NZCity NewsLinks -

All Links

4 Apr 2025

Search

Weather live: Power cuts, ferries cancelled as intense rain lashes Auckland
All Harbour ferries have been halted as heavy rain hits the upper North Island during the morning commute

I ditched Google Search. Now I’m saving the planet with Ecosia instead
You already know that Google is the largest search engine on the planet by a long shot. You may also know that Google is relying more and more on AI results, which has been controversial (to say the least), all while the organic search results have gotten worse. To cap things off, the US DOJ ruled and then doubled down on Google being a monopoly. So, people are understandably peeved and looking to alternatives. The one that caught my eye? Ecosia, which offers an environmentally-friendly bent that lets you search while fighting climate change. What is Ecosia and why is it special? Ecosia was founded in 2009 by Christian Kroll, who felt compelled to do something after he saw the effects of deforestation while on a trip around the world. And so Ecosia was born, a search engine that puts its advertising revenue towards tree-planting projects. Ecosia started off as a search engine, but has since expanded with a few other products that include Ecosia Browser (a Chromium-based web browser), Ecosia Chat (an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s API), and Freetree (a browser extension that plants trees as you shop). Dave Parrack / Foundry Ecosia is a not-for-profit tech company based in Berlin, Germany, that dedicates all profits to the betterment of our planet. In addition to turning every web search into an opportunity to plant and protect trees, Ecosia invests in various initiatives that further regenerative agriculture, renewable energy, and fighting climate change. As a Certified B Corporation, Ecosia seeks to maintain the highest standards of equity and inclusivity. (First time hearing about B Corps? In short, it’s a company that’s committed to using business for good and considering the needs of all stakeholders.) It’s also a steward-owned company, so it can’t be sold off or mined for profit. How Ecosia is helping to save the planet After covering its own costs (which includes costs of operations and development of its own products), Ecosia puts 100% of its profits towards planet-saving goals. As of this writing, 80% of those profits go towards planting and protecting trees while the remaining 20% is invested in other grassroots and community-driven “green” activism. Ecosia has already planted hundreds of millions of trees thanks to users choosing it over other search engines like Google and Bing. And it’s not just about planting trees! Ecosia relies heavily on solar panels to power its servers using renewable energy. As of 2020, Ecosia was producing twice as much energy as it consumes. Ecosia And perhaps the best thing about all of this? Their commitment to transparency. Ecosia publishes monthly financial reports that break down revenue generated, where every single dollar goes, impact on a country-by-country basis, and more. Most tech companies aren’t just secretive and profit-first, but also consume tons of energy to do what they do. That’s why Ecosia is so refreshing. They’re doing things differently and making a difference. How to start using Ecosia right now Using the Ecosia search engine is as simple as navigating to Ecosia.org and using it like you’d use any other search engine. The layout will be familiar if you’ve ever used Google to search the web, with a search bar that invites you to “Search the web…” Dave Parrack / Foundry The Ecosia search engine delivers search results (and the resulting ads) from both Microsoft Bing and Google Search. Ecosia has partnered with both companies, but where your results come from will depend on your location, device, and cookie settings. You can see which search providers are available to you by clicking the hamburger menu at the top-right of the Ecosia site, then clicking Search > Settings. Under “Preferred search provider,” if both Google and Bing are available, you can select one or leave it as No preference: Dave Parrack / Foundry If you want to take things one step further, you can install and use the Ecosia browser. This is a simple, pared-down browser that has Ecosia Search built into it, saving you from having to navigate to Ecosia.org every time you want to search something. Don’t skip Ecosia Chat and Freetree In addition to the search engine and web browser, don’t forget that you can also use Ecosia Chat if you want to interact with an AI chatbot and Freetree if you want to plant trees while shopping online. Ecosia Chat Dave Parrack / Foundry Ecosia Chat is a large language model in the same vein as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. It can answer questions, help with daily tasks, and even guide you in creative content production. It’s powered by ChatGPT in the backend, but the difference here is that none of your queries are used to train the AI model. However, do note that your queries are sent to OpenAI for processing, and those queries are held by OpenAI for 30 days. Ecosia also maintains that its chatbot “does not significantly increase the overall carbon footprint of Ecosia,” even though generative AI is widely known to consume a lot of energy to produce its responses. Freetree Dave Parrack / Foundry Freetree is a browser extension that lets you plant trees every time you purchase something from one of Ecosia’s partner shops. Once installed, you don’t have to do anything else—Freetree will automatically recognize when you’re shopping on supported online stores. Essentially, Ecosia acts as an affiliate. Supported online stores will pay a small commission to Ecosia every time a Freetree user purchases a product. As with the search engine, Ecosia uses that money to plant trees and fund its other climate action initiatives. My personal experience using Ecosia To be perfectly honest, while I had heard of Ecosia many years ago, I hadn’t really used it until a few months ago. But now I’ve used the search engine and the web browser pretty extensively—and while there are times when I return to Google, Ecosia is pretty good overall. The most obvious takeaway is that when using Ecosia, you know you’re doing some good for the world. Google, Microsoft, and other big tech companies may donate to good causes, but their primary mission is to rake in huge profits. That’s not the case with Ecosia. Dave Parrack / Foundry I’d urge anyone seeking to switch to Ecosia to explore the settings and tweak them to make Ecosia work for you. For example, I changed the Search region from the United Kingdom to “All Regions.” I also enabled Personalized search results, which is disabled by default. As for the Ecosia browser, I really enjoy the simple, pared-down interface. Google Chrome—my usual go-to browser—can be a little busy at times. And while I need Chrome’s extra features for work, I use Ecosia to browse the web when I want a more casual, laid-back experience. Dave Parrack / Foundry Ultimately, it feels good knowing that my web searches throughout the day are benefiting the world in a real, tangible way—certainly a more positive impact than searching with Google. If you don’t care about climate change, deforestation, or renewable energy, then you obviously won’t appreciate Ecosia’s raison d’être. But if you, like me, want to make small but effective changes to help make the world a better place, Ecosia is worth using. Further reading: Sick of Google? Try one of these search engines

