>>27759
Synergy is what you need. It's a bit of software that allows you to do this - it's like a VNC or remote desktop application, but is specifically designed around using a single keyboard/mouse across multiple computers and monitors.

It used to be free, but I can see it's now $29 for a lifetime license. I've used it loads, works across Mac/Linux/Windows, and while a niche use case, does exactly what you're describing.

https://symless.com/synergy/features

>>27760

Good shout, but my work laptop requires admin privileges to install new software. I'll raise it with IT and see what they say, but I'm open to other workarounds.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Sharing-Keyboard-Scanner-Printer-Black/dp/B01N6GD9JO/

Getting a flashback to my Maplin days where we would sell people KVM switches that had probably been made in the mid 90s.

I think this was a rather silly supposition to make, OP. That quote you have posted seems to be from someone silly enough to think the media sensationalising science news is a comment on technological advancement and not the media itself.

We are on the edge of being able to inject virus that can reprogram your DNA sequence, reusable rockets that will make space travel affordable and augmented reality adoption is only a question of marketing it right and you think we already reached the end of history? were you dropped on your head as a baby.

>>27753
>Again, this "advance" just lets us maintain the normal better.

This really depends on what the "normal" means, for you. If the normal is just "able to produce a vaccine", then yes in a very broad sense, you're right, but the speed at which the vaccine was made was dependant on plenty of technology and processes that did not exist just a few years ago; mRNA vaccines were tested in animals from the 1990s, there was a lot of excitement and companies being built around it for human use in the 2000s and 2010s, but nothing really came to fruition until 2020.

Other recent biotech breakthroughs include CRISPR. Though the acronym strictly refers to understanding a pattern in DNA, it's usually used synonymously with Cas9 or CRISPR-Cas9, a new technology allowing us to edit genes within organisms.

I would say that, based on CRISPR alone, we are going to see some pretty wild and unexpected advances.

>>27756
>if the normal is just "able to produce a vaccine", then yes in a very broad sense, you're right
I mean that the ability to produce the vaccine means we go back to "business as usual" faster. All these advances are just used to maintain the more general status quo.

>>27756 pretty wild and unexpected advances.

Some of which will be advances in inconvenient directions, but yes.

If we can get some advances in small scale, low energy water treatment so I can properly go unabomber (without the actual bombing bit), that would be a blessing.

>>27742
> We know that your phone isn't actually listening to you, because it would absolutely hose your battery and leave obvious footprints in your data traffic.

This actually happened with an early version of Siri on iOS. It was found pretty quickly because users noticed that their batteries were draining and their data was getting rinsed. I don't think the official reason for the "mysterious behaviour" was ever publicly disclosed but there it is.

> In the case of >>27738, Google can very easily track your location through your phone. If you're carrying a phone, you might as well be logged in to Google on every computer you sit down at, because it's trivial to connect the two.

This is depressingly true. Even if I didn't use the same gmail account on my phone as on my laptop I'm sat here typing away on one while the other sits right next to me. It's quite disconcerting to think about. I can't wait to start getting ads for tranny escorts in my social media feeds. .

> Check this out and prepare to be perturbed:

Also depressing. Confirms that everything I do on every app on my phone is observed by Google and saved to my main google account history. I've now turned everything off and set it to auto-delete anything older than three months but I'm sure that's merely cosmetic and things are getting saved anyway.

Total whinge for being unable to escape "The Botnet" unless I fuck my phone into a canal. You know it's a funny old world when you start wondering if an iPhone is the lesser of two evils.

>>27743

>when you start wondering if an iPhone is the lesser of two evils

In terms of privacy, it unquestionably is.

I also assume if you're this worried about privacy, you would be capable and/or willing to either root your current android phone and install something entirely non-google, or look into opensource or Linux phones.

I'm just at the point where if google want to watch me wank that's fine, as long as I can view my tabs and bookmarks and documents on whatever device I pick up immediately.

>>27744
> I also assume if you're this worried about privacy, you would be capable and/or willing to either root your current android phone and install something entirely non-google, or look into opensource or Linux phones.

It's a bit of a bugger to be honest. Throwing a non-stock image onto an Android phone would potentially stop Google grabbing all the usage data for every app I use but unless I "de-google" myself completely (which means leaving gmail behind) then it's pretty much all for naught. Unfortunately I'm pretty much entrenched into gmail at the moment (whoever thought it was a good idea for your email address to be your main login attribute on the vast majority of websites has a special place in hell waiting for them, that's for sure).

