Archive: Toys, Tools, Tech

Twelve classic computers I wish I’d owned (July 25, 2017)

Amigas and NeXTs and Trash-80s, oh my

Why Apple doesn’t care about professional Mac users anymore (October 31, 2016)

The Apple that made the systems pros love has been dead for a long, long time. Here’s why

The Dyn attack: what non-nerds need to know (October 21, 2016)

Meet a software Eye of Sauron that could put the whole Internet at risk

There is no good reason to ever buy an inkjet printer (October 12, 2016)

Despite their enormous popularity, inkjet printers are always a bad deal

My big idea to save Twitter (October 6, 2016)

Let people buy extra characters

You really need to be using a password manager (September 23, 2016)

You. Yes, you. You need to start using a password manager. Like, right now

Gear VR: The future is (not quite) here (December 19, 2015)

I wanted to see if the Oculus tech was equal to the Oculus hype, so I picked up a Gear VR and put it through its paces. Here’s what I found

Nine questions for Jack Dorsey (November 13, 2015)

Welcome back to Twitter, Jack! I have some questions about your product

Ask Mr. Science: How to securely manage your passwords (September 16, 2015)

Securely managing all your passwords is easy! As long as you’re not stupid, lazy, or a Communist

With Windows 10, Microsoft sells you out (July 31, 2015)

Tech can empower users, or it can sell them out. And with Windows 10, you’re not the master Microsoft is interested in serving anymore

Make typing special characters stupid easy: meet the compose key (March 16, 2015)

Typing special characters probably seems harder than it should be. With this one tip, you can fix that

Quantimetric Self Sensing Prototype, 1996

Tech needs to decide which master it’s going to serve, contd. (May 29, 2014)

Is that plastic band on your wrist trying to serve multiple masters as well?

Google self-driving car prototype rendering

Tech needs to decide which master it’s going to serve (May 28, 2014)

I want the things I use, the things I own, to serve me, not someone else

The Heartbleed Bug is about more than just passwords (April 10, 2014)

Compromised passwords are only the beginning of the story of Heartbleed’s risk to you, not the end of it

The Heartbleed Bug: what non-nerds need to know (April 9, 2014)

What we’ll be doing here is explaining three things in plain English: what the Heartbleed Bug is, how it probably affects you, and what you should do to protect yourself

Citizens react calmly to news that ATMs now dispense slips of construction paper with Guy Fawkes masks printed on them instead of money

BREAKING: Everything Hacked (October 30, 2013)

Everything. The whole enchirito. All of it

Requiem for a netbook (September 14, 2013)

The EEE PC was cheap and cheerful. But there’s no room in the market for cheap and cheerful anymore

USB hard drives are bad and the people who make them should feel bad (September 9, 2013)

Done, done, done. They are dead to me. Done

BREAKING: Tech company announces marginally improved version of gizmo you already own (June 10, 2013)

“This is it,” the CEO of the company told a crowded audience of technology journalists and fans. “This is the Year Zero. All that came before has been scoured from the Earth with fire”

WordPress is secure, until you combine it with people (May 9, 2013)

WordPress suffers from a problem that many software products do: it expects its users to be someone they are not

Ask Mr. Science: Windows 8 (October 26, 2012)

It’s the new version of Windows that doesn’t have any windows!