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Thursday Random Stuff…

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Nvidia Geforce Game Ready 411.63 WHQL Drivers
“Provides the optimal gaming experience for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Forza Horizon 4, and FIFA 19”
Download | Release Notes

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Optional 18.9.2
“faster performance” in F1, Fortnight, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Star Control: Origins.
Download | Release Notes

CCleaner v5.47.6716
As mentioned the last few days, CCleaner 5.47.6701 was pulled because of a bug. A company rep said, “The bug relates to a user preference not correctly saving. It does not affect cleaning in any way.”
Difference in changlog between the 2 versions is this:
“Calling the Windows ‘ping’ function is now done explicitly from the /system32/ directory (fixes a potential vulnerability)”
Download (I use the portable version) | Release Announcement

Other Software Updates
EMDB 3.22
Tor Browser 8.0.1

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

Google Says It Continues to Allow Apps to Scan Data From Gmail Accounts
“Google Inc. told lawmakers it continues to allow other companies to scan and share data from Gmail accounts, responding to questions raised on Capitol Hill about privacy and potential misuse of the information contained in users’ emails.”
Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide

Apple gives you a TRUST rating – and it’s based on your phone call and email habits
“To help identify and prevent fraud, information about how you use your device, including the approximate number of phone calls or emails you send and receive, will be used to compute a device trust score when you attempt a purchase,” Apple explained…The revelation comes exactly one month after the Washington Post revealed Facebook was also giving users trust ratings.”

A public relations nightmare’: Ticketmaster recruits pros for secret scalper program
“Box-office giant Ticketmaster is recruiting professional scalpers who cheat its own system to expand its resale business and squeeze more money out of fans, a CBC News/Toronto Star investigation reveals.”
I don’t think any non-criminal person anywhere likes anything about Ticketmaster.

Credit freezes are now free. Here’s why you might want one
“Many experts agree that freezing your credit report is the strongest way to protect against identity theft.
Starting Friday, you’ll be able to do it free of charge.
In the wake of a massive data breach last year at Equifax that exposed personal information for about 148 million Americans, Congress amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act to require reporting agencies to freeze reports for no charge. Equifax is one of the three major credit reporting agencies in the United States.”
Thanks to Dan S. for the heads up!

KISS End Of The Road World Tour
“After an epic and storied 45 year career that launched an era of rock n roll legends, KISS announced exclusively on NBC’s America’s Got Talent tonight that they are hanging up their 9-inch tall touring boots. The news was delivered in trademark larger-than-life KISS style with a blistering performance of “Detroit Rock City”, proving why the band is known as one of the most iconic live performances that simply can’t be missed. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers who have sold more than 100 million albums worldwide have toured to nearly every city on the planet and played every venue imaginable. Having played for Kings & Queens, for U.S. veterans, and for millions of devoted KISS Army fans, they will play their final shows as part of the multi-year END OF THE ROAD WORLD TOUR. Dates have yet to be announced but KISSonline.com will have all the updates in the weeks to come.”
Kiss Announce Final ‘End of the Road’ World Tour
“All that we have built and all that we have conquered over the past four decades could never have happened without the millions of people worldwide who’ve filled clubs, arenas and stadiums over those years,” Kiss said in a statement. “This will be the ultimate celebration for those who’ve seen us and a last chance for those who haven’t. KISS Army, we’re saying goodbye on our final tour with our biggest show yet and we’ll go out the same way we came in… Unapologetic and Unstoppable.”
Kelly, this one goes out to you brother.

Photo from KISS Richmond, Virginia. September 9th, 2016

Thursday Random Stuff…

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Tor Browser and Tails Updated
Download Tor Browser
Download Tails

Paint.net 4.1
“This update converts some effects to use the GPU for rendering, resulting in huge performance gains. Copy/Paste can now be performed on selections, Bicubic resampling is now available for the Move Selected Pixels tool, and there are lots of little quality-of-life improvements and general bug fixes.”
Download

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

Windows 10 support extended again: September releases now get 30 months
The headline is clickbait. Only Windows 10 Enterprise and Education versions will see this. IMHO this only reinforces the notion that home users are thought of as beta testers for businesses.
This Microsoft blog post explains it:
“All currently supported feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions (versions 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803) will be supported for 30 months from their original release date…All feature releases of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, and Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported for 18 months (this applies to feature updates targeting both March and September).”

Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook
“Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year.”

Senate Committee Vents About Hijacking Of Big Tech For Information War
“The leaders of the Senate intelligence committee vented Wednesday morning about what they called the shortcomings of major tech firms, which they argue have led Americans to become vulnerable to foreign disinformation campaigns.
“What is under attack is the idea that business as usual is good enough. The information your platforms disseminate changes minds, hardens opinions, helps people make sense of the world. … That’s how serious this is,” said Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C.”
Twitter and Facebook CEO’s showed up. Google thinks they are to good to answer when called.

