Greg Cunningham

Tech Talk

 


How do I tell if it’s a fake tech support or printer driver site?

Here’s the best way to tell: If you’re looking for something from Dell or HP or anyone else, their company name will show up in the link BEFORE whatever you’re looking for. For example support.hp.com or http://www.dell.com/support. The fake sites will have what you’re looking for AFTER their site name. Examples of this look like gethuman.com/phone-number/Dell-Tech-Support or iprint.io/hp-officejet

How do I tell if a viral video, Facebook post, or image on social media is true?

The two best sites for weeding out fakes on the Internet are http://www.hoax-slayer.com and http://www.snopes.com/info/whatsnew.asp .

But Greg, what about pictures on the Internet? For pictures, the best way to tell if a picture is being misrepresented is built right into Google Chrome. Left-click on a picture on any site and one of the options in the drop-down menu will be “Search Google for this image.” Clicking on that sends Google off to check the Internet to find exact copies of this picture. By checking the dates and sources for any matches, you can tell the context of the original photo.

How do I print in (insert your version of Windows or a particular program here)?

In every version of Windows - including Windows 10 - holding down the Control key and pressing the P key opens a print dialog box. Some browsers use just the P key. Try ‘em out and 95% of the time you’ll be able to print.

How do I download Facebook photos?

• Login to Facebook and find the photo you want to download

• Click on the photo to open it

• Right-click on the photo and choose “Save Image As”

• Browse to the folder you want to put the picture in and give it a name (unless you like all the random numbers and letters) and click “Save”.

How do I stop videos from autoplaying in my browser?

If you’re using Internet Explorer or the new Edge browser you’re mostly out of luck. The currently recommended settings for blocking autoplaying videos in IE don’t really work and there aren’t any settings for the still-evolving Edge browser.

Things look better for Chrome and Firefox users.

Google Chrome has an extension called Disable HTML5 Autoplay that stops most of the newer HTML5 videos. The older Flash videos can be blocked by going to the “Settings” tab, opening the advanced settings selection, and clicking on the “Content Settings” button. Under the Plugins heading, tick the checkbox next to “Let me choose when to run plugin content”.

In Firefox, HTML5 videos can be disabled in the browser, no extensions necessary. Type “about:config” into the address bar, click through the warning and search for “autoplay” options—double-click on media.autoplay.embed and the value changes to false. To block Flash videos, open up the Firefox menu and choose add-ons; if you click on “Plugins” from the subsequent screen you can select “Ask to Activate” from the drop-down menu next to Shockwave Flash. Any Flash videos will then need to be clicked on before they play (as with Chrome, this may interfere with some perfectly useful sites as well).

Reminder

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don’t.

Do you have a computer or technology question? Greg Cunningham has been providing Tehachapi with on-site PC and network services since 2007. Email Greg at greg@tech-hachapi.com

 
 

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