Sources: Nintendo to launch SNES mini this year

Sources: Nintendo to launch SNES mini this year

Tom Phillips writes at Eurogamer:

The reality of a SNES mini is certainly exciting - while the NES was unique for being Nintendo's first home console, the SNES arguably boasts the better software line-up, and a catalogue of classics far more advanced than their NES forebears. Compare The Legend of Zelda on NES to A Link to the Past, for example, or Donkey Kong to Donkey Kong Country.

Other top SNES games from Nintendo include Super Metroid, Super Mario Kart and Super Mario World, as well as Earthbound, Star Fox and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. The console also had some of the best RPGs of the era, including Square’s Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana.

Many people use emulation software of questionable legality (not that I have ever done anything even remotely like that, like, at all, ever) but soon there may no longer be a need for emulation. This is exciting and I’ll absolutely be buying one of these.

Google begins rolling out free internet to public housing in Fiber cities

Google begins rolling out free internet to public housing in Fiber cities

This is a big deal. I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority for years and talked to a lot of kids and adults about their desire to get online. Philly isn’t yet on Google’s Fiber expansion roadmap, but this is a great development.

Katie Floyd's 3 Tips For Family Tech Support

Katie Floyd’s 3 Tips For Family Tech Support

Great advice for every geek dreading the holiday “Can you help me with my computer?” conversations.

Laser-armed fighter jets by 2020

Laser-armed fighter jets by 2020

Thom Patterson writes for CNN:

Here's how Air Force special ops might use them: The commander of USAF special ops, Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, said last September that by 2020 he wants them on C-130J Ghostrider gunships for landing zone protection.

The laser weapons would take out possible threats like enemy vehicles, or disable infrastructure such as cell towers.

I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night (more on that coming in an article later) so laser weapons seem an appropriate story to share today.

Vizio TVs spy on you, here's how to disable it

Vizio TVs spy on you, here’s how to disable it

Vizio’s technology works by analyzing snippets of the shows you’re watching, whether on traditional television or streaming Internet services such as Netflix. Vizio determines the date, time, channel of programs — as well as whether you watched them live or recorded. The viewing patterns are then connected your IP address - the Internet address that can be used to identify every device in a home, from your TV to a phone.

This is a damn good reason not to buy a Vizio TV. I won’t rant about opt-out/opt-in again. But I found Vizio generally had a good price-to-quality ratio: not top shelf hardware, but not top shelf prices, either. So this shadiness is a shame.

A shamey-ness?

Anyway, props to Samsung and LG, who, according to Julia Angwin at ProPublica, require user consent before enabling the sort of tracking Vizio turns on by default.

Disable Vizio "Smart Interactivity"

Vizio obviously knows how shady its default spying is because they have a page named after the feature which begins with information on how to turn it off:

VIA TV Interface

  1. Press the MENU button on your TV's remote.
  2. Select Settings.
  3. Highlight Smart Interactivity.
  4. Press RIGHT arrow to change setting to Off.

VIA Plus TV Interface

  1. Press the MENU button on your TV's remote or open HDTV Settings app.
  2. Select System.
  3. Select Reset & Admin.
  4. Highlight Smart Interactivity.
  5. Press RIGHT arrow to change setting to Off.

Is the Russian kamikaze sub misinformation or an inadvertent warning to the West?

Is the Russian kamikaze sub misinformation or an inadvertent warning to the West?

Apparently,

The screen capture depicts a project called "Ocean Multipurpose System 'Status-6.'" The weapon would apparently be delivered by a nuclear-powered underwater drone, carried externally by a nuclear submarine. The drone would be capable of depths of up to 3,280 feet and capable of speeds of up to 65 miles an hour. It would also have a range of 6,213 miles.