17 countries where teachers can earn the highest starting salary
“While the US is, according to World Bank data, the nation that pays high school teachers the sixth highest, according to the Learning Police Institute they’re actually paying teachers less and less — to the point where the country is experiencing a teacher shortage.
Data gathered from the National Center for Education Statistics actually suggests many states in the US have seen an average of a 4.6% salary reduction since the 2009-10 school year, which could be part of the reason the country is having to outsource teachers from overseas.”
The U.S. is ranked #6, ironically just above Mexico?!

Airport security trays carry more germs than toilets, study reveals
Just another reason I’ve no desire to fly.

There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written
“Bowheads seem to be recovering from the harvest of Yankee commercial whaling from 1848 to 1915, which wiped out all but 1,000 or so animals. Because the creatures can live longer than 200 years — a fact George discovered when he found an old stone harpoon point in a whale — some of the bowheads alive today may have themselves dodged the barbed steel points of the Yankee whalers.”

Man erects electrified fence to keep bus stop kids off his lawn
“The man — whose name is Bryan — said he was sick of students who cursed, fought, and littered at the bus stop.
“They don’t respect other peoples’ land,” Bryan said. “I pick up trash every day.”
Parents are ticked off. Perhaps they could teach their children to respect others property?

Applebees $2 Samuel Adams OctoberFest For All Of September
That’ll go nice with a Bourbon Street Steak!

Sources: Fox Sports Detroit’s Mario Impemba and Rod Allen involved in physical altercation
I haven’t watched many games this year because the Tigers suck. Not a surprise these 2 don’t like each other and the result shows in the booth. The broadcasting is sub-par. The only bright spot is the former Tiger great Kirk Gibson who is in the booth sparingly as he has Parkinson’s disease.

Burt Reynolds, Screen Legend and Sex Symbol, Dies at 82
One of my favorite actors. RIP brother.
Burt Reynolds Wikipedia
Burt Reynolds IMDB

Monday Random Stuff…

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Last day of a 3 day holiday here. Burned some calories at the gym and immediately put them back on with fried chicken and beer.

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

Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales
“Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Mastercard Inc. brokered a business partnership during about four years of negotiations, according to four people with knowledge of the deal, three of whom worked on it directly. The alliance gave Google an unprecedented asset for measuring retail spending, part of the search giant’s strategy to fortify its primary business against onslaughts from Amazon.com Inc. and others.
But the deal, which has not been previously reported, could raise broader privacy concerns about how much consumer data technology companies like Google quietly absorb.”
Just how far from, “Don’t be evil” can Google stray?

You’re about to get even more from your Office 365 Home or Personal subscription!
– Unlimited device installs and be signed in to 5 of those at any one time.
– 6 licenses (users) up from 5

98.6 Degrees Is A Normal Body Temperature, Right? Not Quite
“Forget everything you know about normal body temperature and fever, starting with 98.6. That’s an antiquated number based on a flawed study from 1868 (yes, 150 years ago). The facts about fever are a lot more complicated.”
Interesting!

How To – Linux Mint Virtual Machine

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How to install Linux Mint as a virtual machine.
I do my day-to-day web activities is a Linux Mint virtual machine. This means web surfing, downloading, YouTube watching, etc. This is a quick guide on how I install and setup Linux Mint.
FYI – one of the great things about VMs is you can copy them to other computers. After setup I will copy my Linux Mint VM to my laptop for use one the road.

The steps:
– Download and install VMWare Player
– Download Linux Mint
– Create a new folder on a fast partition
– Create your new VM
– Install Linux Mint
– Configure power options
– Install VMware Tools
– Update
– Install extra software
– Anti-virus
– Configure Linux Mint
– Backup
(click for full-size)

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Patch Tuesday

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All supported Windows and Office versions have patches.
Windows 10 update history (not updated as of this writing)
Windows 7 and 8 have a few bugfixes and more Spectre/Meldown fixes.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4343900/windows-7-update-kb4343900
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4343898/windows-81-update-kb4343898
See below for full breakdown.

Adobe Reader Updated
Download (EN-US)
All Downloads
APSB18-29 Security updates available for Adobe Acrobat and Reader

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

In post-massacre Vegas, security policies clash with privacy values
&
Caesars Palace not-so-Praetorian guards intimidate DEF CON goers with searches [Updated]
“For safety and security, hotel team members will enter rooms and perform a standard wellness check, even if you have opted out of housekeeping services, posted a sign on your door, or otherwise refused team member entry. You may be asked to leave the hotel, if you do not comply with this company policy,”
Blog Post from Marc Rogers “who leads DEF CON’s security team”.
“I do not support or endorse these room searches or how they are executed. I sympathize with the challenge these hotels are facing but believe they need to take a harder look at the efficiency, impact and long term cost of this strategy.
We MUST NOT let our hotels become like our airports. If we do, then the terrorists win.”
Everything you do outside your room is filmed in Vegas, I get that. But inside your room should be another story. I had money stolen out of my hotel room by the maid 20 plus years ago. I haven’t allowed housekeeping in my room since. You come in my room unannounced and we are going at it.

