In our last post we may have introduced some of you to the idea of using Linux as a replacement for your Windows desktop or laptop. Toward the end we touched on security, and this post will expand on that issue.
There is a fanatical cohort in the Linux realm that will tell you that Linux is secure by design and so security software is not necessary. And nobody is writing malware ...
Continue Reading →All the excitement in the computer business lately has been about the free upgrade to Windows 10 that Microsoft has offered to owners of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 computers. Free is good. We all love to get free stuff, and getting free stuff from Microsoft, well, it’s really special.
But let’s take a look at the operating system that has always been free, Linux, in its many flavors and distributions. Currently ...
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There are really two stories here. The first is about how your Gmail account should become smarter about what you consider to be SPAM, as well as what you consider to be desirable email. We are talking about a system actually learning your personal individual preferences over time. For instance, I get a lot of email newsletters and marketing emails in my ...
Another great joke from Aaron Miller at Miller Bros Auto.
A young man named Chuck bought a horse from a farmer for $250. The farmer agreed to deliver the horse the next day. The next day, the farmer drove up to Chucks house and said, “Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the horse died.”
Chuck replied, “Well, then just give ...
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According to security experts polled in a recent Google Study, the two best ways to stay safe online are to keep your operating system and applications patched by running updates when prompted, and by using a password management tool, such as LastPass. 32% of security professionals said that running updates was the most important and effective security ...
This spring I bought a new Kia Forte that came with a whole lot of electronic goodies including Bluetooth synchronization, voice command, and driver programmable features galore. And evidently, the potential to be hacked.
This is old news now, but security researchers were able to hack a Jeep Cherokee through the on-board Internet connectivity feature called “UConnect.”
Continue Reading →“They were able to change the temperature of the air conditioning, turn on the windshield wipers and blast the wiper fluid to blur the ...
Last week we talked about the impossibility of keeping secrets over the long term, the liberation of secret information by groups or individuals who just wanted the secrets exposed. A close cousin, conceptually, is privacy. At this point, there is no privacy anymore, not really.
Time was when your life was largely unknown, and privacy was an easy thing to have. But this ...
Continue Reading →These jokes are G-rated. Courtesy of my friend Aaron Miller of Miller Bros Auto, “the best place in town to take a leak.”
Q: What do you call a fake noodle?
A: An impasta
Q: Why shouldn’t you write with a broken pencil?
A: Because it’s pointless.
ouch!
Q: What word is ...
Continue Reading →Hacker movies are one of my favorite genres, and have been for a long time. Go figure. One of my favorites from the “olden days” is the 1992 movie “Sneakers.” In this movie Robert Redford and his merry band of cybersecurity testers are tasked with the recovery of a mysterious “black box” which basically can solve for any type of encryption that was in use at that time. At one point in the movie the blind hacker discovers ...
Continue Reading →This article is largely reposted from other blog on WyzGuys.com.
This alert was added after the originally article posted – there does seem to be a small group of people have problems with the upgrade, and it seems to be affecting Asus branded computers and computers with solid state drives or SSD (flash) hard drives. If you fall in those groups, you might want to wait a bit.
Like many in my profession, I have been