Senior Corespondent Arnold Woodworth has a review of the Obamacare enrollment process for us

MacValley's Own Ken Gruberman Writes About His Experience of Signing Up for Obama Care

I have a lot of respect for Ken's technical abilities.   God help less capable people.

He wrote:

I'm reviewing a process. Namely, the process involved with signing up for health care under the ACA, the Affordable Care Act.

The web site's user interface has both good and bad things.

The real culprit? Bad design from a totally out-of-touch website team that apparently never bought anything on the web.

In all it took about 90 minutes and two phone calls, but I prevailed. If the insurance company accepts my application as submitted, my reward for almost two hours of [problematic web site] torture will be a better policy than what I have now, at one-tenth the cost. I'd say that was worth whatever I had to go through.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-gruberman/the-tech-daddy-applies_b_4118983.html

 

 

 

Apple is either terrible at designing charts or thinks you won't notice the difference

http://qz.com/138458/apple-is-either-terrible-at-designing-charts-or-thinks-you-wont-notice-the-difference/

 

 

 

The new iPad Mini affirms that Apple doesn't care about market share, just profit margins

http://qz.com/138453/the-new-ipad-mini-affirms-that-apple-doesnt-care-about-market-share-just-profit-margins/#

 

 

 

Why a $2,999 Mac Pro is a great deal

http://qz.com/138414/why-a-2999-mac-pro-is-a-great-deal/#

 

 

 

How Apple’s Address Book app could allow the NSA to harvest your contacts

When syncing your Address Book to Gmail, HTTPS encryption isn't an option

addresses that automatically travel between Macs and Google servers are sent as plain text.

It's possible Apple developers haven't updated their code since Google introduced the change.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/how-apples-address-book-app-could-allow-the-nsa-to-harvest-your-contacts/

 

 

 

Robots will always be a step behind humans

http://qz.com/138321/robots-will-always-be-a-step-behind-humans/#

 

 

Tech Comics: The History of Free

A good cartoon.  True in several ways.

http://www.datamation.com/commentary/tech-comics-the-history-of-free-1.html

 

 

 

Oh, That Stolen Identity? Not An Accident

Experian apparently sold data on millions of Americans, including social security, bank account and driver license numbers to a "service" that operated for the explicit purpose of stealing people's identity.

http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=225264

 

 

 

Police Executive Research Forum document (PDF) about using social media to analyze/control events

http://info.publicintelligence.net/COPS-SocialMedia.pdf

 

 

 

Police: NSA leaks threaten our ability to use invasive surveillance technologies

Law enforcement is confronted with a citizenry that is waking up to the reality of the surveillance state.

http://www.privacysos.org/node/1215

 

 

 

NSA Hacked Mexican Presidents' Email For Years

The National Security Agency hacked the email of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/20/nsa-felipe-calderon-mexico-spying-hacked_n_4132889.html

 

 

 

Security Check Now Starts Long Before You Fly

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/business/security-check-now-starts-long-before-you-fly.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp&

 

CryptoSeal VPN shuts down rather than risk NSA demands for crypto keys

A consumer VPN service called CryptoSeal Privacy has shut down rather than risk government intrusions that could cost the company money in legal fees and threaten user privacy.

CryptoSeal will continue offering its business-focused VPN, but the consumer service is done, the company announced

The company referred to the case of Lavabit, an e-mail service that shut down rather than comply with government orders to monitor user communications.

"In good conscience there's no reason to continue running a US privacy VPN service without technical controls to prevent being compelled to screw over a user," RDL wrote.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/cryptoseal-vpn-shuts-down-rather-than-risk-nsa-demands-for-crypto-keys/