David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
I think most people know the Nintendo NES was an 8-bit system. That tends to confuse people when it comes to the previous-generation system, the Atari 2600. Was Atari 2600 8 bit? Or something else?
The answer, of course, is that it depends.
Spam phone calls, robocalls, or scam calls aren’t quite as common on cell phones as they are on landlines, but they still happen way too often. When I posted advice on blocking robocalls on landlines, immediately people asked me about mobile phones. So here’s how to stop robocalls on my cell phone. And yours.
In May 2018, there were 4.1 billion robocalls in the United States. And it’s not slowing down. Robocallers won’t stop calling you on your own. So here are five things you can do, in order of increasing effectiveness. Many of them don’t cost you anything.
Roku makes seven models of its popular set-top box for streaming video. And that’s if you only count current production and aren’t buying a used model. Here’s how to know what Roku to buy.
You can buy a TV with Roku hardware built in, but I prefer a separate device. Here’s why.
We’ve all received more than our fair share of them: Phone calls from financial scams, tech support scams, and other dodgy phone calls trying to rip us off. There are actually several things you can do about them. Here’s how to report scam phone calls, so you and others will get fewer of them.
Common types include fake tech support and financial calls. Tech support calls may solicit payment for questionable computer services via credit card or wire transfer. Some scam phone calls may be more interested in getting personal information from you for the purposes of identity theft than money. But it’s important to stop fraud regardless of the motivation, to protect both ourselves and our neighbors.
If your Marx train runs slowly, the problem could be a number of things. Fortunately most of them are easy to check and easy to fix yourself.
For years in the 1980s, there were rumors of a Super Mario Bros Commodore 64 port. Those rumors have persisted to the present day. Not one but two versions of the Nintendo franchise title do indeed exist on the C-64, but both are bootleg in every possible sense of the word.
If you’re looking for the least popular people in any given company, the people who push patches probably rank high on that list. I pushed patches for a living for nearly a decade, so I know. I was good at it though. Let’s talk about patch management best practices.
The computer my sons use sometimes became unreliable a few weeks ago. It would work normally for a while, but rarely could make it through a full day without locking up hard. Here’s how I fixed the Windows 10 random lockups.
Getting a spam phone call, robocall, or scam call every 10 minutes makes you a prisoner in your own home. Blocking those calls would be a real quality of life improvement. Phone companies aren’t terribly interested in helping you, though. But you have options. Here’s how to block robocalls on a landline phone.
Arguably, you have more options with your cell phone. But you can still make your landline more peaceful.
Television standards have changed in a few ways since 1977, when Atari released the Atari 2600. Even if you have a CRT from the 1990s, it might not have an obvious place to hook it up. But it’s possible to connect the Atari Video Computer System to modern TV sets. Here’s how.
It’s possible to connect an Atari 2600 to a modern-ish TV using an RCA to F connector to plug straight into the antenna jack, assuming the TV is old enough to have an antenna input. Getting composite or HDMI is trickier but still doable, requiring additional equipment or modification.