Samsung TV + Chromecast with Google TV = No HDMI Signal

Issue

Samsung Smart TV (UE40H6400) with Google TV Chromecast (2020) connected. When the TV is switched off and then switched back on, it shows No Signal on the HDMI port to which Google TV Chromecast is connected (I tried different HDMI ports).

No Signal
HDMI3
(1) Check the cable connections and the settings of your source device.
(2) Press Source on your remote control to select the connected source device.

Pressing any button on the Samsung TV does nothing, however, pressing any button on the Google TV remote fixes the issue immediately (at which point Samsung TV remote also starts controlling the Google TV interface). For a slightly more elaborate workaround (or if you don't have Google TV remote at hand), you can press Tools on Samsung TV remote, then select Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC) option.

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Currys unstoppable marketing / spam emails

It's not a secret that many websites and organisations will send you marketing / special offers regardless of how carefully you select correct checkboxes telling them that you don't want any marketing emails. In some cases the only difference selecting right boxes makes is that you will start to receive these emails not immediately, but a week or two later...

This is annoying, but at least most legitimate newsletters and marketing emails have working unsubscribe links and respect your choice to opt-out. Obviously, there are exceptions, both good and bad ones. And one of the bad ones is Currys.

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Microsoft Family safety in Windows 10 just doesn't work...

Microsoft have been changing Windows built-in Family Protection in recent Windows 8 and 10 quite a bit. The latest one - Windows 10 version has been renamed to Microsoft Family and moved to the Cloud. All configuration and reporting is now done online on Microsoft Family website. In addition, in order to use Microsoft Family you have to convert all local user accounts to Microsoft Accounts. Now, it's somewhat silly to create email and Microsoft account for 4 year old, but this approach has some advantages. For example, once you setup user accounts and configure parental control settings once, it's super easy and quick to apply them to all your Windows 10 devices.

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Buying USB Flash drive with hardware write protection

I have an old trusted no-brand 4GB USB Flash drive with hardware write protection switch that use to load various security and other tools to infected, or simply untrusted PCs. Hardware write-protection removes that constant need to remember to reformat the flash drive after every use with untrusted devices.

While 4GB is not much, it is more than sufficient for this particular purpose. However, recently I started noticing that write speeds on this thing are getting more and more sluggish. A quick test with AS SSD revealed that it wasn't just my imagination - an average write rate was just over 2MB/s. I don't remember this drive being so slow, so it's probably an aging flash memory issue.

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