Facebook User Privacy Settlement

If you were a Facebook user in the United States between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, inclusive, you may be eligible for a cash payment from a Class Action Settlement. Numerous lawsuits were brought on behalf of Facebook users who allege that Facebook (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) shared or otherwise made accessible to third parties (including but not limited to third-party app developers, “whitelisted” parties, business partners, advertisers, and data brokers) user data and data about users’ friends without permission of the users whose data was shared, and did not sufficiently monitor and enforce third-party access or use of that data.

The Facebook User Privacy Settlement is known as In re: Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, Case No. 3:18- md-02843-VC (N.D. Cal.), and Facebook denies that it violated any law but has agreed to the Settlement to avoid the costs and risks associated with continuing this case. The only way to receive a cash payment from this Settlement is by submitting a timely and properly completed Claim Form that obtains approval from the Settlement Administrator. The Claim Form must be submitted no later than August 25, 2023.

If the Settlement is approved by the Court, Meta will establish a Settlement Fund of seven hundred twenty-five million dollars ($725,000,000.00) to pay all valid claims submitted by the Settlement Class Members, as well as notice and administration expenses, any attorneys’ fees and costs, and any Service Awards for the Settlement Class Representatives. Your payment will depend on how many Settlement Class Members submit valid claims and how long you were a user on Facebook during the Class Period.

Download Someone Else’s Google Slides

In the past few years, my child’s school has hosted many meetings during which the presenters use Google Slides as a visual aid. When asked to share the slides, sometimes the presenters paste a Google Slides URL into the chat. Alternatively they may state that they will will post the slides on the school website or distribute the slides using other means—in my experience, the presenters don’t always follow up with their commitments. If you’re like me, when there is dense information on a slide deck, you might prefer to focus on the presentation instead of taking notes or screenshots of the slides. Therefore, having a copy of the slides can be very helpful. Here’s how to take matters into your own hands.

If you are provided with the Google Slides URL and if the owner has not restricted access, you can simply paste the URL into a browser to open the slide deck. From there, click File > Download and then select your desired file format (.pdf, .pptx, etc.) to initiate the download. Note that the slide deck owner may not have restricted editing privileges, but it would be common etiquette to not alter any of the contents.

What if you are not given access to the URL? One sneaky way to obtain a URL is to pay attention to the presenter as they prepare to put their Google Slides into presentation mode. Usually the presenter will begin screen sharing (e.g., via Zoom, Teams, or other conferencing application) before sharing their slides. When the presenter reveals the Google slides in their web browser, take a screenshot while the URL is present. If you have a modern macOS operating system, opening the screenshot in Preview will allow you to simply click the URL within the screenshot, because Preview tries to recognize URLs and make them clickable. Preview might have a hard time distinguishing between a capital “I” and a lowercase “L” so you might need to play around with the URL a little bit, but you should eventually be able to figure out the correct URL. The only downside here is that the presenter may have restricted access to the file, so even if you have the correct URL, you might not be able to open the file.

A second sneaky way to obtain a URL is when the Google Slides presentation is embedded into a web page. From your web browser, you can try to show the page source and skim the HTML for the URL. On Safari, you can also use the Web Inspector for this same purpose. Note that both of these functions in Safari requires that you enable the Developer tab from your Preferences settings.

A third sneaky way to obtain a URL is to visit https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/0/ where recently viewed presentations will be listed. This won’t work for presentations you’ve viewed via screen sharing, but if you’ve clicked on a Google Slides presentation while logged in to your Google account, it may be listed here. If so, you can open the Google Slide presentation and download away.

I’d also like to mention that once you obtain the URL of a Google Slides document, you can also construct a URL to directly download the file. The URL syntax of a Google Slides presentation is as follows:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/PRESENTATION_ID/edit

Once you have the PRESENTATION_ID, simply plug it into one of the following URLs to download the slides in .pdf or .pptx format:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/PRESENTATION_ID/export/pdf

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/PRESENTATION_ID/export/pptx

Visit this blog for more Google Drive URL tricks that pertain to not only Google Slides but also Google Docs and Google Sheets. 

Caption Your Phone Calls with Olelo

If you have a family member or friend who is experiencing hearing loss, and that person is finding it difficult to carry on a phone conversation, then consider trying a phone captioning app called Olelo. Olelo helps people with hearing loss by captioning in real time every word as it’s spoken during a phone conversation.

The app is available for iOS and Android users, and it is free to use for qualified users with hearing loss. Olelo uses Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service (IP CTS) which is a form of telecommunications relay service (TRS) that permits an individual who can speak, but who has difficulty hearing, to use a phone to simultaneously listen to the other party and read captions of what the other party is saying. Unlike some services that use live transcriptionists, Olelo uses voice recognition technology to automatically transcribe spoken words into text. An IP CTS Consumer Guide describes the technology in more detail.

