2024/03/24

Why did Edge's Read Aloud stop working for PDF files?

TL;DR Edge's Read Aloud not longer works on PDF files.

Out of all the free options, Microsoft's Online voices are (for me) the best. I have to read a lot of PDFs and having the voice read along with me helps me not get so bored that I pass out. Yeah! ADHD!

I am pretty sure a good 0.5 of my GPA is directly a result of using Edge's Read Aloud on my homework. 

So why did it suddenly stop working? There were no updates and neither the Dev channel or Canary channel works with PDFs any more. Regular text and websites read just fine, but not PDFs. The loading bar just sits there and spins. For hours. 

I tried forced updates, reboots, forced downgrades, changed the flags:// setting to use the old non-Adobe PDF engine and eventually started looking into tools that turn PDFs into text. 

 There are other tools that I could use to produce a similar result (good quality voices reading text/pdfs) but I haven't found any solution to make Edge read PDFs again.

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2024/03/21

Where did Data Saver go?

tl;dr Data Saver setting vanished - factory reset makes it come back.

I have a Samsung S21 with the most recent updates using the Visible (Verizon) network. In the middle of the month, the Mobile Hotspot stopped working. It declared that it couldn't turn on until the Data Saver setting is turned off. 

Except the entire Data Saver setting is gone. Not just grey'ed out, entirely missing. 

Every search returns results on how to get to the Data Saver setting in order to turn it off. Except the Data Saver setting is NOT THERE. 

There are no updates available, reboots made no difference, and I was out of ideas. Fortunately, a factory reset corrected the issue. 

I'd love to know why it disappeared, if only to prevent it from happening again. 

Search terms (from last to first): 

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Postscript: 

Why does my phone have ATT apps on it? It didn't come with ATT apps. I have only used Visible as my provider. Why does ATT think it's okay to force install spam games on it's customers? Humbug.

2024/03/20

Firestick damage monitor

 A few days ago I was amused by the idea of plugging an unused Firestick into my monitor. Yesterday I noticed that my monitor was constantly cycling between HDMI1 and HDMI2, so I unplugged the HDMI cable coming from my desktop. That left only the Firestick on HDMI1 plugged into the monitor. 

This morning, when I went to my computer, I noticed two horizontal white lines, one about 25% down from the top of the screen and the other about 25% up from the bottom. When I pushed the home button the Fire Remote, I noticed that the white lines seemed to have changed somehow. And when I scrolled up and down with the directional pad, I could see that whatever was happening looked like an inverted and squished screen was moving but only within the two white lines. 

That's weird, so I tried a few things like unplugging the monitor for a minute, switching HDMI ports, and unplugging the Stick and trying the desktop. The best that I got was the white lines became narrower and dark red smeary looking vertical lines appeared on the left and right sides of the screen.

I tried to find something useful by searching Google and Bing but I either found nothing relevant or nothing with an answer. 

Search terms:

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Why did Edge's Read Aloud stop working for PDF files?

TL;DR Edge's Read Aloud not longer works on PDF files. Out of all the free options, Microsoft's Online voices are (for me) the best....