TweakHound

Computer stuff...

Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound)

Weekend Random Stuff…

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

Nvidiux: Nvidia GPU Overclocking And Underclocking Software For Linux (GUI)
“Nvidiux is a graphical Nvidia GPU overclocking tool for Linux. The application makes it easy to overclock or underclock Nvidia GPUs, while also providing some extra features like fan control or GPU monitoring.”
Cool!

The best phone to buy right now (2018) – The Verge
LOL. I knew what their pick was before I clicked the link. And they wonder why people call them iVerge…

USPS Site Exposed Data on 60 Million Users
“U.S. Postal Service just fixed a security weakness that allowed anyone who has an account at usps.com to view account details for some 60 million other users, and in some cases to modify account details on their behalf.”
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…

Exclusive poll: America sours on social media giants
“In the past year, there has been a 15-point spike in the number of people who fear the federal government won’t do enough to regulate big tech companies — with 55% now sharing this concern…Yes, but: About 40% of Americans still feel that social media is a net positive for society. Overall, 65% of people say smartphones have made their quality of life better…Americans are more aware than ever before about the dark side of technologies, which should worry Silicon Valley.”
Apparently 40% of Americans wear rose colored glasses.

Google Reveals Plans to Monitor Our Moods, Our Movements, and Our Children’s Behavior at Home
“What the patents describe are sensors and cameras mounted in every room to follow us and analyze what we’re doing throughout our home.
They describe how the cameras can even recognize the image of a movie star’s image on a resident’s t-shirt, connect it to the person’s browsing history, and send the person an ad for a new movie the star is in.”
Smart homes, for people who aren’t.

Windows 10 Telemetry
This topic has been making the rounds for the last couple of days. The German government Federal Office for Information Security did a paper entitled, “Analysis of Telemetry component in Windows 10“. It dissects and offers advice on slowing/stopping/blocking Win10 telemetry.
This article and analysis offers absolutely nothing new. Geeks have known all this information for some time. Everything you could possibly want to know on this subject and the available solutions are available here:
Forums at Mt Digital Life – [REPO] Windows 10 TELEMETRY REPOSITORY (requires login to see everything)

My Amazon Fire HD 10
Received, rooted, hacked. Still playing with it. Article at least a week out.

Monday Random Stuff…

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It’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S.A Expect the news to be slow as folks have other things to attend to. Please be safe and patient out there.
Don’t forget that Uber, Lyft, and taxis are available if you’ve had too much holiday cheer.

I purchased:
Amazon Fire HD 10 Tablet [$50.00 off (33%)]
and the
Samsung 256GB microSD card to go with it [$40.00 off (47%)]
My aim is to watch stuff while on the treadmill or bike at the gym and maybe web surf while watching TV. There may be an article or two to follow.

As Insurers Offer Discounts For Fitness Trackers, Wearers Should Step With Caution
“But just how much fitness trackers contribute — if at all — to better health and lower health care spending isn’t yet known. Among the studies that cast doubt on their effectiveness is one published in 2016 by the University of Pittsburgh. That research found young adults who used fitness trackers in the study lost less weight than those in a control group who self-reported their exercise and diet…
Boyd is cautious but confident that some of the ongoing studies will show positive benefits for patient health. But he urges taking care before trading data for dollars. It’s important to know the type of information your tracker is revealing about your health, he says, and to know exactly how it will be used. Your incentives could offer a clue ”
Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you
Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I’ll be watching you
Oh can’t you see
You belong to me
My poor heart aches
With every step you take
Every move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I’ll be watching you
– The Police

Friday Random Stuff…

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Firefox 63.0.3
A few fixes.
Download (all) | Download 32-bit EN-US | Download 64-bit EN-US | Release Notes

[H]ard At Work
Kyle and crew have had several great articles this week
First they came out with: GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FAILS After Gaming for 2 Hours
“After gaming for a few hours this evening, playing Hunt: Showndown, I was met with a hard-lock, while the game was on its end-of-mission screen…Is there something rotten in RTX land? You are damn right there is, and we are all just coming to grips with it now.”
Several days later: NVIDIA on the Cause of RTX 2080 Series Card Failures
“NVIDIA has announced that the culprit behind some of the defective early boards for the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition was limited test escapes…it would seem that NVIDIA is actually owning up to putting bad RTX 2000 series cards into the market…Only this morning, we have seen an EVGA 2080 Ti XC literally burst into flames, and of course one of the two RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition cards we purchased directly from NVIDIA has failed with what looks to be a RAM issue.”
They pitted the current top CPUs against each other: Intel Core i9-9980XE vs AMD Ryzen Threadripper
“The 9980XE seems to overall fall in between the 2950X and 2970WX performance-wise. From that perspective, you are paying about $679 to $1079 more for the 9980XE, than the competitive Threadripper processor…The Core i9-990XE in in no way a “bad” CPU for content creators, or for gamers for that matter. The 9980XE simply seems to be overpriced for the performance value it brings to the table now that AMD and its Threadripper are on the scene in the HEDT market.”
They finished out the week with: XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy OC+ Video Card Review
“Say bye-bye to the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, because it just isn’t relevant anymore.”

