Twitter being in the news lately is generally due to some new nonsense by Elon Musk. This time though it’s for bungling their data security. It came out now that 200 million email addresses and other records for Twitter users have been exposed in the endless line of data breaches. Lawrence Abrams at Bleeping Computer…Continue readingTwitter Data Breach is Another Reason to Hate it There
Tag: tech
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Ask Me Questions At My Funeral
Mourning the dead is a process that differs by culture, geographic location, customs, and a myriad of other factors. One interesting turn of how technology may augment this process is the work of StoryFile. This company whose purpose is to memorialize Holocaust survivors has been employed at times to let the deceased “attend” and “answer”…Continue readingAsk Me Questions At My Funeral
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The HomePod Comes Home
In what is surely one of the most out-of-left-field announcements from Apple in a long time, they have done something I have never seen them do: They resurrected a product. Specifically, the HomePod smart speaker is back and in its Version 2 form, it is very much similar to the HomePod that was discontinued in…Continue readingThe HomePod Comes Home
Let’s start with the end of this story first: John Deere sucks. That is the most important part to know because, like others, they have fought tooth and nail to stop people from repairing the stuff they buy from Deere. In a society that’s moving more toward renting everything, being locked out of fixing your…Continue readingFarmers Finally Allowed to Repair the Stuff They Own
In yet more proof (like we needed any) that Facebook Meta is still falling quite short in making their virtual reality world Horizon Worlds a thing, Wired reporter Eric Ravenscraft tells his tale of trying to hold a holiday party inside that system. Spoilers: it was a big mess. For starters, organizing an event using…Continue readingIs Anyone Still “Trying to fall in love” with Horizon Worlds?
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iPhone Karaoke
Apple Music has been in fierce competition with Spotify since the launch of Cupertino’s service. Aside from Spotify Wrapped (which Apple greatly improved their version in ’22), there are few differences in services. It really comes down to personal taste and preference rather than which is ‘better’. Because both are damn good. Apple is looking…Continue readingiPhone Karaoke
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Alexa, Go Away
With the massive proliferation of Amazon Echo / Alexa devices, Amazon found a gaping hole by which to get their hardware into people’s houses. For years Amazon has generally released shoddy, commodity (AKA crap) they sell at a loss in order to get you to use their services more. The Echo was a hit, mostly…Continue readingAlexa, Go Away
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Dead or Alive, You’re Coming With Me
When science fiction becomes science fact, it can be awesome. Other times it can be really bad. In the case of “Asimov’s Laws of Robotics”, it has become reality to examine the first law “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” because, in…Continue readingDead or Alive, You’re Coming With Me
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Hive Temporarily Forced Offline
With people looking for Twitter alternatives, because… you know why, there have been many giving Mastodon and others a try. One that has come up is called Hive, a social network I’d never even heard of a month ago. The influx of people has been so massive though that this 2-person company is feeling the…Continue readingHive Temporarily Forced Offline
Anker, whose sub-brand Eufy, has built a ton of goodwill in the decade-plus it’s been in business. They’ve created many sub-brands with Eufy being one for the home and consisting of cameras. They’ve promised zero-subscription, zero-cloud, encrypted video since Day 1. Imagine my surprise when news broke that data is going to the cloud. Oh,…Continue readingEufy’s Promise of Secure Video Was A Lie
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A Silly Little SmartPhone
Over on “The Birdsite” there continues to be no end of apologists, seekers of Lord Manchild’s (as I’ve nicknamed Musk) attention, and defenders of Elon Musk’s every move. Twitter is Going Great chronicles so much, but this new nonsense takes the cake. Attention-Seeker Liz Wheeler jumped into the fray on Twitter basically challenging Musk to…Continue readingA Silly Little SmartPhone
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It Looks Like You Need a Sweater
Does anyone like Clippy? For anyone who’s initial response is “Who?” let’s rewind. Back in the mid 90’s, Microsoft introduced an assistant into Word named Clippy. It was an animated paperclip with eyes. It would monitor what you were doing and interrupt your work with suggestions. It was… annoying. Dipping into the nostalgia well, Microsoft…Continue readingIt Looks Like You Need a Sweater
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Evernote’s End
One of the longest-running and successful apps on iOS has been Evernote. This note-taking app was an amazing piece of software in the early days of the iPhone. From OCR to web syncing to a complete organizational method, Evernote (for a time) was *THE* note-taking app to use. That road seems to be over in…Continue readingEvernote’s End
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California Platin’
It only took fifteen years for e-ink to find another use besides the driving technology behind the Kindle and other eBook readers. A bill was signed into law recently in California allowing this tech to do something that will make life easier for everyone: be a license plate. Jonathan Gitlin at Ars Technica has more.…Continue readingCalifornia Platin’
It’s been… a week in the tech sphere. So much so that I felt the need to write about it all in a Lightning Round update because it stretches far and wide. For starters, there’s the trainwreck that is Twitter & Elon Musk. To call it a crisis is an understatement. A billionaire with thin…Continue readingWWWTF
