@davehawley said in File types & Downloads:

@joshl
I have absolutely no idea what you mean!

I think it means he'd rather not install something new if there's any way to move forward with fixing/tweaking what he's already got on the system... not an uncommon preference where old hardware is concerned. (And/or where 'old' users are concerned, as well. )

@assybish The contrast and/or color rendering of the images you uploaded make it really hard to discern the light grey text carrying the Royal notation... in any case, the Royal text is indeed visible in the upper right corners.

You've probably picked up adware in your Opera installation similar to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/antivirus/comments/98qaml/how_do_i_remove_ads_by_royal/

Try checking for something peculiar in your extensions and remove any oddities if found, even to the extent of removing each extension, if that's what it takes. From other reports I've seen, "Royal Raid" can be nasty to remove for some victims (particularly on Android-related systems), depending on how it's caused an infection, so you may end up having to reset the browser or reinstall it.

@nobiznis said in Please stop ads via speed dial entries:

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Sneaking fake Bookmarks into people's lists of links is BS. ...

It's a huge violation of trust and a big disappointment. Shouldn't have to wait for an update to turn off an unethical idea that never should've been allowed in the first place.

The bookmarks being added aren't "fake", they're real. You've simply assumed that the bookmarks on the browser's link lists would only be ones you've added. To the best of my knowledge, there's no assurance in Opera's ToS/EULA or browser promotions that such link additions won't occur during updates. Moreover, the added ones can easily be removed by users following an update.

Violation of trust requires the breaking of a promise, assurance, or guarantee; unethical behavior involves a violation of professional or moral standards. Neither has occurred with Opera's ad-placement practices. What has occurred clearly represents (to you) a disappointment or something below what you appear to have expected, but it does not rise to the level of your accusations. Nothing is served by such rhetorical over-reach.

In any case, Opera is responding to user objections (such as yours) to their practice and is providing users an avenue for remedy if they so choose.

@yanta said in Please stop ads via speed dial entries:

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I am very grateful that future Opera builds will have an opt-out option. However, given that this option will not be displayed in the settings by default (if I understand this post correctly), most users will probably not find it.

Perhaps another form of advertising could be found that enjoys a higher degree of acceptance. Respective proposals could be discussed in this forum.

That may be true that most users may not find the setting. On the other hand, the thinking may be that if a user is truly disturbed by the speed dial ads, they'll track down the setting wherever it's placed. Something to keep in mind is that if one makes ads too easy to disable, the market value for companies to place ads in your product declines. Personally, I believe the flaw lies in the "free" revenue models associated almost universally with things Internet these days... it's the source of many current online ills (assaults on user data privacy, the ads vs. ad-blocking war, etc).

Philosophically and economically, I'm old-school on much of this: if I value a product or media offering, I'm willing to pay money for it - as I've long done with printed media and for ordinary products. But somehow, the idea of competing for cash payment on the basis of quality has largely been submerged in the deluge of the modern Internet's "it has to be free or nobody will use it," which merely means other forms of payment besides monetary must be extracted from the user to cover the costs of production.

@deestonic said in Unwanted speed dial entries - again:

@leocg Oh, please, don't play that game. It shows ads, it's intrusive - so, i'm paying with my attention. And that's just what they want.
So yes - it's not free. ....

There is no "game" involved in what he said. In this world, there are no true 'free' lunches... somebody, somehow must pay in some way for creating and offering them. In the conventional marketplace, payment for something is normally made by handing over 'money'; when money is not handed over, then the term "free" is often applied to the transaction. Use of that term in ads normally conveys that the product is available without the user paying money for it.

However, there still remains a real cost that exists for the product, and either the maker must cover that cost 'out of the goodness of his heart' (and incur the losses) or he must attempt to recover 'value' (to him) from the user so as to defray his true costs. There are only three main mechanisms available for a maker to recover value from a "free" product: sell the user's personal data and/or browsing details into the data-marketing arena, sell access to the user's eyeballs (ads and favored placements within the product), or cover/underwrite the cost of the 'free' product from the maker's profit from a different for-pay product in hopes of interesting the user in buying that for-pay product. There is only one end-point for companies that don't somehow recover their continuing costs for 'free' products they provide: bankruptcy.

I don't particularly like ads and such, but in an Internet world dominated by the revenue model of "free" software and websites, I realize that either eyeballs or data about me are the payment for such. I don't, however, feel outraged and entitled to continue using such "free" products without paying for them in some way, since I'm nowhere entitled to a life full of free lunches in the real world.

@joshl said in What is your Weather? :

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Is the AGW still a conspiracy by bureaucrats and bad scientists or is it a reality?
Can't they have a comprehensive proof to us wise guys at last? Or is science destined to become a new stupid religion - you believe, you do not?

It remains a theory - an attempt by certain people to describe reality. Because it is essentially based on computer models, a great deal of assumptions and interpretation get folded in by both the nature of the models themselves (what mathematical emphases are placed on which atmospheric/chemical processes and how they are theorized to interact over time) and in the quality of the data being fed into the models (which is constantly being tweaked - to compensate for certain things according to theory supporters and to intentionally create biased results according to critics).

