Tag Archives: budget

PTJ 177 News: Unboxed

February 10, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Might the cable bill have fewer line items in the future? The Federal Communications Commission would like to make it happen! While the intended merger of Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications is still under review and the agency is defending its net neutrality policy against attacks and appeals, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler got the cable industry in a further tizzy by announcing a proposal that would do away with the practice of customers having to rent their set-top boxes from their service providers. Cable companies: Not so happy.

President Obama sent his last budget to Congress this week, and out of the $4 trillion dollars total, the budget requested $19 billion dollars for national cybersecurity. The new plan calls for a chunk of change to finally upgrade federal workers off their ancient totally hackable computer systems. Case in point, according to VICE’s Motherboard site, an anonymous hacker has threatened to dump gigabytes of employee information grabbed off a Justice Department computer. Homeland security, indeed.

A worldwide tweetstorm began to brew over the weekend after BuzzFeed reported that Twitter was getting ready to change its real-time reverse chronological feed into a Facebook-like algorithm-run arrangement that shows you tweets the program thinks you want to see rather than what’s happening at the moment. Wired defused some of the tweet-rage saying the new version of Twitter basically expands the While You Were Away highlights of older tweets. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also responded. Oh, and Twitter launched its First View ads this week, which are video adverts that sit on top of your newsfeed so you can’t miss them.

Speaking of Wired, the site is cracking down on ad-blocking and soon plans to start restricting access to the site for readers cruising by in a browser with an ad-blocker. You can also give them money to get rid of the ads.

Facebook’s promise of free Internet — or at least Facebook’s version of the Internet — has been rejected by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the government authority there who blocked the Social Network’s Free Basics app. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to press on.

Instagram, also owned by Facebook, had better news. The official blog announced an update to its app that allows you to add multiple accounts and then easily switch between them.

Home theater hobbyists who have been eagerly awaiting the Samsung UBD-K8500 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player to buy won’t have to wait much longer. Samsung jumped its own expected March release date for the player to slip a few units into the Video & Audio Center out in Santa Monica, where they quickly sold out.

Google Cardboard has been the on-ramp into the world of virtual reality for a lot of people, but Google is now said to be working on a higher-end VR headset to rival the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift gear. Google is not commenting on its plans.

Canonical, the company that makes Ubuntu Linux, just announced the Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet produced with European hardware maker BQ and is expected to go on sale next month. The Penguin Pad has a 10-inch screen and runs the touch-screen version of Ubuntu.

But be very careful when shopping for USB-C cables. The Verge site reports that the faulty or improper wiring on cheap uncertified USB-C cables has actually shorted out laptops due to incorrect power usage. The article points to lists of cables that have been tested to work correctly, but also calls USB industry groups to come up with reliable certification procedures because nobody wants fried laptop for dinner.

StubHub is moving into direct sales with a new ticketing platform. The new system won’t delineate between second-hand resellers and direct sales from the venue’s box office and lets StubHub give TicketMaster a lot more competition. StubHub is also partnering with the Philadelphia 76ers to sell tickets to the team’s games when the NBA season starts up this fall.

And finally, if you long for a more simpler time when computer viruses were not just out to steal your money and identity, visit the Malware Museum online at the Internet Archive. Curated by security expert Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure, the emulated selections in the museum have been cleansed of their destructive power but show you the sometimes-whimsical messages left by hackers in a gentler, DOS-based era.

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint, Episode Links

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: Fuss, Budget

January 5, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Okay, the holidays are over! Time to get things under control in 2016 before it gets too late! if you’re serious about tracking spending and coming up with a budget plan to hold on to a little more of your money than you did the previous year, this is a good time to dive in. In fact, you probably have most of the data you need right at your fingertips already: It’s there waiting in your online bank and credit-card accounts.

For starters, most credit-card companies offer a 2015 Year End Summary or statement that breaks down all your charges on that card into categories so you can see where your cash went last year – and make changes for this year if you need to. If you log into your account and don’t see a link to your Year End report, give it a few weeks — most should be available for download by early February and could also be helpful at tax time if you take deductions for things like charitable deductions that you may have charged.

Some banks, like Wells Fargo (if you have an account there), let you really track your cashflow with an online spending report. Even if you don’t get fancy graphics, many financial institutions let you grab a copy of your account activity any time of year for a specified time period. By looking at the hard data, so you can better track the flow of money in and out of your accounts. If you write checks to charitable organizations, you can also confirm those totals in the scans of returned checks that should also be available to view online when you are logged into your bank account.

Some banks and credit-card companies even make the files compatible with financial programs like Quicken — which hardcore budget masters already know. But if you’re new to the whole idea of personal budget-tracking and don’t use fancy financial software, you can also download your files in standard formats like comma-separated values that open in Microsoft Excel (shown above), iWork Numbers for OS X or cross-platform freebies like LibreOffice Calc. Web-based spreadsheet wranglers like Google Sheets, Apple’s iWork for iCloud, Microsoft Office Excel Online, or other service.

As always, before you doing anything regarding personal accounts or finance, make sure you are logged into a non-public network, with secure website connections and you have the latest security software installed on your computer. Once you’ve got the computer locked down, it’s time to lock down that spending — or at least see just how much you may have spent on Amazon, Google Play and the iTunes Store last year…

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