A weapon like this could take out the transatlantic data cables as mere collateral damage…

Russian Ships Too Close to Data Cables for U.S. Comfort

Russian Ships Too Close to Data Cables for U.S. Comfort

The first of two this-is-really-concerning posts you’ll find here today:

The role of the cables is more important than ever before. They carry global business worth more than $10 trillion a day, including from financial institutions that settle transactions on them every second. Any significant disruption would cut the flow of capital. The cables also carry more than 95 percent of daily communications.

I hope there are ways for at least economic, government and military organizations to route around those cables via satellite if necessary…

Apple has learned nothing from Microsoft's Surface

Apple has learned nothing from Microsoft’s Surface - The Verge

iPad sales are indeed down, but it does not follow from that fact that iPad use is down. This Time article did the yeoman’s work of aggregating some data about iPad sales. The bottom line is that in the five years since the iPad’s 2010 launch, Apple has sold more than 258 million of the tablets. That’s more iPads in the wild than people living in Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Egypt, Germany, Iran, Turkey, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Thailand, France, United Kingdom, or Italy (thanks Wolfram|Alpha).

My dad has an Android tablet and a Windows PC. Since he got the tablet (which, interestingly from a marketing perspective, he insists on calling an iPad) he does nothing on the PC except pay bills, and that’s primarily because most of the apps you use to pay bills on mobile devices are, to put it mildly, user-hostile antichrists of design and experience.

He is a sample of one, but my dad isn’t even your typical cutting edge older gentleman. For example, he was on Aol dial-up until sometime around 2013, and refuses to use a non-clamshell mobile phone. So his taking so quickly to using a tablet implies to me that the replacement of PCs by iPads and other tablets may be closer than Tom Warren of The Verge thinks, although still far off.

I don’t see my dad using an iPad Pro though because most of his use is on the couch as a second screen. I suspect that the second screen use case coupled with the price point will dampen iPad Pro sales outside of the geek and artist demographics.

Hackers Can Silently Control Siri From 16 Feet Away

Hackers Can Silently Control Siri From 16 Feet Away

Well this is concerning:

A pair of researchers at ANSSI, a French government agency devoted to information security, have shown that they can use radio waves to silently trigger voice commands on any Android phone or iPhone that has Google Now or Siri enabled, if it also has a pair of headphones with a microphone plugged into its jack. Their clever hack uses those headphones’ cord as an antenna, exploiting its wire to convert surreptitious electromagnetic waves into electrical signals that appear to the phone’s operating system to be audio coming from the user’s microphone. Without speaking a word, a hacker could use that radio attack to tell Siri or Google Now to make calls and send texts, dial the hacker’s number to turn the phone into an eavesdropping device, send the phone’s browser to a malware site, or send spam and phishing messages via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

You can disable Siri whenever your iOS device is locked by going to Settings > Touch ID & Passcode > Allow Access When Locked and toggling the Siri switch to the “off” (as in not green) position. This doesn’t guarantee a hack like the one deascribed above won’t work on your device, but it does guarantee you’ll see Siri doing something weird and can thus be alerted to the hackery.

Thoughts on ad blockers

Most of this article is an extensive discussion of my hunt for the best ad blocker on iOS. It isn’t exhaustive and, given the pace at which the App Store moves, probably won’t remain current for long. That’s why I want to open things with my own thoughts on ad blocking, because I don’t expect those to change any time soon.

My Opinion on Ad Blocking

Large publishers don’t have much to worry about with regard to ad blocking because they have the resources to play cat-and-mouse with developers. But smaller publishers and even independent publishers of a significant size, traffic-wise, are right to keep an eye on ad blocking. I don’t think John Gruber has much to worry about either, but he also doesn’t have time to spend staying one step ahead of blockers who blacklist his primary advertising network, The Deck.

I use blockers on desktop browsers and, now, on iOS for all the reasons so many people have already cited: ads often ruin the reading experience, trackers build creepy profiles on what we like and follow us around the web showing it to us, and sometimes the stuff a publisher publishes is worth our eyeballs, so why should we be counted among their visitors and help boost their ad rates?