I've been toying with the idea of deploying NextCloud on a digital ocean droplet and slowly migrating my calendar / notes / personal shared files onto that instead of using google drive. If I combined that with a de-googled Android image and only used my primary gmail and associated accounts in a separate sandboxed browser instance I could probably mitigate most of the privacy issues. Of course then the bugger is that I'd lose any apps that I've bought in the play store over the years, but I suppose I could always get a tablet for that kind of thing.

Sage for utterly uninteresting personal blog bollocks.

>>27740
>It's entirely possible, though the number of people googling answers for the Times crossword is unlikely to be significant.
That's just wrong. Millions of people in Britain do a crossword every day. It's specifically recommended by doctors as a way of staving off dementia and similar.

Also, if you think Google aren't motivated enough to bump a national newspapers' crosswords answers each day in their search results then I suspect you're underestimating their degree of motivation. Which search engine are you going to use, the one that gives you the crosswords answers easily, or the one that takes a bit of digging? Old people are the least suspicious of any age group when it comes to advertising, which makes them the most attractive catch. Anything that can bring and keep them on your service is going to be an obvious win. I'm not saying that I know they do this, but I'd be more surprised if they didn't, honestly.

>>27746

>if you think Google aren't motivated enough to bump a national newspapers' crosswords answers each day

It's not a question of motivation - those search suggestions are the product of an AI algorithm that is autonomously trying to predict what people will search for. Google can manually hide certain words or phrases from the suggestions, they can tweak the underlying parameters of the algorithm, but they don't really understand how it works or why it produces certain suggestions.

Every time you use Google search, you're training that algorithm. If you pick one of the suggestions, you're telling the algorithm that it guessed correctly.

>>27714

I would assume the hold out on using skype probably isn't them but the people they are talking to through it.

>There is no point to this thread other than to say I am thoroughly annoyed.

Then this is not the board you should be posting on, motherfucker.

>>27719

Fuck, you've rumbled me. There's even the minor rants and pissoffs thread. What do I do, modlads?

>>27720
We'll forgive you this time, but go and stand in the corner and think about what you've done.

>>27721

Otherlad might forgive you but I don't. Ruined my day you have.

Try IFTTT

I have the same problem but I hardly notice it while the screen is in use. Same pattern, btw. Short of getting a new device and religiously using a microcloth to divide the keyboard and the screen it will happen.

>>27691

Is this a troll post that will actually melt my laptop?

>>27693

It won't melt your laptop, it'll just completely remove the anti-glare coating. That's why they tell you not to use window cleaner on your monitor. If your anti-glare is damaged, it might be preferable to completely remove it.

>>27693
It didn't melt the scanner so I'm guessing it won't melt your laptop, unless these things perhaps react differently on whatever a laptop screen is made of.

>>27698
Scanners are plain regular glass.
Laptops, tablets and phones have special coatings. Some laptops still have plastic screens.

>>27676

Those specs look very recent - are you still under warranty? I wouldn't bother troubleshooting anything weird if I can just get an RtB.

Failing that, my first course of action would be to open up Resource Monitor and wait to see if anything weird happens; any runaway process that is using up all of your CPU should make itself known. If that reveals nothing, I'd use msconfig to reboot into minimal Safe Mode to see if the problem still occurs. If it doesn't, then I'd use Device Manager and msconfig to disable every non-essential driver and background process, then re-enable them one by one.

Caveat: I admin Linux boxes in a professional capacity, but am very much a non-expert when it comes to Windows.

Is there no warranty or what have you? Have you tried bitching really hard about it to customer support? Looks like a newish laptop so I'm sorry if that's not an option.

>>27676
>7gb dual channel
Huh?

>>27695
Gig for GPU m8

>>27696
Ah, so the system shares a pool of memory. Fair enough, never had a Laptop with an APU in it before.

>>27436
It's really active, no one gives a fuck about your profile picture you spacker.

I've recently started visiting a forum I was quite active in from 2006 until I got bored of it c. 2013. It's like fucking groundhog day and I'm glad I left. I never thought I'd particularly grown up and matured but going back there has really shown me that I've moved on with my life since then.

>>27672
Wow, okay, rude.

>>27673

Guess he out grew us and took up watching Rick and Morty.