Blue light from phone screens accelerates blindness, study finds
“Scientists say they have found how blue light from smartphones, laptops and other digital devices damages vision and can speed up blindness. Research by the University of Toledo in the US has revealed that prolonged exposure to blue light triggers poisonous molecules to be generated in the eye’s light-sensitive cells that can cause macular degeneration – an incurable condition that affects the middle part of vision.”
My S7 has a blue light filter and I am experimenting with it. Apple calls their blue light filter Night Shift.

2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Driven: Longer, Lighter, More Fuel Efficient, and Extremely Refined
Base price, I repeat BASE PRICE is $30,000, for a fracking Work Truck.
“The crew cab Silverados I drove — a $50,995 LT Trail Boss and top of the line $62,535 High Country”

Back on the shelves: Samuel Adams OctoberFest
My favorite American Oktoberfest.

[Read more…] about Patch Tuesday

Weekend Random Stuff…

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

Yes, Carrie Fisher will be in Star Wars: Episode 9. Here’s how
“Mark Hamill will also appear in the new episode, despite Luke Skywalker’s seeming death in Episode 8.”
Mark being it it I am cool with. Don’t know how I feel about Carrie though, kinda creepy…

Thieves targeting cars with keyless ignition
Don’t bother reading the article, it is lame and basically unsourced. Folks are breaking into to cars using a key fob amplifier which I had never heard of so I Googled it. It is an actual thing and they can break in many cars and even steal some of them.
“The attack uses the two devices to extend the effective range of the key fob,” says Jun Li, one of the researchers in the Qihoo group, who call themselves Team Unicorn. “You’re working in your office or shopping in the supermarket, and your car is parked outside. Someone slips near you and then someone else can open up and drive your car. It’s simple.”
Good grief.

After a Year, Equifax Remains Largely Unfazed by Historic Breach
“Despite a breach that exposed the personal data of more than 147 million Americans, the company has yet to face a government-imposed financial punishment.”
Depressing yet unsurprising. I’m sure Equifax is funding lots of political candidates on both sides of the aisle.

TSA is tracking regular travelers like terrorists in secret surveillance program
“Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.”
I could tell you a story from about a dozen years ago when the TSA forced my mom to stand up out of her wheelchair after hip-replacement surgery, and how when I saw it happening my dad and wife had to physically stop me from intervening…

How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies
My first guess was because they are greedy, souless, self-important twits who aren’t near as smart as they think they are.
Anywho, the gist of the article is the Chicoms and Russians are stealing everything they can out of Silicon Valley and they are both great at playing they long game, expecially the Chicoms.
Bookmark it. It is a 10 minute read.

Buy One, Get One at P.F. Changs
“Enjoy a free entrée of your choice with purchase of any entrée. Valid for dine-in only through 8/5. One redemption per table.*”
My fav there is the Beef A La Sichuan and the Surf & Turf.
Take off your tinfoil hat, these last 2 articles are purely coincidental…

Happy National Chicken Wing Day! Here’s Where To Get FREE Wings!
I despise those things but I thought I would pass this along.

NASA Brought Hundreds of Kilograms of Moon Rocks to Earth. Scientists Have Not Touched Most of Them
Do you know how many Universities, Colleges, and High Schools would love to get their hands on this stuff? Get off your asses and hand these out to people who can benefit from these things.
Shame on you NASA.

Look Up This Weekend for Closest Mars Views Since 2003
“We are rapidly coming up on the pinnacle of the current Mars apparition, when it arrives at opposition to the sun and its closest point to the Earth. But will the weather cooperate for you to get a good look at Mars at its best?…So, you will have a stretch of five nights, from Friday through Tuesday, to get your very best views.”

This Map Shows What People Hate The Most In Each State
Apparently there is a dating app called Hater that matches people up on what they do not like. There are some weird people out there…

Jerry Jones: Cowboys will require players to stand for anthem, not remain in locker room
Because
Dallas Cowboys quarterback: Anthem protesting ‘takes away from the joy’ of football
“I’d never protest during the anthem, and I don’t think that’s the time or the venue to do so,” he added. “The game of football has always brought me such peace, and I think it does the same for a lot of people.”
Respect to you Dak. (I still hate the Cowboys.)

