Daily Tech News 10 October 2021

• As one browser window closes, another one opens.
  
  Firefox sends every character you type into the URL bar to the servers at Mozilla - to get suggestions, but now also to show you ads. (Thurrott.com)
  
  Just to completely set your privacy on fire, it also sends those keystrokes to your search engine - by default, Google. At least if you use Chrome you only have to deal with one bunch of lunatics.
  
  
  
• Vivaldi meanwhile now automatically blocks Google's Idle Detection API. (Thurrott.com)
  
  This API is designed to detect whether you are actively using your computer. Vivaldi not only blocks it automatically, it blocks sites from requesting that you turn it on.
  
  The new version also supports progressive web apps, has a screen capture function that can get a screenshot of the entire web page, and has improvements to the built-in mail, calendar, and feed reader components.
  
  Vivaldi and Brave are the browsers I recommend to the average user, with Edge for corporate use, if only because it's easier to get acceptance.
  
  
  
• A senior Victoria police officer has resigned after giving an interview - in uniform - saying that the force is sick of acting as Dan Andrews' personal stormtroopers. (Sky News)
  
  Which is all very well but they could have said no.
  
  
  

• You can't feed cocoa seeds to parrots.
  
  
  
• I mentioned that Far Cry 6 requires more video memory at its highest quality settings than most of Nvidia's current generation of cards actually provides.
  
  This review shows the effects. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Scroll down to the benchmarks of 4K Ultra DXR settings and the scores for the RTX 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3070 Ti are suddenly missing. The text explains why: Those cards at those settings abruptly drop as low as 10 fps.
  
  The RTX 3060, which is slower card but has more memory, maintains a reasonably playable 30 fps.
  
  It's not an insurmountable problem: Drop down to 2560x1440, or switch off DXR, and the three missing cards turn in 50 fps or better. But it does highlight the fact that Nvidia's most popular cards right now are low on memory relative to both their compute performance and their competition. Those three cards have 8GB, where both the cheaper RTX 3060 and AMD's competing 6700 XT come with 12GB.
  
  
  
• Eight problems with Windows 11 and how to fix them. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Step One: Don't install Windows 11.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 02:04 AM

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