The Dropbox Email Finally Made Me Fix My Passwords
Dropbox forced a password reset on old accounts this week over a 2012 breach, and it finally pushed me to set up a real password manager. Heres exactly what I did.
Tutorials
Tutorials
The Free Windows 10 Upgrade Is Officially Dead. It Still Works.
Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade offer ended July 29th, but the old accessibility-page trick still activates it for free. Here's how I did it this weekend.
The Windows 10 Deadline Came and Went
The free Windows 10 upgrade deadline passed on July 29th. Notes on a last-minute upgrade, what your options are now, and why you should back up before touching old hardware.
Finally Moving techpad to HTTPS: Let's Encrypt Notes
Notes from finally moving this whole four-and-a-half-year-old archive over to HTTPS with Let's Encrypt, including the mixed-content cleanup nobody warns you about.
Moving techpad to HTTPS (and why I put it off for years)
Finally switching this blog to HTTPS with Let's Encrypt's free certs, cron-job renewals, and the four years of mixed-content cleanup nobody warns you about.
Finally Fixing My Lazy Passcode
Prompted by the Apple/FBI encryption fight, I finally fixed my lazy four-digit passcode, turned on FileVault, and set up real two-factor auth. Here's exactly what I changed.
Turning On Encrypted Backups (Finally)
The Apple/FBI news made me actually check my own devices this weekend — turns out my passcode was still 4 digits and my iTunes backups weren't encrypted at all.
Killing the IE8 Hacks (Finally)
Microsoft cut off support for IE8, 9, and 10 this week, so I finally ripped every last legacy IE hack out of techpad's stylesheet. Here's what that cleanup actually looked like.
Swift Runs on My Ubuntu Box Now, and I'm Weirdly Excited About It
Apple open-sourced Swift this week with Linux builds, so I spent Saturday getting it running on Ubuntu instead of doing yard work. Notes on the install, the REPL, and why it matters more than the headlines let on.
The Windows 10 November Update Ate My Saturday Afternoon
Notes from actually running the Windows 10 November Update (build 10586) this weekend, including the audio driver headache nobody warned me about.
Finally Updating to iOS 9 (And What Actually Ate My Storage)
A weekend spent wrestling a nearly-full iPhone onto iOS 9, plus the storage trick Apple quietly built in to make the update less painful this time.
The Windows 10 Settings I Turned Off Before I Trusted It
A walkthrough of the Windows 10 privacy settings worth switching off, including Wi-Fi Sense, the advertising ID, and the update-sharing feature buried in Advanced Options.