Unbelievably, offensively useless chat with Healthfirst online support
A website that refuses access to critical documents is bad enough. Completely clueless chat agents who provide stock, bullshit, useless answers is much worse.
Author Archives: jik
This is how to make the “Install pending software updates” checkbox go away in GNOME
You can switch GNOME Software to manual updates, or block offline updates completely with polkit. Neither solution is perfect. The GNOME developers have no interest in improving the situation.
Comics Aggregator: workaround while “Nancy” is in transition
If you read the comic strip Nancy in the Comics Aggregator, you may have noticed that your comics page is loading slowly and displaying an error for Nancy. This is because Nancy has stopped publishing new strips temporarily while transitioning to a new artist. The slow page load is due to the fact that unfortunately… Read More »
Review: EVEN Hotel, Rockville, MD: a bad hotel and the people who run it should feel bad
A mediocre hotel with mediocre amenities provided by its staff in a mediocre way.
Thoughts on proposed Massachusetts Consumer Data Privacy Act, H.4746
The Massachusetts House version of the privacy act is superior to the Senate version but still has some problems. Also, it has a role to play in reducing privacy-invasive ALPR mass surveillance.
DeleteMe, please stop the nonsense: data brokers are not doxxing people
Data brokers selling people’s data is not doxxing, and claiming otherwise makes you look stupid and greedy.
Boston election Nov. 4 2025: District 9 endorsements
Vote for Michelle Wu, Liz Breadon, Henry Santana, Marvin Mathelier, Ruthzee Louijeune, and Julia Mejia!
How you actually should respond to that “183 million credentials leak”
What a recent Forbes article got wrong and what it should have told you instead.
Why websites shouldn’t indiscriminately block VPN users
I convinced a state senator that government websites indiscriminately blocking VPN users is bad. Here’s the case I made, which you can use yourself to keep fighting the good fight.
Yet another Synology Drive Client for Linux data-loss bug
If you create a directory on one client and then put files in that directory on another client, those files won’t be synchronized to your NAS. This is bad. The only workaround is to not use the new version of the client.