Onur Sümbül

Smartphones have become more than just basic communication devices that replace home line phones. They are our point-and-shoot cameras, navigation units, media consumption devices and add many more unique features to help us out in real world use-cases. With every new year comes a new generation of SoCs, camera sensors, charging and display technologies. This is also why it is tempting to buy the newest flagship phone on the market.  Adding the hype around these devices, people most are likely willing to upgrade sooner to the next gen devices then their use-cases require.  This creates many problems: First, changing phones every one or two years creates a large amount of waste and that way harms the environment. Also, new devices need resources that are most likely only available in mines with inferior labor rights compared to modern industrial countries. Well known cases of child labor and slavery shouldn't become a norm to satisfy the public.  But w...

Back in 1984, the Mac carried the slogan " The computer for the rest of us" . The Macintosh was special because of its new mouse input feature and the idea of revolutionizing the way people interacted with computers. Some features still remained today like the Apple logo in the newest macOS versions alongside the menubar.  The evolution of the Mac carried along with the challenges the computer industry has had to face over the decades. The internet was one of the biggest influencers of Mac hardware. For instance, the biggest selling point of the iMac G3 back in 1998 was internet compatibility. It was advertised as the default gateway for accessing the internet.  The next step that Macs took began with the transition from the PowerPC (PPC) platform developed by IBM to the x86 Intel platform. This was a necessity since the efficiency and power output of the PPC wouldn't be as competitive as on the x86-architecture. Efficiency was the biggest influence for an evolutionar...

Let's imagine a scenario that is not really unlikely to happen to you: You are drinking a cup of coffee and checking some typos on your essay that you wrote yesterday. Obviously, your headphones were plugged in and you simply enjoyed the time that you had available all for yourself. Fresh air brings new ideas and is a must after intensive work so you get up from your chair. What you forgot is that your headphones were beneath your coffee mug and as soon as you got up, your laptop and smartphone got full of liquid.  Now every minute counts: You turn your notebook off immediately and let it dry for a bit. But what If you are one of the Mac users with a soldered storages device or even with a T2 Security chip and your notebook does not turn on at all to save all your data that you had? This is where a reliable and proper backup comes in. In some cases, your data such as pictures, documents for work or university are more important than a MacBook. They could be more expensi...

With the growth of the internet came a threat to operating systems in form of viruses, malware, and spyware. Back in the days when computers didn't have an app store, popups appeared upon restart and when installing additional software on your computer. Updates, new feature announcements or ads. Everything was happening at ones, no one understood it but at least Internet Explorer and Microsoft Excel opened up. I wound say that these days where the dark days of the internet era. People with little to none knowledge about properly using a computer had bad experiences because of the unknowingly installed software running in the background sucking power and resources that could have been used for the programs the user actually had an interest in. Some people even had a hard time opening the task manager to force quit the application that caused this slow experience.  In recent years the quality of viruses has changed dramatically. Many organizations have been affected by data hos...

Let's begin with the obvious facts: Google Search is not prone for its privacy and user anonymity. In fact, the goal of most companies from the valley is about farming data about you. It's not that they want to scam or blackmail you. The goal is to create a personal image of the user to target ads and campaigns for companies that try to reach a specific audience. A vacuum manufacturer obviously tries to reach people that regularly use a vacuum and have an interest in having a nice and functioning one. So, the perfect audience for a vacuum ad could be housewives and professional cleaning companies for example. Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts about privacy, cookies are one of the main data access points for creating a user profile. With the help of the EU, users have gained the ability to check the cookie usages on websites and can choose to only save the necessary cookies to have a properly functioning website.  But there are alternatives in which data ca...

Germany takes privacy very serious. The abuse of personal information and trust by the Nazis with the Gestapo and the socialists with the Stasi organization showed Germans why information is a very valuable good.  This is also one of the reasons innovative technologies take time to get implemented in Germany and the usage of credit cards are extremely low compared to countries like the USA.  One of the most important things to consider in the 21th century is privacy.  That is why I decided to write this quick post about how you can avoid leaving any footprints behind you with your daily internet consumption.  Here are some important points: 1. Cookies Cookies are one of the most important aspects you need to worry about when browsing through the internet.  Cookies are essentially small data packs that include some information about the website you have visited. For example, settings for visuals or your login information. The problem with c...