Google's 50 Million Euro GDPR Fine Is Real Money and Also Basically Nothing
France's CNIL just hit Google with the biggest GDPR fine yet over its Android consent flows, and the number matters less than what it says about "click to agree."
My Chromecast Started Telling Me to Subscribe to PewDiePie
My Chromecast got hijacked into telling me to subscribe to PewDiePie this weekend. Here's what UPnP has to do with it and how to actually fix it.
Moving My Side Projects to GitHub Now That Private Repos Are Free
GitHub made private repos free for everyone last week, so I spent the weekend migrating my junk drawer of side projects off Bitbucket and deleting the dead ones.
It's the Far Side, Not the Dark Side
China's Chang'e 4 pulled off the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon last week, and it's bugging me how many headlines still call it the "dark side."
Nobody Has Actually Found This Drone
The couple arrested over the Gatwick drone shutdown were released with no evidence against them, and nobody's actually produced a drone. Some thoughts on a story that outran its own facts.
Tumblr's Filter Can't Tell Soup From Porn
Tumblr's new adult content filter went live yesterday and it's flagging everything from soup bowls to knitting patterns as explicit, while actual affected communities scramble to leave.
Google+ Finds a Second Way to Die
Google just moved up the Google+ shutdown after a second data-exposing bug hit 52.5 million accounts. A look at why the pattern matters more than the bug itself.
64 Satellites, One Rocket, and a Cold Cup of Coffee
SpaceX crammed 64 satellites onto one Falcon 9 rocket last week, and I got up early to watch it. Also: digging through old Starwood account emails after the Marriott breach news.
Tumblr's Porn Ban and the Robots Getting It Wrong
Tumblr's incoming porn ban kicks in December 17th, and the automated filter doing the flagging is already misfiring badly on art, fandom content, and even grapes.
Bethesda's Idea of an Apology Is Five Bucks of Pretend Money
Bethesda's response to the Fallout 76 Power Armor Edition bag swap was to offer angry buyers five dollars of in-game currency, and it's a perfect little case study in how not to apologize.
The Real Story of Landing Day Was Two Briefcases
The real hero of Mars landing day wasn't the InSight lander, it was two briefcase-sized cubesats nobody's talking about that relayed the touchdown signal home in near real time.
Peanuts and a Buffering Livestream: How I Watched Something Land on Mars
I watched NASA's InSight touch down on Mars from a laptop propped on a filing cabinet, and the best part of the whole thing was a decades-old good-luck ritual involving peanuts.