I ordered a TV stand on Amazon. It was supposed to be here Friday. I checked tracking on my Amazon app:
[Read more…] about UPS LOL – *UPDATED
Think You’re Having A Bad Day?
Microsoft services are down and the Hackers at Pwn3Own hacked the crap out of the Microsoft Edge browser. Win10’s UAC isn’t faring well either.
Tuesday Morning News
Win10 Updated
Couple of fixes.
Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 update history
Related:
Mystery update KB 3150513 makes yet another reappearance: “You probably don’t want this update—long implicated in advanced Microsoft snooping—on your Windows system”
New Nvidia Drivers
GeForce Game Ready Driver 378.92 WHQL available.
“Provides the optimal gaming experience for Mass Effect: Andromeda and Rock Band VR”
Download
RIP Chuck Berry
If you listen to Rock & Roll in any form from any era then he has touched your life. He was one of the most influential music artists ever. Icon doesn’t even begin to describe him.
Mr. Berry, thank you for your music and for influencing the bands I love. Thank you for the good times it continues to bring.
A Father Of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Chuck Berry Dies At 90
Chuck Berry – Guitarist, Songwriter, Singer – Biography.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Berry
Another place Chuck Berry left his mark? The silver screen
Members Of GUNS N’ ROSES, AEROSMITH, KISS, MÖTLEY CRÜE, JUDAS PRIEST, Others React To Passing Of CHUCK BERRY
I am so sad to hear of Chuck Berry’s passing. I want to thank him for all the inspirational music he gave to us.
He lit up our teenage years, and blew life into our dreams of being musicians and performers.
His lyrics shone above others & threw a strange light on the American dream. Chuck you were amazing & your music is engraved inside us forever.
Mick Jagger
Chuck Berry was rock’s greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock ‘n’ roll writer who ever lived.
Bruce Springsteen
Weekend Random Stuff…
Happy Saint Patty’s Day
My 100% Irish Grandfather thought the shenanigans surrounding this holiday here in the U.S.A. was too much.
He said, and I am paraphrasing here to keep this SFW,
“Luck of the Irish my arse.”
Still, I’m gonna knock back a pint or two.
If you celebrate, please don’t drink and drive. Call a friend, a taxi, or Lyft, or Uber.
Win10 Creators Update
“They” say this is right around the corner. But then again, Microsoft released build 15060 to the fast ring yesterday and “They” said this was the final build. Then today Microsoft released build 15061. So what the heck do “They” know. I expect I will be futilely running a few Game Mode benchies this weekend.
DSOG claims that as far as Windows is concerned, Vulkan will support multiple GPUs only in Windows 10. So, that kinda sucks.
Tom Warren (ex of WinRumors and Neowin) over at iVerge claims that all the ads in Win10 “are the final straw“. Glad he has joined the party but “the final straw” implies a response that I don’t see in his article.. You know, “that latest affair was the last straw, I’m leaving.”
Ryzen Tips From AMD
In a nutshell:
– Buy fast RAM
– Use High Performance Power Plan
– Overclock
Yes we’ve all been doing that since, well since we’ve been using PC’s.
Google Chrome Updated
“The stable channel has been updated to 57.0.2987.110 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.”
Download: Google Chrome Web 32-bit Google Chrome 64-bit
Download Offline Installer: Google Chrome Offline Installer 32-bit Google Chrome Offline Installer 64-bit
Credit Neowin with links
VM Software Updated
VMware Workstation 12.5.4 Player
VirtualBox 5.1.18
Wise Disk Cleaner 9.44
Info
Download
Audacity 2.1.3
“Audacity is free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing.”
Download & Info
March Madness
Got your brackets going?
I’ve got 2 main ones. One at the NCAA site and one at ESPN.
Patch Tuesday
Time To Run Windows Update
Security updates available for all supported versions of Windows, IE, Edge, Flash…
Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for March 2017
see also: Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 update history
I would highly recommend watching Ask Woody to monitor the situation with these updates. Especially watch his MS-DEFCON board.
Flash
What would Patch Tuesday be without Adobe patching Flash?
APSB17-07 Security updates available for Adobe Flash Player
Download (for Firefox, Opera, Chromium, IE 10 and earlier)
Google Chrome
Chrome 57 was released 5 days ago. It contains the latest Flash version
More on bikes.
The post I made earlier got me thinking about my old bikes.
[Read more…] about More on bikes.
Tuesday Random Stuff…
It’s Patch Tuesday so look for another post this afternoon.