But… ButButBUT

Can you sense that I’m about to state a caveat to my support of the development and use of blockers? If not, you need more coffee, or to visit a doctor, or just give up reading for, like, ever.

Seriously though here’s the caveat: Blockers should absolutely always and without fail include a whitelisting feature, and it is my personal opinion that to use blockers without actively using the whitelisting feature is entitled, unethical and hypocritical.

It’s entitled because it assumes you deserve everything published on the web for free, just because, like, you’re you. That’s not true.

It’s unethical because there are absolutely jobs to which blocking poses an existential threat, and jobs are people, and people have families, and feelings, and futures.

It’s hypocritical because, at least in my mind, the primary purpose of using blocking tools is to say to publishers and their ad partners, unequivocally, you’re doing it wrong. But to say that sincerely you have to have in mind that there is a way of doing it right. And, of course, there is: unobtrusive, minimally tracking advertisements carefully monitored and held to a far higher standard than that to which most are held these days.

It sends no signal to simply block everything indiscriminately, which is what you’re doing if you don’t use a whitelist. I want publishers who display ads respectful of their readers to continue to be able to sell that inventory. I want to see a virtuous cycle: I want them to be able to charge more for that space because they’re on whitelists their less respectful competitors aren’t on.

So I use ad blockers on desktop and mobile, and also spend a lot of time on building whitelists full of sites whose ads I don’t mind and whose business model I want to help preserve for at least as long as it takes for them to find and transition to whatever model comes next.

An Ad Blocking Case Study: Peace by Marco Arment

Apple released iOS 9 earlier this month and Safari, the built-in browser, gained the ability in 64-bit devices to load what Apple calls (a bit disingenuously…) “content blockers”. These are apps you install and enable in Settings > Safari > Content Blockers. This new class of apps is almost exclusively used for blocking display advertisements and tracking scripts that follow you around the web building an anonymized-but-still-targeted-at-your-face profile about you.

I’m writing this to express my opinion, because that’s what the internet is for. I’ll explain my reasons and then recommend steps you should or shouldn’t take based on how much you agree with me.

[caption id=“attachment_1388” align=“aligncenter” width=“576”]Settings screen from Peace, an iOS ad blocker by Marco Arment Settings screen from Peace, an iOS ad blocker by Marco Arment[/caption]

Let’s use a case study to illustrate the acceleration of the debate about ad blockers on iOS and desktop web browsers. Marco Arment, an early tumblr employee, the creator of Instapaper (which he later sold) and, more recently, of the Overcast podcast service for iOS, released his own ad blocker, called Peace, on September 16, 2015, announcing it in a blog post. He explained in that article:

And we shouldn’t feel guilty about this. The “implied contract” theory that we’ve agreed to view ads in exchange for free content is void because we can’t review the terms first — as soon as we follow a link, our browsers load, execute, transfer, and track everything embedded by the publisher. Our data, battery life, time, and privacy are taken by a blank check with no recourse. It’s like ordering from a restaurant menu with no prices, then being forced to pay whatever the restaurant demands at the end of the meal.

I was one of many purchasers who paid $2.99 to try out Peace on my iPhone, helping to send it flying to the top of the paid app charts almost immediately. It’s well-designed and includes the ability to do one-time exceptions or permanently whitelist specific sites (more on that later). Arment had to explain in a post the day after Peace launched why Peace blocks the classy ad network The Deck. This explanation was important because Arment displays advertisements on his own site using The Deck. It was a clear example of the cognitive dissonance the ad blocking issue causes.

The Top App Disappears From the App Store

The day after that, though, Arment did something surprising: he pulled Peace from the App Store and explained how everyone could get a refund. That’s tens of thousands of dollars to which he said “Nevermind” because he developed a crisis of conscience. He said:

Peace required that all ads be treated the same — all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren’t black and white. This approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn’t serve our goals or beliefs well enough. If we’re going to effect positive change overall, a more nuanced, complex approach is required than what I can bring in a simple iOS app.

