Tech of the Day

[Daniel E.]

How to Relieve Shoulder Pain from using a Mouse [Tips & Treatments]

Have you ever developed aches, pains or injuries from sitting at your desk, staring at your computer screen, with poor posture for hours on end? It seems obvious, but humans weren’t designed to sit at a desk all day! Our hunter and gatherer ancestors certainly didn’t suffer from knots in…

www.movebeyond.com.au

 

[Daniel E.]

Trackballs and Vertical Mice: Reducing Physical Stress on Your Body | Kensington

Extended mouse use can lead to injury. Check out this infographic for reasons to switch to an ergonomic input device like a trackball or vertical mouse.

www.kensington.com

 

[Daniel E.]

"Flaticon has more than a million icons and stickers in all formats, for all kind of projects: presentations, apps, websites, catalogs, infographics etc."

Free Icons and Stickers - Millions of images to download

Download Free Icons and Stickers for your projects. Images made by and for designers in PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and CSS formats

www.flaticon.com

 

[Daniel E.]

For adding Javascript to a Wordpress site:

How to Easily Add JavaScript in WordPress Pages or Posts

Do you want to add JavaScript to your WordPress pages or posts? Learn how to easily add JavaScript in WordPress pages and posts using 2 different methods.

www.wpbeginner.com

WPCode – Insert Headers and Footers + Custom Code Snippets – WordPress Code Manager

Easily add code snippets in WordPress. Insert header & footer scripts, add PHP code snippets with conditional logic, insert ads pixel code, and more.

wordpress.org

CSS & JavaScript Toolbox

Add code snippets (CSS, JavaScript, HTML, PHP) to your site and choose where it goes. Feel confident with 10 years of security & reliability.

wordpress.org

(open source) "CJT code blocks can be assigned to pages, posts, custom posts, categories, URLs, expressions, and practically anywhere you want on your website. Code block shortcodes can also provide you with further placement accuracy."

 

[Daniel E.]

An aggregate of research blogs is at ResearchBlogging.org, including neuroscience, psychology and social science.

UPDATE: No new content as of June 2017

 

[Daniel E.]

CC Search Portal

search.creativecommons.org

"Browse over 500 million images, available for reuse "

 

[Daniel E.]

Free (and open source) web app for data queries and charting:

Franchise: a sql notebook

A SQL Notebook

franchise.cloud

If your data is in a CSV, JSON, or XLSX file, loading it is as simple as dropping the file into Franchise.

We run a version of the SQLite engine in your browser, so all processing happens locally.

Trying to connect to PostgreSQL, MySQL, or BigQuery?

Run a single command in your terminal to set up a database bridge that allows Franchise to connect to your databases directly through your computer.

Your data never hits our servers.
Sometimes data really shines when you let it show its colors.

We’ve built a number of visualizations right in— Scatter Plots, Bar Charts, Line Charts for time series data, Maps, and more.



Have a new idea for a query to run, but don’t want to mess with code that already works?

Franchise’s unique notebook layout system lets you quickly fork a query and try a variation side-by-side against the original.

(source code at Github)

 

[Daniel E.]

Privacy Reset: A guide to the important settings you should change now​

for

• Google
• Amazon
• Facebook
• Venmo

 

[Daniel E.]

Wikipedia is swimming in money—why is it begging people to donate?

The site is way richer than it wants you to know.

www.dailydot.com

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the non-profit that owns Wikipedia and other volunteer-written websites, is about to reach its 10-year goal of creating a $100 million endowment five years earlier than it planned. Its total funds, which have risen by about $200 million over the past five years, now stand at around $300 million. Its revenue has risen every year. In just the first nine months of its current financial year, it has raked in $142 million in donations according to an internal document—and already obliterated its previous annual record...

Just after its embarrassment of riches last summer, the WMF started its first ever fundraising campaign in India, suggesting readers donate 150 Rupees ($2) each. Banners saying “Wikipedia really needs you,” “We need you to make a donation to protect Wikipedia’s independence,” “Help us keep Wikipedia online and growing,” caused fears in India that Wikipedia was dying or might put up a paywall.

Wikipedians have long been dismayed by these fundraising banners. Wikipedia is supposed to be “The Free Encyclopedia,” not the one that makes its readers feel guilty. Wikipedia has never been at risk of going offline, needing advertisements, or losing its independence. Every year the WMF has taken more money than the year before, and expanded its staff...

 

[Daniel E.]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/12/leave-facebook-alternatives/

Where to keep up with your neighborhood​

This category is a great example of when the alternatives can have their own thorny ethical issues. Neighborhood groups can be rife with racial profiling, complaining, public shaming and surveillance. The spread of individual security cameras has even spawned its own social network, the Neighbors by Ring app, which is owned by Amazon. There’s Nextdoor, which relies on community moderators and has struggled with complaints about racism. On the darkest end of the spectrum is Citizen, which is a local crime app for viewing your neighborhood through the lens of the bad things that happen. Perhaps the safest place to re-create your neighborhood group is in person.

