Tag Archives: Internet provider

Weekly output: iOS updates, Mac ransomware, ISP privacy (x2), wedding gifts, e-mail security

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AUSTIN–I’ve been here since Friday morning, and somehow I have not eaten any brisket yet. If you choose to regard that oversight as a character issue, I can’t blame you.

3/7/2016: How to recover from iPhone update gone bad, USA Today

I made a mistake in this column–I misread an Apple tech-support note about restoring an iPhone in an Apple Store as evidence that you could also borrow a computer there to backup your iPhone and then restore it. That’s not the case, as two people pointed out, so I’ve asked my editor to correct the piece.

Yahoo Tech ISP-privacy post3/7/2016: Your ISP might not be spying on you now — but you’d be crazy not to worry that it will, Yahoo Tech

This post started life as a simpler, shorter unpacking of a report about the limits to Internet providers’ visibility of their subscribers’ online activity, but the topic and the word count expanded a bit from there.

3/8/2016: Ransomware on the Mac: Turns out identify theft is a problem for apps, too, Yahoo Tech

After this ran, a friend commented on my Facebook page that he uses the Transmission app but had chosen to skip the update that had been contaminated with a ransomware payload. Yikes.

3/9/2016: Great Wedding Registry Gift Ideas, The Sweethome

As part of this long guide to wedding presents, Casey Johnston interviewed my wife and I about the stand mixer that (I think) some of her parents’ friends gave us, and which I use to make bread every week.

3/11/2016: FCC proposes new broadband-privacy rules — and your ISP probably hates them, Yahoo Tech

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler proposed some not-too-sweeping proposals to limit what your ISP can do with the data it collects about your online activity, and Big Telecom is not amused.

3/13/2016: How to give your email a security checkup, USA Today

I was pleasantly surprised to see some large Internet providers support IMAP syncing and TLS encryption–but others have horribly obsolete and insecure setups. Think about that when you hear somebody insist that the only way to get a good and reliable service online is to pay for it.

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Weekly output: net neutrality, teens on Facebook, Chrome and passwords

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I had two stories this week show up online without the links I’d added. Since two different sites and CMSes were involved, I’m left with the conclusion that I’m personally snakebit. Or that I maxed out a monthly link quota that I didn’t know existed.

Yahoo Tech net-neutrality post1/14/2014: Why Is Tuesday’s Court Decision on Net Neutrality Such a Big Deal? And What Happens Next?, Yahoo Tech

This was not the column I’d originally written for this week, but when a federal court handed down a ruling Tuesday morning that gutted the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to enforce net-neutrality regulations, I had to drop everything and write an analysis of a result that I saw coming back in 2010. This post initially appeared without any of the links I’d added, for reasons nobody has been able to figure out; we fixed that earlier today.

1/16/2014: Rob Pegoraro, columnist for USA Today and Yahoo Tech, talks about teens dumping Facebook, WTOP

WTOP had me via Skype to talk about an iStrategyLabs report, based on usage data Facebook provides to advertisers, of declining teen Facebook use. About 10 minutes afterwards, I remembered that only two months ago, I’d heard about some enlightening research into teen social-media use that would have been useful to cite on the air.

1/19/2014: Why does Chrome ask for your Mac Keychain password?, USA Today

For the second time in three weeks, my USAT column dealt with a problem I’d experienced on my own computer–in this case, annoying Keychain prompts by the Mac version of Chrome. The column somehow got posted without any links; I’ll ask management about that.

On Sulia, I observed that Netflix’s data on average streaming rates across different ISPs showed how much viewing there involves lower resolutions, heaped scorn on the Weather Channel’s attempt to guilt DirecTV into paying a higher carriage fee, confessed to having a Digital Compact Cassette in my office, shared a fix for Evernote’s iPad app not digitizing scanned business cards, and complained about Netflix becoming unwatchably slow over my 15-Mbps Verizon Fios connection.