David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
If you’re in the market for some new PC gear, it helps to measure reliability and quality of hardware. How do you measure that? How about buying the one that induces the least buyer’s remorse? That’s an approach you can take with the data from Hardware.fr. It’s in French, but Google Translate works.
This doesn’t measure long-term reliability–only DOA rate and short-term reliability–but it’s data I haven’t seen before, so I think it’s a welcome resource.
Slashdot ran a story about executives being targets in high-end hotels in the Far East. I didn’t realize this was a new phenomenon; perhaps I just assumed it’s been going on all along.
At any rate, it’s possible to protect against it.
A college classmate contacted me a week or two ago. A relative of hers got scammed, and she wanted to know what to do.
“Get the charges reversed on the credit card,” was my simple response.
“What about cleaning up the computer?” she asked.
That’s the easy part. Read more
One of my very earliest readers alerted me today that comments were broken. I traced the problem back to WP-Spamshield. I disabled it, and comments are working again. I hate to lose that plugin, but comments are important, so I’ll search for a replacement or a fix action. In the meantime at least it’s working.
To nobody’s particular surpise, yesterday president Barack Obama endorsed a form of net neutrality. And immediately, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) came out swinging against it, calling it, “Obamacare for the Internet.”
Sen. Cruz appears to have either failed to read, or refused to read, the four-point proposal, which is short and simple enough to fit on an index card, if not a business card. He also failed to discuss the alternative–and there is a perfectly fair alternative to net neutrality.
In spite of what a certain O gauge magazine tells you, vintage toy train transformers aren’t inherently unsafe to use. Age can take their toll on them, so you want to give them a good safety inspection, but as long as they pass the safety inspection, they can give you a long, productive service life. Here’s how to check a train transformer for safety.
All of my train transformers are at least 50 years old, and I expect my sons to inherit them in workable condition. Read more
New details emerged on the Home Depot attack that left 56 million consumers with compromised credit cards. The interesting thing in the new details is that it could have been much worse, but maybe not for reasons immediately obvious.
After the Royals won the Wild Card game and officially ended their postseason drought, I thought of a novel way to celebrate it: Celebrate their badness.
After all, there are people who celebrate the 1962 Mets, and between 1986 and 2013 the Royals had quite a few players who wouldn’t have been good enough for the 1962 Mets, so why not?
So I dredged up the memories of those players I’ve tried to forget, so I could buy baseball cards of them. Read more
I see the advice all the time not to buy a house if you can’t afford it, but rarely do I see a good explanation of what that means.
It’s really easy. Let me explain it, as someone who paid off a 30-year mortgage in five years and now co-manages rental property and has to determine if someone can afford to rent from us or will be over their head. And no, just because I’m a landlord doesn’t mean I think everyone should rent. There are definitely times when buying makes sense. Read more
The other night I had a dryer go out. I had a few surprise expenses this month, so I really didn’t want to replace a dryer on top of the other things, so I looked into how to repair a dryer.
I learned quite a bit, but the most important thing was that I fixed a $200 dryer with $7.50 worth of parts, and it only took a few minutes.