It’s now easier to check if that used smartphone you might buy is stolen
If you’re intent on buying a used phone – and don’t want to buy a hot one – you now have a new tool that will allow you to be reasonably confident that devide hasn’t been reported stolen.
05/12/2017
IT work gets The Onion treatment
Is it possible that a writer at The Onion has previously toiled as a network engineer … or systems administrator?
05/11/2017
‘Found a leaky ethernet port’
As a regular reader of Reddit’s section devoted to system administration, I have come to understand that subject lines such as “Found a leaky ethernet port” do no always mean what one might assume they mean.
05/05/2017
Majority of U.S. households now cellphone-only, government says
For the first time in history, U.S. households with landlines – such as mine -- are now in the minority, according to survey numbers from a federal government report released this morning.
05/04/2017
Amazon bestows free Prime memberships on townspeople who need them not at all
Free is free and it’s probable that even the well-to-do of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass., would rather have a free year’s worth of Amazon Prime – retail: $99 per year – than not have a year’s worth of free Amazon Prime.
05/01/2017
Apple fanboys cited as Merriam-Webster herds ‘sheeple’ into dictionary
“Wake up!” the good folks a Merriam-Webster just tweeted. “Sheeple is in the dictionary now.”
04/27/2017
Would Verizon really publish my unlisted landline number?
If I cancel Verizon's extortionary $5.25-a-month privacy-protection "service," will the carrier really punish me by publishing my landline number – unlisted now for 10 years – against my will and even if I first ask politely that they...
04/25/2017
MIT selling 8 million coveted IPv4 addresses; Amazon a buyer
MIT is selling half of its 16 million valuable IPv4 addresses – an increasingly scarce stash it has held since the birth of the Internet. While details of the sale have not been made public, at least some of those addresses have...
04/21/2017
Twitter’s porn problem is ‘trending’
News that former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez reportedly had committed suicide sent the murderer’s name to the top of Twitter’s “trending” list. Porn purveyors followed.
04/19/2017
It’s ‘It,’ as in the movie, not IT, as in ‘eye-tee’
“I keep seeing posts and advertisements for the movie IT. Every time, I think of it as I-T and have to reread it. … Is it just me?” ... No, it's not.
04/18/2017
‘Find My iPhone’ foils pickpocket who swiped 100 devices: police
You might think that a pickpocket skilled enough to steal 100 cellphones, pictured above, would also be savvy enough to know that at least the iPhones in that haul carry a means to foil his caper.
04/17/2017
Cyber-sleuth boots 15 cheaters from today’s Boston Marathon
Here in Hopkinton, Mass., this morning, 15 fewer runners – cheaters, actually -- are gathering for the start of the Boston Marathon than would have otherwise, thanks to the cyber-sleuthing efforts of an Ohio business analyst.
04/17/2017
Online privacy meets abortion debate
The attorney general of Massachusetts has taken the abstraction of online privacy and brought it into crystal clear focus by barring a Boston advertising agency from targeting anti-abortion ads at the cellphones of women the moment...
04/06/2017
Star pitcher willing to join IT team
It’s a standard line of inquiry by sportswriters that until now has always generated answers straight out of the Crash Davis school of interview banalities.
04/03/2017
White House to issue commemorative solar eclipse safety glasses
The White House announced Friday that come this summer it will be issuing commemorative safety glasses in anticipation of the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse.
04/01/2017
Tech giants join effort to save legal services for the poor from Trump budget ax
The biggest names in technology are urging Congress to ignore a line item in the president's proposed budget that would entirely defund the Legal Services Corporation, a non-profit that provides civil legal assistance to the poor.
03/31/2017
Americans value online privacy but voters do not care when it counts
Ninety percent of Americans tell pollsters they believe online privacy protections are important, but far fewer act upon that belief when they go to the polls.
03/30/2017
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner did not just delete his tweets, says Wayback Machine
The alleged recent mass deletion of tweets did not happen, at least according to the indispensable Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
03/28/2017
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner tweets nothing like Trump
Jared Kushner has had a twitter account for eight years but uses it nothing like his famous father-in-law, President Trump.
03/27/2017
FedEx offering $5 and all you have to do is, gulp, reinstall or reactivate Flash
Testing the limits of what a customer might do for gettiing $5 off.
03/24/2017
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