Just thoughts …

Category: TG@u3a

Some of my posts on the Cardiff u3a Thought grazing site (from 2020) are duplicated here.

  • You, groups, flickr and privacy

    Most of the time people join flickr to showcase their photos, to get faves, and to get comments (hopefully both positive and constructive) to enable them to improve their photography. The photos you upload are shown in your flickr Photostream (or Camera Roll) which you can browse and put into Albums. You can create your own Galleries of your (and other people’s) images; Fave images that appear in your Activity stream (see later) and Follow people whose photos you like.

    We’ll start by looking at the default privacy settings you can apply to the images you upload. The Settings page is accessed from your profile tab …

    … which gives you access to a page with these headings …

    … clicking on Privacy and Permissions brings up this screen – from which you should first look at Defaults for new uploads …

    Read carefully the Note: “if you add something to a group pool, that group’s members will be able to view and add notes, comments or tags, regardless of privacy settings.” There’s no privacy within a group. All members of the group can see all members’ photos. If you’ve declared your image to have restricted viewing to Friends, or Family however they will not be visible for public viewing in the group, even though the group page might be visible for public viewing.

    After uploading your photos they will (unless you’ve changed the default settings) appear by default in the Activity stream which you can access from the flickr logo …

    … from which you will also be able to see the images of the people and groups you follow. This is the default view when you open Flickr on a mobile device.

    Any photo you fave is then attached to your account so that you can return to view it on a later occasion.

    It is also possible – unless you’ve prevented it – for someone to download the photo, or add it to their own Photostream as their own! You might wish to check your settings to prevent that happening.

    … and …

    … so it’s important that you know what you’re doing when you follow someone – I certainly wouldn’t recommend the default setting of “Anyone”.

    There are occasions however when you might wish to keep your photos completely private, or to share them privately within a Group. The settings in flickr to allow this are not exactly as intuitive as they might be so this post continues by seeking to help understand how you can “hide” your photos from the Public photostream, but to show them within a Group. Let’s start there.

    Groups can either be Public, open to invited membership (or upon application to join) and then also to be Private. Note especially carefully the note attached to Invite-Only Group which can be either Public or Private … “Anyone can view an Invite-Only group page …”

    The last case is obviously the most restrictive and in this situation a Group is setup by a Flickr member and they invite either existing Flickr members, or non-members to join the group.

    They will be sent an invite to join flickr, and the Group, as a member. You can therefore appreciate that you have to be a flickr member to view Photos which are in a Group. However if they’re not hidden from the Activity Stream by changing the default privacy settings (as above) and if it isn’t a Private group – they’ll still be visible to anyone unless you’ve also changed your search profile …

    For the Invite-Only Group which has not been declared Private it is important to note that anyone (even non-Flickr members) can view the group page, so as we shall next, if you want your photos to be completely invisible to the outside world, you’ll have to do something else to make them invisible!!

    If you want to keep your photos visible only to members of a Group, you need to specify on the Default privacy settings page either “Your friends”, or “Your family” depending upon the nature of the Group; similarly you should restrict Comments (and Notes, Tags and People) to “Your friends and family”.

    However these settings will then apply to every image that you upload and that might be more privacy than you really want, so you are able to choose the level of privacy on an image by image basis after you’ve uploaded them. This is done by looking at the information attached to an image after you’ve clicked on it in your Photostream …

    … so, as an alternative, you could leave your Photostream relatively open using settings similar to the ones in the screenshots above and then restrict viewing of individual photos to Friends, or Family, etc. within Groups.

    I hope this helps.

  • So you want a new laptop? [from Which?]

    How to buy the best laptop

    Five crucial questions you need to ask to find the perfect laptop.

    With hundreds of models to choose from, you’ll want to a laptop that ticks the boxes and will last the test of time. One of the biggest decisions will be how much you want to spend – what many don’t realise is that if you’re after a good all-rounder for day-to-day tasks, it doesn’t have to be a lot.

    We award Best Buys to our top-performing laptops, and our cheapest Best Buys costs less than £500. Plus if you’re willing to compromise you can find good models for as little as £150.

    Top five questions to ask before buying a laptop

    Before you start shopping for a laptop, it will help to know the answers to the following five key questions.

    1. How much should I spend on a laptop?

    • Less than £200 – Intel Celeron or Atom processors, 2GB of Ram and 32GB of storage. Won’t be particularly fast, but fine for note taking and browsing the internet.
    • Less than £400 – Intel Pentium, Core i3, AMD Ryzen 3 and 4GB Ram. Fast enough for web browsing and research work. Aim for a Full HD screen and an SSD if you can.
    • Less than £600 – Intel Core i5, i7, AMD Ryzen 5, 7 and 8GB of Ram. Should be ideal for photo editing and some light video work. Look for a thin and light design, a Full HD screen and an SSD.
    • Less than £800 – As above, but in increasingly high-end designs. Look for great battery life on premium ultrabooks.
    • More than £800 – Some stunning designs, great screens and good speakers. High-end laptops will suit more intensive tasks, such as video editing or playing games. You can buy Apple MacBooks from £950 and above.

