January 2017 - Page 7 of 9 - How to Kill an Hour

Delete yourself from the Internet!

12th January 2017/in Gadgets / Tech, Technology /by billywright

Now you can DELETE yourself from the internet!

There is a Investigatory Powers Bill which is also known as the Snooper’s Charter, if this is passed into law, then every digital thing you do will be recorded and held for up to 12 months!

Two Swedish Men, Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unnebäck, have created a website that will erase you from the internet it’s called Deseat.me, you log in with your Google account, it will then pull up all the services and apps linked to that Google account and then give you steps to delete those accounts – the proper way.

Privacy is huge for Willie and Linus they decided to build their service to run on your computer only as “the only thing you’re telling us is what accounts you want to delete. That’s it, and since we use Google’s OAuth protocol we don’t have access to any of your login information.”

Which is different than – Just Delete Me or Account killer who both hold directories of links you can use to delete yourself from the internet.

To hear the guys talking about this please click here!

Edit Tweets?

9th January 2017/in Gadgets / Tech, Technology /by billywright

The CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey has asked Twitter users what improvements that they want to see on the site in 2017. He has over 5,700 replies so far.

The most requested feature is to edit Tweets after you sent them, rather than having to delete and start over. This feature while is the most requested is also one that is most polarizing.

While Jack Dorsey agreed that a “form of edit is def needed” and that “the company is thinking a lot about it” – he suggests that anything more than a quick edit would require some sort of changelog (revision history) — yet this would cause all kinds of problems:

Other problems that revision history (or any kind of edit for that matter) would run into is that a user wouldn’t know who liked the tweet and which version of it. Say for example you post a tweet and it gets 100 likes and you change that tweet 3 times. How many of those 100 people liked which version of the tweet? Or a tweet could be changed entirely which would cause the company to lose and damage trust in their service. As news sites and individuals could change a few words and the whole context of the tweet would mean something else – and by ‘endorsing’ the original tweet and having it changed do they still ‘like’ the tweet or do they have to ‘like’ it again – as you can see a simple ‘edit’ button can open a lot of problems for Twitter!

Other ideas asked of Dorsey would be a way to introduce bookmarks of tweets so users can find their favorite of their most ‘liked’ tweets plus an improvement on eradicating bullying on the service – which Dorsey called Twitters ‘Main Priority’

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Picture of Marcus Bronzy from the How To Kill An Hour Podcast

Episode 145 – The Cult of Apple!

9th January 2017/in Shows /by billywright

10 Years of iPhone

9th January 2017/0 Comments/in Gadgets / Tech, Technology /by billywright

REAL LIFE IRON MAN

8th January 2017/in Gadgets / Tech, Technology /by billywright

All of your childhood dream (and adulthood dreams too for that matter) have come true and your prayers answered. A life size, fully animated Iron Man suit is real! (But it will cost $360,000.

Chinese Comoany “The Toys Asia” we can get an inisight into what it would be like to be Tony Stark and save the world as Iron Man! Their version of the Iron Man suit includes 46 motors which control and power 567 moving parts!

It even has it’s own remote control so you can be all action hero like and open the armour to see all of the components inside of it. But don’t go walking into it though. You can’t actually sit in it or walk in it, or do anything cool with it. Due to all the moving parts (and pesky health and safety) it’s basically a really cool ornament.

Still looks good to look at right?

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Google Maps KNOWS where you are!

8th January 2017/in Gadgets / Tech, Technology /by billywright

Turns out Google knows everywhere you’ve been and has a log of it.

Google has a program that uses red dots on a map to mark where a user is and has been which of course makes it easier to identify them if anyone wishes to do so.

To see exactly what Google has been up to, just click here and log in with the same Google account that you use on your phone and you will be able to see exactly where Google has a record of you from the day one of the current month that you’re in.

Even if you turn off all the privacy settings the folks over at Google still collect your info.

But you can reduce that by a following a few simple steps:

Go to the Google Maps Location History page and click the gear logo to access History settings.

Here you can disable or enable the service. (Disabling still doesn’t remove past history)

To erase the information Google Maps has on you over the past 30 days go to the Location History Page and use the pull down menu to highlight the history of up to 30 days. Below the Calendar you’ll see an option to delete your history from the time period you have chosen or to delete ALL history.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Episode 144 – Google Knows ALL!

8th January 2017/in Shows /by billywright

US asks for Social Media Accounts?!

8th January 2017/in Gadgets / Tech, Technology /by billywright

If you want to travel to the US under the visa waiver program you will now have an optional question to fill out in the ESTA form. (Electronic System for Travel Authorization, basically a form which you have to fill out to get into the United States)

It reads: “Please enter information associated with your online presence,” along with a drop-down menu for various social media outlets and a text box for the username associated with each one.

Reportedly this was introduced to help identify Terrorist threats and was suggested way back in June 2016. It has just passed the DepDepartment of Homeland Security has approved the controversial proposal on December 19th.

There has been a lot of worry about this of course due to privacy risks and there is a worry that discrimination would “fall hardest on Arab and Muslim communities, whose usernames, posts, contacts and social networks will be exposed to intense scrutiny.”

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!