Buying My First Bitcoin the Week DC Didn't Freak Out About It
A walkthrough of how I finally bought bitcoin this week through Coinbase, right after a surprisingly calm Senate hearing sent the price climbing toward $900.
The Cops Paid the Ransom in Bitcoin
A Massachusetts police department paid ransomware criminals in Bitcoin this week, and that says more about where Bitcoin (and backups) stand right now than any Senate hearing did.
I Forgot I Mined Bitcoin
Bitcoin's price went wild this week after Monday's Senate hearing, which sent me digging through an old hard drive for a wallet file I mined on a whim back in 2011.
Blue Light Weekend
The PS4 launched last Friday, and between my own midnight GameStop run and the "Blue Light of Death" threads flooding forums all weekend, launch week turned into its own small saga.
The Bitcoin Wallet I Forgot I Had
A Senate hearing on Bitcoin regulation turned out surprisingly not-hostile, the price went wild, and it sent me digging through an old external drive for a wallet I forgot I had.
The PS4's Blue Light Problem, Two Days In
A look at the small but real percentage of PS4 launch units bricked by bad HDMI ports over the weekend, and why that story is more interesting than another sales-numbers recap.
5.75 Billion Reasons My Checkout Page Should Be Embarrassed
Everyone's lining up for the PS4 launch today, but the number that actually stuck with me this week is the $5.75 billion Alibaba moved in one day for Singles' Day.
Backups or Bust: Surviving the CryptoLocker Scare
A close call with CryptoLocker ransomware in my own family prompted a rundown of what the malware actually does and the practical steps (real backups, CryptoPrevent, showing file extensions) that matter right now.
PS4 Reviews Are Up and I Still Cant Decide
PS4 review embargo lifted this week ahead of Fridays launch, and reading through them has me stuck between wanting one immediately and knowing better.
35 Billion Yuan in a Day (and My Backup Paranoia)
Alibaba's Singles' Day just moved about $5.75 billion in a single day, nobody I know here had heard of it, plus a mobile checkout rant and a CryptoLocker-induced backup panic.
The Adobe Breach Finally Talked Me Into a Password Manager
The leaked Adobe password hints finally scared me into setting up LastPass. Here's what that actually involved and what nobody warns you about.
123456 and Other Things the Adobe Leak Taught Us
Security researchers cracked open Adobe's leaked password file this week, and the most popular password on it was, predictably, 123456.