David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Guy Wright’s piece titled Internet Security: We were worried about the wrong things is a bit old but it’s an important point. Security is a moving target. It’s always a moving target.
I disagree, however, with the assertion that SSL (and its successor, TLS) were a waste of time.
One of my peers–he does exactly what I do at work, but for Unix machines while I cover Windows–asked me for some tips for giving presentations after he gave a presentation last week. I’ve presented a couple of times myself, and from the feedback I received, I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself, so he asked for my feedback.
I gave him a few tips that have served me well over the years.
So I understand ISPs are upselling connection speeds saying it’ll make Netflix work better. That’s a nice theory. But if you’re already over 10 megabits, there’s a decent chance your connection speed won’t do much for Netflix at all. Here’s how to size your Internet connection. Read more
Most modern cell phones have an FM radio built into their SoC, but the only major makers who are actually enabling them are HTC and Motorola. There’s disagreement over whether this is a problem, of course.
My Moto E has an FM radio and an app that lets me use it. I have to say if I’ve used it, I don’t remember it. But as NPR says, there’s an advantage to it.
I was at church on Sunday and the video projection wasn’t working. After a few minutes of watching everyone struggle, I volunteered to take a look, and working together, we were able to get the video working again using a simple, repeatable methodology: Using the OSI model to troubleshoot video.
I’m going to share that methodology now.
SSD pricing continues to be competitive, and if I were buying an SSD today, I would have a tough decision ahead of me. The Crucial BX100 would be the obvious choice, with its good speed, super-low power consumption, and attractive price, at $99 for the 250GB model and around $185 for the 500GB model.
But there’s an underdog: the PNY CS1111. Bear with me on that one: It’s a little slower than the Crucial, but costs 15% less.
I’ve written enough about the Asus Memopad HD 7 that you can probably surmise I’ve had a few issues with them. Fortunately the fix is usually simple, and in the case of a Memopad that won’t charge even after you did my battery fix, that’s true as well.
It started with my observation that the USB cable fit rather loosely into my sons’ tablets. I cleaned out the mini-USB port with a wooden toothpick, which is a common fix, but it didn’t help–the cable still fit very loosely and the device wouldn’t charge.
Then I tried other cables. I found most of them didn’t work either. If I set something heavy on top, they would charge for a while, but doing that caused the cables to wear out in a matter of weeks. Finally I figured out the tablets are just picky–or at least they are once they get some age to them. The charger for the Moto E, which has a hardwired cable, works fine. So does some other random cable I had that I never used for anything else because it happens to be so short it’s not useful for anything else. I bought some new Monoprice cables, and while they’re fine for data transfer, these Memo Pad 7s don’t like them for charging.
I really hate to say try every USB cable in the house, but… your best first step is to try every USB cable in the house. And if you have to buy a cable, buy something locally, ideally in a store that will try it out with you before purchase. If you don’t have a store with that kind of service near you anymore, then buy a cable and try it out in the parking lot in your car right away before driving home. That way you can exchange the cable right away, or get a refund, if it doesn’t work any better than what you already had.
Later this week, Philips will be releasing a new, cheap LED bulb at an introductory rate of $5 for a pack of two. They are 800 lumen bulbs, equivalent to a 60w incandescent in light output, use 8.5 watts to give off an impressive 94 lumens per watt, and have a color temperature of 2700K that’s comparable to a soft white incandescent.
Sound good? It ought to, but there’s a catch. Often there is.
I read this week that most households earning $75K a year eat out too much to save any money.
It kind of makes sense–many jobs are salaried rather than hourly, which means they may very well work more than 40 hours a week and not have time to do everything that needs to be done around the house, especially if both people work.
The key is to get the convenience back at a lower cost.
Veteran IT journalist Guy Wright advises not to buy any more computer than you need. Wright was a prominent Commodore journalist, so he’s been thinking this way for literally decades. I grew up reading the magazines he edited in the 1980s and 1990s–yes, really–so it’s not surprising that I would agree with him.
I saw a couple of points worth clarifying.