Arment can afford to take the hit, financially, but what’s more surprising about this move is that he is a world-class iOS developer, constantly improving and maintaining a popular podcast app, who spent a lot of time and effort and stress building an app that, only days after it launched, he decided to kill. And Apple took notice: the company notified him on September 21 it would be “proactively refunding” every purchase of his ad blocker.

I didn’t expect that because Apple included in iOS 9 its very own News app, which doesn’t allow content blocking and thus is now the only bullet-proof way for publishers to ensure their advertisements come along for the ride when someone reads their stuff. I wonder if it was more a kind gesture to Arment, whose great apps bring a lot of attention and a nontrivial amount of money to Apple (who gets 30 percent off the top for every purchase of every paid app) and iOS.

The First Crop of iOS Ad Blockers

I tried five different ad blockers1, listed below:

I quickly realized my dealbreaker feature while evaluating those apps: whitelisting. That immediately eliminated AdMop and Crystal.2 The next one I eliminated was Blockr which, while it does offer a whitelist, is a little too complex for my tastes, requiring you to choose from several different elements to whitelist on each site. I prefer simplicity just from an aesthetic perspective, but more importantly “normals” – non-geeks – are less likely to use a feature that looks complex and bloated, not because they “don’t get it” but because they’re not obsessed with spending hours tweaking the settings on their gadgets.

Peace is my favorite because not only does it offer a whitelist, but the action extension you use to whitelist a site includes all of Peace’s other settings, including a global disable button. Even more interesting is the separate action extension Arment included to “Open in Peace,” meaning you can disable the app globally and selectively load overburdened pages in Peace on demand. While I’ll focus on building a whitelist, the inclusion of a selective-enable option demonstrates the amount of thought Arment put into this issue. This wasn’t just a money grab, it was an experiment. That’s what the Scott Meyer, CEO of Ghostery, the company whose blocking database Arment licensed, called it, The Peace App Experiment. His thoughts echoed Arment’s:

Specifically, the black and white, all on/all off approach to content blocking in Peace ran counter to our core belief that these aren't black and white decisions. With the currently limited flexibility of the user experience, we both felt it best not to continue to sell or support the app. Ghostery is based on giving the consumer the choice as to what they block and when. Ghostery doesn’t block ads or any other content by default. That’s too subjective a call. If there are objective measures for what types of tracking should be blocked, then that’s an option we’ll pursue. Right now, however, we didn’t feel that we had the mix right in Peace. Marco agreed.

I suspect based on that language and Arment’s own post about withdrawing the app that future improvement by Apple to its blocking framework may enable the nuance to which Peace aspired. For now though, the app isn’t available anymore and, while if you already have it installed and don’t delete it, you can keep using it, there’s no guarantee of any support or updates. I plan to hang onto it and will probably stick with it until Purify somehow differentiates itself.

[caption id=“attachment_1387” align=“aligncenter” width=“576”]Settings screen from Purify, an iOS ad blocker by Chris Aljoudi Whitelisting screen from Purify, an iOS ad blocker by Chris Aljoudi[/caption]

But for those of you who haven’t yet tried one out, or are still on the fence about which one to use, and haven’t yet purchased and installed Peace, or have deleted it since it was pulled from the App Store, I have to recommend Purify. Yes, it’s $3.99, no, that shouldn’t stop you from getting it. It has a dead-simple and fast whitelisting option and lets you decide to block images, scripts and fonts as well, although only ads and trackers are blocked by default.

