mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Kinda retired, but not very good at it. Freelance tech columnist for the Houston Chronicle. Project manager for Space City Weather. Still a pizza lover, aspiring cat lady.
I live in Houston. It's worth it.
Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.
I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.
Pls boost.
I've been so excited about the explosion of new Mastodon apps that I decided to write about it in my column, with a focus on @ivory@tapbots.social and @icecubesapp@mastodon.cloud. A thousand flowers blooming!
Nerdiest joke ever. From my daughter, who we clearly raised right.
Meta: If we are forced to pay billions to make our products safer for kids in New Mexico “…we may have no choice but to remove access to its platforms for users in New Mexico entirely.”
New Mexico: Don't threaten us with a good time.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/04/meta-new-mexico-child-safety-facebook-instagram.html
USB-C was supposed to be the one cable to rule them all. But different cables have different capabilities; telling them apart isn't easy. WhatCable is a free, open-source app for Macs will tell you what a cable can (and can’t) do.
The FCC's goofy foreign-made router ban (surprise! All consumer routers in the US are made overseas) is dumb enough on its face, but there's a dumber problem looming next year, when its rules may forbid router makers from updating their firmware, even to fix vulnerabilities.
https://www.ookla.com/articles/here-are-the-top-vendors-affected-by-the-fccs-new-router-rules
