On vacation? Check for hidden cameras

Tech Talk #178–Apr 30, 2022 Yay! You’ve got some vacation time, and you’ve found the perfect place for you and your family to stay. Whether it’s for security reasons, industrial espionage, or just because people are weird, you can find another article about people finding hidden cameras in their accommodations every few months. People find surveillance cameras in fake smoke detectors, bedside alarm clocks, behind A/C vents, USB hubs, and even embedded walls. There are

Hiding people and pets, Google Doodle games

Tech Talk #177–Apr 16, 2022 Hiding people and pets Google Photos can automatically make "Memories" from the photos you store with them. But maybe the memories they make for you aren't necessarily good memories for you. What can you do? Thankfully, there's a straightforward way to make Google forget certain people and even animals. Open the Google Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, or tablet. (The Memories feature doesn't show up when you

DuckDuckGo vs. StartPage

Tech Talk #176–Apr 2, 2022 Have you switched to DuckDuckGo to escape the relentless data gathering Google does? But do the search results from DuckDuckGo seem to not reach into the deepest darkest corners of the internet to find what you want? There’s a solution, sort of. StartPage.com is a Dutch company with privacy policies like DuckDuckGo. That means StartPage doesn’t store your IP address storage or your search data. But, in 2009, StartPage agreed