journalism Archives - The Silicon Underground

Thank you, Jerry Pournelle

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 05:06:39 +0000

Longtime computer columnist and science fiction author Jerry Pournelle died on Sept 8, 2017. I count Dr. Pournelle as one of my influences. I was never a big sci-fi fan, so I’ve never read any of his novels. I really

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Using Adsense with WordPress

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 11:00:33 +0000

I first started using Google Adsense sometime in 2003 or 2004. But using Adsense with WordPress isn’t completely straightforward. So here’s an easy, concise guide to using Adsense with WordPress, including within your content. I’m not a full-time blogger. I’m

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Why is Publisher hyphenating my words?

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 11:00:44 +0000

Why is Publisher hyphenating my words? That’s probably one of the most common questions I hear about Microsoft Publisher. There’s a good reason for it, but I understand if you want to disable it. So I’ll answer both questions. How

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Robert Rayford (Robert R): AIDS in St. Louis in the 1960s

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 12:00:38 +0000

The sad story of Robert Rayford (aka Robert R), the first documented case of HIV/AIDS in the United States, shows that if timing had been a little bit different, the AIDS epidemic could have happened a decade earlier than it

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Change a headline, go to prison

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 11:00:16 +0000

A former journalist whose track record includes being fired from the Tribune Co. and from Reuters is facing two decades in prison for giving the hacking group Anonymous credentials to log into a Tribune web site and change stuff. Anonymous

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How to mitigate MS15-078 or future Microsoft font driver vulnerabilities

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:00:26 +0000

Microsoft rushed out an out-of-band patch, MS15-078, to deal with active exploits in their font driver yesterday. Since pushing out patches takes time, my boss asked me what we could do to mitigate the issue in the meantime. The biggest

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Yes, an ethical journalist protects his/her sources

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 11:00:25 +0000

An anonymous reader asked why journalists protect their sources. It’s a fair question but an easy one to answer. Part of a journalist’s role in society is accountability. When something is wrong, the journalist is supposed to raise awareness. In

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Tricks for giving presentations at work

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 05 May 2015 11:00:39 +0000

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,

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Identify bad guys through writing style

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 11:00:52 +0000

This month’s Social Engineer podcast discussed a tactic to identify bad guys through writing style, something the hosts expressed surprise was possible. This won’t be news to anyone who minored in English or Communications or Journalism. A lot of factors

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Phil Kerpen, net neutrality, and socialism: A post-mortem

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 11:00:45 +0000

I learned the hard way a few weeks ago how net neutrality can be equated with socialism, an argument that puzzles people who work on computer networks for a living and see networking as a big flow of electrons. I

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