Netflix’s authorization model, generously applied here, is rubbish. Frankly, there’s no other way to say that. Content levels are applied to profiles, which are freely selectable on EVERY device. Yes, I can set a GLOBAL parental control PIN for the account, but that’s a broken way to manage access. Can we please have profile based authentication? I would love to […]
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I’ve been looking for a better way to visualize the workout metrics produced from my bicycling computer than the tiny graphs that Strava provides, but I didn’t find anything that quite suited my requirements. So, I built something, and would love it if I could get some help testing it out. Usage is simple, drop the files (GPX, TCX, FIT) […]
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I opened the laptop last week to retrieve the HDD. This is what I found. Definitely the battery; it is swollen and burned. The fire did not reach the HDD. I was able to pull it, retrieve data and then encrypt. Dell wants the burned machine back as part of the support case. After a bit of back and forth with […]
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I always wondered about posts and videos reporting laptop and cell phone battery fires. I do not have to any longer. My husband has a Dell Inspiron 15 7000. He closed the lid on it Thursday night and left it on the couch. The laptop goes to sleep and everything is good. Friday morning the laptop started smoking. This is what […]
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I remember clearly when the first UltraViolet (UV) titles launched. I had followed the development of the UV content ecosystem over several years and was excited to finally be able to start building a digital locker where I would be able to access my entire library in the cloud without the hassle of disc based backup to burned discs or […]
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The other day I received a email from Monoprice lauding the arrival of its new $19 “Smart LED bulb… Works with Amazon Alexa & Google Assistant…“. Which is cheap for a single Wi-Fi enabled “smart” bulb, but it reminded me how wrong these sorts of home automation devices are. OK, that may be a little hyperbolic, but just a touch… […]
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Hi NVIDIA, Big fan of the Shield Android TV here. The Shield is great because provides a wonderful intersection of steaming and local content without the hassle of many other devices. There was a time I didn’t think anything could replace a home theater PC (HTPC) in my A/V stack, but the Shield has… It does almost everything I need […]
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Everything has a lifespan, including the products we use. I don’t have a problem with companies understanding this, and specifically designing their goods to fall within a specific number of years or uses. They have incentives to maximize profit, so in markets where they can’t rely on technical innovation to drive sales, planning obsolescence is a viable tactic. The main […]
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This morning my sister, with whom I have an ongoing discussion around “smart device” privacy, sent me a link to Gizmodo’s “The House That Spied On Me”. As you can probably tell from the title, it’s mostly about how our connected devices collect and transmit information about us to The Cloud. Some of this is quite alarming, for e.g. Hulu […]
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The DVD was unleashed on the Japanese public all the way back in 1996 and the Blu-ray format has been around for 11 years already, meaning we were absolutely due for another shakeup. That transition began with the introduction of the Ultra High Definition (UHD) Blu-ray format and the first movie releases in early 2016. A year and a half […]
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