>>27673>>27674
Considering I check Carol Vorderman's Twitter account on an almost daily basis, with the sole intention of posting any pictures of her on /iq/, I don't think I'm going to outgrow this place any time soon.

>>27618

An ACTUAL PROFESSOR has done studies on the caloric expenditure of popular VR games.

https://vrhealth.institute/vr-ratings/

>>27619
About 1 hour on drums and 30 mins of Beat Saber.

>>27621
Well, I'm glad it was more fun than an hour of walking.

GTA V VR mod works surprisingly well. It's very fun to explore the world map in full VRw.

However, the mod renders the left and right eye alternately, so each eye is always one frame offset from the other, though this can be disabled at the cost of losing stereoscopic effects (which doesn't affect the game all that much, imo). What it does mean though is that now I've come out of about an hour of playing it, the real world feels very strange indeed.

The game is fully playable though, although the Menyoo's laser sights option is a good one to turn on.

2ish month update:

I'm still using it every day, even if just to crack one out, and the novelty hasn't worn off. Been playing Fallout 4 VR for the past couple of weeks, and despite its many, many problems it's far more engaging in VR than it ever was in 2D. Weirdly it almost feels like the Nuka-World DLC was made for VR but it has never officially been released.

At this point I'd say I've got my money's worth out of it, and think that whilst VR still has a way to go, especially with the Quest 2 launching at £299, it's something that I think is worth looking into for more people.

>>27663
Congratulations, you've invented Remote Desktop.

>>27665
That's not true, the only guides for desktop streaming on Steam are for doing the exact same thing I talked about doing in my post. Feel free to show me where the desktop streaming option is on Steam, maybe I'm just being blind, but I can't see it in Steam's settings, broadcasting, profile.

>>27666
This is exactly what I asked for in my OP so, err, thanks, I don't understand why you're trying to sound smug though. Plus, that's a Microsoft application and is therefore likely radiating a serious amount of black magic and I'm already running Windows 10 AND 8.1 on the laptop so I really don't need any more of that. I had to have my motherboard consecrated just stop the PC from attacking me in my sleep.

>>27667
Well, I use the app on my Samsung TV. The app itself has a 'desktop' button but I find that doesn't work very well so I rarely use it.

I start up the app and connect to Steam - it starts in Big Picture mode. I minimise Big Picture mode and boom, there's the desktop, with full mouse and keyboard control.

How does your experience differ?

>>27668
I tried the Big Picture Mode method but whenever I try to stream it from the PC I just get a pop-up telling me "Laptop is no longer available for streaming" and then it immediately reconnects. I have no idea why. I'm doing the exact same thing with my method anyway, I can use literally any application on my PC, it's really a moot point.

>>27667
>This is exactly what I asked for in my OP so, err, thanks
Yes, that's why we suggested both it and VNC. I have no idea why you ended up dicking around with Steam after that.

I use Firefox. I don't understand, simply out of ignorance on my part, why it's dismissed out of hand by some people now. It does everything I like and I have uBlock on it. Actually I have uBlock AND Ad Block Plus because a very long time ago one the other didn't block some adverts, so I installed the other to compensate. Now which one is the good one is lost to time and they exist in what I'd like to think is a dualistic balance. I also have so many bookmarks and so much browsing history saved at this point that moving to another browser would be a like a mini house move and unless there's some big new breakthrough in browsing the web that has passed Firefox users by, I don't see the need to change. Though the history and bookmarks are probably transferable on some browsers, what with this being space year twenty-twenty, but I don't care so it's a moot point.

>>27654
>I use Firefox. I don't understand, simply out of ignorance on my part, why it's dismissed out of hand by some people now.
I used to use it until it started eating up all my memory. Try watching porn on an underpowered laptop with Firefox.

I have been using Chrome, but I can't really find anything to replace is with. With that being said, I haven't actually done any research.

>>27648
If you're on a Mac or iDevice, sticking with Safari, particularly now in v14, does a lot of privacy blocking. I haven't found a single reason to use another browser. I also separately run piHole to block ads on all devices in the house. But as I said, v14 of Safari seems to now be doing a LOT of privacy blocking on its own.

On my Windows machine, I use Chrome, but again, in conjunction with piHole.

>>27653
Is that the brave coin thing? How does it work exactly?

