I've written a good deal about our shrinking privacy, and the Fourth Amendment in the past in connection with the internet and the NSA. The latest comes in the form of an Executive Order, thus bypassing the up or down vote of the Congress, and will be added to the timelines of the most significant expansions of domestic surveillance in the modern era. E.O. 12333 further erodes the barriers of between law enforcement surveillance and NSA spying. With access to th...
If you buy stuff on Amazon...if you haven't, you probably will, sometime, you probably check out buyer reviews...with some it's easy to spot a fake review. Others, not so much. So, it isn't news (I hope) that sellers like good reviews and there's a group of folks who earn money by 'reviewing' products for pay. Many sites don't do this, allowing only buyers to leave reviews, but there are 'work arounds' such as sending the 'reviewer' sample...
Ghacks has reported (as had Neowin) changes in privacy in W10, which has been a concern of Windows users for a long time. " You can load https://account.microsoft.com/privacy#/ in your browser of choice to open the new "Your Privacy" page on the Microsoft Account website." - gHacks "In a nutshell: Microsoft will improve the privacy set up experience and privacy settings in the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update, and it has launched a new online privacy dashboard th...
Chrome's "autofill" for forms is a convenient feature, and it would be great, except that it 'leaks' information. Websites which have forms to fill out can be a pain, and filling out forms is a pain, but what you see on the form is organized into "fields". You don't necessarily see all the fields. Some can be 'hidden' and get information from your browser you might not want the website to get. Pretty sneaky, imho. At the gHacks link, there's a scr...
Not that update errors ever happen, but MS has a new troubleshooting and fixing tool for borked updates, providing the update hasn't rendered the OS unusable... "This guided walk-through provides steps to fix problems when installing updates. Here are some commonly seen error codes: 0x80073712, 0x800705B4, 0x80004005, 0x8024402F, 0x80070002, 0x80070643, 0x80070003, 0x8024200B, 0x80070422, 0x80070020. These steps should help with all errors and not just the ones listed." - MS
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Well, it's free and is made to be a high level program for PCs running Windows 7, 8 and 10 (x32 and x64) : RansomFree needs to be installed on the target machine. The protection that it adds to the system is interesting, as it creates a number of files on the system that it monitors for changes. These files use characters that place them at the top of the directory structure. The idea is that ransomware will parse for files using the same structure so that the created ...
Sorry, but it's a mess here...an old pipe broke and an Ark might be more useful than a sleigh... Anyway, getting stuff fixed and dried out. Not much time to write, but I do want everyone to be safe, so...do read the linked article. Please be safe out there! "Here’s how to stay safe online this Christmas As is the case all year round, the key to staying safe online is using common sense and reading things thoroughly. Here are some top tips: Always read ...
"Yahoo previously disclosed in November, law enforcement provided the company with data files that a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. The company analyzed this data with the assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data. Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, Yahoo believes an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts. The company has not been able ...
Malwarebytes has changed: Used to be, there were three programs: Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, and Malwarebytes Anti-Ransomware. The first two were available as free (with limited features) and the third as a beta. Now, with the advent of Malwarebytes Premium 3.0, all three programs are housed under that single roof with a unified display. "Good news : Malwarebytes 3.0 comes as a free and premium version. The free version offers a manual scann...
Adni18...Master skinner Nikos...has a lovely website which (to my great embarrassment) I've never written about. It here: http://wwa.adni18.com/ and has photography, themes and wallpapers, screenshots and more. Folks like teddybearcholla, relhom, our departed friend jazzilady, and sed posted there as well as here, and have been featured there, as well. Many of you know submicron's work from devArt and is featured there as well. So, if you're looki...
On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth... John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American aviator , engineer , astronaut , and United States Senator from Ohio . He was one of the " Mercury Seven " group of military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA to become America'...
TechRepublic has published what we can expect will be added to W10 in 2017. Needless to say, MS has a track record to consider when deciding what to believe...they've disappointed in the past. Still, if they fulfill the promise, these features will be coming. I'll give a short list, but the article (linked) goes into a lot more detail, and is worth the read. 1. Windows 10 phones edge closer to replacing desktop PCs - the Continuum feature. ""With Continuu...
Photoscan has graduated to 2.0.0. And it's pretty good, especially if you also wish to translate what's written on the graphic. The app doesn't do the actual translation, but you can save it to your notepad or other app and then use Google or Bing to translate...but, inaccurate translation is a limitation, as idioms abound, but that isn't the app's fault. Anyway, I tried it out and found it to be pretty good. You can find it here: https://www.microsoft.c...
Folks, may use the Android OS...especially for messaging. The app AirDroid has had 10-50 million installs not couting those done via the AirDroid website...and it's a very vulnerable app. AirDroid was approached quietly and said they would fix it, but in its latest update, no fixes were present. "The security issues are mainly due to AirDroid using the same HTTP request to authorize the device and send usage statistics. The request is encrypted, but uses a hardcoded ke...
I've written before about creativeLive and getting free lessons using Photoshop and Lightroom. If are a portrait or landscape photographer, and are looking to go beyond 'the usual', this is one great way. I always wanted to learn how to paint. I can sketch, and I can use Photoshop (Lightroom, a lot less), so I've tried in various ways to merge photos with painting...watercolors and oil, without going to the expense of buying materials and going to classes, etc.
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