Ramblings of an old Doc
DrJBHL's Articles » Page 5
April 25, 2022 by DrJBHL
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...
April 22, 2022 by DrJBHL
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...
April 5, 2022 by DrJBHL
I rarely post about new pharmaceutical technology...but this is nothing less than miraculous.  Read the article linked above. This new technology enables researchers to synthesize and analyze 40,000 molecules in a bubble smaller than the head of a pin. This will accelerate vaccine and pharmaceutical development by a factor of one million. This should also make the R&D cheaper, and far less wasteful of energy, materials, time and labor and therefore the cost of medicines should dro...
February 13, 2022 by DrJBHL
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...
February 4, 2022 by DrJBHL
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...
January 24, 2022 by DrJBHL
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...
November 26, 2021 by DrJBHL
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/
August 29, 2021 by DrJBHL
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/  
August 23, 2021 by DrJBHL
Make sure to update your browsers, if you use Chrome or any of the browsers using Chrome's engine. Google has issued "high" security warnings regarding possible points of code compromise, but hasn't given a lot of information about the vulnerabilities in order to allow users of the world's most popular browsers time to update before hackers can utilize the vulnerabilities.   Thanks, Hank. 👍
June 25, 2021 by DrJBHL
Most of us appreciate privacy and not becoming a supposedly anonymized piece of data for sale. Brave has entered this field now, as well with a search engine which has more privacy than others. “Brave Search is the industry’s most private search engine, as well as the only independent search engine, giving users the control and confidence they seek in alternatives to big tech,” Brave co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich  says . “Unlike older search engines that tra...
June 4, 2021 by DrJBHL
Norton...remember how much we loved it? Me either. “As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers’ lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust,” said Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock. “Norton Crypto is yet another innovative example of how we are expanding our Cyber Safety platform to protect our customers’ ever-evolving digital lives." Really? Is he joking? This is incredi...
June 2, 2021 by DrJBHL
MS finally released WinGet 1.0 which was planned and mentioned at Build 2020. “A package manager is designed to help you save time and frustration,” Microsoft’s Demitrius Nelon explained when the firm announced its plans for WinGet. “Essentially, it is a set of software tools that help you automate the process of getting software on your machine. You specify which apps you want installed, and it does the work of finding the latest version (or the exact on...
March 10, 2021 by DrJBHL
I receive Ghacks updates routinely. Today I received one which while nothing out of the ordinary for MS, caused me some concern regarding the March 2021 Cumulative Update issued on Patch Tuesday (yesterday). "The updates patch security issues, all with the second-highest severity rating of important. One of the additional issues that these updates patch is a printing to FILE ports vulnerability. The issue is patched in updates for all versions of Windows, from Windows 7 to Windows 10...Accor...
January 29, 2021 by DrJBHL
I'm using Brave as my default, but am looking at Opera and Edge, and I'm wondering which extensions you guys use and if they slow you down. I might also take a look at Vivaldi with its stacked tabs.
January 11, 2021 by DrJBHL
Came across this article which caught my eye since the net seems to have an inordinate hunger for info about what you look at, wear, sites you visit, your health and more. So, the authors offered six browser extensions to leave slimmer pickins on the net...in the link above.