 

[Daniel E.]

Desperate for Workers, Restaurants Turn to Robots (Published 2021)

They can make French fries, mix drinks and even clean toilets, and they never ask for a raise. But they also break down.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Daniel E.]

High-tech alarms go off when kids are left in hot cars

Car seat alarms and child safety apps can help caregivers prevent a tragedy.

mashable.com

"Available for Android and iPhone, The BackSeat app doesn’t require connections to hardware or Bluetooth technology, but can detect vehicle speeds and send reminders to users to check the backseat after the car is parked. It also offers a backup plan when users don’t respond to phone alerts by sending email and text messages to three designated contacts letting them know that a child might have been left in a hot car. The vehicle’s location and description will also be shared."


Android-only app:

Kars4Kids Safety App - Never Forget Your Kid in the Car

A necessary addition to every responsible parent's toolkit, the Kars4Kids Safety app gives parents peace of mind knowing that their child is safe in the backseat.

www.kars4kids.org

No parent thinks, "This can happen to me." But as too many have learned, the hard way, it can. It may be a change in routine or a sleep-deprived and overloaded memory. Even the most conscientious and loving parent can forget a child out of sight in the back of the car, with a potentially fatal outcome. The Kars 4 Kids Safety app is designed to alert drivers when they leave their cars to remember there is a baby in the backseat. So you can drive with peace of mind knowing we’ve got your back.

 

[Daniel E.]

For code and data junkies:

Visual Studio 2022 released today:

Download Visual Studio Tools - Install Free for Windows, Mac, Linux

Download Visual Studio IDE or VS Code for free. Try out Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise editions on Windows, Mac.

visualstudio.microsoft.com

SQL Server 2022 is now in private preview:

Introducing SQL Server 2022

Today we have announced the next major release of SQL Server 2022, now in private preview. SQL Server 2022 has built-in Azure enablement and innovations in security, performance, availability, data virtualization, and enhancements to the T-SQL language.

www.linkedin.com

 

[Daniel E.]

Keyboard Shortcuts in Office

 

[Daniel E.]

Import JSON documents - SQL Server

Import JSON documents into SQL Server

docs.microsoft.com

This article describes how to import JSON files into SQL Server. Currently there are lots of JSON documents stored in files. Applications log information in JSON files, sensors generate information that's stored in JSON files, and so forth. It's important to be able to read the JSON data stored in files, load the data into SQL Server, and analyze it.

 

[Daniel E.]

A $799 "foundation" PC for power users like gamers:

Amid GPU Shortage, NZXT Releases Pre-Built PC With No Graphics Card

However, the $799 product can still run PC games, thanks to the integrated graphics on the CPU.

www.pcmag.com

Foundation PC - H510 Edition

NZXT Foundation PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G APU to enable solid gaming performance without a discrete graphics card.

nzxt.com

Their PC performance software for comparison:

https://nzxt.com/software/cam

 

[Daniel E.]

Can You Game Without a Graphics Card? We Tested 11 Desktop CPUs to Find Out

Graphics cards are still just too expensive. Is it possible to rely on an integrated graphics solution and stay above 30 frames per second in games you want to play? Let's get testing!

www.pcmag.com

In our testing, we found that both AMD's Ryzen 5 5600G [same as in the NZXT Foundation PC] and Ryzen 7 5700G could hold their own above or near 60fps in the two AAA titles we tested, while the latter nearly topped 100fps in Rainbow Six: Siege at the game's Medium preset. Crank that down to Low, and 120fps or higher is feasible.

 

[Daniel E.]

Blink vs. Ring: Which deserves to survive?

Should Amazon pick between its two smart home camera companies or should it make us decide which is better?

www.theverge.com

Blink’s core technology revolves around a proprietary chip that can keep a camera running on two lithium AA batteries for up to two years — something no other security camera has managed to replicate. Yes, competitors’ cameras — including Ring’s — have better video quality, but that doesn’t do you any good if you don’t remember to take it down and charge it every four to six weeks.

 

[Daniel E.]

Progressive web app - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Starbucks provides a PWA that is 99.84% smaller than its equivalent iOS app. After deploying its PWA, Starbucks doubled the number of online orders, with desktop users ordering at about the same rate as mobile app users.

12 Best Examples of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) [Updated 2023]

Here is a list of impressive PWA examples across a variety of industries - so you can experience the new web technology yourself.

www.simicart.com

 

[Daniel E.]

This Keyboard Lets People Type So Fast It’s Banned From Typing Competitions

A new peripheral lets you keep typing without ever lifting a finger. When it comes to gaming and typing competitions, is it cheating?

www.vice.com

CharaChorder can type individual letters, but also boasts “chorded” typing. Similar to stenography, chorded typing allows the users to input several letters at the same time and have a computer program generate a predicted word. Instead of typing h e l l o, a chorded typer mashes h, e, l, and o to produce the word. With practice, it’s much faster.