[caption id=“attachment_1390” align=“alignright” width=“264”]ublock, an ad blocker for desktop browsers, by Chris Aljoudiublock, an ad blocker for desktop browsers, by Chris Aljoudi[/caption]

Purify also has the benefit of being developed by Chris Aljoudi, maker of the uBlock extension for desktop browsers. uBlock also has a dead-simple whitelisting option. Aljoudi developed uBlock out in the open and it’s free, so you can get a good sense of the quality of his work before buying Purify, if my recommendation isn’t enough.

iOS 9 marks the first time Apple has included content blocking in the mobile operating system, and it almost certainly is part of a larger strategy to squeeze other large companies reliant on advertising models for revenue. But its bound to put pressure on small and medium publishers to clean up their advertising standards or consider alternatives like membership programs or tip jars, used by Brett Terpstra, The Loop, Katie Floyd and many others, with varying degrees of success.

For now, I’ll keep on blocking the crap and whitelisting the good guys. How about you?

Feature image by NEXO Design under CC-BY-SA; screenshots by me


  1. There are many more, and the field will no doubt continue to grow. See Dave Mark's list at Loop Insight. He posted his own thoughts on all of this the next day
  2. Crystal has a "Report Site" action extension, to tell them about sites that break with Crystal enabled, but no whitelist. 

Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police

Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police

This is troubling:

Lt. Scott Wahl, a spokesman for the 1,900-member San Diego Police Department, said the department does not require police officers to file a report when they use the facial recognition technology but do not make an arrest. The department has no record of the stops involving Mr. Hanson and Mr. Harvey, and Lieutenant Wahl said that he did not know about the incidents but that they could have happened.

Should police departments be allowed to use facial recognition?

Yes.

Should they be able to use it with minimal consent, oversight and reporting requirements?

No.

Image from Wikimedia

iOS 9 Public Beta coming today?

iOS 9 Public Beta coming today?

I rarely cross-post from my geekery-focused Tumblr, but I’m so excited about this I had to share it here, where I have literally thousands more followers.

I’ll be writing a proper post about the public beta after I’ve used it for a few days. There are some interesting legal consequences of agreeing to use beta software.

The Verge made a FAA drone exemption search engine

The Verge made a FAA drone exemption search engine

Ben Popper reports at The Verge:

We have partnered with the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College to collect data on every commercial exemption the FAA grants. It's a fascinating snapshot of a fast-growing industry still in its infancy. [The result] is an interactive database that allows you to drill deeper into details, exploring the companies that have been given permission to fly and what they are planning to do with their drones. You can also search by state and figure out who near you is planning to put a drone in the sky.

Photo by Capricorn4049

Tor Project seeks Executive Director

Tor Project seeks Executive Director

The Tor Project, makers of anonymizing browsing tools, is looking for a new Executive Director:

The position provides the high-profile opportunity to assume the voice and face of Tor to the world, and particularly to the global community of Internet organizations dedicated to maintaining a stable, secure and private Internet. In this position, the successful candidate will be able to exercise their deep leadership experience to manage a virtual team of culturally diverse volunteer developers. The candidate will have the opportunity to draw support from their stature in the wider community of Internet privacy foundations and activist organizations to advance external development initiatives.

Tor is used by everyone from political dissidents to child pornographers to access a darknet, unreachable from the Internet most people know. Read more about the Tor Project at Wikipedia.

Tor Project logo uploaded by Wikimedia Commons user Flugaal

Amazon AWS: Good enough for the CIA

Amazon AWS: Good enough for the CIA

Leena Rao has a fascinating background story at Fortune on Amazon Web Services, built around a profile of its leader, Senior Vice President Andy Jassy. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but this bit was particularly interesting:

Net­flix’s adoption also gave other big companies and institutions the confidence to try AWS. Its heavyweight corporate customers now include Samsung, Comcast, and pharmaceutical giant Novartis, to name just a few. In 2013, AWS won a contract from the Central Intelligence Agency—a classified deal that became public knowledge when a competitor sued the government over it. Once that news broke, Jassy recalls, “a lot of companies would say, ‘Well, if the security and performance is good [enough] for the CIA, then it’s probably good enough for us.’ ”

Read about the original disclosure of the deal over at Federal Computing World.

