Few months ago, I wrote a spiel on a new Dyson PencilVac vacuum cleaner. It didn’t merit to be called a full-scale review, as I wasn’t testing the product against any other vacuums in the market, and quite frankly my research was limited to what fits into my needs and routines. Regardless, at the time, I knew the vacuum had Bluetooth capability and an app that were lackluster overall. The modern expectation of IoT apps would be somewhere near or above entry level robot vacuums.
Tagged WiFi
How to View Extra Information from macOS Control Center
With the introduction of iOS-like Control Center on macOS, many Menu Bar icons can now be hidden unless they are absolutely necessary. I have most of the icons hidden unless they are active. But there are times when having a similar level of access the older icons had are simply needed — such as what WiFi icon used to show when Option-click on it.
Netgear Orbi RBR50 Spiel
Orbi RBR50 has been EOL for a couple of years now, so as a “review”, this post will be outdated the moment it is published. But I thought to share some of my experiences, some positives, and some negatives in using and setting up mesh routers for the first time then upgrading to another one. I wouldn’t go into details on what is my latest choice of routers, but it isn’t from Netgear — partly due to its pricing and product design.
Ethernet, the Physical Champion of Nonphysical Mediums
More than a decade ago, I ran the ethernet ‘backbones’ for my home network: ones to connect the nodes, ones to connect workstations, and ones to connect media streaming devices. If I recall correctly, the fastest WiFi standard available at the time to be used to connect nodes-to-nodes, were either slightly slower or faster than the 1Gbps Cat 5E, which was already wired-in. I benignly thought cables would last long enough with little latencies; how incredibly wrong I was.
How to Upgrade WiFi Router Platform-Agnostically
Upgrading a router every few years takes more than what it should. The price tag on these machines is generally on par with entry-level smartphones, and smartphones with the average upgrade cycle of 4 years have better upgradability and migration softwares. Not to mention, all the manufacturers are eager to support migration away from the competitors. Routers, from my experience, don’t do that.
Call to Router Manufacturers for Better EOL Disclosure
WiFi is the basic necessity of 21st century. We fight over it, much like cowboys have fought over lands to grow their, well, cows. Wild West is an unusual metaphor for WiFi, but my reasoning is that home networking markets lack transparency and control on how much these home-grown radio wave generators are sold and maintained much in a sense how Wild West was. We are living in a world where having access to the internet is prerequisite for living in a modern society, yet the equipments themselves are often overlooked.
Fix macOS Shared Folder ‘Not Found’ Error
While Mac handles vast majority of things nicely without too much asking questions, keeping network connection to a NAS drive is not one of them. If you happen to be on WiFi, and your Mac is likely to go to sleep frequently (i.e. it’s a laptop), you will see an annoying error message anytime you try to reconnect to NAS, “cannot be opened because the original item cannot be found”.