May 2018

One thing that I really like on mobile devices is the long-tap functionality to write different characters to the screen when I long-tap on a key. Useful to write Umlauts ä,ö, or ü, or other special characters that may not be accessible directly on the keyboard.

A long-tap on a smartphone displays additional keys that you may select. The same function is not available on desktop PCs; one reason for that is probably the physical keyboard that you use when you work on desktop computers.

While most Windows users probably never come into contact with the Windows command line unless they run into some kind of issue and receive advise to run commands to repair it, it is still useful to know at least some of the available commands.

Windows devices come without command line reference which means that you have to find other ways to get to know commands and how to use them on the operating system.

While you can type "help" on the command prompt to get a list of popular commands, the list that is returned to you when you run help is limited and incomplete.

Privacy Possum is a new open source browser extension for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browser by a former developer of the EFF's Privacy Badger extension.

The extension focuses on blocking data that companies may use to track you across the Internet. Tracking has gotten way out of hand on today's Internet thanks to a growing list of technologies that companies may use to track users and the financial incentives.

A new version of the popular password manager KeePass was released today that brings the version of the Windows program to KeePass 2.39.

KeePass is an open source password manager that stores the data in encrypted databases on local devices. It is extensible which means that you may install plugins or use browser extensions to integrated it with other programs or sync data across devices.

The new version of KeePass can best be described as a maintenance release even though new features are introduced as well.

Writing has always been something I enjoyed throughout my life, and nowadays I practically write for a living. You’d think that being a professional writer, I might have some kind of hyper-focus when I sit down to write...

But sadly, I openly admit to being easily distracted. Thankfully, there are different tools I utilize sometimes to help mitigate that issue; one such tool being FocusWriter.

When I installed Google Chrome Canary the other day on a new Windows machine, I noticed right away that the font looked off in the browser's interface and on websites that I opened in the browser.

While I knew that Chrome's font rendering could be bad under certain circumstances, the fact that it happened on the machine was surprising as I did not experience the issue in Chrome Stable on the same PC.

You can check out the font rendering on the screenshot below that I got initially after the installation of Google Chrome Canary on the device.

Patch Tuesday is just around the corner; Microsoft pushes out security updates and other updates for all of its products on the second Tuesday of the month.

While that is a good thing usually, Windows 10 users who have not upgraded systems to the new Windows 10 version 1803 "The April 2018 Update" may want to configure their devices to skip that update.

Microsoft plans to push the new feature update for Windows 10 to eligible PCs and devices this Tuesday.

If you want to find specific text in files, in a command line output or elsewhere, you may use the findstr command on Windows to do so.

Findstr is a built-in tool of the Windows operating system that you may run from the command line to find text in files or in command line outputs.

You can use the application to filter command line outputs, search individual files or entire directory structures for files with matching text.

Run findstr /? from the command line to display all parameters and options that "Find String" supports.

If things go as planned, Mozilla Firefox will soon display recent downloads in the highlights section of the browser's default New Tab Page.

Twitter revealed on May 3, 2018 that the company stored user passwords in plain text for a considerable amount of time. The company patched the issue and investigated potential breaches but concluded that there was "no indication of breach or misuse by anyone".