NASA, Verizon developing tech to track drones via cell towers

DJI Phantom 1, rear (pilot) view NASA, Verizon developing tech to track drones via cell towers

Mark Harris reports at The Guardian:

That $500,000 project is now underway at Nasa’s Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. Nasa is planning the first tests of an air traffic control system for drones there this summer, with Verizon scheduled to introduce a concept for using cell coverage for data, navigation, surveillance and tracking of drones by 2017. The phone company hopes to finalise its technology by 2019.

This is fascinating to me because the documents obtained by The Guardian describe the purpose of the partnership as to “jointly explore if cell towers and communications could possibly support Unmannned Aerial Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) for communications and surveillance of UAS at low altitudes” (emphasis added).

NASA typically focuses on altitudes so high they’re, well, in space, so why are they involved with developing low-altitutde drone tracking technology?

I want to note that I’m not necessarily opposed to someone in the government being able to keep track of all the drones that will inevitably be zipping around. I’m just not sure why NASA is involved, and I wonder whether their choice of Verizon as a partner serves as a tacit confirmation of that cellular network’s claims of coverage supremacy over its competitors.

There will be some related surveillance stories in tomorrow’s Modern Law newsletter, so sign up to get an email with five links I haven’t blogged about yet.

Image © Nevit Dilmen

Another blow to deceptively marketed "unlimited" data plans

Another blow to deceptively marketed “unlimited” data plans

Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica:

The FCC's new rules ban throttling except in cases of "reasonable network management." AT&T could argue that the throttling is necessary to keep its network running smoothly, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has objected to throttling of plans that are supposed to be unlimited and forced Verizon Wireless to back down from a throttling plan last year.

I have no problem with good-faith network management, but if a plan is subject to throttling, it can’t be marketed and sold as “unlimited.” The FTC is sending the right signal here in choosing to pursue this case, and Judge Edward Chen of the US District Court in Northern California has demonstrated that he understands the issue.

The network that can provide real unlimited data at usable speeds with no fine print has an opportunity to significantly increase its user base, but I haven’t found one yet. Let me know if you have.

Tesla will enable automated freeway driving this summer

Tesla will enable automated freeway driving this summer

Chris Taylor reporting at Mashable:

So to recap: Tesla cars will start self-driving this summer, on freeways at least. (It seems likely that once we've gotten used to that notion, autopilot for the full ride will be unlocked.) Google could have done the same thing for us a few years back, if the company were not driven by perfectionism and relentless iteration.

This is interesting. Tesla, to me, has made Google look a little old school, in a bad way. What’s more disruptive? Waiting until you’ve perfected automobile automation everywhere, or enable what you’re confident you’ve done well?

Of course, a base Model S goes for $63,570 after the federal tax credit. So I won’t be automated-ly driving around any freeways for at least a decade (student loan reform, anyone?). But the fact that Tesla can enable automated driving with nothing more than a software update speaks volumes to where the industry is headed.

The ethics of reporting on the Sony hack

The ethics of reporting on the Sony hack

HBO without cable confirmed for April 2015

HBO without cable confirmed for April 2015

Update to iOS 8 even without enough free space

I’ve heard from many people who insist their iPhone or iPad “can’t handle” or “doesn’t fit” iOS 8. I read an article about a slow-down in updates to iOS 8. John Gruber of Daring Fireball first posited that some well-documented software bugs were making people reluctant to update.

But his follow-up post reminded me how many times I’ve been asked by “normals” how I managed to update my iPhone 5. Their phones, the common story goes, just don’t have enough free space available to perform the update.

I know this is frustrating, so I wanted to share some quick and easy advice on the topic. First, if your iOS device is low on space, it’s probably because of all those photos and videos you’re taking. Learn how to move that stuff to your computer so you can safely delete it from your device.

