This week’s work involved the Virginia countryside, a space capsule, robots playing soccer, and some quality time with drones. And yet none of those things showed up in this week’s articles. But there’s always next week…

6/10/2014: Explained: How ‘TLS’ Keeps Your Email Secure, Yahoo Tech

I enjoyed crafting the photo for this, and not just because it gave me an excuse to flip through old postcards. I did not enjoy reading the comments as much: the repeated assertion there that nothing online can be made secure is both incorrect on a technical level and fundamentally defeatist.

6/10/2014: 4 Ways Your Email Provider Can Encrypt Your Messages, Yahoo Tech

I wrote a short sidebar–something we’ve taken to doing more often at Yahoo Tech–outlining how e-mail encryption has advanced over the last decade or so… at least at some providers.

6/15/2014: Revisiting a fix for your MacBook webcam, USA Today

Yes, you read about this topic earlier this year in my USAT column. But this time around the remedy may work a little more reliably. There’s also a tip about watching Netflix on a computer without Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in–if you’re running Windows 8.1.