In the words of Ian Malcolm: Well, there it is. The long-running saga of if shitposter extraordinaire Elon Musk would own Twitter is now over. It comes as no surprise that a man who impulsively signed a purchase agreement could not get out of it, no matter how much he tried. As of last Friday,…Continue readingTwit Show
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The Muddled iPad
Last week Apple updated its iPad line, as rumors had suggested. It wasn’t a flashy prerecorded event or a live keynote. With some press releases and an update to their store, the “new hotness” was unleashed. But unlike many new products, this lineup is… confusing. For years Apple has gone with a Small, Regular, and…Continue readingThe Muddled iPad
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Lying Legs
As Facebook Meta continues its push to convince you that VR is really really really the wave of the future, they made an announcement last week that legs were coming to their Horizon Worlds experience. There was a whole demo around this feature. Avatars have only been floating torsos up to this point. It isn’t…Continue readingLying Legs
Minecraft, one of the most popular and longest-lasting games out there, made an interesting rule change earlier this year: no integrations with NFTs would be allowed anymore. To many (or even most) players of Minecraft, this would likely be no big deal. But to a few who parlayed their servers into a play-to-earn model, the…Continue readingMinecraft Rule Change Collapses NFT Community
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Gettin Spinny With It
Since the invention of disk storage, a drive with spinning platters has been the standard in nearly all computers. Then something interesting happened in the early 2000s: storage on chips became cheap enough to replace a “spinning” hard drive. Hence, Solid State Drives (SSDs) were born. But were they better than the old standard? Andrew…Continue readingGettin Spinny With It
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Sony’s Coming for Meta with PSVR2
Facebook Meta isn’t the only game in town when it comes to virtual reality. In an approach based in… reality, Sony is developing their second PSVR hardware for the application people would actually use: playing games. Sony released its first edition of the Playstation VR add-on to the PS4 back in 2016. While it was…Continue readingSony’s Coming for Meta with PSVR2
Smart home devices are great until they’re not. The earliest device to get smart and go mainstream is the thermostat, thanks to Nest. The device is sleek and easy to use. Over time many others have come to the market. But now we see the downside: a power company in Colorado locked out their customers…Continue readingI’m Sorry Dave, You Cannot Turn Your Air Conditioning On
AT&T plugging holes in its G5 network by placing winning bids on “mid-range” bandwidth. These frequencies allow faster-than-4G speed, but now they seem to have pulled a fast one. After confirming multiple times about phones that will support their 3.45 GHz spectrum, they’ve now come out and said JKLOL MY BAD! Only brand new phones…Continue readingScummy Cell Carrier Does Scummy Thing (Yet Again)
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Death to the SIM
For all the hullabaloo in Apple’s announcements last week, one key item was also announced: the iPhone 14 in the US will not come with a spot for a physical SIM card. eSIM, a software-only equivalent, will be the only way to go from now on. Is this a smart move on Apple’s part? Eli…Continue readingDeath to the SIM
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Camera Evolution
On the eve of the iPhone 14 announcement, I thought it would be good to pause and look back on this fantastic comparison the folks at Simple Ghar mocked up. The team over there went through and compared photos from Samsung, Apple, and other smartphones going back to 2000. To compare the capabilities of camera…Continue readingCamera Evolution
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I Want My NFT TV
A new entry from the “we never asked for this” department. LG has announced its Arts Lab with this bonehead feature: you can display, buy, and sell NFTs directly on the television. Emma Roth at The Verge brings us this gem of an idea. For now, only users in the US with an LG TV…Continue readingI Want My NFT TV
The early days of the internet lasted a long time. Notably, the start of people getting online differed from childhood, to something teenagers tried out, to people only getting a computer in the home past 2000. It wasn’t like the iPhone where people all got it within a compressed timeframe. Because of that long time,…Continue readingInternet Power Explains the “World Wide Web” in 1995
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Diversifying The Supply Chain
Apple, like most companies, has most, if not all manufacturing taking place in China. While this has been debated hotly in the US for decades if it’s good to do, COVID and the inability to make things have hit the tech sector hard. Apple is now doing something about it. Arnold Zafra at The Mac…Continue readingDiversifying The Supply Chain
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Does It Come In Elvish?
If there is one subset of PC hobbyists that can simultaneously become a rabbit hole and an obsession, it’s those who are enamored with mechanical keyboards. These fans create custom keyboards, cobbled together from bespoke keycaps and individually suited switches in order to make their perfect input device. It is a fun hobby and can…Continue readingDoes It Come In Elvish?
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T-Mobile Looks To The Stars
In an event that wasn’t leaked beforehand or tipped off to any insiders, T-Mobile made a big announcement last week. The company, which merged with Sprint recently, will partner with Starlink to fill in gaps within their coverage map. The coolest part? It will work with existing cell phones without the need to buy special…Continue readingT-Mobile Looks To The Stars