Every year, Sophos puts out an expected threat profile based on events, etc. I won't bother summerizing their report, as it's available for free at the external link above, and it's quite interesting to read. From the linked page: "The gloves came off in 2022. While Russia-based threat actor groups spread misinformation and launched multiple cyberattacks against Ukraine, China-based (and likely sponsored) threat actor groups attacked hardware security products made by nearly every compan...
Not paranoia...the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), with a subject's consent (lol), will be scanning computers for vulnerabilities...all in the interest of security, of course. This sort of thing generated our Fourth Amendment. "The scan is the work of the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It says its looking for zero-day vulnerabilities, meaning security holes that hackers are actively exploiting before a fix is available." - John Lister How ...
You can make your W11 or W10 look like XP with Windowblinds and Start10 or Start11...or, you can actually run good old Windows XP on your W11 or W10 computer using a virtual machine. Take a peek at MakeUseOf's article on how to here: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-windows-xp-for-free-and-legally-straight-from-microsoft-si/?utm_source=MUO-NL-RP&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=MUO-NL-CP And by the way, it's perfectly legal. This post is dedicated to m...
You might well have thought Windows 12 was a joke of sorts, but no...I wasn't pulling your leg here . Windows 12 (MS Project Next Valley) is real...and it's being predicted for 2024. You can read more in the linked article under this article's title, with more at Tom's Hardware and at XDA. Have a good Sunday, oh...and... A very happy birthday to a certain RedneckDude known as Jim in these here parts! 🥳 🎂
Who says magic is dead? Just the other day, Spotify got installed on my computer with neither my consent or knowledge. After boot, a splash screen popup appeared just like the one in the article linked. Not to make a short story long, this happened after a Windows update...but MS isn't talking about whether this was due to some bizarre planetary conjunction, or whether it was some deal Spotify made with MS...who knows, maybe booting up will become a new ad opportunity for income for MS, an...
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...