On the first episode of 2021, we discuss a more philosophical question: Is technology - and our over-reliance on technology - making us dumber or is it making us smarter? Short answer? It depends.

On episode 9 of Pardon My Tech, we discuss video buffering. Video buffering is something that we all endlessly say as we roll our eyes, but in this episode we really give the word meaning. We discuss why it happens and any mitigations that we may have to help stop a video from buffering. Enjoy!

On today's episode of Pardon My Tech, we break down the main components of a computer and we discuss what parts of the human body we could compare each part to.

In episode 7 of Pardon My Tech, we talk about why the holiday season is consistently the annual peak for cyber attacks and what you can do to protect yourself. We also discuss if it is safe to store private information such as credit card information and shipping addresses on websites. Happy Monday!

In episode 6 of Pardon My Tech we dive into a common form of cyberattack, a phishing attack (pronounced fishing). We talk about what the attack is, what you can do to defend yourself against such attacks, how to tell if an email could be phishing, and other topics. Thanks for listening!

In episode 5 of Pardon My Tech, we welcome on a special guest Brian Yu to discuss bitcoin and blockchain. What is bitcoin? What are the advantages and disadvantages of cryptocurrency? Who should use bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies? Brian is the host of The More You Know, a podcast which seeks to learn something new each week. You can find his podcast here: https://anchor.fm/themoreyouknowpod

In episode 4 of Pardon My Tech we discuss VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and how you can use them to get access to things like Netflix shows only offered in other countries. We also talk about Airplane mode and why it is still necessary in 2020.

In today's episode, Pardon My Tech's first guest, Matthias Eberl, speaks on the serious privacy concerns of TikTok. Matthias is a journalist based out of Germany who focuses most of his investigations on the digital realm and digital privacy. Here is the link to his original article discussing TikTok which goes into detail on some of the issues we discuss: https://rufposten.de/blog/2019/12/05/privacy-analysis-of-tiktoks-app-and-website/

On today’s Pardon My Tech, we discuss the Dark Web at a high level [2:37 - 25:16]. We answer questions like “What is the Dark Web?” “How can I get to the dark web?” and “Why doesn’t the government just shut down the dark web?” We also discuss browsing cookies and why requests for those cookies have seemingly increased significantly in recent memory [25:17 - 33:08].

Do I really need a password manager? Or is it just something that's nice to have. Also, a brief preview of what's to come at the Apple announcement on Tuesday.