Newsletter Archives

• The best laptop docking stations and hubs for 2021

  Posted on April 5th, 2021 at 01:06 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  More and more of us have been spending part of our time working in a business office and part of our time in a home office (which may sometimes be called “the kitchen table”).

  Even if you work primarily at home, there are always times when you want to work on your laptop in a hotel room or maybe that beach house you like to retreat to on weekends.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.12.0 (2021-04-05).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Docks, hardware, Public Defender

• LinkedIn deliberately scrambles résumé PDFs, experts say

  Posted on March 22nd, 2021 at 01:08 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  ISSUE 18.11 • 2021-03-22

  The AskWoody Newsletters will not be published on March 29, 2021. We’ll see you again on April 5, 2021.

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  LinkedIn — the foremost social network for working professionals, with 760 million members in more than 200 countries — constantly changes the format of its PDF résumés to make it hard for companies to search for possible job applicants, according to human-resource consultants.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.11.0 (2021-03-22).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 18.11.F (2021-03-22).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LinkedIn, Public Defender

• There are no USB cables any more

  Posted on March 8th, 2021 at 01:04 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  It used to be that you could run any old USB cable between just about any two USB ports, and the devices on each end would simply work. But that hasn’t been true for a long, long time.

  As more and more manufacturers wanted to bring different devices with different needs to market, the standard USB-A cable was lost in the shuffle. Instead, we got a gaggle of novel USB connectors named Mini-A, Mini-B, Micro-A, Micro-B, Apple’s similar-but-different Lightning, and more.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.9.0 (2021-03-08).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender, Thunderbolt, USB, USB standards

• Here’s looking at you, kid: the child-cam scam

  Posted on March 1st, 2021 at 01:06 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

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  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  Here’s looking at you, kid: the child-cam scam

  By Brian Livingston

  It’s terrible when no one is paying attention to you. But it’s much worse when someone is paying attention to you whom you don’t WANT to be paying attention to you.

  Around the world, millions of nursery schools, daycare centers, and private homes have installed “child cams.” These are intended to allow parents to see what their kids and caregivers are doing at daycare, how their infants are sleeping in a crib room, and so on. Many of the systems allow the video to be viewed from a distance across the Internet.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.8.0 (2021-03-01).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender, Security AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Internet of Things, privacy, Public Defender

• Amazon’s new ‘same-day nodes’ will displace postal deliveries

  Posted on February 22nd, 2021 at 01:06 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  Amazon’s new ‘same-day nodes’ will displace postal deliveries

  By Brian Livingston

  The market dominance of Amazon in online retail is well known. But what’s less understood is the effect the corporate giant’s expansion into superfast delivery services will have on the US Postal Service and private parcel companies.

  Marc Wulfraat has extensively studied Amazon’s plans in the United States and 22 other countries in his role as president of MWPVL International, a logistics consulting service based in Montréal, Québec.

  In the past year, Amazon has built eight new “same-day fulfillment centers” in the US.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.7.0 (2021-02-22).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender Amazon, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender, USPS

• Batteries so powerful they do everything but fly

  Posted on February 15th, 2021 at 01:10 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  Batteries so powerful they do everything but fly

  By Brian Livingston

  There are times when I’m power-mad — I just want the biggest battery available to power my laptop, my phone, and heck, maybe a cup warmer for my coffee, too.

  I’m not going to drag around a cart with a propane generator just so I can compute. Fortunately, power banks that can double or triple the life of a laptop are now affordable and light enough to carry around in a shoulder bag or backpack.

  But what about airplanes?

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.6.0 (2021-02-15).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Batteries, Power, Public Defender, Travel

• Surf the Web — even when your ISP is down

  Posted on February 8th, 2021 at 01:50 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge
  

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  Surf the Web — even when your ISP is down

  By Brian Livingston

  It’s a well-known subset of Murphy’s Law: Your Internet service provider will go down at the worst possible time for you.

  When my ISP goes dark, whatever boat I was trying to float becomes pretty much dead in the water. On occasions like this, my usually sympathetic friends become singularly unhelpful: “Just go outside and take a walk for a while.”

  But if you’re hosting a video conference, moderating a hot stock-tips forum, or preparing a report for presentation to your board in an hour, your participants aren’t going to accept excuses such as, “I decided to take a walk instead.”

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.5.0 (2021-02-08).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 18.5.F (2021-02-08).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Home Networks, Public Defender

• Set up a guest network that’s actually secure

  Posted on February 1st, 2021 at 01:10 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  Set up a guest network that’s actually secure

  By Brian Livingston

  In the computer industry, too many things that should be simple and easy are instead complicated and hard for the average person to understand. Take Wi-Fi routers — please!

  In my column on January 25, I showed you a way to protect your most essential computing devices by placing them on a different network from easy-to-hack Internet of Things devices. The trick uses two different Wi-Fi routers.

  But what if you have only one device? A cable company often installs a gateway that offers several wired Ethernet ports as well as Wi-Fi. In that case, you don’t have two devices to play with — you have just one.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.4.0 (2021-02-01).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender, Uncategorized AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Networking, Public Defender

• Hackers are running your smart home

  Posted on January 25th, 2021 at 01:25 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  Hackers are running your smart home

  By Brian Livingston

  I never thought it would get this bad. But it has.

  There are now more Internet of Things (IoT) devices than there are people on the planet. And the vast majority of those IoT gadgets are wide open, easily taken over by malicious hackers and used against you, your community, and the world.

  Almost half of all technology managers have let IoT gizmos — printers, HVAC systems, protocol gateways, etc. — into their corporate networks without changing the default passwords, according to a ForeScout survey.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.3.0 (2021-01-25).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Home Networks, Public Defender

• Stop paying $200 a year for your Internet cable modem

  Posted on January 11th, 2021 at 00:30 Brian Livingston Comment on the AskWoody Lounge

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  Stop paying $200 a year for your Internet cable modem

  By Brian Livingston

  If there’s anything I hate, it’s paying $15 or $20 a month for something I don’t want or need.

  Now our political system — such as it is — has done something about it. A law passed by Congress went into effect just a few days ago: December 20, 2020, to be exact. ISPs (Internet service providers) are now prohibited from charging you a monthly “equipment fee” for connection devices you bought and installed yourself.

  ISPs know all about this law, which is called the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA). It was supposed to go into effect last year on June 20, but cable and telephone companies pressured the FCC to delay its protections for six months. But now, if you own your own hardware, one call to your ISP should get the charge removed — although it should already have disappeared from your bill.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.1.0 (2021-01-11).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender