Daily Tech News 9 October 2022

• PayPal now says it won't steal all your money for "misinformation" and that the very detailed Acceptable Use Policy the company sent to users was released by "mistake". (National Review / Yahoo News)
  
  The mistake being that they got caught.

• Apple's Stasi image filter that runs directly on the hardware you "own" is totally cool and inevitable so just bend over. (Apple Insider)
  
  The article gets roasted in the comments.
  
  
  
• HP's Envy 16 is a 16" laptop with a 4K OLED display and a QHD webcam. (PC Magazine)
  
  And the Four Essential Keys - just the Four Essential Keys, not a full numeric keypad as you often find on laptops.
  
  Only problem is HP's pricing in Australia, if you live in Australia, which I do. The model with a 2560x1600 screen and RTX 3060 graphics costs an eye-watering A$4399. That's about A$2000 more than I paid for my similarly specced Dell Inspiron 16 Plus at the start of the year - though that was an 11th gen model - and A$1200 more than a Gigabyte system with a 4K OLED display and a much faster GTX 3070 Ti.
  
  
  
• Speaking of the Four Essential Keys: Some laptop models from Dell and MSI have four keys in the place where the FEK should be but aren't those keys.
  
  Enter Windows PowerToys. The Keyboard Manager function lets you remap any key to any function. I tried it out on my (slowly dying due to physical abuse during the long process of moving house) Inspiron 14 7000, which does sort of have the FEK but also has a completely useless Print Screen button.
  
  Remapped that without any difficulty.
  
  That makes the Framework Laptop more palatable. Really it's the only drawback of the system for me, given its easy upgradeability and modular I/O. Apparently the battery life isn't stellar, but with USB C charging and tiny GAN chargers that's not the end of the world if you're not on the road all the time.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:15 AM

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