December 2023
Summer Stephan: Tech Scams are Financially Devastating Senior Citizens
The author is the District Attorney for the County of San Diego.
November 2023
Dan Goodin: This Tiny Device is Sending Updated iPhones into a Never-ending DoS Loop
The Flipper Zero device can cause havoc on nearby electronic devices.
September 2023
Emma Beddington: 50 of the Weirdest, Most Wonderful Corners of the Web
Something for everyone, including: Music from selected decades and countries, Historical maps, Marine traffic, Word pronunciation, Live air traffic control chatter, Wildlife web cams, etc.
Karandeep Singh: Use Google Search like it’s 1998 to mark its 25th birthday
June 2023
Joanna Goodrich: How the Computer Graphics Industry Got Started at the University of Utah
Adobe and Pixar founders created tech that shaped modern animation
Includes a photo of 13 computer graphics pioneers, from the 1960s and 1970s. Younger generations take for granted what technology exists today, without a thought of how it came to exist.
Fernanda Lopez Halvorson: New Grant to Help More San Diegans Get Online (Free Internet Access)
The County is expanding its campaign to help more San Diegans get online.
May 2023
You can "Raise You Hand" in a Zoom Meeting by waving.
ZOOM CAN RECOGNIZE YOUR HAND RAISE GESTURE
If you enable one of its image analysis tools, Zoom itself can recognize when you physically raise your hand and turn that into a digital raised hand. Darn helpful, actually, and saves you having to remember where that “Raise Hand” button is located. To enable this feature, click on the tiny “^” adjacent to the Reactions button on your Zoom toolbar. A menu appears with one item:
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Scott J Shapiro: On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world
Click to Read
George Musser: How AI Knows Things No One Told It
Click to Read
April 2023
Jennifer Korn: 50 Years Ago, He Made the First Cell Phone Call
Click to Read
Madhumita Murgia: OpenAI’s Red Team: The Experts Hired to ‘break’ ChatGPT
Click to Read
David Zipper: The Glorious Return of a Humble Car Feature
Click to Read
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March 2023
David C. Brock: 50 Years Later, We’re Still Living in the Xerox Alto’s World
Click to Read
Connie Loizos: Worldcoin, co-founded by Sam Altman, is betting the next big thing in AI is proving you are human
Click to Read
Yale News: An article about the use of AI and ChatGPT in College Writing
Samantha Murphy Kelly: The Way We Work is About to Change
Click to Read
This is about newer Generative AI Tools, such as the latest version of ChatGPT-4, and those planned on by Microsoft, Google and others.
An AI Revolution (Article from 3/24 Honilulu Newspaper)
Paresh Dave: ChatGPT Opened a New Era in Search. Microsoft Could Ruin It.
Click to Read
This article describes competition and changes in search engines, due to chatbots and large language models. Microsoft plans to significantly increase their fees to companies who use Bing-based search results in products those companies offer.
February 2023
Attila Tomaschek: Change Your LastPass Password Manager, Before It's Too Late
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/change-your-lastpass-password-manager-before-its-too-late/
- Helping Protect Seniors from Fraud and Identity Theft
Click to Read
Save Money by Cleaning out your Google Drive or GMail
Click to Read
The Quiet Way Advertisers are tracking your Browsing
Click to Read
January 2023
Kourtnee Jackson & Ty Pendlebury: Cable vs. Streaming: Which Is Cheaper?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/is-cable-really-less-expensive-than-streaming/
Scharon Harding: Reviewer Buys 16TB Portable SSD for $70, Proves it’s a Sham
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/64gb-microsd-cards-are-posing-as-16tb-portable-ssds-on-amazon/
December 2022
Taras Buria: Top 11 apps every Windows 11 user should have
https://www.neowin.net/news/top-11-apps-every-windows-11-user-should-have/
As the beginning of the article states, "they also work perfectly fine on Windows 10."
November 2022
Kevin Purdy: A realistic roundup of what today's Matter launch means for your smart home
Simon Fondrie-Teitler, Angie Waller, and Colin Lecher: Tax Filing Websites Have Been Sending Users’ Financial Information to Facebook
Sara Morrison: Holiday scam email season is here. Don’t fall for it.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/11/25/23473947/scam-phishing-yeti-cooler-kohls-emails
September 2022
Brian Krebs: How 1-Time Passcodes Became a Corporate Liability
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/08/how-1-time-passcodes-became-a-corporate-liability
Barbara Krasnoff & Antonio G. Di Benedetto: Brand New iPhone Features that Android Already Has
https://www.theverge.com/23319739/apple-iphone-ios-16-android-features-google-apps-comparison
This article is relevant to people owning either phone, as Android users may discover features they weren't aware exist./
Mike Sorrentino: Clear Your Android Phone's Cookies, Cache to Erase Junk Files
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/clear-your-android-phones-cookies-cache-to-erase-junk-files/
That article also contains a link for iPhone users to do the same.
Jeremy Reimer: A history of ARM, part 1: Building the first chip (Acorn RISC Machine)
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-part-1-building-the-first-chip/
It contains a simple description of how the CPU (Central Processing Unit) in a computer operates, and tells the story of how a ground-breaking 32-bit CPU chip (ARM - Acorn RISC Machine) was designed by only ten people, for very little money, back in the 1980s, which significantly outperformed other CPU chips of that era.
Alas (spoiler alert), it didn't have software in the way of an operating system and applications to match their competitors at the time, and so didn't triumph.
AUGUST 2022
Dan Goodin: I'm a Security Reporter and Got Fooled by a Blatant Phish
Zack Whittaker: TheTruthSpy exposed: This spyware lookup tool says if your Android device was compromised
https://techcrunch.com/pages/thetruthspy-investigation/
It describes how to find a smartphone's International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) 14-15 digit number (*#06#) and its Google advertising ID (16 or 32 characters), to see if they appear on a list of Android phones containing a specific form of Spyware, up to April 2022.
July 2022
Creative content
Steve Dent: The James Webb Space Telescope is capturing the universe on a 68GB SSD
https://www.engadget.com/the-james-webb-space-telescope-has-a-68-gb-ssd-095528169.html
Jon Keegan and Alfred Ng: Who Is Collecting Data from Your Car?
https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2022/07/27/who-is-collecting-data-from-your-car
May 2022
Passwordless Sign-Ins soon to be implemented in all Major Platforms
Apple, Google, and Microsoft will soon implement passwordless sign-in on all major platforms
It describes future sign-ins, using a Fast Identity Online (FIDO) process, which eliminates using a password. Basically sounds like two-factor authentication, using a token on a smart phone, which has its pros and cons.
Why You Should Be Taking Security Advice from YOur Grandmother
The Financial Times reports that a joint study by Visa and Aston University’s Institute for Forensic Linguistics brings bad tidings for the young. One in four 18-34 year olds trust scam messages, which is “more than double” of those over 55.
Mike Sorrentino: You Can Clear Cache and Cookies on Your Android Phone for a Privacy Boost https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/you-can-clear-cache-and-cookies-on-your-android-phone-for-a-privacy-boost/
Will McCurdy: There may soon officially be no escape from Windows 11 on your PC https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-windows-11-no-escape-broad-deployment
April 2022
Simon Hill: What's the Matter? We Explain the New Smart Home Standard
Matthew Hutson: Can Computers Learn Common Sense?
It describes various scenarios where Artificial Intelligence (AI) can guess common sense responses to situations a certain percent of the time, and where it fails to do so (corner cases). Humans are often better at reasoning out those situations.