Just a 'headsup' for you power users... Microsoft has updated PowerToys to 0.62 and has added three new tools to the existing ones: New utility: Screen Ruler is a quick and easy way to measure pixels on your screen. New utility: Quick Accent is an easy way to write letters with accents. New utility: Text Extractor works like Snipping Tool, but copies the text out of the selected region using OCR and puts it on the clipboard. PowerToy Run ships with a new Plugin letting you searc...
Preston Gralla is an expert. His CV per Computer World (where he's a Contributing Editor) goes like this: "Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld , a blogger for ITworld, and the author of more than 45 books, including NOOK Tablet: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly 2012) and How the Internet Works (Que, 2006)." He wrote two really good articles recently: 1. Windows 10 Insider Previews: A guide to the builds . and 2. Windows 11: A gui...
Not very good news for many WCers, I'm afraid. Luckily, Hankers saw this and had no qualms about waking me out of a sound postprandial slumber to bring this warning to you all. It seems that a dev working on stuff for Lastpass got hacked, and portions of Lastpass's source code got lifted in the exploit. This happened two weeks ago, but Lastpass didn't see fit to warn folks of the possible repercussions of such a theft. "LastPass CEO Karim Toubba says the company uncovered a ...
This past week, two articles taught me (once again), "Don't believe anything they tell you and suspect everything." The first (chronologically) reported that online searches done even in the U.S. and Canada using Bing are censored in the start menu search, Bing, and even Duckduckgo which uses Bing's (but not Google's, lol) autosuggestion and shares data with MS. More on that, later. The duplicity of that in its advertising alone is staggering considering how Duckduckgo states how it re...
The update for Windows 11 21H2 this month is designated KB5013943 and will take your system to OS Build 22000.675. If it doesn't screw your computer up first. Were I you, I'd put off getting this Patch Tuesday update for a while...at least until MS can fix it. Neowin has published regarding patch KB5013943 and its associated problems today and thanks to Hankers tipping me off, you might just avoid some problems. You can read about the issues in the article linked above. A...
Many of us rely on MS Defender as one layer of our security on and offline. For that reason, when I saw the article linked above, I decided I'd be remiss were I not to bring it to your attention. The article gives not such great news, if AV-Comparatives' March testing is to be believed. Note MS Defender's position re: offline detection rate as opposed to its online detection rate. It still ranked in the highest group, but not in first place. MS Defender's overall ra...
Caveat emptor. At some point you just have to laugh. So the news is Edge is getting a "free" Cloudfare VPN attatched to it in a security update. This is a very special "VPN". You have to sign into your MS account to use it. Hmm...what does that remind me of? Even more amusing? The 'P' in VPN stands for 'Private'. A VPN hides you and your browsing from data merchants, and hides..."awkward" searches, health care questions, and the like. The MS VPN hides those searches, etc. from ver...
Preston Gralla did us all a service with his articles: A concise, centralized listing of and guide to the updates to date to W10 and W11 and what each did. I think that's a handy reference to have. Updates to W10 guide and list : https://www.computerworld.com/article/3199077/windows-10-a-guide-to-the-updates.html Updates to W11 guide and list : https://www.computerworld.com/article/3636790/windows-11-a-guide-to-the-updates.html Also, How to handle W10 and W11 Updates ...
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols isn't paranoid. He's actually rather smart, and his reasoning is excellent. I'm not an anti-W11er for no reason. I felt all along the it was essentially unnecessary, as W10 could be continually developed, and that the processor requirement and TP2 dustup were basically nonsense because as long as code will exist, hackers will as well, and no code is un-hackable. "Yes, the Windows 11 security updates are good — if you have the right hardware. But &n...
When my redneck friend (yeah, the one I always 'shop') sent me this Windows 12 tidbit, I figured "He's seeking vengeance for all my miserable shops." Then I started researching it. As with most things MS, there are two sides. One says it's in the works, the other says nah, 11 is barely here. It seems it's all based on a SwiftSecurity tweet which was supposed to be a joke, and was deleted. Well, that stopped nothing in our current age of conspiracy theories, of course. What th...
Continuing in MS's tradition of faulty releases and the need to release patches to fix coding errors, Power Toys 0.55.2 has been released to repair "This is a patch release to fix issues in v0.55.1 due to an installer bug and .NET 5 doing an update for the runtime. We deemed important for stability based on incoming rates. See v0.55.0 for full release notes. #16203 - Installer didn't handle when a newer version was released for .NET 5" PowerToys is Microsoft's open-sou...
Everyone loves free software, and there are plenty of places on the web to download desired proggies legally. I've summarized the linked article for you, but please do take a gander at the source. Hits count, after all. Most important is downloading software safely. Here's a URL to check the safety of a website: https://www.urlvoid.com/ . It works on the same principle as virus signatures in an antivirus program...so, you can quickly realize that it isn't perfect, as you won't g...
Got this little gem in my email. I can't tell you how many times my screen has frozen and I resorted to Restart (losing all the work I did up to the freeze). Had I known this trick, the air in the room would have had a far less blue tint. So much for cliff hangers... "To reset your graphics drivers when your computer is frozen, press the following key combination: Win + Ctrl + Shift + B ." - MUO What's so great about this command is that all the apps currently...
Hi, folks. Happy Thanksgiving from Israel, here in the Galilee! I saw the article linked above, and thought how you power users might like enabling all those tools from a desktop link (in an appropriate fence). Link: https://www.reviewgeek.com/103171/windows-11-has-a-god-mode-too-heres-how-to-activate-it/
Not about "my browser can beat up yours". This is about the endless privacy invasions by Chrome, and Google selling info and your security without a second thought (see external link above). Enough is enough! Here are four good ones and four to ditch asap. https://privacyaustralia.net/best-secure-browser/