    2. Operating system – what type of laptop do I need?

    There are three major players when it comes to the software (operating system) your computer runs on. Windows, MacOS, and ChromeOS.

    Buy a Windows 10 laptop if…

    • You prefer the familiarity of Windows
    • Have specialist software you can’t live without
    • Want a big variety of laptops to choose from

    Buy a MacBook if…

    • You have a budget of at least £950
    • Value longevity and build quality
    • Use other Apple products, or are happy to learn a new operating system

    Buy a Chromebook if…

    • You’re on a budget
    • Value simplicity
    • Don’t mind working in web-based applications

    3. How powerful does my laptop need to be?

    In short: If you need a laptop for light use and note taking, look for Intel Pentium or Intel Core i3 and at least 4GB of Ram for a great experience. Go for Intel Core i5 and i7 and AMD Ryzen 5 and 7 and at least 8GB of Ram if you’re a heavy user. Look for dedicated graphics from Nvidia and AMD if you want to game.

    Processing power really matters if you’re planning on using a laptop for photo or video editing, or are otherwise a very heavy user, opening lots of programs and browser tabs.

    When looking at laptop processors, you’ll see two main specifications beyond the product name: clock speed (measured in Gigahertz or GHz and number of cores) and Ram. Think of clock speed as the speed limit on a road and the number of cores as the number of lanes. As on a road, depending on traffic conditions – the tasks being done on your computer – a road might see a greater benefit from more lanes or a higher speed limit.

    In the simplest way possible, more of both is better, and all of our reviews describe what sort of tasks a laptop is good for.

    Think of Ram (Random Access Memory) like a desk and your hard drive like a filing cabinet. You pull files out of the cabinet and it takes a while, but once they’re on your desk, you can reach for them instantly. The same is true of Ram; once you have loaded a file from the hard drive, it’s now in the Ram and can be accessed almost instantaneously.

    The bigger the desk you have, the more items you can access more quickly, and the same goes for Ram. Most mid-range laptops come with at least 4GB of Ram, and we’d tend to recommend 8GB for people who are heavy web users or usually have lots of documents and pictures open.

    You can manage with less, but you’ll have to rein in your use. If you fill up your Ram, some of the things you’re working on will be moved back to the hard drive, making things feel a lot slower.

    Some cheap computers come with 2GB – this is usually fine on a cheap Chromebook, but some Windows 10 laptops will struggle.

    When you close a program or file, it is removed from the Ram and makes room for other things to be accessed immediately. This is part of the reason why closing programs you aren’t using can make your computer faster.

    4. Screen – what size and resolution of laptop display do I need? 

    In short: Unless you have a very low budget, don’t settle for less than Full HD, no matter the size.

    image072.jpg

    A laptop’s screen is one case where bigger isn’t always better. If you want a longer-lasting battery and a more portable device, you may want to go for an 11, 12 or 13-inch display; most of these will weigh between 1kg and 1.5kg.

    The largest you’re likely to see is 15 or 17 inches, with weight increasing to around 2kg to 3kg.

    Most machines on the shelves now have a Full-HD 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution display, and high-end models can have even sharper screens with even more pixels up to and beyond 4K Ultra HD. Generally, the higher the resolution, the sharper the picture.

    Only cheaper laptops should have a lower screen resolution of 1,366×768. This is fine for most people, but if you like to have lots of items on screen at once you’ll prefer a higher-resolution display.

    5. How much laptop storage do I really need?

    In short: Go for an SSD unless you really, really need more storage at all times. Storage capacity, measured in the size of the hard disk drive (HDD) in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB, equal to 1,000GB), determines how many things your PC can hold.

    Documents, photos, music, movies, programs – they all take up space. Bigger is usually better, although solid-state drives (SSDs) are often more expensive for considerably less space. This is because they load much quicker and are completely silent.

    We’re also seeing a lot of cheaper laptops (including Chromebooks) carrying eMMC (embedded Multi-Media Controller) flash storage, which is slower than SSDs and gives you very little storage space.

    If you cleared out all the stuff on your computer you don’t actually need, how much space do you think you’d have? How much do you have now? Check ‘My Computer’ if you’re using Windows to gauge how big your next laptop’s storage needs to be.

    Laptop battery life: manufacturer claims vs reality

    In short: Manufacturer battery claims aren’t useful unless you’re only comparing models from the same brand. Use our reviews to get the full picture. Manufacturers often make heady claims about how long their laptops’ batteries last. Our tests ignore the manufacturer claims and involve multiple battery rundowns while simulating web browsing and watching videos.

    If you’re buying a portable laptop that you intend to use when travelling or on your commute, make sure the battery life is at least six hours based on our reviews. We’ve tested some models that last for more than 10 hours before they need recharging.

    But we’ve also found companies claiming 10 hours of battery life on average, while our own tests found 6.3 hours was closer to the mark.

    Battery stamina on large, desktop-replacement models won’t be as crucial, as they’ll almost always be near a power socket, but we still mark them down if they run out of juice in under four hours.