This afternoon’s exciting plot twist: I successfully replaced the shattered screen of my Pixel 5a, using a Google-authorized iFixit replacement kit. Detaching the old screen was a lot more work than I expected, but everything after that was surprisingly easy.

10/18/2022: Mozilla Makes Private Browsing in Firefox Easier, Adds PDF Editing, ‘Firefox View’, PCMag

Five days into using this update, I can confirm that the new “Firefox View” start page represents a real improvement–while the other additions in Firefox 106 have essentially escaped my notice.

10/19/2022: 6G advocates mash up a metaverse-centric sales pitch, Light Reading

Yes, 6G. I spent Wednesday and Thursday of the previous week at a conference in downtown D.C. devoted to talking up the notional next generation of wireless broadband and, as you see, did not come away too sold on the concept.

10/20/2022: Google Messages App Finally Lets Android Users Send Tapback Emoji to iPhones, PCMag

The Q&A period during the press pre-briefing Tuesday was more informative than I expected, yielding a reasonably coherent explanation for why Google hasn’t published an API for the RCS messaging standard that such third-party messaging apps as Signal could use instead of falling back to unencrypted SMS and MMS.

10/21/2022: Twitter Whistleblower: Stop Treating Cybersecurity Like Folklore, PCMag

CyberScoop’s CyberTalks conference Thursday closed out with an onstage Q&A featuring veteran security researcher Peiter “Mudge” Zatko. He didn’t discuss his experience as Twitter’s head of security (and subsequently Twitter’s highest-profile whistleblower) but had some insightful observations about how infosec types can fail to communicate with their corporate overlords.