A major problem relates to the backward look scientists take into historical climate records (either man-created or conclusions drawn from various geologic/geophysical traces) and what interpretation they make of what they see - and there's major disagreement over many of the claims made about what the "climate records" indicate. As a result, it is difficult (if not impossible) to accurately run the models against what occurred in the past to "proof" the models themselves in order to make accurate future projections.

Another thing to keep in mind is that our human understanding of the full role the sun plays on earth climate is limited since many solar processes are poorly understood (remaining unproven theories)... it is known that there is cyclicity in solar output (eg: sunspot cycles, for one), but the mechanisms and the full earth climatic consequences are not well understood yet. Part of the problem is that detailed research into all these things has only really gone on for the last 60-70 years and what we normally consider typical "precision" and "scope" of 'science' in such fields has only existed over the last 50 years - very short time spans in terms of something so long-term as 'climate'.

It appears you have feedzpipe adware that has taken up residence in your Opera browser, either as an extension or auto-loading webpage. You'll have to remove the infecting extension and/or stop the auto-loading webpage. You probably should ask an Opera Forums moderator to move this thread to the Opera For Windows forum, which is a more appropriate place for it (this sub-forum is just for issues involving the forum itself).

@nvmjustagirl said in VPN not working, I.p. address exposed:

@jimma question about this.. " cannot connect may be blocked by ISP or Government "

do ya use your isp dns server that they provide..
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if so i was just gonna say try 'n a public one might help..
And then try browsing.. this will allow you to know if your ISP is block 'n you.. but i dunno about Government..

It depends on the particular government in that locale. Some run the national backbones through their filters, some require (and police) the local providers to do the blocking via DNS, some do both. The more active censorship places tend to aggressively seek out and block VPN IPs (or non-local DNS lookup services or even TOR relay IPs/nodes) whenever they can. With the advances of technology by both censors and users, the entire arena of censorship and bypassing it has taken on the overtones of electronic warfare and countermeasures. Each censorship measure has countermeasures, which in turn, stimulate counter-counter-measures. The only sure and permanent solution is using a satellite phone for the connection and bypassing the local nets... which is, sadly, highly impractical for most people.

@shirohige2811 said in VPN does not work:

@junioroe Hello, I am from Venezuela, the VPN stays in orange without being conceited, The VPN is available in Venezuela?

It may have to do with the 2017 article here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/25/venezuela_increases_censorship_surveillance/ More recent news articles from June 2018 report Venezuela is also now blocking access to the TOR network. Given the repeatedly-demonstrated aggressiveness of their censors in blocking citizen access to extra-national news sites and similar, the blocking the IPs of known VPN's and proxies (including Opera's) would certainly fall within their censorship goals.

@rejzor said in Terrible performance, how to figure out what's causing it?:

@blackbird71 And how is telemetry going to tell them that my entire laptop runs like crap? It's not crashing, not having lockups, errors or freezes, it's just horrendously slow for no logical reason. I don't even know who to contact at Microsoft to get it fixed...

The Windows telemetry runs in the background, more or less in bursts all the time; moreover, it uses multiple IP addresses that you will find very difficult to block via a firewall, hosts file, etc. Depending on certain settings options, various kinds and details of data are phoned home. As to many of the specific details, Microsoft has been less than forthcoming. This, in turn, has been the source of many privacy questions and criticisms from users ever since Win10 first emerged.

Moreover, regarding telemetry, Microsoft couldn't care less about your particular system... they're collating data from millions of users looking for various pattern failures that they can then fix before they ship the updates to their more lucrative (and stability-demanding) Enterprise users. Home and Pro users may be able to delay the forced updates for varying amounts of time, but they can't pick and choose among them nearly as easily as in previous Windows versions - hence they can't avoid the early-adopters' problematic ones as easily as in the past. It's more than likely Microsoft's telemetry indeed has data indicating the slowdown on your system after whichever update was involved, but that merely represents a single occurrence to Microsoft. Only if they see enough similar field problems will anything be done to fix/re-build the update for later users, none of which will do your system any good unless the problem is sufficiently widespread.

Microsoft's object in doing this is to use the "free" field testing by users as a substitute for more costly in-house QA testing... but that goal does not include helping a specific user fix a problem caused by one of their updates. Since the 1709 "Fall Update" first emerged last autumn, there have been literally multiple dozens of updates issued (clustered in groups), of which perhaps 10-20 have caused multiple users a wide variety of issues. One of the most common causes have been update conflicts with various hardware drivers on certain systems.

I wish things were otherwise, but sadly they're not. Unless a user is something of a Windows guru, about all they can do is to install the basic Win10 OS and block the Windows update service from functioning. Then the user manually downloads each Win10 update one-at-a-time and checks operation after each to try to find the problematic update. If he finds one, he can "hide" it from the auto-updater's view (for a time period not clearly defined by Microsoft) if he wants to resume allowing the Windows updater to function. It's messy and labor-intensive; but for some users, it's about all they can do unless they know somebody who is skilled and experienced in Windows update problems.