Now Is A Good Time To Upgrade To SSD Drives

June 4th, 2018

If you've been considering swapping out some of your old HDDs to SSDs, now is a great time to do so, thanks to the convergence of two factors.

First is the fact that the manufacturers of SSDs have been  making strides in terms of increasing the capacity of the drives they're offering.

Microsoft Is Issuing Surface Book 4 Replacements

June 2nd, 2018

Do you own a Surface Book 4?  If you do, you may have been unfortunate enough to get one that suffers from a peculiar screen flickering issue.  It's not known exactly how many Surface Book 4's have been affected by the issue, but thousands of angry users have been comparing horror stories about it on various discussion forums around the web.

SSD Drive Makers Adding Features To Reduce Duplicate Data

May 30th, 2018

Big changes are in the works in the SSD-based storage ecosystem. It includes three different vendors all making similar announcements regarding designs to help companies that rely on SSD-based storage systems to reduce duplication and control data creep.

Chili’s Is The Latest To Suffer A Credit Card Breach

May 29th, 2018

Brinker International (the parent company of the Chili's restaurant chain) formally announced that on May 11, they discovered malware on an undisclosed number of their point of sales terminals.  Details are sketchy at this point, because the investigation is still ongoing, but the company had the following to say about the incident:

"If you used your payment card at a Chili's restaurant between March and April 2018, it does not mean you were affected by this incident.

Fitbit and Google Partnership May Raise Privacy Concerns

May 25th, 2018

Depending on which side of the privacy debate you're on, you're either going to love or hate this announcement:

"Fitbit intends to use Google's new Cloud Healthcare API to help the company integrate further into the healthcare system, such as by connecting user data with electronic medical records.

Hulu To Soon Offer Episode Downloading and Offline Streaming

May 24th, 2018

Hulu recently announced that it would join both Netflix and Amazon Prime in allowing its users to download content to watch offline, but in Hulu's case, it comes with a twist.

If you subscribe to the $7.99 a month tier, in addition to downloading the content you want to watch, you'll also be downloading the advertising associated with that content.

Lego and Alexa Team Up For Storytelling Through Device

May 23rd, 2018

In terms of toys, what could possibly be better than LEGOS?  How about LEGOS, combined with Alexa?  That's the latest idea from Amazon, who has paired the unlikely duo in a newly announced service called "LEGO Duplo Stories."  The new service ("skill," in the parlance of Alexa) will be available on any device that offers Alexa support including Echo Dot and Amazon Echo.

Firefox To Start Showing Ads On Tab Page

May 22nd, 2018

Before Google released its Chrome browser, Firefox felt pretty good about their arrangement.  They got a handsome reward in exchange for making Google.com their default search engine.  It was a win-win.

These days though, Firefox's position is a bit more precious.

All Twitter Passwords Exposed, Change Your Password Now

May 17th, 2018

Twitter shot itself in the foot recently but is working hard to get out in front of the problem.  According to a recent blog post, the company experienced an issue with its hashing routine - a process which masks user passwords, making them virtually impossible to crack.

T-Mobile And Sprint To Merge Companies

May 15th, 2018

The on-again, off-again talks about a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint is definitely back on, with T-Mobile planning to buy Sprint for a staggering $26 billion.

The deal has been in the works since before Trump was elected President. It died quietly when it became clear that the Obama administration would not allow the deal to go forward, due to concerns that it would leave the US with only three telecom providers, which could harm consumers.