Win10 Ads
Everyone is pissed off that Microsoft is putting ads in Windows. IMHO it is just the latest fiasco surrounding Win10.
CCleaner Monthly Update
Version 5.28 released.
Download
Version History
Finally
Verizon managed to finally push out Android Nougat to my Galaxy S7.
The update also put in the most recent security updates (Feb. 1) which is all I really cared about.
The update broke LED notifications and I had to do a full reset to get them to work.
New Bike
Last year I had mentioned I was looking for a hybrid bike. Several of you emailed some good suggestions.
I recently bought a Cannondale Quick 3 Disc on sale for $749 at a local bike shop.
I put a phone holder, two water bottle cages, and a rear bike rack on it. I have 2 CamelBak Podium Big Chill Insulated Water Bottles. I also got a 529 Garage Bicycle Registration Kit to help recover the bike if it is stolen.
I look forward to putting some serious miles on it once the weather breaks.
Tuesday Random Stuff…
Installing Windows 7 From Scratch
Woody Leonhard has a chuckle at Microsoft’s “convoluted technique for installing Windows 7 from scratch“.
Best to follow his advice.
Firefox 52 Released
Download 32-bit(en-US)
Download 64-bit (en-US)
All Downloads
Release Notes
O&O ShutUp10 Updated
Version 1.4.1387 – released on 07.03.2017
Following settings were changed:
– Setting “Do not display last users on lock screen” was removed as some users had problems accessing their system
Following errors were fixed:
– Dialogue boxes were defective in high contrast mode
– Crash when clicking links where Google Chrome is set as the standard browser
– Problems detecting some Windows 10 OEM versions
– Notifications that some settings are managed by the organisation did not disappear after applying factory settings
– Factory settings revised
Available in English, German, French, Italian and Russian
Linux Swap Partition
Red Hat Blog – Do we really need swap on modern systems?
“How much swap is recommended nowadays?
This depends on the desired behaviour of the system, but configuring an amount of 20% of the RAM as swap is usually a good idea. More details are in this solution document.
Can I run without swap? Is further tuning possible?
Systems without swap can make sense and are supported by Red Hat – just be sure the behaviour of such a system under memory pressure is what you want. In most environments, a bit of swap makes sense.”
AMD Ryzen
AMD Ryzen
AMD’s newest CPU platform was this week. It didn’t seem to live up to the hype, things never do in the tech world. Still, it seems to be a solid product. Consensus seems to be it rocks for everything but gaming.
User radosuaf let me know that despite earlier reports, there is Windows 7 support!
There also seems to be some good results under Linux.
Here are some reviews and snipets:
[H]ardOCP – AMD Ryzen 1700X CPU Review
“First and foremost, for most HardOCP readers, you are going to find that Ryzen simply has a huge clock deficit to overcome compared to Intel. If you are looking to build a system for desktop gaming alone, there is simply no way to suggest that Ryzen is your CPU as the Intel 7600K and 7700K still hold a great advantage especially if you are overclocking…Once you get past desktop gaming, the AMD Ryzen starts to look a lot more promising. In fact, when you look at video encoding, decoding, and content creation, the AMD Ryzen is an extremely impressive CPU showing that it can even best the $1000 Intel 6900K in some workloads. Even where the Ryzen does not “win,” it still remains extremely competitive. All of its 8 cores do work, and do work very well. If you are building a machine with these applications in mind, there is no way I can suggest you build with Intel. It has been a long long time since we have made a statement like that.”
Phoronix – AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Linux Benchmarks: Great Multi-Core Performance For $329
“The same operating system as used throughout testing was the Ubuntu 17.04 x86_64 development snapshot with the Linux 4.10 kernel and GCC 6.3.0. …The Ryzen 7 1700 has a damn nice showing when it comes to the heavily threaded benchmarks like C-Ray, Smallpt, and code compilation. Ryzen does great for these multi-core tests but lets down the user in many of the single-threaded tests, in which case for $350 you can get the Core i7 7700K Kabylake from Intel. But if you are routinely compiling code on your system or engaging in other highly parallel tasks, the Ryzen 7 1700 performs rather well and in those cases can outperform the $400+ Core i7 6800K.”
PCWorld – AMD’s CEO says patches will boost Ryzen gaming performance: It ‘will only get better’
“We hear people on wanting to see improved 1080p performance and we fully expect that Ryzen performance in 1080p will only get better as developers get more time with ‘Zen”