The FCC IP CTS program has a mandate to ensure functionally-equivalent phone service for the deaf and hard-of-hearing and compensates Olelo for the services they offer, thereby allowing Olelo to be used for free. Olelo provides answers to frequently asked questions, so check it out if you think it could help someone with hearing loss.

Revert to Previous Version of ETT

Eleven Table Tennis (ETT) is an amazing virtual reality table tennis game for Meta Quest. It features very realistic physics and modes where you can play against the computer or other humans in real time (or near real time as I describe here).

In December 2022, the ETT developers introduced avatars to the game, and the new release was accompanied by so many issues that negatively impacted gameplay that they issued an emergency roll back to the prior version.

Several days ago, the ETT developers issued another update, again with avatars, with many of the gameplay issues remedied. However, I did not like the update because the screen would glitch frequently during a match, and my avatar’s arms would sometimes appear on the screen despite me toggling the setting to display the avatar only to my opponents. I understand why the developers want to introduce avatars, but I still consider this newest release to be a downgrade. Many players on the Eleven Table Tennis Facebook Group have expressed similar complaints. In that forum, I learned how to revert the app to a previous version. Here’s how:

1. Launch the Quest app on your smartphone

2. Launch the Store

3. Navigate to the app (in this case, Eleven Table Tennis)

4. Scroll down to the Version and tap on it

 

5. Tap “Channel”

6. Select the version you want to revert to

  

Next time you use your Quest headset, you should be notified that there is an update to the app. Install the update. This should install the version that you selected.

Hope this helps!

Make Your Tesla Fart

I discovered a “Fart” feature on my Tesla app, as pictured on the upper right corner of the icon library (whose icons can be repositioned):

Tapping the “Fart” icon results in the Tesla playing a variety of fart noises through its exterior speakers. Some are short, and some are long, but all of them are entertaining. Similar to eating Lay’s potato chips, nobody can resist the urge to tap the icon just once.

In 2021, Tesla featured a pretty extensive fart menu in Emissions Testing Mode. It featured 6 different fart sounds that could be triggered on demand or when using the turn signal. Apparently it could also be instructed to play the sound from a specific seat.

In 2022, Tesla allowed users to replace its horn with fart and other noises with its ‘Boombox’ feature and was ordered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to disable those noises because pedestrians are less likely to be able to hear them. Details are provided in this CNN story and NHTSA Safety Recall Report.

The current fart noise feature does not replace the horn sound so does not compromise the pedestrian warning system. If you’re like me, you’ll appreciate that there is now a safe and legal way to make your Tesla fart. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to light a match.

Backing Up Your Data

Today, March 31, is World Backup Day. It’s a reminder for all of us to back up our important files. I am backing up my photos, videos, and personal documents as I write this blog, and I try to back up my files on a monthly basis.

My current process is to back up my files onto 2 external hard drives, each of which has 8 TB of storage capacity, which is currently sufficient to store all of my files. However, I recently learned about the “3-2-1 Plan” which is described at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website and in many other online sources. In summary, you should have:

• 3 copies of your data
• 2 different kinds of media for your backups
• 1 backup copy that is offsite

The idea behind the 3-2-1 Plan is to diversify your backups to avoid having a single point of failure. For example, you could have 3 copies of your data, but if they are all in 1 place and there is a fire, flood, or theft, then that single event could potentially destroy all of your data despite you having backups.

Admittedly my backup approach does involve 3 copies of data (internal SSD and 2 external hard drives) and 2 kinds of media (if you count SSD and hard drives as being “different” kinds of media), but I do to have 1 backup copy that is offsite. For many years I have contemplated bringing 1 of my 2 external hard drives to my parents’ house each time I visit them, but I have never executed on that plan. Maybe it’s time for the to re-think my approach.

How well does your backup plan stack up against the 3-2-1 plan?

Visible Wireless Network “Upgrade”

I was recently notified by my wireless provider, Visible, that a network upgrade was “required to improve your service” and that the upgrade would result in a “faster, more reliable network” for the same price.

All three of our family members use Visible, we all requested the upgrade, and we were all sent new SIM cards. My wife and I installed our new SIM cards and simultaneously attempted to activate our phones on the new Visible network. Unfortunately neither of our phones successfully activated, so we were stuck without cellular service for almost a full day.

