Since many of you (or at least some) use Avast!, I thought I’d let you know that I just saw this. In Reddit, Avast Forum and Mozilla ZZine, there are many reports that the latest Avast is deleting FF add-ons, apparently at start up without any option to stop the deletion. It isn’t linked to the Avast’s “Browser Cleanup” tool. The exact cause is at this point unclear. The issues are confirmed by some users but not noticed by others. The only common denominator is that all affecte...
A great utility has been redesigned. It has a new interface in the popular ‘flat style’. The 5.0 Beta has just the interface change, but more changes are coming over the next week. You can expect the RTM at the end of the month. You can read more and get the download here: http://www.piriform.com/blog/2014/11/14/ccleaner-v50-is-now-available-in-beta
Yes…get used to the idea, because you’re going to be seeing them. This is a good lesson in economics and evolution. This decision came along with the launch of Ff 33.1, or should it now be called AdFox? The ads will appear in the form of Tiles in the new tabs page which is used to show your most visited sites (by frequency and recentness): Google is the major source of FF’s funding, your default search engine has been Google…unless you changed it. It has...
No doubt you’ve run into online verification procedures for processing payments…After making a purchase, retailers redirect customers to a page with a Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode form, into which they are required to enter characters from their password to verify their purchase…and the consequences when these sites are hacked. These passwords are a true pain and are difficult to remember. Consumers generally hate these systems. There are big changes coming, and whe...
ID’s on vacation…so here are the picks from the past week in skinning! There was a glitch – hope the urls accompany the thumbs.
Today the president (on the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/ ) called upon the FCC to guard the openness of the internet and prevent the creation of “fast and slow lanes”. The full video and the full text of the speech are at the link above after clicking on “learn more”. Essentially the president is suggesting a reclassification of the internet as a utility. Essentially He’s advocating: “The rules I am asking for are simple, c...
Long suspected as much. Not only do you pay more, you get slower speeds, as well. The New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, compared Internet service in the US: Kansas City, Missouri (pop. 467,000), San Francisco and Bristol, Virginia (pop. 17,835) -- with large European and Asian metropolises, including London, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo, and Copenhagen. You can view the report here: http://www.newamerica.org/downloads/OTI_The_Cost_of_Connectivity_2014.pdf While t...
This device works through a Windows phone. It uses location and a network of info beacons in cities to determine location and routes to use in getting from one place to another. The device was developed with the charity "Guide Dogs" and it's available in Britain only at this point. Another interesting feature is that instead of using earbuds, it uses bone conduction through the jaw to relay information, thus not compromising the users ears to hear what's going o...
This Tuesday’s release will have (at this point) 16 updates, 5 ‘critical’ (to prevent remote code execution) and 9 ‘important’. It’s a big one as far as 2014 is concerned, and will have a reboot. “Microsoft will patch all supported versions of its IE browser, from the almost-retired IE6 on Windows Server 2003 to the newest IE11. The fix for IE on Windows' client editions -- Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 -- was ra...
A team of Israeli scientists (Prof. Danny Porath, along with Prof. Alexander Kotlyar) have engineered a huge development. This is 4 stranded DNA along which an electric charge can be passed. This was published in Nature Nanotechnology this week. This will pave the way for molecular computers which will be smaller, more sophisticated and cheaper. The four-stranded DNA can conduct up to more than 100 picoamperes of electricity up to more than 100 nanometers, 10 times further than ...
This launcher is a suite with 150 outstanding (and portable) utilities. It has recovery tools, password recovery tools, disk health tools, tools to diagnose unstable/crashing systems. There’s more: NirLauncher can be used from USB flash drive without need of any installation. NirLauncher and all the utilities in the package are completely freeware, without any Spyware/Adware/Malware. This package doesn't contain any 3-party software, toolbars, Web browser plugins, o...
Windows Task Manager is the native Windows app which comes with the OS and which gives very limited information about usage and processes running. It doesn’t list dependencies, which isn’t good. There are better alternatives and all (as far as I know) are free. I took a look at Process Explorer and System Explorer. Mark Russinovich wrote Process Explorer. The older among us also know he did SysInternals, which is the definitive tool collection for analyzing MS OSs.
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OK…this is a bit technical, so brace yourselves. Anyway, recently, a SSL 3.0 vulnerability was discovered. This vulnerability allows the injection of malicious code into your computer and web hosting servers and allow remote code execution. So what’s SSL? It means Secure Sockets Layer (and there are 3). It has been superceded by TLS (Transport Layer Security). The Poodle ( Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption ) attack allows a web criminal to intercept data that ...
Just saw this on ZDNet. Websense® ThreatSeeker® Intelligence Cloud has detected that the official website of Popular Science has been compromised and is serving malicious code (iFrame). The code is of the redirect type and will send the user to other websites which will drop malicious files (RIG Exploit Kit) on the victim’s computer. RIG is an executable. If the user doesn’t have any of the checked AVs installed, then the exploit kit proceeds to evaluate the installe...
Thanks should go to Brad Sams at Neowin for this (and to Hankers). This should be a “definitely do today”. That’s because once you’re hacked, it’s pointless. This “Security Code” will allow you to recover your account if someone hacks it and changes the password. “How to”: 1. Login. https://account.live.com/p 2. Under “Recovery Code” click “Set up”. If you’ve done this in the past, your page will say, “Replace”…in which case, click “Replace”. 3....