4/16/2024: Peek into my mailbag
More of your tech questions, answered
Plus: Beeper gets bought, advanced undo options, and refurbished tech for less
Quick programming note: Next week’s newsletter will arrive on Wednesday instead of Tuesday due to the timing of Passover this year. Thanks for your patience!
The last time I did a Q&A column in Advisorator, the general consensus I picked up was, “This is great, but don’t do it too often.” That was a little under six months ago, so the timing for another mailbag column seems about right.
Last time around, I answered some of your most pressing security and privacy questions. Unsurprisingly, more of those have since arrived. But I’m also going to expand the scope this time with some smart questions about apps, deals, and gadgets.
The questions below have been paraphrased for length and clarity, but otherwise come straight from your fellow Advisorator subscribers. Take it away, folks!
More security questions
Merry A. asks:
I’m getting notifications on my iPhone that say, “This password has appeared in a data leak, which puts this account at high risk of compromise. You should change your password immediately.” Are these legit?
If you’ve been using Safari’s auto-fill feature or letting your iPhone save the passwords you enter, then yes. These alerts indicate that you’ve used the same password on a site that previously suffered a security breach, which in turn means the password may be shared among hackers to try and use on other sites. By heading to Settings > Passwords > Security Recommendations on an iPhone, you can view a list of sites where you’re using compromised passwords and tap on the links to change them.
(For what it’s worth, many other password managers offer similar features, including Bitwarden, 1Password, Dashlane, and Chrome.)
James M. asks:
“I recently purchased NordVPN and I’m unsure how it will effect access smart home devices and printers, and whether I should run the VPN directly on my router.”
The VPN shouldn’t interfere with devices on your local network, but it can prevent some apps from from communicating with those devices while the VPN is running. To work around this, Nord offers a feature called split-tunneling that exempts some apps from the VPN, and it even suggests apps that may benefit from this setup.
If your router allows it, running a VPN on the network level means you don’t have to set up the connection on every individual device, but there’s a trade-off: If the VPN causes any connection problems, you’ll need to fiddle with the router settings instead of just temporarily disabling the VPN on one device. (More fundamentally, it’s worth asking whether you need a VPN in the first place.)
Need to know
Beeper gets bought: Beeper, the messaging app best-known for trying to bring iMessage to Android users (ultimately without success), has been acquired by Automattic, the company best-known for the WordPress blogging service and software. Beeper’s desktop version no longer has a waitlist, and its recently-revamped Android app is now out of beta.
I’ve been using Beeper as my main messaging app on Android and desktop for months now. Even without the iMessage integration, it’s great having a unified inbox for WhatsApp, Signal, Slack, standard text messages, and other chat services. WordPress says it’s committed to supporting Beeper as a text messaging solution for power users.
(As for iMessage, I’ve found a rather elaborate workaround to relay iMessages from my Mac Mini into the Beeper app, involving a separate app called BlueBubbles and a script that you set up in the MacOS Terminal. Hardly anyone should do this, but I can write up instructions if there’s interest.)
Goodbye, Google One VPN: Google is discontinuing the VPN that it offered at no extra charge with any paid cloud storage plan, blaming low usage. The company still offers free VPN service for Pixel phone users and Google Fi wireless subscribers, but the VPN for Google One will go away later this year.
While the benefits of VPNs tend to be overblown, they do provide some extra privacy protection by hiding your IP address from the sites you visit. Still, Google wasn’t aggressive about advertising this benefit—I can’t recall the last time I heard about it as a Google One subscriber—and Ars Technica reports that the Windows version was a buggy mess. Instead of figuring out how to increase adoption, Google’s doing what it usually does and abandoning the whole endeavor.
Tip of the moment
Advanced undo options: If you have an iPhone, chances are you’ve invoked the “Shake to Undo” feature by accident at some point. Thankfully there’s a better way that doesn’t involve any acts of iPhone aggression.
Using three fingers, just swipe left to undo the text, or swipe right to redo it. You can also tap once with three fingers to bring up an editing menu that includes the undo and redo buttons. (Double-tapping with three fingers is also an option, but I find that it works maybe 20% of the time.)
Once you’ve mastered the gesture, you can disable Shake to Undo under Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Shake to Undo.
What about Android? Google’s platform is blissfully free of any Shake to Undo function, but it also lacks a simple system-wide alternative. While some apps have their own undo buttons, others don’t.
So here’s the workaround, via 9to5Google: Using Google’s Gboard keyboard, open the keybaord settings menu, then select Languages > Add Keyboard > [12キー]. This adds a Japanese keyboard with a big undo button at the top-left corner. You can then tap the globe button to switch keyboards, undo your text, then switch back again. (You can also long-press the Undo button to Redo instead.) I should’ve done this sooner.
Now try this
Searchable audio notes: Voicenotes.com lets you take notes by voice and automatically generates transcripts. You can then use the site’s AI assistant to search or come up with new ideas based on what you’ve written. It’s free for text snippets up to one minute apiece. (Via Rich DeMuro’s newsletter, which I’m glad to see back after a hiatus.)
Further reading
- By me: The battery breakthrough that could take foldable phones mainstream.
- Right-to repair-win: Apple will allow for used parts in all iPhone 15 repairs.
- Fairphone’s new earbuds have user-replaceable batteries.
- Google Photos’ AI editing tools won’t require a subscription anymore.
- Windows 10 users start seeing full-screen upgrade nags.
- OpenTable adds users’ first names and profile pics to previously-anonymous reviews.
- DuckDuckGo’s new $10 per month subscription has a VPN, data deletion, and identity theft resolution.
Spend wisely
eBay is having a sale on refurbished tech, knocking 15% off the listed prices with the promo code SHOPGREEN. A handful of notable picks:
- iPhone 14 in “Excellent” condition for $433.
- Apple Watch Series 9 in “Excellent” condition for $276.
- First-gen Pixel Watch in “Excellent” condition for $92.
- Samsung 3.1 soundbar and subwoofer for $161.
Peruse the full list of deals here, and remember that you’ll need to enter the code SHOPGREEN to see the additional 15% discount.
This week’s bonus deals for paid subscribers include hundreds of dollars in savings on Apple devices, storage expansion, and audio gear. Sign up for a free trial to get the full newsletter every week, including extra deals in each newsletter.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks again to everyone who sent in the questions that led to this week’s column! You can always get in touch with me by replying to this email or via advisorator@jarednewman.com.
Also, apologies for putting “Advisorator: Advisorator:” in the subject line of last week’s email. It’s the newsletter so nice, I accidentally named it twice.
Catch you next Wednesday, a day later than usual.
Until next week,
Jared