After several hours of futile activation attempts, I contacted Visible using their chat service which is the only way they provide customer support. On my first attempt, I was queued for about an hour and watched the progress bar slowly make its way to 100%, at which time I was supposed to be connected to a chat agent. Unfortunately something went wrong, and instead of connecting me to an agent, the chat box froze so I had to abort. On my second attempt, I waited another hour and this time was successfully connected to a chat agent. The chat conversation was horribly slow. Each time I entered a response, the agent would take 30-60 seconds to reply and often provided generic answers such as “Thank you” or “I’ll look into that” or other seemingly canned responses. It also felt to me like the agent was trying to help multiple customers at the same time due to the slowness of the replies. Anyway, after spending an hour on the chat line, I was finally told that there was some kind of outage on the Visible side (not Verizon which is the actual network that Visible customers use), that they were trying to fix it, and to try activating again the next day. I was also credited $5 toward my next monthly payment for all my troubles (admittedly this probably added 10 minutes to my total chat time). My wife and I did both successfully activate our phones the next morning.

Then it occurred to me that I should put Visible’s claim of a faster network to the test. Since I had not yet activated my daughter’s phone on the new network, I decided to do some speed comparisons using the iOS Speedtest app. I’ll admit that I could not conduct a completely fair head-to-head comparison because I was pitting my iPhone 12 Pro Max (which I’ll refer to as “12”) on the new Visible network against my daughter’s iPhone X (“X”) on the old Visible network.

My first thought was to perform a series of “control” speed tests where I measured download (“D”) and upload (“U”) speeds with both phones connected to our home Wi-Fi (provided by Spectrum). For all tests, both phones were placed next to one another so they were equidistant from the router, and I initiated the speed tests on both phones at the same time. The results showed similar speeds on both phones, with slightly faster speeds on 12 vs. X which might be attributable to the faster processor on 12 (I am guessing here).

Control: Both Phones Using Home Wi-Fi
Run	12 D (Mbps)	X D (Mbps)	12 U (Mbps)	X U (Mbps)
1	33.81	35.00	4.17	3.34
2	42.82	34.06	3.19	3.09
3	42.29	34.36	3.20	3.25
Average	39.64	34.47	3.52	3.23

The next thing I did was to test 12 (using new Visible LTE) against X (using old Visible LTE). Since my 12 is capable of 5G, but X can only use LTE, I had to change the cellular setting on 12 to use LTE only. I was pleased to see that I saw faster speeds on 12 than X, and the difference was greater than the observed difference in Wi-Fi speeds, so in other words the faster speed on 12 may not be explained by the hardware difference alone.

Comparison: 12 (New Visible LTE) vs. X (Old Visible LTE)
Run	12 D (Mbps)	X D (Mbps)	12 U (Mbps)	X U (Mbps)
4	18.36	11.13	7.33	5.04
5	38.43	26.30	10.13	7.42
6	27.44	12.80	7.52	6.45
Average	28.08	16.74	8.33	6.30

Next, I installed the new SIM card on X and successfully activated the phone right away. Then I re-ran speed tests on 12 and X, with both phones using the new Visible LTE network. Surprisingly, I observed more or less the same speeds on both phones. Because I saw wide variability in download speeds on both phones with different runs, I performed 5 runs on each phone (instead of 3 like I did before). In any case, with this small sample size, I saw no convincing evidence that the network upgrade yielded faster speeds on X—about 17 Mbps download and 6 Mbps upload on both the old and new Visible networks.

Comparison: Both Phones Using New Visible LTE
Run	12 D (Mbps)	X D (Mbps)	12 U (Mbps)	X U (Mbps)
7	16.65	14.48	8.54	7.22
8	29.80	22.95	6.70	5.35
9	44.53	13.73	7.03	5.62
10	10.91	25.03	6.25	5.30
11	12.12	28.44	7.83	4.10
Average	30.33	17.05	7.42	6.06

For good measure, I re-ran my control comparisons with both phones using home Wi-Fi, and results were very similar to my initial control run.

Control: Both Phones Using Home Wi-Fi
Run	12 D (Mbps)	X D (Mbps)	12 U (Mbps)	X U (Mbps)
12	35.50	38.75	0.89	1.21
13	45.42	31.29	5.40	2.29
Average	40.46	35.02	3.15	1.75

In conclusion, I was disappointed to not see any significant speed improvement on the new Visible network. Even though the 12 vs. X comparison was not a fair head to head comparison, the speeds on X were similar on the old and new Visible LTE network. A limitation of this experiment is that I only compared LTE speeds because X is not capable of 5G. It is possible that the new Visible network is in fact faster than the old network in 5G connectivity, but I did not see that in fine print anywhere, nor was I able to directly test that hypothesis.

This reminds me of a similar experiment that I conducted a couple years ago when I conducted a Comparison of 4G and 5G Cellular Networks.