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“Brain Hacking”

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“Silicon Valley is engineering your phone, apps and social media to get you hooked, says a former Google product manager.”
Very interesting article. Unfortunately it is about a 60 Minutes TV show that you can only see if you subscribe. Nope.
Bottom line. Tech companies engineer their products to get you addicted, to fool you, to manipulate you.
“Look, never before in history have a handful of people at a handful of technology companies shaped how a billion people think and feel every day with the choices they make about these screens.”
The report is about a guy named Tristan Harris. He wrote a paper called How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist.
I highly suggest you read it. It took me about 10 minutes to read. I will probably re-read it later.

Patch Tuesday, Part 2

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More updates coming out…

Windows XP Patched Again (Vista Too)
June 2017 security update release
“Microsoft releases additional updates for older platforms to protect against potential nation-state activity” (WannaCry/WannaCrypt)
Microsoft security advisory 4025685: Guidance for older platforms: June 13, 2017
“This section summarizes resources for customers running editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 8, or Windows Server 2003.”
The above link has links to all the downloads/KB articles.

Firefox 54
“Version 54.0, first offered to Release channel users on June 13, 2017
Today’s release is the first to run Firefox using multiple operating system processes for web page content, making Firefox faster and more stable than ever. Learn more about how multiple processes strike a “just right” balance between performance and memory use on the Mozilla Blog. Dive into the details (including performance benchmarks) on Medium.”

Peek Squad
Ah, Geek Squad. Remember the good old days when they were just searching your electronics for nudes and posting them on the web? You would think an outfit with a 1.1 satisfactory rating would strive to do better, but alas…
EFF – Why We’re Suing the FBI for Records About Best Buy Geek Squad Informants
“Law Enforcement Should Not Be Able to Bypass the Fourth Amendment to Search Your Devices
Sending your computer to Best Buy for repairs shouldn’t require you to surrender your Fourth Amendment rights. But that’s apparently what’s been happening when customers send their computers to a Geek Squad repair facility in Kentucky.“

Patch Tuesday

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Windows Updates
Updates, Update Rollups…
See:
Microsoft Security Update Summary for June 2017 farther down this post.
June 2017 Security Release
For Win10: 2017-06 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1703 for x64-based Systems (KB4022725)
June 13, 2017—KB4022725 (OS Build 15063.413 and 15063.414)

It should be noted that Windows Telemetry update KB2952664 is back in Optional Updates.
Watch AskWoody for more on this months updates.

Flash Updated
APSB17-17 Security updates available for Adobe Flash Player
Download

Latest Video Drivers
AMD Crimson ReLive Edition 17.6.1 (6/8/2017)
Nvidia Ceforce Game Ready Driver 382.53 WHQL (6/9/2017)

Best Of The Rest
CCleaner 5.31
FileZilla 3.26.2

[Read more…] about Patch Tuesday

Tweaking Windows 10, Creators Update Version

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After far too long the Creators Updated version of the Win10 Tweak Guide is here.
For a variety of reasons this version was a royal PITA to write and publish.
Last week Windows 10 Privacy Settings version 3.0 was released.
As always I would appreciate you spreading the word via email, social media, news postings, or whatever.

Important changes to purchasing.
Many of you noticed that the original Win10 tweak guide purchase page left out the “Once you purchase the guide you get updates of following versions for free” statement that was present in other guides.
This is because Windows 10 is supposedly the “Last version of Windows” and I’ve no intention of providing free books in perpetuity.
Windows 10 is now scheduled to receive 2 major updates per year. That means a whole lot of work for me.
There are now 3 options:
1 – $5 (U.S.) One time purchase
2 – $10 (U.S.) One year of updates (this should get you through 2 or three editions)
3 – $20 (U.S.) Lifetime updates

I will be giving out free updates to the following people (please forward your original email to me):
– Bought a guide in the last 6 months
– Used an option of more than $5 previously
– Donated to my Bike MS ride

Thank you,
Eric

New Webhost

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This site never ran like it should with my last 2 Web Hosts. Slow, laggy, plugins not working correctly. Web host blaming the plugins. Plugin support repeatedly blaming the web host server configuration.
You all deserve better as do I.
Fortunately my old friend that hosted this site for many, many years (from it’s inception) is getting back into the web hosting business. He knows what he is doing and is willing to provide personal support and not buck-passing.
I have volunteered to be the first client and sort of guinea pig. I have given him carte blanche to tweak what he wants to. I will provide the details when he is ready to go full time.
This site is now running wicked fast!
Please let me know if you run in to any issues.