I use Windows Task Manager daily. Here are 9 tips I wish I’d known sooner
The Windows Task Manager is one of the most iconic tools of the operating system. Whether you’re looking for information on system processes, checking on how your CPU or RAM is doing, or trying to shut down an errant app, it’s a really useful app. But like most Windows tools, you probably only know the bare essentials for day-to-day use—and that’s a shame because Task Manager can do so much more. Here are some lesser-known Task Manager tips and tricks worth knowing that’ll make you look like a pro. Quick-launch using a keyboard shortcut Jon Martindale / Foundry You might know you can press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and then select Task Manager from the list on the black screen that follows, but there’s another quick keyboard shortcut you can use to open Task Manager. Simply press Windows key + X to bring up the WinX menu (also known as Power User menu), then press the T key to immediately launch Task Manager without needing your mouse. Alternatively, you can press Windows key + Shift + Esc. It’s a little trickier to do one-handed, but this one instantly opens the Task Manager directly. Manage your startup apps Jon Martindale / Foundry If you have too many apps set to automatically launch when Windows boots up, it can slow down the overall Windows startup process. The solution? Manage your startup apps from within Task Manager to make sure only the most important ones are set to auto-start. With Task Manager open, navigate to the Startup apps tab in the left-side panel. Look through the list of apps that are “Enabled” and consider disabling the ones you don’t need all the time, especially if they have a “Startup Impact” of Medium or High. To disable auto-start for an app, right-click on it and select Disable. Once you’ve disabled all the apps you don’t need at startup, try rebooting your PC to see what kind of impact it had. Jump to an app’s program folder Joel Lee / Foundry If you want to make manual changes to an app’s program files—or just want to know where they are for future reference—you can actually navigate there directly from within Task Manager. To do so, make sure you’re in the Processes tab of Task Manager in the left-side panel. Then, right-click on the app you want to locate and select Open file location. This will launch a new File Explorer window where the app’s program folder is located. Restart Windows Explorer to fix glitches Jon Martindale / Foundry Lots can go wrong with Windows, but one of the best cure-all fixes when it seems like your PC is malfunctioning? Restarting Windows Explorer. If certain files or folders are unresponsive, or if the taskbar has disappeared, or if the Start menu stops working, or if a range of other basic Windows functions aren’t behaving properly, then this trick usually does the job—and you can do it from within Task Manager. Select the Processes tab and scroll until you find Windows Explorer. (It’ll likely be at the bottom of the running apps list.) Right-click it and select Restart to reboot Windows Explorer and give it a fresh start… hopefully without whatever problems you were facing before. Force-quit crashed or frozen apps Joel Lee / Foundry Task Manager has long been the tool of choice for shutting down errant programs, but the modern Task Manager has a number of options you can try for anything too stubborn to shut down properly. In the Processes tab, locate the app you want to close, right-click it and select End Task. If that doesn’t do the job, select the Details tab in the left-hand panel, then look through the list of running processes for the app you want to close, right-click it and select End process tree. This should force-quit the app and all related processes. Give an app more system resources Joel Lee / Foundry If your PC has a weak processor or not enough RAM, you might find that some apps are sluggish, especially when you have lots of apps or browser tabs open. In such cases, it can be helpful to tell Windows to prioritize certain apps over others and give them more resources to work with. (This can be really useful when you’re gaming since any dip in performance can affect how well a game plays.) To use Task Manager to change app priority, open it up and select the Details tab in the left-hand panel. Locate the app you want to boost, right-click it, hover over Set priority, then choose a priority level from the menu. (“Above normal” and “High” are good choices. “Realtime” offers the best performance but can cause system instability or crashes.) Similarly, you can deprioritize certain apps that are hogging too many resources or causing problems. Just repeat the above steps but select a lower priority, which will cause Windows to portion its resources away from that app to the higher-priority ones. Alternatively, right-click an app and set it to Efficiency mode if you’d rather Windows automatically deprioritize it to save resources as needed. See which apps are using your network Jon Martindale / Foundry Task Manager lets you quickly see just how much of your wired and wireless networks are being utilized, but it can also give you a shortcut to more detailed information when you need it. Select the Performance tab in the left-hand panel of Task Manager, then select Wi-Fi or Ethernet to look at broader network usage. If you want to see what’s using what in more detail, click the three-dot menu at the top right and select Resource Monitor. Then, on the next window, select the Network tab to expand out and see all the processes that are using your network and by how much. Monitor your system performance Joel Lee / Foundry If you need to keep an eye on how well a particular app runs or how your PC handles the running of certain apps and services, then you can use Task Manager for monitoring and reports. Select the Performance tab in Task Manager and choose the component you want to monitor (e.g., CPU, Memory, Disk, etc.). Right-click on the large real-time graph and select Graph summary view to see a simplified graph without any extra menu items. (Double-click it to return to the full Task Manager view per normal.) You probably want this graph to run on top of all other apps while you’re monitoring it, right? To do that, click the Settings cog icon in the bottom-left corner of Task Manager, then scroll down to Window management and tick the checkbox for Always on top. Use the old Task Manager Do you prefer the way the old Task Manager used to look? You can run it but it takes a few extra steps. Follow this quick guide to bring it back with its retro look. Note, however, you can’t use the new and old Task Managers at the same time; if the current Task Manager is running, you can’t also start the old one (and vice versa). Interested in more ways to use Windows 11 like a pro? Check out these essential Windows survival skills everyone should know.