Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound)

* Be sure to check out my latest article: Bad Tweak – Optimize USB Storage

Got Windows? You got updates.
This may or may not be the last update before the May 2018 feature update.

Windows 7
April 9, 2019—KB4493448 (Security-only update)
April 9, 2019—KB4493472 (Monthly Rollup)

Windows 8.1
April 9, 2019—KB4493467 (Security-only update)
April 9, 2019—KB4493446 (Monthly Rollup)

Windows 10
1809 – April 9, 2019—KB4493509 (OS Build 17763.437)
1803 – April 9, 2019—KB4493464 (OS Build 17134.706)
1709 – April 9, 2019—KB4493441 (OS Build 16299.1087)
Reminder: Windows 10, version 1709, will reach end of service on April 9, 2019 for devices running Windows 10 Home, Pro, Pro for Workstation, and IoT Core editions.

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CCleaner v5.56.7144
Download (I use portable) | Release Announcement
See also: Blocking A Programs Internet Access Via The Windows Firewall

Adobe Reader Updated
Download en-US | All Downloads | Security Bulletin | Release Notes

Stuff I bookmarked recently. Some off topic, some not:

Microsoft says FCC data on improved broadband coverage is misleading
It’s a well-known fact that large swathes of the US remain without broadband connectivity — indeed, some $22 billion has been poured into closing this gap over the past five years. However, exactly how many Americans are going without is up for debate. As a new blog post by Microsoft explains, “official” data from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can’t be trusted.
No?! Government data can’t be trusted? Surely you jest?

Stone sells its Berlin brewery to Scotland’s BrewDog
Greg Koch, the Stone co-founder who had advocated the Berlin experiment, noted slower-than-expected sales and German contractors who were unable to quickly respond to “unexpected challenges.”
He flat out said it was the Germans fault. SMH. Check out the comments…

Do Real Men Wear Scrunchies?
Paywalled: Try the Bypass Paywalls extension for Firefox
As more guys jump on the long hair trend, they’re also embracing a wider range of hair accessories, like the pink Fendi hair tie worn by Aquaman Jason Momoa
I’m gonna shut my yap on this one. That huge Hawaian dude might kick my ass…

Samsung SSD Magician Software 5.3.1
Download | Alternative Download

Intel Graphics Driver for Windows [15.45]
This is a security release and only supports Windows 7* & 8.1* for 6th Generation processors.
Download & Info

New Win10 Update Settings
Yes, I know about it because every Windows tech site/blog jumped on it. They do every time something sponge-worthy newsworthy pops up on the Windows blog and they act like they have an exclusive scoop. I’ve no comment because:
– It applies to the next major update and it ain’t out yet.
– You shouldn’t be upgrading to the next Win10 update when it comes out, and it ain’t out yet.
– It ain’t out yet, and it ain’t out yet.

Maglite Heavy-Duty Incandescent 6-Cell D Flashlight, Black – S6D016
BTW – I keep mine next to the front door. It’s like a mini baseball bat…
List Price: $42.98
Price: $30.81
You Save: $12.17 (28%)

I’ve been sick for almost a month. A sinus infection turned into acute bronchitis because the inept doctors at my local urgent care center wouldn’t prescribe an antibiotic when it was obvious I needed it. I’ve been on doxycycline hyclate (antibiotic) and prednisone (steroid to help breathing) for several days now. I haven’t been focusing well. Here at TweakHound.com some misspelling and general rambling have ensued and I apologize. I’m gonna take a few days off. I might head up towards the mountains and hit a few breweries.

Macrium Reflect v7.2.4156
Bugfixes, support large cluster size (NTFS)
Download | Release Notes

Stuff I bookmarked recently. Some off topic, some not:

Office Depot And Partner Ordered To Pay $35 Million For Tricking Consumers Into Thinking They Had Malware
“Consumers have a hard enough time protecting their computers from malware, viruses, and other threats,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons. “This case should send a strong message to companies that they will face stiff consequences if they use deception to trick consumers into buying costly services they may not need.”
LOL. The ENTIRE industry uses those tactics.

Hundreds of millions of Facebook records exposed on Amazon cloud servers
One of the companies stored 146 gigabytes of data containing more than 540 million records, including comments, likes, reactions and account names, on the Amazon servers, according to UpGuard. The number of users whose data was included is not yet clear.
#DeleteFacebook

‘Beyond Sketchy’: Facebook Demanding Some New Users’ Email Passwords
I don’t know what’s worse. The ignorance of asking for the password or the ignorance of giving it. #DeleteFacebook

25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
I didn’t find the interview interesting until this:
But, I absolutely detest modern “social media”—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It’s a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior.
I think part of it is something that email shares too, and that I’ve said before: “On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle”. When you’re not talking to somebody face to face, and you miss all the normal social cues, it’s easy to miss humor and sarcasm, but it’s also very easy to overlook the reaction of the recipient, so you get things like flame wars, etc., that might not happen as easily with face-to-face interaction…
Add in anonymity, and it’s just disgusting. When you don’t even put your real name on your garbage (or the garbage you share or like), it really doesn’t help.
I’m actually one of those people who thinks that anonymity is overrated. Some people confuse privacy and anonymity and think they go hand in hand, and that protecting privacy means that you need to protect anonymity. I think that’s wrong. Anonymity is important if you’re a whistle-blower, but if you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn’t be visible, and you shouldn’t be able to share it or like it.

People need to wake up to dangers of AI, warns Google ethics adviser
“AI is the single most disruptive force that humanity has ever encountered and my concern is that so much of the discussion that we hear about now is very incremental,” said De Kai, a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in an interview this week. “We are near an era when people can easily produce weapons such as fleets of armed AI drones … the cat is out of the bag.”
I would put the odds at better than even AI will be our undoing. I dunno, maybe I’m just in a mood.

