An Evening With a Raspberry Pi and Too Many DNS Requests
I finally set up Pi-hole on an old Raspberry Pi to deal with our overloaded home wifi during remote school week, and found out just how much junk traffic ads and trackers actually generate.
Checking PurpleAir More Than Twitter
A week into hazardous wildfire smoke from the SCU and LNU Lightning Complex fires, I'm checking PurpleAir more than Twitter and rationing N95s between two different emergencies.
Flight Simulator Ate My Entire Evening (And My Data Cap)
Microsoft Flight Simulator finally launched today, and the real story for most of us wasn't the graphics, it was watching a multi-hour download eat the whole evening.
Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite Was the Real Story
The Epic vs. Apple fight was never really about V-bucks. The real story is the "Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite" parody ad, and how obviously pre-planned the whole legal stunt was.
The App Store Fight Looks Different From Down Here
Epic picked a fight with Apple and Google this week over the App Store's 30% cut. As someone with a tiny app earning $61 a quarter, the fight looks a lot different from where I'm sitting.
Samsung's New Earbuds Look Like Coffee Beans
Samsungs new bean-shaped Galaxy Buds Live claim active noise cancellation with an open-fit design, and Im not convinced the physics works out.
I Poked At Instagram Reels for a Weekend
Instagram Reels rolled out worldwide on August 5th, and I spent the weekend poking at it. Some notes on the timing, the UI, and why it feels like homework instead of a hobby.
Samsung Shaved the S Pen Lag Down to 9ms and I Can't Stop Thinking About It
Samsung's Note 20 Ultra dropped S Pen latency to 9ms and buried it in a keynote full of bigger, dumber news. That number is the only part I actually care about.
The Helicopter Riding Along to Mars
Perseverance launched to Mars this week carrying a tiny helicopter named Ingenuity, and that little four-pound gamble is the part of the mission I can't stop thinking about.
Widgets on a Phone I Don't Even Use
A weekend spent on a spare iPhone messing with iOS 14's new home screen widgets, plus a note on finally fixing my Twitter 2FA after the mid-July hack.
The Week Twitter Lost It Over GPT-3
A week of viral GPT-3 demos flooded tech Twitter, and a much bigger space milestone got barely a glance.
I Put My Phone on the iOS 14 Beta and Now My Home Screen Looks Like a Ransom Note
First impressions after installing the iOS 14 public beta over the weekend: widgets, App Library, and one banking app that flatly refuses to open.