Patch Tuesday

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Got Windows? You got updates. MS Office too. See the end of this post for full breakdown. Among many other things these Windows Updates contain more Spectre fixes.
Win10 1803 – June 12, 2018—KB4284835 (OS Build 17134.112)
Win10 1709 – June 12, 2018—KB4284819 (OS Build 16299.492)
Win10 1703 – June 12, 2018—KB4284874 (OS Build 15063.1155)
Win10 1607 – June 12, 2018—KB4284880 (OS Build 14393.2312)

All flash plugins were patched last week. I’m not gonna track this security nightmare anymore. Do yourself a favor and uninstall it. I have it installed on like one of 7 computers and I don’t even remember why it is installed on that.

Chrome Updated
“The stable channel has been updated to 67.0.3396.87 for Windows, Mac, and Linux…This update includes 1 security fix”
Download
Download standalone(full)
Download standalone 64-bit Windows version(full)

[Read more…] about Patch Tuesday

Friday Random Stuff…

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Battle Royal
Who ya got? Poll up in the right sidebar. Polls not working correctly.
Intel wants PCs to be more than just ‘personal computers’
vs
Eric wants PCs to be just ‘personal computers’

Wise Disk Cleaner Updated
Version 9.7.5.692 brings “improvements” and “fixes”.
Download ( I use the portable version. )

openSUSE 15
Forgot to mention this. Leap 15 was released last week. It use kernel 4.12 released last July. Current LTS in 4.14+. Current Stable is 4.16+.
I don’t get it. Fail.

Off Topic

“We live for the One, we die for the One”
Wikipedia | IMDB
Babylon 5 is one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi series. It is finally available for streaming. (I’ve got the DVD set)
Babylon 5 on Amazon Prime
Babylon 5 DVD Babylon 5: The Complete Collection Series
This poster is on my wall.

Stuff I Bookmarked:

A newspaper columnist’s rant against cheeseburgers gives hamburger loyalists the hero they deserve
Heroes don’t always wear capes.

Facebook, Amazon, and hundreds of companies post targeted job ads that screen out older workers
IMHO this practice is widespread and along with being illegal is short-sighted and disgusting.

Countries With the Widest Gaps Between Rich and Poor
The U.S. is #9 and that is sad.

Scientists race to find who is pumping an incredibly dangerous gas into the atmosphere
China. There, I solved it for you.

AI better than dermatologists at detecting skin cancer, study finds
“At first look, dermatologists correctly detected an average of 87 percent of melanomas, and accurately identified an average of 73 percent of lesions that were not malignant. Conversely, the CNN correctly detected 95 percent of melanomas.”
Interesting but isn’t that why they send it out for a biopsy?

Question Club: Where should Star Wars go after Solo’s box office disappointment?
Disappointment to who? Its opening weekend was a holiday weekend and most sane people hate the movie theater. PPV and DVD by this fall at a fraction of the price to take your family to the theater.

Monday Random Stuff…

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Reboot Your Router
The FBI kindly suggest you reboot your router.
“Foreign cyber actors (Russians) have compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers and other networked devices worldwide.”
At least half a million devices have been affected.
According to ARSTechnica here is a list affected routers:

Linksys E1200
Linksys E2500
Linksys WRVS4400N
Mikrotik RouterOS for Cloud Core Routers: Versions 1016, 1036, and 1072
Netgear DGN2200
Netgear R6400
Netgear R7000
Netgear R8000
Netgear WNR1000
Netgear WNR2000
QNAP TS251
QNAP TS439 Pro
Other QNAP NAS devices running QTS software
TP-Link R600VPN

Mp3tag 2.88
Pretty big update.
Download | Changelog | Release Announcment

Do You Know Science?
Each year the government asks 10 simple questions to test the public’s knowledge of science. Can you correctly answer them all?
Basic stuff here. Disappointed with the results.

Patch Tuesday

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Windows Updates Available
You got Windows, you got updates. (Microsoft Security Update Summary for May 8, 2018) below)
May 8, 2018—KB4103721 (OS Build 17134.48)
*Until further notice my advice is to wait a week or so to see what the fallout is over the latest updates. It seems every single update breaks something anymore.

Of Course
What would Patch Tuesday be without Adobe patching another flaw in Flash Player?
APSB18-16 Security update available for Adobe Flash Player
Version 29.0.0.171 is out.
for Firefox, Opera
for Internet Explorer
Flash for Edge, IE 11, and Chrome update automatically with the browser.

Off Topic

Equifax confirms data breach included driver’s licenses and passports
Jail. Someone needs to go to jail.

The average American works more hours than a medieval peasant
I wonder if it is all worth it? Some synonyms for peasant: boor, bumpkin, hayseed, hick, oaf, peon, rube, serf.

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