>>27657
On the surface of it, there are some unobtrusive pop-up ads you can opt in to and at least some of the as revenue gets paid out to you. Actually setting it up though is a pain in the arse, as is keeping it running at a worthwhile rate. It does seem to be legitimate though, at least £30 made its way to a real bank account in the past couple of months.

What's he already got? Access to his own HDMI TV? Spare keyboard and mouse lying around? Someone to write Micro SD cards?

>>27642
I think all his parents have for him is a very basic laptop for doing homework.

I might suggest a Micro:bit (v2 if you can) or two, instead of a pi?
The hassle of VNC and it stopping working in a million ways make a pi a bit annoying in that setup. Or, if you do go the pi route, make sure you also get him a micro-SD card write so he can get back to a useful system when things stop working.
Micro:bit gets all the 'fun' of programming, with easy to see and comprehend IO devices, and no chance of bricking it. Getting him two lets him play radio games - remote control fart machines etc. (if V2) Who wouldn't like that?
Of course, if he's already deep into it, a pi makes more sense. But I reckon Micro:bit is a far better bet if he's starting form scratch.

>>25181
As someone at the very tail end of that, it was frustrating. The year after I finished my A-Levels they started doing computingat both GCSE and A-Level at my school - meanwhile, I'd done IT GCSE/A-Levels. The A-Level was little more than business with a technical skew.

Then again, a poor teacher can completely ruin your interest in a subject, and realistically may cause kids to get out of programming rather than into it. Thankfully I got taught programming properly and in a way that suited me at uni (assembly up), but the way it was taught was very... autistic. Normal people really didn't get it, and I effectively became a programming teacher for a good number of my course mates as it simply wasn't clicking for them that to understand programming you have to think like a computer. Of course, to the uni lecturers, they already did and so it wasn't really something they even thought of. I honestly think that many of the people I went to uni with who would, if taught well, be very competent programmers have sworn off it as the teaching must have been so confusing to them.

I also notice a lot of people want to "learn coding", but realistically unless you have some goal you want to accomplish then it's like learning how to paint but not actually wanting to paint.

>>27644
Thanks, lad. I'll see if I can get the new one when it's out next month.

>>27635
Looks like it'll be this one you need, actually:
https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/playlistItems/insert?apix=true

>>27634
I'd never used mine until very recently - and in the end only for exactly the purpose you describe; finding things I want to watch, and then watching them later on the Apple TV. They get us all in the end.

>>27635
>>27636
That looks complicated, but I don't mind trying new stuff if it will work. I just don't want to pay for it.

>>27637
You would think that they would make it easier for people like us.


I remember, years ago, you could play around with the web address to create an untitled playlist, but that doesn't work any more.

Anyone got any ideas?

>>27638
As far as I'm aware, you have three options:

1. Use the API (reliable, easier than option 2, may cost you);
2. Write a bot which directly interfaces with YouTube as if it were you clicking the mouse using something like Selenium for Python (unreliable, will take a lot of time, hard);
3. Manually make the playlist


For more info on Option 2:
https://towardsdatascience.com/controlling-the-web-with-python-6fceb22c5f08

>>27638

For downloading youtube videos I use youtube-dl which is a command line tool, you pass it the ID at the end of the URL, like in pic - guide here:

There is a switch in documentation (-x, --extract-audio) to extract the audio only and you can specify the format (--audio-format mp3) for example, perhaps this may be of use. I assume you can just use a batch file to do a whole bunch of them in one go.

None of my extensions will turn back on now either. What the fuck?

>>27625
It's easier to build discipline when you can free yourself from constant distraction and can occupy yourself with fulfilling hobbies.

>>27627
>>27628
Werks on my machine m8. I just turn it on for 15 hours every morning. Are you using Linux or summat?

>>27629
Something went wrong when it tried to install its extension for firefox and it just fucked the whole thing up.

I really barely use the Internet any more. I browse this place on my lunch break, I make a few controversial posts on lefty Rudgwick subs, and I'll stick youtube on when I'm eating. But the whole thing has really rather lost its appeal. I think I've already read all there is about the subjects I used to get lost in deep wiki walks and so on for.

So much of the Internet is just vapid shite now,, and it's harder to find the stuff that isn't because Google massages its results to put shopping and entertainment sites above anything else.

>>27631
Google may massage your results to do that.

I often search up technical standards documents, etc, and often find that using Google to get to the IEEExplore page is easier than its integrated search.