New Google Drive Warning

Not really related to Linux but a warning to all of you who use ODT for your offline document formats (good choice). Recently Google updated their GoogleDrive, removing an incredibly important and key feature.

GoogleDrive no longer honors any default document download preferences (for multiple file downloads). It will 100% default to Microsoft's DOCX format. (Which for those of us in the Open-Source world, is truly appalling and unacceptable.)

If you select multiple files and try to download them, you will get DOCX, every time. The only way around this is to download each document individually, setting a preference for download format each time. That's a lot more clicking and annoyance. Ffor some of us (with hundreds of documents), this is unacceptable.

Google should have defaulted to ODT or something equally open, in order to make the world start to convert to a usable, worthwhile format, instead of pandering to yet another of Microsoft's continuing bad formats.

Google.com no Longer useful for Image Searches

Quick note to inform any readers: It appears that Google.com is no longer useful as a proper reverse-image search tool. I found out recently that Google.com (for the USA/United States) heavily HEAVILY censors the results it shows users, even if you have SafeSearch EXPLICITY turned off. There is absolutely nothing you can do to actually get the real results using simple searches. If you specify your search, you may get better results but general ones are censored.

Simple test: Search for "boobs" on google.com and google.co.uk and you will get different results. The results from the .co.uk will be more explicit.

It's even more apparent if you search for anything vaguely pornographic using Bing.com. While Bing is very well known for censoring their search results in order to kowtow to the RIAA/MPAA and Big Media (along with buckling at the first sign from political entities like China), they apparently don't feel the need to molly coddle adults from sexuality. Search for boobs there and you really get good matches.

The list of failures by Google are growing, and this is certainly one that's going to be high on the list. And it pains me to say that, because generally I like Google. (And I positively loathe Microsoft.)

Google Hangouts

So it's universally acknowledged and there can be no argument that Google Hangouts, though having some nice features, is pretty bad when it comes to actual chats. I mean really bad.

Want to look at a chat you had 6 months ago? Good luck finding it. (I'm not even sure that functionality is possibly any longer, which says something. Even if it is still around, the fact that it's so obscure that the incredibly tech savvy can't find it readily is an abject failure.) Try finding that old chat with the gmail app? Nah, not happening. Even when you could, it was HORRIBLY broken.

As for missing chats from people, Hangouts is actually worse. You see, if you have Hangouts logged in on one of your devices (Phone or Tablet), the message will be received. But it won't TELL you that you've got the message if you log into your desktop. If you are lucky the message will appear as non-new (already read) message in your inbox. However there are times when it won't even show up there.

So how do you know if someone sent you a message? Well, if you notice that you've received something, then you can go dig through your "Chats" section on your desktop browser with gmail.com.

So yeah, Hangouts is arguably the most broken mainstream app from Google to date, which is really sad. Not to mention the bitch is a pain to log out of. You have to do five clicks and a couple of scrolls. Bad. Bad bad bad.

KDE longer able to handle rars / rar files

Quick one: If you are using KDE (probably on Fedora) in the last several months, and suddenly Ark has stopped being able to open/extract Rar files and gives you the message:

Failed to locate program lsar on disk

This solution may work for you. You need to install the package 'unar', and no that is not a typo. It stands for Unified Archive extractor or something. It's basically a back-end or go-between for Ark to handle multiple file types, such as rar.

Open up the konsole terminal, and type this:

sudo yum install unar

I did not have to even restart KDE, but you may need to restart KDE or reboot before it takes effect.

Tiny Trick to make Autopager work again for Firefox

Overview

tl;dr When a page that should Autopagerize doesn't work, open the "Manage Setting" in Autopager. Find the specific rules for site (via searching usually, and make sure you haven't created any personal ones that overrides it). On the "General" tab on the right, uncheck the option "Enable Javascript while loading page." Then try loading your page again. This fixed my problems.

The Problem

I've been using Autopager for the better part of a decade, and it's changed the way I browse the internet.

Unfortunately I have noticed on occasion that sometimes with certain pages Autopager doesn't work in Firefox like it should, especially when the pages used to Autopagerize properly. (I think that's the right word for it.) For example, Autopager doesn't work on Deviantart in Firefox. I usually attributed the failure to a Rules download problem and left it to be fixed automatically overtime. However lately I've noticed some problems have persisted for months and sometimes years.

Recently I decided it was time to fix this problem.

Diagnosis

First I tried loading the pages in Chrome, and sure enough, they Autopagerized correctly. I created a fresh copy of Firefox with no add-ons, loaded Autopager and tried again. Didn't work, so I could rule out conflicting add-ons.

Googling for help produced no usable information. It's apparently not a well documented problem.

From the autopager home website, I tried importing various different rules for DeviantArt, made by different people. But none of them worked

I began manually inspecting the rules for one problem page (that example happened to be DeviantArt) and I could find nothing unusual or wrong. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before, a checkbox option to "Enable Javascript while loading page." This was checked. Having nothing to lose, I disabled that option, and tried reloading the DeviantArt gallery I was currently browsing.

Amazingly, it worked! Fantastically!

Cause of Problem

My guess is that while the front end of a page doesn't change a lot, the underlying structure, which includes Javascript, might. It's something the average user and even developer isn't going to notice right away. It can also be done overtime by third-parties so even main websites might not be aware.

I also use NoScript to disable a lot of javascript execution, so this too could cause problems, but it did not in this case. My tests with the fresh profile of Firefox with no add-ons aside from Autopager specifically didn't have NoScript installed. Still, this is worth considering.

Solution
So the solution when a page that should Autopagerize doesn't work, open the "Manage Setting" in Autopager. Find the specific rules for site (via searching usually, and make sure you haven't created any personal ones that overrides it). On the "General" tab on the right, uncheck the option "Enable Javascript while loading page." Then try loading the page again.