Comment by Robelius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Robelius | Hacker News Reader

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The Windows beep is usually from a speaker connected to your motherboard. There is no speaker located on the majority of keyboards, meaning no beeps.

It's not ridiculous to think words would begin to get deleted, but it is ridiculous to say some government organization would sit there and watch him type to remove some content. Why would any organization spying on him make it so obvious, and pointless. If he wanted to hide it from them he would just go to another computer.

I run into this self'deleting in words once a month. I have no idea how I activate it, but when i type it deletes what's in front of it. It's a frustrating feature that I haven't defeated, but I don't think the government is watching my computer, seeing what I type on Hacker News.

(I have no idea what your technical expertise is like; please don't take offense to this.)

Have you noticed whether the blinking cursor has changed from a vertical line to a block? If it has (or, maybe, even if it hasn't, depending on OS + other factors), it's possible you've accidentally hit the "Insert" key on your keyboard, which toggles whether text is inserted or overwrites other text.

It's an ancient feature that very few people consciously use any more and still results in the occasional call in to our shop from a bewildered client.

Hitting the "Insert" key again should fix the problem next time.

I'm pretty sure the government is watching your computer (internet traffic, and maybe your webcam). They probably don't have you targeted for surveillance by an agent, which is what I think you meant.

We haven't yet been marketed a reason to constantly steam our webcams to the cloud. For this reason remote activation would be required in many cases, and that would be expensive on a mass scale.

Steps toward cloud services like this might include the Kinect, or face recognition login services. We'll see how it plays out. :^)

Pretty sure that's the Insert key that turns on "overtype".

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