Airbnb’s policy change to ban all indoor cameras at listed properties highlights the scourge of tiny cameras used for snooping. Here’s how to discover if you’re being watched in a rental, hotel, or elsewhere.

Google’s new Find My Device network works nearly identically to Apple’s Find My network with a few exceptions: Google’s design offers more anti-stalking and privacy features than Apple.

You might think that modern cartoonists would create their strips using digital drawing tools, but in fact, many still rely on traditional pens and brushes. Glenn Fleishman explored the surprising way that cartoonists meld the old with the new as part of the research for a new book, How Comics Were Made.

After a network hiccup caused his HomeKit-enabled smart thermostat to lose its network connection, Glenn Fleishman had to do tweaky network reconfiguration to get it to rejoin his Home setup.

The “grandparent scam” goes back almost 20 years, but it and similar frauds are gaining new traction through AI voice impersonation. Protect your family, friends, and colleagues with advance planning.

Apple has released details about Contact Key Verification, an upcoming option in Messages that lets you manually verify an iMessage correspondent’s identity without relying on encryption data managed centrally by Apple. The feature also watches for anomalies, warning you when changes prevent it from guaranteeing a conversation is with the same person.

As with all its services, Apple offers no real troubleshooting when iCloud Drive synchronization stalls in macOS. Glenn Fleishman encountered a problem that took months to diagnose and fix. In the process, he went through the wringer of trying nearly everything suggested online, via Apple support, and from colleagues. In the end, the magic that fixed it was undisclosed engineers.

Glenn Fleishman explores iOS 17’s new Check In feature, which lets you specify someone as a temporary safety partner who can confirm you got where you intended to to go. It’s a welcome addition to Apple’s collection of features aimed at increasing personal safety.

With USB-C replacing Lightning across Apple’s new iPhone 15 series, shun expensive Apple cables and adapters in favor of third-party alternatives.

In response to a surge of car thefts, the New York Police Department recommends the city’s car owners install an AirTag to help with stolen vehicle recovery. Meanwhile, Apple and Google have partnered on a new industry standard to provide consistent anti-tracking protection for devices that can track object locations persistently.

With Apple dropping support for migrating iPhoto and Aperture libraries to Photos in macOS 13 Ventura, Fat Cat Software has thrown a lifeline to people who still have old photo libraries.

Authory preserves articles you write for any website, giving you a permanent copy that’s also searchable by others. It’s worth a look for anyone who wants a record of their personal or professional writing that’s independent of any given publication or platform.

With centralized, ad-driven social networks in disarray and suffering from misinformation, harassment, and declining users, can the long-simmering Mastodon microblogging system offer a distributed future for conversation and community?

A growing set of services let users on independently operated servers interlink with standard, open-source protocols for microblogging, photo sharing, and dozens of other purposes. Could the Fediverse be a solution to the ugliness of commercial service algorithms designed to drive outrage and titillation?

Technology has a hard time delivering happiness. Apple has cracked the code with how it uses machine learning to populate the Lock Screen Photo Shuffle feature and Featured Photos widget with images you’ll like.