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Talk to your Mac, shaming non-SSL sites, WOT and IoT trust

If you already talk to your iPhone, why not do the same to your Mac? The Mac has built-in dictation that can be used to type with just your voice. Set it up by going to System Preferences, then Keyboard, to then click on the Dictation tab where you can turn it on. Then learn how to toggle it to listen or back off, the default keyboard shortcut is to tap the Fn key twice. You can also find the Start Dictation command on the Edit menu for any program that supports dictation.

Soon Chrome, Google’s brand of web browser, will be warning you that site not using SSL (starting with https:// or showing that lock symbol) are insecure. This should start at the beginning of 2017, with the words Not Secure showing to the left of the web address. I would also expect some more pop-up style fake alerts if people do not learn what the real alert looks like. See https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-secure-web.html

Flying in the near future and trying to find cheap tickets may be easier with Google Flights https://www.google.com/flights/. They let you play with all sorts of scheduling options, including interests like food or ecotourism, multi-city itineraries, and even how many stops you will tolerate.

There is a way to see if you have an Internet of Things (IoT) device, like a baby cam, a smart TV or thermostat, that is open to being hacked from the web. Bullguard provides an online scanner that can let you know if you have devices on the same network as your computer that could be open to remote hacking. It is at http://iotscanner.bullguard.com/

A lesson in trust, you may be using the Web of Trust plugin to check on how sites are crowd rated based on trustworthiness and child safety. It has come out that they both sell your browsing history and worse, having claimed that they anonymize it, it turns out they have not done a good job of stripping out information that can lead back to you. The lesson from this, other than first uninstalling Web of Trust, is that we don’t know anything about how companies are anonymizing data they sell about us.

Windows programs can be set to always open maximized. You will have to work with a shortcut for the program. Search for the app you want in the Start Menu, then right-click it and choose Pin to Taskbar. Right-click on the app’s icon on the Taskbar, then right-click again on the app’s name in the resulting menu and choose Properties. On the Shortcut tab under the Run: field, change the value from Normal Window to Maximized. Now, starting that program from the shortcut on the taskbar will make it launch at full size.

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