Ramblings of an old Doc
DrJBHL's Articles » Page 35
September 30, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Apple has more bad news for folks, it seems. My birthday wish? That none of you folks have had this happen to you… “Apple has had a very rough couple of weeks. From reports of bending iPhones to the EU accusing them of not paying their taxes, and bugs ruining their iOS8 launch, the Cupertino company can’t seem to catch a break. And now another serious iOS bug is seemingly making the rounds and annoying users. MacRumors is reporting that a number of their members have ...
September 28, 2014 by DrJBHL
  This out of Softpedia , reporting on an interview with MS Indonesia President Andreas Diantoro. During this interview, he reportedly said that Windows 8 would update to Windows 9 Technical Preview (original story at detik.com). This comes after MS France’s President said that the preview would be coming this week. Apparently, W8 will update to W9 without the need for a clean install. MS is neither confirming nor denying this (Google Translate of the original): “It’s ea...
September 27, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Russia has demanded that Google, Facebook and Twitter comply with Russian censorship laws and store all data locally. In fact, Putin signed that into law in July, 2014. Before screaming (justifiably), we should probably realize that we (the NSA), the British (GCHQ) and so many others demand and/or do the same already. Also, it’s not like Google, et. al. don’t do the same (even censorship to some degree), only for profit. Well, in China Google sidestepped it by se...
September 25, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Neowin just published on this. This one’s worse than “Heartbleed”. Even if you aren’t running the above OSs, hackers can take control of any device running on operating systems that make use of Bash for command line operations. Also, some networking equipment such as routers and switches running on Linux variants also make use of Bash. “The severity of the bug has been rated 10 out of 10 by Cybersecurity agency, Rapid7, due to its high risk and low complexity combinati...
September 21, 2014 by DrJBHL
  I felt really good when I read gHacks about this topic, since it’s something I’ve been doing for years. There are two basic situations: The first: You’ve decided that for the type of purchase you’re making, it’s better to have a direct connection to the brick and mortar merchant, and the second: You’ve decided that the discount or local availability dictate you shop online. For the second, this article doesn’t apply. For the first, there are several ways to pay for things. ...
September 20, 2014 by DrJBHL
  I like that Sci Fi ‘inventions’ become real. Exoskeletons (a normal attribute for insects and crustaceans) are now finding their way into mankind’s world. They exist…for medical and industrial as well as military uses:   The first is the ‘Walker’ for paralyzed people which is undergoing medical trials prior to FDA approval. The second is ‘HULC’ ( http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2011/june/LockheedMartinsHULCRoboti.html ) hel...
September 14, 2014 by DrJBHL
  First of all, it’s in Beta, but supposedly runs just fine but only for Chrome, and Chrome based browsers. The review of it is here:  http://www.ghacks.net/2014/09/12/google-software-removal-tool-for-windows-released/?_m=3n%2e0038%2e1365%2ehj0ao01hy5%2e1ew6 I agree with Martin Brinkmann that this should only be used as a last resort, if only because Google doesn’t list exactly which programs it scans for and removes. It does it for those it considers “suspicious”. ...
September 13, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Everybody signs up for free stuff or services, goodies, whatever. It’s only human. Fort me, it’s graphics, fonts, photography sites, digital art sites. What can I say? Things pile up really quickly, and your inbox looks like World War Z around the walls of Jerusalem. So, it’s time to get rid of stuff you no longer need. Like “accounts”. MakeUseOf had a good article ( http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-4-changes-delete-online-account/ ) which gives four steps b...
September 12, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Microsoft calls this build Windows Technical Preview and the build number is 9834 (Windows 8.1 is 9600), not Windows 9. So maybe it won’t be called Windows 9 after all? There’s a video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--wgAsHWNRE#t=16 There’s also a review of the new features revealed in the video and a fair critique here: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/09/12/what-the-leaked-windows-9-screenshots-reveal-about-the-operating-system/?_m=3n%2e0038%2e1364...
September 10, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Just saw this…so, passing it on. “According to the Daily Dot, nearly 5 million usernames and passwords to Gmail accounts have been leaked on a Russian Bitcoin forum. Here's what you should know. The list has since been taken down, and there's no evidence that Gmail itself was hacked—just that these passwords have been leaked. Most sources are saying that lots of the information is quite old, so chances are they were leaked long ago—though others ...
September 7, 2014 by DrJBHL
  A cool concept…by making it windowless, there will be a great savings of materials producing a lighter and stronger airframe. So, no one wants to be shut in that way, without a way to look out and see the world, right? Well this baby will have cameras outside with 360 0 pano view and the cabin walls will be screens…with possibilities for video conferencing, etc. Spike Aerospace has won design prizes with this revolutionary plane design. Pretty cool!   ...
September 7, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Meetup, Mozilla, Reddit, Etsy and Kickstarter and other big website owning net neutrality backers will be displaying the dreaded large spinning wheel (‘Please wait – site loading’) this Wednesday, five days before the FCC second round deadline for public comments. This will be to show folks how their net will look if the FCC doesn’t pass strong net neutrality regulations. The point being without those regulations, the web will develop ‘fast’ (higher fee) lanes and ‘slow’ pe...
September 6, 2014 by DrJBHL
  “The best way to infect thousands of computers is to set up a malicious website. Better still, hack a popular website and insert malicious code. That way, thousands of website visitors will be affected when they visit the website. Badware is the name given to the malware present on websites – in the site code or in the malicious advertisements or malvertisements being displayed on the website.” – TWC It basically ignores your choice as to how your compu...
September 4, 2014 by DrJBHL
  “This was one of the largest and oldest criminal hacker operations…using over 800 shell companies to steal information from government servers, banks, and large corporations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland…for over a decade (since 2002).”- TimesofIsrael CyberIntel and a UK partner were asked to investigate a security breach which a German company could not identify, because the Trojan used had not been identified by any antivirus software. The Trojan was unique i...
September 3, 2014 by DrJBHL
  Lifehacker puts out good stuff quite often. Folks buy and sell their devices often enough that it’s worth noting three excellent articles about this topic. If you have additional suggestions, please add them! The first is…well the titled source: http://lifehacker.com/the-apps-you-need-to-deauthenticate-before-selling-your-1629748753 The second is your phone: http://lifehacker.com/5808280/what-should-i-do-with-my-phone-before-i-sell-it The third and arguab...