When the earliest Gmail accounts receive emails destined for others

Note: this was originally at the tail end of another post, but given its significance, it deserved to be its own post.   Who knew that Fesshole would help bring up this issue again?     Google bros all say this is impossible, or they blame the user, which is usually the case with Google […]

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To those who take technology and make life harder: you’re doing it wrong

I like technology. I don’t hate technology. But I hate what a bunch of idiots have done with technology. You’d be forgiven for thinking I was referring to the mass misinformation-authoring that used my name over the last three months, but, frankly, this level of technological misuse is everywhere in various forms. Take today, when […]

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Eudora users, welcome Aurora: finally, a modern, secure, Unicode-friendly successor

We have lift-off. For those of us who have been waiting for a successor to Eudora 7.1.0.9 from 2006, our patience has been rewarded. Some years ago, I had heard of a project called Hermes, and they have now delivered an alpha version called Hermes Aurora that does everything they promised. Back when Hermes was […]

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Cloudflare’s unpredictable blocks could come in handy

A few weeks ago, I removed Design Taxi from our links’ list because I received this:     so I assumed the site had gone or had made a decision to block certain people or countries. But it turns out that it hasn’t and I now have egg on my face. I’ve no idea why […]

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Going to HTTPS need not be this hard

Autocade finally got a secure certificate. The reason it took so long: people who make these things write convoluted instructions to lock out laypeople, or they are simply wrong. The Autocade one is through Let’s Encrypt, which has a confusing website. It linked to instructions for our web host, Hetzner, which were plain wrong. The […]

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Why you shouldn’t sign up for Facebook’s two-factor authentication

I know, you’re stick of reading my reporting on my experiences with Facebook et al, let alone what someone else is going through. But here’s a word of warning from Gabriel Lewis, who signed up to Facebook’s two-factor authentication. Note: he never opted in to SMS notifications, and he doesn’t have the Facebook app. He’s […]

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New Zealand slips to 17th in latest Good Country Index

Above: Simon Anholt, giving a talk at TEDSalon Berlin. Out today: my friend Simon Anholt’s Good Country Index, with the Netherlands taking the top spot from Sweden, which drops to sixth. New Zealand is in 17th, failing in prosperity and equality, and in cultural contribution (previously we had been 5th and 12th). On the plus […]

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A warning to those with rivers.pro tagcloud code in their Tumblr themes

Does anyone have the rivers.pro tagcloud code in their Tumblr theme? If so, it’s time to remove it. The code forwards to a website which McAfee SiteAdvisor labels dodgy. It is very hard to remove from a customized theme, since every time the page loads, the forwarding takes place. You’ll have to find a way […]

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I remember one of IMI’s scare campaigns

I came across a fascinating article in Wired’s online edition about two scammers who promote “scareware”: those inferior antivirus programs designed to rid users of fake viruses they tell you about through fake pop-ups. And once you install them, you get a virus.    This paragraph struck a chord: But those troubles didn’t do much […]

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