Second, if you have an iPhone 4 or 4s, think hard before updating to iOS 8. Some reports suggest you’ll have a much slower device after the update. There are some neat new features, but none of them are worth slowing your phone down.

Third, make sure your iPhone or iPad is fully charged before you try to update. While it will be plugged into the computer and therefore charging during the update, it’s best to be safe about these things. Make sure your battery icon is green before you start the update and you should be fine.

Update to iOS 8 with iTunes

  1. If you want to install the iOS 8 update but your iPhone or iPad tells you it doesn’t have enough free space, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes.
  2. Plug the charging cable into your computer’s USB port and then connect it to your iPhone or iPad.
  3. If iTunes isn’t already opened, it will open. If it doesn’t open automatically you’ll just have to open it yourself (a first-world problem if ever I heard one).
  4. Click on the iPhone button that appears in iTunes and, if iTunes isn’t already offering to update your phone, click Check for Update.
  5. Wait. iTunes will download the five-gigabyte update to your computer and install it on your device.

<

p>Check out Apple’s support page for more information.

Subprime auto lenders use technology to compel payment

Subprime auto lenders use technology to compel payment

Apple can't bypass your iOS passcode

Apple can’t bypass your iOS passcode

Check for lint before trying to replace your iPhone's charging port

My iPhone 5 recently stopped charging, unless I propped the phone upside down against an inclined surface like a lamp stand or a keyboard. I’m not in a position to buy one of those fancy new iPhones, so I shopped around in the internet’s DIY isle.

I found a well-reviewed set of iPhone surgery tools and even a well-reviewed replacement part on Amazon. Armed with those and an instructional YouTube video, I planned to replace the part myself.

Luckily, one of my many neuroses involves exhaustively reading through reviews before I buy anything from Amazon. It’s my favorite part of the site. I don’t even consider products with less than 25 or so reviews.

In a bricks-and-mortar store, you probably only have the staff to ask for advice, and they’re obviously biased. And if you’re anything like me, you probably know far more about the product than they do. Always take advantage of the availability of reviews on Amazon.

Anyway, with the necessary tools in my cart and the video queued up in the Watch Later section of my YouTube account, I headed over to read some reviews. That’s when I found this gem by Amazon user DullJack, who wrote:

First off, if you suspect your charging port is going bad, it probably isn’t. Grab a flashlight and a safety pin/needle, shine the light into the charging port and you will probably see a bunch of lint tightly jammed into the back of the port that is preventing the cable from fully inserting.

But I had looked in there and I didn’t see anything, DullJack. So what gives? He continues:

I looked into my old port before replacing it and it looked clear, but I didn’t shine a light into it.

Ah. I shined a light into it and alas, there it was. I turned my phone off (better safe than sorry when poking around inside your iPhone with anything sharp or metal) and gently used a paper clip to pull out more lint that I would have though could fit in there. Do this over a piece of white paper to get the full effect.

So. Much. Lint.

Then, I plugged it in with the reckless abandon I had used before the problems began. A small white Apple logo appeared in the middle of the screen. The phone booted up and the battery icon showed it was charging. I moved it around in all the common ways that had been causing it to stop charging.

Fixed!

I don’t use exclamation points very often on this site because that’s just not the tone I’m going for over here. But that one was obligatory. The sense of relief I felt upon learning I wouldn’t need to expose my iPhone’s innards to the harsh light of day is something only fellow geeks can understand.

Of course, exposing an iPhone’s innards to the harsh light of day is something only fellow geeks would even consider, too.

Let this be a lesson, well, several lessons, to you all:

  1. Always, always read the reviews before you buy online,
  2. Be absolutely certain the problem isn’t lint before replacing your iPhone’s charging port, and
  3. Amazon user DullJack is a gentleman and scholar deserving of the gratitude and respect of fellow geeks everywhere.

Millenials won't use subpar enterprise software

Millenials won’t use subpar enterprise software