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Great Marketing Video for a Service Called ‘Chatbooks’
As you may know from reading this blog, I’ve been using Flickr for my photo albums for years. Once owned by Yahoo, it was sold last year to the family-owned — and very well run photo service website — SmugMug. As you can see from two posts I wrote about…
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Unfortunately Trump Doesn’t Understand Technology
President Trump tweeted this morning that “Apple will not be given Tariff waiver, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China. Make them in USA, no Tariffs!” Perhaps he doesn’t know that every time he does something like this we all laugh at him? Unfortunately, Trump’s basic…
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*Any* Backdoor in to Encrypted Devices Will Not Work!
TechCrunch reported today that US attorney general William Barr says Americans should accept security risks of encryption backdoors and this idea is a very, very bad one. There is NO FUCKING WAY that I will allow my devices to have a backdoor in them … ever … and please note:…
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Tracking Companies Are The Real Threat To Our Privacy And Congress Is Doing Nothing About These Secondary Surveillance Networks
Congressional “theater” is happening right now and our ‘Congress Critters’ are all seemingly outraged at the privacy violations by Facebook, Google, and all the other tech companies we all use every day. Some even want to break them up as do various Democratic presidential candidates. But I’d like you to…
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Why We Didn’t Buy Near the Sea When We Moved to California
When my wife and I were looking for a home to buy after moving from Minnesota to California just over one year ago, we considered spending more than we wanted to on a home with an ocean view or in a beach community here in Orange County. Most of those…
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Yes, I Believe in UFOs and It Turns Out So Does The U.S. Navy
Ever since I’ve been a kid my fascination with space and the universe has been quite strong. I’ve always paid attention to and that only accelerated when I first watched Carl Sagan’s TV series Cosmos. Sagan was always teased about his answer to the question: How many galaxies and planets…
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Solar is Still Worth the Investment … But California Utility Pricing is a Mess!
Our solar was turned on around 9am PDT on Wednesday, June 26, 2019. In our first week of solar production we have generated 294.37 killowatt hours (kWh). (I subtracted the energy generated on this eighth day morning as I write this post). Several people asked me for an update on…
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My Kids’ Technology Adventures Began With An Alien Named Cosmic Osmo
When my first-born daughter Liz was a toddler, I was hoping I’d be able to guide her towards becoming a techie. No pushing and no pressure was what I tried to achieve. Instead I tried to be a coach to her, gently showing her how stuff worked while striving to…
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Watch the Net Neutrality Senate Livestream on June 11th
Since I care (as we all should) about privacy, security, government surveillance, third-party trackers, and all the other downsides that have already happened to this thing we love called the internet, WE ALL need to stand up and make our voices heard about the recent bill passage to gut net…
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ProtonMail Continues To Be The Safest, Most Secure, and Private Email Provider
Last evening I saw this article link from Steiger Legal, on a blog run by Swiss lawyer Martin Steiger, in which he published a damning allegation that my beloved ProtonMail, the end-to-end encrypted email provider, was: Email service provider ProtonMail, based in Switzerland, offers assistance for real-time surveillance: Voluntarily! Steiger…
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NSA Loses Control of THEIR Hacking Software and Apple’s Tim Cook Was 100% Right
Remember when Apple’s Tim Cook wouldn’t put in a backdoor to iOS so the FBI could gain access to the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone? THIS IS WHY! If the NSA can’t control software as destructive as this, how can any government guarantee a compromised operating system won’t get in to…
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Why We Should Accelerate the Use of Nuclear Power
Yesterday’s post about our solar installation got me to thinking more deeply about the overall problem of renewables and that they are unlikely to be able to keep pace with the accelerating demand for energy. The only place I differ with many environmentalists is that, while renewables make so much…
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