Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: How do I stop Opera from opening a new tab when I open it?

Posted on March 25, 2023

Question from Gene: I use Chrome for most everything but I always open Facebook in Opera.

Every time I open Opera it opens Facebook by default (which is what I want), but it also always opens a new tab as the active tab.

I have to always click the X to close that new tab in order to see the Facebook tab.

How can I get Opera to open just the Facebook tab without opening a new tab along with it? [Read more…]

Find your misplaced phone when you can’t call it from another phone

Posted on March 24, 2023

If you ask 100 people what’s the easiest way to find a cell phone that has been misplaced inside your home, chances are 99 of them will say call it with another phone and track it down by the ringing sound.

That does indeed work most of the time, but what if you don’t have another phone on hand to place the “locator” call from?

[Read more…]

Just asking: How can tech companies afford to lay off thousands of employees?

Posted on March 24, 2023

<I’m Confused>

If you’ve been following the news of late you’ve probably seen a lot of headlines similar to these:

“Tech consulting giant Accenture cutting 19K jobs“

“Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 employees“

“Dell to lay off 6,650 workers, or 5% of its workforce“

“Microsoft to lay off 10,000 workers as it looks to trim costs“

And those companies are just the tip of the iceberg, with mass layoffs affecting numerous tech professionals across the entire tech tech sector.

All these layoffs have prompted me to ponder this question: If these companies can lay off thousands of their employees, did they really need that many in the first place? [Read more…]

Q&A: How do I remove the Weather icon from the Taskbar in Windows 11?

Posted on March 22, 2023

Question from Rita: My laptop has Windows 11 on it and when I turned it on yesterday morning I noticed that it had installed an update.

Ever since the update there’s been a little Weather icon on the Taskbar right beside the Start button.

Every time I move my mouse towards either the Start button or the icon just to the right of the Weather icon a screen pops up showing the weather along with what appears to be about a thousand news reports.

This is irritating me to no end. Is there any way to remove that Weather icon from the Taskbar? [Read more…]