Tech

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    The Problem with Total Surveillance

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    According to the emails I’ve received just in the past couple of weeks:

    I’m actively seeking employment in Pennsylvania
    I own rental property in Las Vegas
    I have wives and children enrolled in schools in NC, VA and Canada.
    I travel back and forth between San Francisco and New Zealand frequently
    I frequent some “interesting” dating sites, including at least one that caters to cheating spouses. (Great, thanks to whoever used my email address to sign up for that at the same time my wife is across the country, that doesn’t look odd!!!!)
    I am paying for cable internet/TV service for a young lady in Michigan. (Student using their stepfather’s payment info maybe?)
    I shop at some online retailers in England.
    Now, none of that is true

  • Google Finds a Predator

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Cross posted from the Child Abuse Survivor site The tech world is alive with news that Google has helped locate and charge a predator based on scanning their email for child pornography images. Obviously, this is a case of a stupid criminal, if you’re going to share illegal images, using a cloud service provider that…

  • Why Net Neutrality Matters

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    TechDirt has a good example that should show you what is at stake with net neutrality rules. For about $12, Sprint will soon let subscribers buy a wireless plan that only connects to Facebook. For that same price, they could choose instead to connect only with Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest—or for $10 more, enjoy unlimited…

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    Deactivating AddThis

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I’ve been using a couple of AddThis plugins on this site recently, in an effort to make it easier for folks to share things that they find interesting on the site, or to encourage folks to share or like the Facebook page, etc. Tonight, however, I’m deactivating AddThis on the site. The reason? This article…