TEH 021: Remote Detonator

In This Episode: Playing with PLATO. Travel technology. Scraping the S3 bucket. SmugMug smug about buying Flickr. Warranty NOT void if removed. Things not to name your WiFi hotspot.

This Week’s Hosts

  • Leo Notenboom, “Chief Question Answerer” at tech education site Ask Leo!
  • Gary Rosenzweig host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
  • Kevin Savetz, web site publisher and Computer Historian at Atari Podcast.
  • Longer Bios on the Hosts page.

Show Notes

  • Kevin has been playing with PLATO — a very early (1970s) online forum platform, described in the book The Friendly Orange Glow, that is now available again.
  • Gary’s Cribbage game for iOS is now officially released, and now he’s designing something new.
  • Breach of the Week: Data firm leaks 48 million user profiles it scraped from Facebook, LinkedIn, others.
  • SmugMug has bought Flickr (Their FAQ about the transfer, and an article in USA Today).
  • FTC reminds companies that declaring warranties void if some sticker is removed is illegal (Vice).
  • What’s your WiFi’s SSID set to? A panic evacuation was triggered in a Michigan gym by someone setting their hotspot to “RemoteDetonator” (Saginaw News).
  • Tricky hiking tips: use your phone for GPS tracking without killing the battery by putting the phone in “Airplane” mode. Using Location Sharing on Google Maps reports your position to friends when you do connect to the Internet. And/or the Firechat app uses a mesh network to communicate with other people’s phones.

5 Comments on “TEH 021: Remote Detonator

  1. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 is what makes those “Warranty Void if Removed” stickers illegal. The manufacturer must prove that your actions broke the part that you are trying to get repaired under warranty. The simple absence of a sticker is *not* sufficient proof that you damaged it.

    The “3rd party car-repair” example that Kevin gave is precisely why the Act was passed — to guarantee that manufacturers honor their warranties. If you *modify* the product (including an attempt at a repair) and that *modification* damages a warranted part, the manufacturer can refuse to cover the damage under warranty — but the onus is on them to *prove* that you did the damage. They cannot automatically deny the warranty based solely on the fact that you took it to a 3rd party, or attempted to repair it yourself.

    And I am *so* changing my SSID to “Remote Detonator,” and waiting for someone to notice. 😉 Let the chaos ensue!

    Reply
  2. May I make a request? In the Show Notes section of each show’s page, can you put the time in front of the topic? Taking an example from this week’s show, it could be “33:36 – What’s your WiFi’s SSID set to…” That way, if someone doesn’t have time to listen to the entire podcast, but is interested in a particular topic, they can fast-forward to the correct spot. Just a thought….

    Reply
    • I totally understand why, and it’s a fabulous idea …that I’ve thought of too. The problem is, it’s almost impossible to do it easily: we jot notes as we go along, and I compile the notes into the bullet points, but do that without actually listening to it again, taking another hour to do so. We do at least try hard to keep the links and notes in order. But I can’t dedicate another hour to putting in the time stamps.

      That said, if someone wants to volunteer to do the time stamps (and maybe suggest more tags that I missed!), I’d happily add them to the page if emailed to me.

      Reply
      • That makes sense… It would be quite time-consuming, and y’all are already so busy with everything else you do. Frankly, I’m amazed any of y’all have the time for this podcast. 🙂

        Reply

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