horrific invasion of privacy. We can be sure that big companies will be careless with private information about us,...
Working Remotely: Splashtop Tips For Dual Monitors & Blurry Displays
A lot of you are working remotely, connecting to an office computer from a home computer or laptop. Here are some tips that can improve that experience - setting your office...