Category: Networking | Scottie's Tech.Info

Why webmail is just a really bad idea

I’m always amazed at how many people these days still use webmail.

From Gmail to Yahoo Mail, it seems everyone enjoys the convenience of no crappy e-mail program, easily accessible e-mail from any device, and free data storage In the Cloud^TM.

In the case of Gmail, you can even use the same e-mail account on your smartphone. Yay, even more data for Google!

Naturally, there are huge drawbacks to the webmail approach, the biggest of which is privacy.

From Day One, webmail has been hoovering up all kinds of data. Recently, the world discovered that – duh – it’s worse than we think!

5G rollout runs into roadblocks – Detour ahead?

There’s a lot happening on the 5G front.

From petitions, to cities temporarily halting their 5G rollout, to senate hearings, to nation-wide days of protest, things have been pretty busy!

In this video, I talk about one particular petition that I think summarizes everything quite nicely.

I also flesh out some details and connect some dots to show just how ridiculous the whole charade really is!

Another reason to skip WiFi and go Full Ethernet

These days, WiFi is everywhere. Even your washing machine probably has it. 😉

I typically don’t recommend using WiFi due to the huge amount of evidence indicating that it’s probably not the best thing for your health.

But there’s another reason to go back to cables…

WiFi is quite often WAAAY slower than most people think. In fact, it’s very rare that you will get anywhere near the maximum speeds advertised when you buy a WiFi access point or router.

What to do, what to do?

PayPal and AliExpress slow? It might be CloudFlare’s DNS

In May 2018, I posted this article: Speed up your browsing with CloudFlare’s public DNS

In that post, I recommended CloudFlare’s DNS, 1.1.1.1. At the time, it was quite fast, and worked perfectly.

Fast forward to today, and I’m afraid that’s no longer the case.

If you switched to CloudFlare’s DNS and you’ve noticed that things like paying via PayPal have become almost useless, read on!

Just how BIG is Big Data? Some fun internet facts

Ah, the internet… It’s big. Really, really BIG.

We don’t often think about these things, but just how much storage space is needed for the internet to go?

What kind of power is needed to make Google googley?

How on earth does YouTube store and process all that crazy video data?

Join Cletus and me for a look at some fun facts and statistics about YouTube, Google, and the internet as a whole!

Big Data, spying, & 5G pushers: Who are THEY??

We hear a lot of about “THEY”. Big data violates our privacy, new potentially dangerous tech like 5G is pushed by “them”, and so on.

But just who is this “they“, anyway?

It turns out, the answer is: It’s complicated!

The best place to look is the big data/spying nonsense. The real history of the internet gives a pretty good idea of just how it all works.

When you lump greedy CEOs together with power-hungry (and often paranoid) politicians, and then toss in some Tech Evangelists for good measure, you get exactly what we have today…

At long last, LANscanner works on Windows 10!

Way back in early 2009, I wrote a post entitled: How to Determine the Master Browser in a Windows Workgroup

Since then, quite a number of people have downloaded and used my little LANscanner program for displaying the IP addies, MAC addies, workgroup, and Master Browser of all the gizmos on their local network.

One problem: With the release of Windows 10 1709, it stopped working.

Well, I’m happy to announce the release of LANscanner v2.0!

Wireless Trolls: How to win against electrosmog naysayers

You know the drill: you try to tell someone about some study showing the health effects of WiFi, 5G, or whatever, and then it hits…

Maybe they come back with one of several standard cop-outs, maybe you’re called crazy, maybe they ask what happened to your tinfoil hat, or maybe they even get angry and abusive!

So, what to do?

In this video, I give some tips and tricks and information that hopefully you will find useful in spreading the word.

The Internet of Things and 5G: It’s all BONKERS!

Ah yes, the IoT, or Internet of Things.

The future is apparently filled with internet-connected everything, including dust (yes, dust).

We’re already seeing the beginnings of this brave new world, mostly in the form of smart thermostats, smart appliances, and things like Amazon’s Echo toys.

Part of this future IoT is 5G. As I mentioned in an earlier video, there is a fair amount of evidence in the form of numerous studies that 5G will be particularly bad for our health. As you’ll see, even physicists have jumped on board to sound the alarm.

And finally, a discussion of the 5G Internet of Things wouldn’t be complete without a reintroduction to everyone’s favorite forgotten topic: spycraft!

A crash course in how the internet works

Way back in 1995, I was a freshman at university. I had this new thing called “The Internet” at my fingertips.

It was cool, but I wanted to know how it worked. I asked someone, and they wouldn’t answer the question – mostly because they couldn’t answer!

Today, everyone knows and uses the internet, but people keep asking me questions about the basic concepts that make it go.

So, I figured it was about time to give a basic intro to how the internet actually works, including a simplified discussion of networks, IP addresses, ports, protocols, DNS, bandwidth, latency, and more!

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