Frequent password changes used to be all the rage, the logic being that it made logins more secure. Good passwords, long (like six random words), unique and not made from a pattern, that can’t be guessed from any publicly available information about you, only need to be changed for sites that have been breached. And, if you also enable two factor authentication you will have that second layer of getting and using an additional one-time code when logging in from a new device or location. If such codes pop up unexpectedly you know something may be amiss and can check it out.
There are a variety of building materials that can really hamper Wi-Fi signals in your home or work place. Metal, whether as mesh or rebar in concrete walls, large appliances, or metal doors, are great at blocking Wi-Fi. A totally steel building will even block cell signals. Don’t forget that mirrors and low emission windows also can block those signals with their thin coatings of metal. Water looks clear but large aquariums will also absorb Wi-Fi. You may know that stone impedes it also but ceramic tile on backer boards can have similar effects. The solution can be simply moving the base station to a location that has less blockage, or investing in a mesh system that will work around some of those physical blocks.
Beautiful New Daily (part of InformationIsBeautiful.net) is a great antidote to whatever other news you are seeing. As they state, it is a “collection of good news, positive trends, uplifting statistics and facts,” stories that are a reminder of amazing things still happening in the world. Follow more at https://informationisbeautiful.net/beautifulnews/ They also create amazing graphics to illustrate their short blurbs and provide a link to the source story.
Web searchers using google now find that Google’s AI Overview doesn’t always show correct information and yet it sits at the top of search results. If you are a Chrome user, there is a new extension that at least hides the display coding for AI Overview, letting you get straight to the search results. As this extension just came out, realize it won’t have many bells and whistles. You can install it from the Chrome Web store, https://chromewebstore.google.com/ , by searching for “Hide Gemini”, just make sure its description says “Hides Gemini elements from Google properties.”
If you find a “great deal” price online at Amazon, you might want to check price tracking sites to see if that price is truly “great.” CamelCamelCamel is wonderful for seeing how Amazon pricing has changed over time. They have a browser extension but you can test their service at https://camelcamelcamel.com/
The opposite of Wikipedia.org is “Wikenigma – an Encyclopedia of Unknowns” where you can explore some of what we still don’t know, https://wikenigma.org.uk/ It is just a reminder of what we can still learn. Spend some time perusing their A-Z listing where I see there is no clear knowledge for the origins of April fools’ Day, for example.
There is a great “educational” time waster, GeoGuessr.com, where you are shown a Google Street View image and you try to place its location on a map. Although it is a subscription service, you can get three free tries per day when you sign up for an account and just cancel out of the paid plan sign up. Three tries seem to be about the right amount to decide how addictive it might become. If you search for alternatives to geoguessr, you will find many other similar sites, some are free but show many ads.
ChatGPT and other related LLMs (large language models) have become what some view as AI (artificial intelligence) and are often seen as the answer to all sorts of problems. Missing for most of us is a decent but not technical explanation of what these prediction services can actually do. Two professors at Washington University have put together https://thebullshitmachines.com/ an 18-lesson course in what LLMs are and aren’t capable of doing for us. The best part is that each lesson is short and doesn’t rely on programming or math skills to understand.