Computer News

Site Stuff
– Tried 2 poll widgets in the sidebar. YOP Poll doesn’t work with caching. Polldaddy screws up site layout. I really like site polls. They’re just fun. If anyone has a solution let me know.
– I increased main content window width and reduced sidebar width. Let me know if there are any issues.
– Not much going on out there. Here is what I bookmarked in the last few days (can you guess what band I’m listening to?):

Dirty White Boy
DNC’s Data Service Manager Madeleine Leader doesn’t want any Dirty White Boy’s in her IT department. She sent out an email looking for IT staff, “I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, as they are already in the majority.”
Are you worried what your friends see, and will it ruin your reputation loving me?

Urgent
“About a quarter of all U.S. adults (26%) get news from two or more social media sites.” If you get your news from Social Media you’re just plain wrong.
You play tricks on my mind. You’re everywhere but you’re so hard to find. You’re not warm or sentimental. You’re so extreme, you can be so temperamental.

Head Games
Equifax clears executives who sold shares after hack. No surprise here. We all knew they would get away with it.
But if you wanna win you gotta learn how to play, head games.

Feels Like The First Time
Verizon Wants FCC to Ban States From Protecting Your Privacy. This isn’t the first time Verizon has lobbied against their customers, it just feels like it.

Cold As Ice
Some movie theaters aren’t gonna show Star Wars: The Last Jedi because they will lose money showing it. Seems Disney has gone over to the dark side and is demanding a greater percentage of the gate than ever before. That’s just Cold As Ice.

That Was Yesterday
One of my favorite beers got released. A reporter stopped and asked me a few questions on my way out of the brewery. But That Was Yesterday.

Audacity 2.2.0 Released
98 bugs/annoyances in 2.1.3 fixed.
New:
– Playback of MIDI files (really? It’s 2017. Are people still using this?)
– 4 new themes (dark below).
– Better organized menus (definitely needed).
– Help link buttons in many dialogs lead to the relevant manual pages (what did they lead to before?).
Download

Edge Sucks And Everyone Knows It
16% market share and falling.

Oh No He Didn’t
Tim Cooke called out Social Media because, “some of these tools are used to divide people, to manipulate people, to get fake news to people in broad numbers so as to influence their thinking.” I agree, well, actually I think social media is proof of humanities downfall and is the offspring of the devil and the Borg queen.

Off Topic

Anthony Bourdain Hates Yelpers
But Twitter and Instagram are OK?

$200 Beer That Is Illegal In 12 States
Sam Adams has a 28% ABV show stopper. Maybe 20 of us can chip in and we each get a sip?

Houston Astros Are Champs!
And Justin Verlander got his ring.

Image source.

Nvidia 388.13 WHQL Drivers
“Provides the optimal gaming experience for Call of Duty: WWII, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and Need for Speed Payback”
Download

Off Topic

Linus Would Be Proud
Youngstown State University got 972 people to dress up as penguins and broke a world record. Wait, there’s a world record for that?!
Are you Linux Geeks gonna sit there and take this???

Yes Sir, I Have My Scars
Some dude bought some old pictures for 2 dollars. Turns out it was of Billy The Kid and a couple of his fellow Regulators! Should be worth some bank and is a cool find.
I still choose to believe Brushy Bill Roberts was Billy!.

Browser Updates
Chrome 62.0.3202.75 (32-bit here.)
Firefox 56.0.2
Tor Browser 7.0.8

Software Updates
Adobe Flash Player 27.0.0.183. Download for Firefox, Opera or Internet Explorer
CrystalDiskMark 5.5.0
EMDB 3.05
Mp3tag 2.85

Twankers
The Twits at Twitter overstated the number of users for many years. They claim their users number around 330 million. No word on how many of those are fake accounts and bots. Although I’ve run into few accounts there that weren’t too bad, most seem to be filled with self-serving, lying twaddle. Maybe that’s why A third of America wouldn’t care if Twitter disappeared.

A KeyGen? Really?
I didn’t even know these things were still floating around! Anywho…
Some dude at the NSA disabled his AV (Kaspersky), tried to use a fake key generator, got pawned, NSA stuff exposed.
So says Kaspersky anyway. Source: El Reg

Off Topic

MegaRipoff
Already at ridiculous odds, Megamillions odds just got worse and more expensive to play.
“Starting on Saturday, tickets will cost $2…the odds of winning the jackpot will get worse jumping from 1 in 258.9 million in this week’s drawings to 1 in 302.6 million.

[H]ardMobo’s
Kyle and crew take a look at 2 Gigabyte AMD Threadripper motherboards:
Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 3 (Silver Award)
“The Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 3 motherboard does what it is made for, but do not expect much else if overclocking is your goal. We were actually very impressed with this inexpensive X299 motherboard in that it held stable in most of the abuse we heaped on it.”
& the
Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7 TR4 (Gold Award)
“If you are looking to overclock the Threadripper, we can highly suggest the Gaming 7. The Gaming 7 has the power components and UEFI tweaks needed to push your Threadripper, if you have the cooling.”

Tor Browser 7.0.7
“This release updates Firefox to 52.4.1esr, HTTPS-Everywhere to 2017.10.4 and NoScript to 5.1.2.”
Download

VirtualBox 5.2
“This is a major update.”
Download

Off Topic
Chris Long to donate final 10 Eagles game checks, play for free
This season, Long had a base salary of $1 million. All of that money is now going to fund the education of others…”I’ve been lucky,” Long said after donating his first six game checks earlier this year. “I’ve made a lot of money in my career, so it’s not like I’m scrapping check to check. This isn’t a hero thing. It’s nothing like that. It’s honestly just that I want to put my money where my mouth is.”
Outstanding

L.A. Guns – “The Flood’s The Fault Of The Rain” (Official Video)

Not So Pure After All
PureVPN is being mocked around the web for releasing client info to the authorities. Seems they keep logs which leaves a permanent record of when and by what IP addy you accessed their servers. This is a big deal because VPN providers product is anonymity.
There is a debate going on as to whether of not any VPN provider is log-less.
I use TorGuard and they state, “We don’t log, period. In addition to a strict no logging policy, TorGuard features a shared VPN setup for increased anonymity.”

Nvidia Drivers
387.92 WHQL released.
Game Ready
Provides the optimal gaming experience for Middle-earth: Shadow of War, The Evil Within 2, and Forza Motorsport 7
Game Ready VR
Provides the optimal gaming experience for ARKTIKA.1

Dear Microsoft,
Now that Windows Mobile is dead, can you get that useless code off my PC?
Thanks,
Every Windows 10 user
p.s. Mobile first indeed!

It’s been a bad week folks.
It started with the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. Then one of my all-time favs Tom Petty passed away. And all week we saw news about this hack and that breach.
When you add in all the bickering and hatred, fueled in large part by social media it is just one more reason to ditch GoogTwitFaceTagramChat. Even the people at the core of creating these online entities are swearing off using it.
For your highly recommended weekend reading I suggest, ‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia.
“Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks alarmed by a race for human attention”

Me, I’m headed for the beach to ride my bicycle, eat oysters and BBQ, and drink copious amounts of alcohol.
Hope you all have a great weekend.

Firefox 56
Download (EN-US): 32-bit or 64-bit
All downloads
Release Notes
The next version is supposed to be twice as fast.

AMD Drivers
Crimson ReLive Edition 17.9.3 is out.