Google Is Selling Broken Chromecasts, and That's Hard for me to Accept.

I am someone who often can fixate on things that I cannot change. This has sometimes caused me great grief, especially if it is something that I know should not be a problem, even in a broken world with broken people. Things involving technology seem to affect me more than politics, but that is likely a topic for another post. One recent example is when I got two 3rd generation Google Chromecasts, and a firmware update pushed rounded corners to ALL 2nd and 3rd generation Chromecasts. Yes, ALL casted content has little rounded corners like a CRT. This has been widely complained about on the Google Support forums since about June 2020, and in November 2020, they claimed that "they have identified an issue and that the fix should be rolling out". Well, here we are in April 2021, and no fix. 

But that's not even the worst part! Get this: ALL 1080p60 YouTube content has crackling audio and dropped frames on the latest firmwares. I know this because both of my brand new 3rd gen Chromecasts suffer this exact issue. I wasted way way too much time with tech support (I am a Google One subscriber for some reason) trying to get them to understand how forced firmware updates mean that a warranty replacement is an unacceptable solution, but they still somehow didn't get it. At this point I can live with the authoritarian rounded corners (all they had to do was add a toggle, this decision has only cost them users and money, see forums) but I cannot live with unwatchable crackly 1080p60 YouTube videos!

If this were a smaller company, they would be sued for knowingly selling defective products, yet all of our passionate complaints do absolutely nothing. What does one do when you have no way of fixing an issue that a team of people paid 6 figures is supposed to fix? I did HOURS of diagnostics and testing and proved many times over that it had nothing to do with my network, yet they still kept trying to blame my network (it's impossible for it to be my fault if the network link is more than 50 megabits, which is was well above, I did speed tests too). Knowing that I worked harder for free than Google engineers had has been very hard for me to grapple with, but with time it has become easier. I guess that's the crux of it, all I need is time and I will eventually let things go, but I have spent so so much time on this issue for two 35 dollar dongles that I got on sale for 20 each, and yet it was very very hard for me to let go. I know Google has a long track record of making innovative and industry leading products and then intentionally ruining them (RIP Google+) but it's still hard for me to accept as a Google fan. I want them to succeed, I am a big Android fan. But it's almost like they are going into self destruct mode. It's so impressively bizarre.     How do you deal with unfair situations that you know even in this broken world you shouldn't have to deal with? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

The PC isn't going away anytime soon and here's why.

We've probably all heard it sometime in the last eight years: "PC sales are going down, and mobile device sales are going up". Usually, when this is said, it is said as part of an argument that claims that PCs are being used less and mobile devices are being used more. While this certainly has become the case to some extent, it isn't nearly that simple. Here's why.

Convenience.
The first and most obvious reason why smartphones are now selling better than ever and PCs are not is that smartphones can do almost literally everything that the average person would do on a desktop PC, and it can fit in your pocket. And, you can make phone calls too (imagine that)! Now, of course, while you can do anything on the web (excluding stuff that requires Flash, Java) on your phone that you would on your PC, the screen size can often be a limitation, and many websites are just more efficient to use with a mouse and keyboard. But for things like watching videos, checking social media, gaming or email, phones are perfect and if those things are all that someone does on the Internet, it could potentially be hard for them to justify the purchase of a desktop or laptop PC.

Bang for Buck.
This is basically an extension of the "Convenience" section. If you only have a phone because you don't need anything else, you are (in most cases) saving money.

Future-proofness.
Let's face it, when comparing raw performance and overall potential and functionality and excluding the needs of a user, PCs are a better bang for buck. Why? Simply because you can buy a mid-range PC and it will be usable for at least ten years. As time progresses, and as PCs become more powerful, that length of time will likely increase a bit more before it plateaus. For example, I have an old Intel iMac from late 2006. It has a 64bit dual core processor, a not so good GPU, and 3 gigabytes of RAM. Although the version of Mac OS X that it runs is no longer supported,  is also capable of running the latest version of Windows 10 via Boot Camp (and of course, Windows 7 if that is your thing). This means that it is secure, and it is actually fast enough to view 720P HD video, play basic games, and browse the web. Keep in mind, that is a ten year old PC. Perfectly usable for the average person, even if it doesn't provide the best possible experience. Now, think back to what kinds of smartphones we had in 2006.

The basic idea is, because PCs stay usable for so much longer than PCs, not as many of them need to be bought. If a business has 8 year old PCs that they use for database entry purposes, they would be stupid to buy new PCs. They arguably would be smart to keep the operating system up to date, but even this is not always necessary. In contrast, smartphones often don't even have the option to keep themselves up to date after two years, and even if you are fine with that, you will eventually not be able to play the latest game that you want to, either due to hardware or software limitations. Because of this, you really have to buy a new smartphone much more often than you have to buy a new PC.


So what was the purpose of this article? Basically, I a urging tech news outlets to stop claiming that PCs aren't being used less overall and that it's doomsday for the PC. There is a difference between the purchase of a PC and the actual use of one. Also, there is such a thing as a used hardware market for both PCs and smartphones, and that is something that from what I can gather is never factored into studies and statistics.

How To Install Latest Version of KDE Connect via PPA in Ubuntu and Linux Mint

If you use a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that uses the KDE desktop environment, chances are you use KDE Connect. If you don't, you are really missing out. Anyway, there are plenty of tutorials floating around explain how to install the KDE counterpart of KDE connect, but they all use Ubuntu's repository which has an outdated version that is incompatible with certain features such as the remote trackpad. There has been no PPA or repository that has provided the latest version of KDE connect, that is, not until now.

Here's how to install the latest version of KDE Connect. Remember, this is just the KDE side of KDE Connect. You also need to have the KDE Connect Android app installed.


Type the following commands into your favorite terminal emulator:

1.     sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vikoadi/ppa
2.     sudo apt-get update
3.     sudo apt-get install kdeconnect

If you already have it installed, then these commands will upgrade it for you.


This PPA also hosts the indicator-kdeconnect package, which is an optional taskbar indicator plugin that easily allows you to manage your connected devices. For some features (such as battery percentage reporting) it is required. Once adding the PPA to your system, you can install it by running the command sudo apt-get install indicator-kdeconnect.