amiga Commodore declared bankruptcy 25 years ago today Commodore International declared bankruptcy on April 29, 1994, and pretty much sealed the fate of the Amiga. I couldn’t care less about Commodore, but I think we lost
passwords A standard for describing a site's password rules There’s not a universal standard for what a valid password on a website must look like. Some sites allow you to use any four letters. Others require at least twenty characters, including at least one numeric digit and one “special character&
happiness Ringing the bird I was on an early morning walk and came across a guy staring at the telephone wires. As I approached, I caught the distinct aroma of marijuana. I turned to see what he might be looking at, and he held a finger to his
ajit pai Heavy traffic is not a DDoS Ajit Pai claimed that when the FCC asked citizens to comment on Net Neutrality, their website was attacked with a distributed denial of service, or DDoS. I’ve heard many of his defenders claim that an overwhelming number of people trying to use
Happy birthday to me! I registered Honeypot.net on July 2, 1998, so today is its twentieth birthday. We’ve had fun, little domain. Here’s to twenty more!
trump "At a Crucial Juncture, Trump’s Legal Defense Is Largely a One-Man Operation" At a Crucial Juncture, Trump’s Legal Defense Is Largely a One-Man Operation – The New York Times Highlights: Joseph diGenova, a longtime Washington lawyer who has pushed theories on Fox News that the F.B.I. made up evidence against Mr. Trump, left
advertising How many minutes of Internet are you paying for each month? If you pay for a 100Mbps cable connection to the Internet and your plan sets a 300GB data cap, you can use your connection at full speed for 8.3 hours per month before hitting overuse charges. If your cell phone plan supports 50Mbps
travel Airlines Restrict 'Smart Luggage' Over Fire Hazards Posed By Batteries Airlines Restrict ‘Smart Luggage’ Over Fire Hazards Posed By Batteries : The Two-Way : NPR: “Beginning Jan. 15, customers who travel with a smart bag must be able to remove the battery in case the bag has to be checked at any point
apps App subscriptions must offer value Software authors are increasingly switching to subscription models to make their work “sustainable”. Too often they’re forgetting to make a value proposition that helps their customers. Here’s a hint: if you have to write a Medium post explaining why I should support
computing Introducing metric quantity units for computing In computing, metric-sounding prefixes almost universally refer to sizes expressed as powers of two: kilo = 2^10 = 1024 mega = 2^20 = 1,048,576 giga = 2^30 = 1,073,741,
omnifocus Traveling with OmniFocus and OmniOutliner I don’t travel a lot, so when I do I invariably find that I’ve forgotten something important (9 PM the night before: “say, dear, where are we boarding the dogs?” “I thought you were doing that!”). I wrote an AppleScript to copy
ghost Back home to Wordpress I’ve been blogging for years using one system or another: At first, there was writing HTML in vim and using FTP to upload it. Then there was a self-written system that pulled content out of MySQL and stuffed it into a template. Next
ai Provider She was half-heartedly poking at the keyboard when the car started to move. Oh. “I guess I’m rolling. Coverage is sketch here so I might cut out.” “Oh my God. You’re still shielding her? I thought we
economy America's military versus the world I am pro-military. I think having a strong military means we’re unlikely to have to use it to protect ourselves. But how strong does it actually need to
privacy Search-proof your devices when traveling Over-eager airport security has recently taken to making travelers unlock their phones and tables for examination. This is both unforgivably invasive and trivially easy to defeat. Here’s how to protect your data on your iPhone or iPad when traveling. Simplest: disable Touch
meta Rebooting I started this blog twelve years ago. I always meant to update it regularly, but… life intervenes. After recently coming back to it, I decided it was due for a good cleaning. There were lots of old articles about things I no longer
privacy Purge your Yahoo account There are about 1.5 billion reasons to want to cancel your Yahoo account. Don’t do that! According to Yahoo’s account deletion page, they “may allow other users to sign up for and use your current Yahoo! ID and
devonthink Migrating off Evernote In late 2016, Evernote updated their privacy policy to explicitly grant their employees the right to view your personal information. In their own words: And please note that you cannot opt out of employees looking at your content for other reasons stated in our
politics Technology IS Politics It’s not possible for technologists to avoid politics because technology is politics: You’re writing an instant messaging app that can more easily share information with law enforcement agencies, or one designed to make that impossible. Either of those alter how
education Electronics Kit for my Kids Cory Doctorow mentioned that Elenco makes a perfect copy of the Radio Shack 200-in-One electronics kit. I hadn’t read to the end of his article before I’
childhood We had a scary basement When I was a kid, my parents had a horror movie basement. It was unfinished, poorly lit, and apparently designed to terrorize kids. It was divided into three approximately equally sized rooms: The wooden, backless staircase from upstairs dropped you into the first. It
alameda My phone was Lyfted My son needed a ride to a Boy Scout campout yesterday and neither Jen nor I were home to take him. I had the idea to call a Lyft driver for him. My son accidentally left his phone in the Lyft car and this
christmas Christmases Past How I imagined the backstory of the dad from “A Christmas Story”: I’ve seen things. Lots of us have: it was a long war. Terrible things, like Anzio ’44. Wonderful things, like summer in liberated Paris. I’ve seen these, and