Ex-Mozilla CTO: US border cops demanded I unlock my phone, laptop at SF airport – and I’m an American citizen
“On this trip, the kiosk directed me to a Customs and Border Patrol agent who kept my passport and sent me to secondary inspection,” Gal said. “There I quickly found myself surrounded by three armed agents wearing bullet proof vests. They started to question me aggressively regarding my trip, my current employment, and my past work for Mozilla, a non-profit organization dedicated to open technology and online privacy.”
I don’t fly much. Don’t care if I ever do again. Folks making comments on this article talk about burner phones and laptops for travel…

Luigi that ordered a Tweak Guide:
I need a legit email addy bro!

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.4.1 Optional
Bugfixes
Download | Release Notes

Microsoft Office 365 Updated
Non-Security update Version 1903 (Build 11425.20202)
How to check for Office updates.

O&O AppBuster Updated
Win10 app uninstaller from the same folks who make O&O ShutUp10.
Download & Info | Changelog

Stuff I bookmarked recently. Some off topic, some not:

IT and security professionals think normal people are just the worst
Two surveys of IT and security experts suggest they put most of the blame for data insecurity at the feet of ignorant, careless employees.
I’ve been out of IT for quite some time. The biggest issue I saw back then was organizations not willing to spend what it takes to secure their network and data. As for “ignorant, careless employees”, always has been, always will be the case.

Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
We are 91 days into the year, and so far, Google is racking up an unprecedented body count. If we just take the official shutdown dates that have already occurred in 2019, a Google-branded product, feature, or service has died, on average, about every nine days.
Google is till copying Microsoft I see.

A Mystery Religion Pre-Dated The Incas by 500 Years, Stunning Lake Discovery Reveals
For long before the Incas held dominion over the sweeping lands stretching from Colombia to Chile, an even more mysterious and ancient society inhabited this elevated Andean region.
This older empire was called the Tiwanaku state, whom we know even less about.

Dear Tickmaster,
I’ve never bought tickets for a soccer match on your site. I’ve never even looked for tickets for a soccer match on your site. I wouldn’t go to a soccer match unless you paid me, a lot, a whole lot. Oh, and beer, I’ll need a lot of that too. Stop sending me emails to buy tickets for a soccer match on your site.
Thanks

I Lost One Of My Windows 7 PCs This Weekend
Mobo was Intel DG965OT circa 2006. Moved to another case an expanded and CPU upgraded. It was my wifes PC. She only occasionally used it for shopping and surfing.
USB keyboard and mouse stopped working. Hmmm… Did an update break something? Reboot…keyboard not found. Changed keyboard, same thing. Complete shutdown, unplug power for a minute, reboot, same thing. Plug into different ports, same thing. Maybe PSU going bad? Swap in different PSU, nope. Not worth any more effort. I’ll keep the parts around.

Stuff I bookmarked recently. Some off topic, some not:

In An Increasingly Polarized America, Is It Possible To Be Civil On Social Media?
No.

The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high
But among the 23 percent of adults — or nearly 1 in 4 — who spent the year in a celibate state, a much larger than expected number of them were twentysomething men, according to the latest data from the General Social Survey.
Bros?! You need to step up your game! Get off of social media and put down the game controller.

Governor’s push for handheld cellphone ban appears doomed
Slaybaugh said that Northam’s proposal is not germane to the original legislation related only to work zones and noted that lawmakers already failed to pass a broad “hands-free driving” bill earlier this year.
Well that’s the rub isn’t it? You should’ve passed the “hands-free driving” bill. Irresponsible.

Snapshot of extinction: Fossils show day of killer asteroid
New research released Friday captures a fossilized snapshot of the day nearly 66 million years ago when an asteroid smacked Earth, fire rained from the sky and the ground shook far worse than any modern earthquake.
It was the day that nearly all life on Earth went extinct, including the dinosaurs.

Bracket
2 of 4 teams left. 1 of 2 finals teams left. Rank in my group = 1 of 6. Rank worldwide = 85K out of millions (97 percentile).
Go Spartans!

VMware Workstation 15.0.4
VMware Workstation Player contains an out-of-bounds read/write vulnerability and a Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) vulnerability in the virtual USB UHCI (Universal Host Controller Interface). These issues may allow a guest to execute code on the host.
Download | Release Notes

Stuff I bookmarked recently. Some off topic, some not:

Facebook to Fight Belgian Ban on Tracking Users (and Even Non-Users)
Facebook Inc. is attacking a Belgian court order forcing it to stop tracking local users’ surfing habits, including those of millions who aren’t signed up to the social network. Belgium’s privacy watchdog argues Facebook “still violates the fundamental rights of millions of residents of Belgium.”
Yeah, Belgium and everywhere else.

Airbnb Has a Hidden-Camera Problem
At about 8 or 9 p.m., he went out for dinner; by the time he got home, his hosts had gone to bed in the room adjacent to his, and he prepared to do the same.
That was when he saw the light. Two small, black, rectangular boxes were stacked next to an outlet on the far side of the guest room, both facing the bed. From afar, they looked like phone chargers. But when Vest got closer, he realized they were cameras, and they were recording.
If it was me there would have been an ass-whooping going down that night.

Cool Craft Beer Videos
YouTube – The Craft Beer Channel
Busting myths about lager with We Are Lager festival! #ad | The Craft Beer Channel

Blind taste test: how quickly does beer skunk & oxidise? | The Craft Beer Channel

Beer School: What is Malt? | The Craft Beer Channel