Last September, I spent more hours than I care to admit researching wireless earbuds, checking sites (mostly RTINGS.com), saving the names of a few top picks to a Google Keep note, and setting multiple price alerts using camelcamelcamel. Two months later, I discovered that the Soundcore by Anker Life P3 Noise Cancelling Earbuds were on sale for $59.99, which matched the previous lowest price ever. (I would have received a price alert email from camelcamelcamel, but I hadn’t set up the price watch correctly.)

After waffling back and forth, I bought a pair, received them a few days later, and loved them. They’re comfortable, the sound quality is great, and the noise cancelling features are fantastic. I’ve even used them with noise cancelling active and no music playing to dampen the sound at very loud events.

I’m confident that more expensive earbuds would likely have better neutral sound or would be better for working out, but I feel like the Soundcore P3 earbuds hit the sweet spot of quality and value for the money.

Why do I mention this 6 months after I bought them? Because I still love them, I still use them when working out, and they’re on sale for $59.99 again today.

As promised in my previous post, here’s a follow-up post stating the gallery has been re-abled (and was re-enabled last week, but I finally remembered to make a separate post about it).

Are you running Piwigo on a server running PHP 8.x? Is your error_log file in your gallery quickly filling up with PHP warnings? If so, follow these steps to suppress those warnings:

• Log in to your Piwigo gallery.
• Click Administration. (This guide assumes your account has Webmaster rights.)
• Click Plugins on the left-hand menu.
• Click Add a new plugin.
• Click in the Search field, type “localfiles” (minus quotes), and press Enter.
• Under the LocalFiles Editor result, click Add.
• Click Plugins on the left-hand menu.
• Toggle the LocalFiles Editor plugin on if it isn’t already
• Click the Settings button under the LocalFiles Editor item.
• Copy and paste the following code into the local/config/config.inc.php file:

$conf['show_php_errors'] = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_WARNING;

• Click Save File.

Original source: https://piwigo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=31875

Here are a few basic lines of PowerShell code to get your computer to talk to you.

It’s simple code, but it makes my children smile.

You can quickly launch PowerShell on most Windows computers by right-clicking the Start button and clicking Windows PowerShell.

Quite user-friendly. And no app install required!

I had planned to post the following on the Mediacom Support forums, but was unable to register an account after triple-checking my e-mail address and requesting a new verification e-mail 5 times over the course of an hour. So I’m posting this here for public view:

I signed up for Mediacom service around 6 months ago. Once the setup was complete, service was flawless until early December.

Continue reading →

As you likely already noticed, Google has confirmed Brainstorm Warning is no longer infected by malware and safe to browse again. Huzzah!

My wife and I recently switched from a basic phone plan with AT&T to Straight Talk’s unlimited talk, text, and “web browsing” plan. Almost from day one, we’ve repeatedly encountered an “access forbidden” error message when trying to pull up a web page in Chrome or the default Android web browser. Other apps that require Internet access also fail to connect (e.g. Amazon AppStore, Google Play Store, Facebook, etc.). The issue is not constant, but I encounter it approximately half to two-thirds of the times I move out of wi-fi range and into an area with HSPA+.

And it seems I’m not the only one with this problem. The following threads were posted to the Straight Talk Wireless Forums starting Sept. 22 and on:

Galaxy Nexus (ATT-sim) Web access forbidden

Access Forbidden

Access forbidden issue – a look behind the scenes

“Access Forbidden” each time I try to use the internet

“access forbidden”

Access Forbidden

“access forbidden” (internet over 3G)

There are similar threads on other sections of the ST Wireless Forums and all posts are met with the same response: A user claiming to represent ST asking the customer to contact them via private message.

Customers on other forums have reported the same issue:

 access forbidden

“Access Forbidden” message in browser

Having a very weird issue with data and phone?

It’s apparent this is a widespread issue and I’ve yet to find one fix that works consistently (or at all). Straight Talk has not provided a public explanation or solution, suggesting they either are unwilling or, more likely, unable to resolve the problem.

It’s possible that this issue is not specific to Straight Talk, but also affects other AT&T MVNOs. It’s not unreasonable to suspect that AT&T is purposely crippling their MVNO users’ data to push them back toward a post-paid plan with a subsidized phone, higher cost for the consumer, and greater profit margin for AT&T.

I’m strongly recommending that all Straight Talk customers that encounter this issue file a complaint against ST with the Florida Office of the Attorney General. Until customers put pressure on Straight Talk to resolve this issue, they likely won’t put any pressure on AT&T and we likely won’t see a solution.