Recent and relevant news items that require more than just a headline glance.
Embed from Getty Images This post is actually a preface to another one I’m in the middle of right now, on password managers. But I wanted to take a minute and explain why your workplace insists on bizarre passwords, and how you can capitalize on that in your personal life. Why are there password requirements?…
Is this meme real or is it a hoax? We want to be good people and help others. And we would like to think that wealthy people and huge companies want to pass along some goodies. Unfortunately, there are people and groups that will take advantage of your good nature or your trusting tendencies….
The process of writing this article was much more educational than I anticipated. I started out to write about a breach of Snapchat usernames and phone numbers, so I could warn readers about using this service. Then I found out about the photo leaks—and more. I also found a significant amount of naivetĂ© demonstrated by…
Unless you always save to your external drive or your mapped drive on your home server, you might consider disconnecting when not in use. The encrypting malware is getting really sophisticated and extends its reach to your mapped drives. That means if your offsite online backup solution operates as a mapped drive, your safety net…
I was reading one of my techie newsletters recently and the writer mentioned something of which I had never before heard: CubeSats. I know that there are a lot of things in space of which I have never before heard, but I thought I had heard of the big, important things. As it turns out,…
Rule Number One: Don’t get infected. But if you do, follow Rule Number Two: Clean it off your system immediately. If you read my post on CryptoLocker, you’re aware that it’s not always just that easy. Without a good backup you run the risk of losing everything, and even with a good backup, you’re in…
It is a rare circumstance when our United States Supreme Court agrees so completely as they did in the case of Riley v. California: all nine of the Justices agreed that law enforcement officers DO need a search warrant to examine the contents of your cell phone. This question is no longer about seeing who…
There have been several incidents in recent memory in which a service provider has stopped providing a free service or stopped providing service altogether. Most recently, the developers of TrueCrypt, a disk encryption product, announced that they were stopping all development and support of their product. They went so far as to alert users that…
answer: ALWAYS. It is a rare circumstance when our United States Supreme Court agrees so completely as they did in the case of Riley v. California: all nine of the Justices agreed that law enforcement officers DO need a search warrant to examine the contents of your cell phone. This question is no longer about…
The internet is a cool place, is it not? We now have access to information on a scale not dreamed of by our parents; our grandparents didn’t even know a lot of this information even existed. You can find countless places to pursue any of your interests. Some of the material is provided by subscription,…
Want a weekly recap of posts for Oakwood Experience? No need to check every day for new content, and I won’t spam you with junk. I may send out occasional notifications of special pricing at my art shops, but I respect your time and attention.