That Syncing Feeling

Shoppers, start your engines

The retail juggernaut known as Amazon Prime Day is July 15 and 16. Tom’s Guide has some good advice here on making the most of it.

How to Save a Web Page PROPERLY (because you’re doing it wrong)

Because we keep seeing these messes on people’s computers, and it’s easy to do it the right way.

Firefox tutorial here, Chrome and Safari coming soon.

That syncing feeling

Are you using iCloud or OneDrive for your Documents and Desktop? There’s a small but real risk you should be aware of.

Cloud services like iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and the like are kind of miraculous; they allow us to automatically sync our data to the cloud, and access it on all our devices. And if your computer is short of disk space, they let you keep those things ONLY in the cloud. As fast-but-small SSD drives have become common on today’s computers, more people are relying on the cloud as PRIMARY storage for their stuff. And the big tech companies want you locked in to their services, so cloud sync is often turned on by default—you never chose it, but it’s on anyway. (If you see a little cloud symbol next to a file, it’s not actually present on your computer).

But what if something goes wrong? If you lose access to the account that has the sole copy of your documents, or years of family photos? It’s the data equivalent of a hurricane: a low probability, high-impact catastrophe. Even being diligent about backup won’t help, because your backup can’t make copies of stuff that isn’t “local” (on your computer).

There are various ways to address this, but if at all possible, try to keep a local copy of ALL your data on at least one computer or device, and make sure to back it up. Backblaze has a writeup on how to properly back up your data (for Mac or PC).

News You Might Have Missed

Microsoft is moving towards a world without passwords. . .Apple updated its laptop options, dropping some prices and eliminating the Macbook. If you’re shopping, AppleInsider has a useful price comparison page for Apple products here . . . Millions of Android devices were infected with malware. . .Zoom on Macs had a scary security flaw . . . As did the Walkie-Talkie app on Apple Watches.