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

Mozilla – Shop Safe This Holiday Season (*privacy not included)
“Teddy bears that connect to the internet. Smart speakers that listen to commands. Great gifts—unless they spy on you. We created this guide to help you buy safe, secure products this holiday season.”
Sounds like the makings of a horror movie.

Microsoft Is Putting Ads on the Mail App in Windows 10
“Mail App in Windows 10“, LMAO

Mapping Thanksgiving
“Using Google Maps data from 2017’s holiday season, we’re providing insight into the places people visit around the holidays, when to visit them, and the best times to get on (or stay off) the road in 2018.”
I’m not traveling for Thanksgiving and will be avoiding any area anywhere near a shopping mall Friday. Oh, and to all the retail stores opening on Thanksgiving evening, you suck.

Security boffins uncover seven more Spectre and Meltdown attacks
The article covers this research paper. The conclusion reads:
“Our systematization uncovered 7 (new) transient execution attacks (Spectre and Meltdown variants) which have been overlooked and have not been investigated so far. We demonstrated all these variants in practical proof-of-concept attacks and evaluated their applicability to Intel, AMD, and ARM processors. We also systematically evaluated all defenses discovering that some transient execution attacks are not successfully mitigated by the rolled out patches and others are not mitigated because they have been overlooked. Hence, we need to think about future defenses carefully and plan to mitigate attacks and variants that are yet unknown.”
It’s worth noting that AFAIK there are no Spectre / Meltdown attacks in the wild ATM.

Scientists say humans will be having lots of sex in self-driving cars
Kinda obvious IMHO. Apparently Millennials won’t be though.

Antares rocket launch moved to Saturday on Virginia’s Eastern Shore
“Most of the rockets launched from Wallops are sub-orbital, which means they don’t get high enough to enter Earth orbit. This one will not only go into orbit, but it will eventually dock with and resupply the International Space Station! These Antares rockets are the biggest to launch from the Wallops Island Facility and are easily seen (if the sky is clear) from Richmond and all over the east coast.”
If I can get my lazy a** up at about 3:45 I’m gonna drive to the end of my block and try and watch it.
Wallops Mission Status Center. There is also a tracking map there.

Wednesday Random Stuff…

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Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Driver 416.94 WHQL
“Provides the optimal gaming experience for Battlefield V, Fallout 76, and Hitman 2”
Download | Release Notes

Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4.5 Released
I bookmarked this this morning. Unfortunately ATM the site seems to be having issues.
Download | Release Announcement

U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves are Abusing USPS’s Mail Scanning Service
“A year ago, KrebsOnSecurity warned that “Informed Delivery,” a new offering from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that lets residents view scanned images of all incoming mail, was likely to be abused by identity thieves and other fraudsters unless the USPS beefed up security around the program and made it easier for people to opt out. This week, the U.S. Secret Service issued an internal alert warning that many of its field offices have reported crooks are indeed using Informed Delivery to commit various identity theft and credit card fraud schemes.”

Hacker Breaks Down 26 Hacking Scenes From Movies & TV | WIRED
Not quite hacker related but the one tech related Hollywood BS that sets me off is “can you enhance that” when talking about pics or video.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! NO. NO you fracking can’t!

Windows 10 Quality

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This blog post by Microsoft VP Michael Fortin has gotten Geeks Irish up. The entire post is delusional and tone-deaf. It spends half the time telling us we think Win10 is great and the other half telling us what a great job Microsoft is doing.
Geeks and Windows Experts have savaged Microsoft for the fiasco that is Win10 and this latest post just made things worse. Some recent comments from the Windows Expert / Geek world:
Paul Thurrott
“You can’t trust anything these people tell you. They literally have no idea what they’re doing.”
Woody Leonhard
“The past four months have shown, repeatedly, that you’d have to be crazy — or ignorant of the past — to continue applying Windows patches as soon as they’re released.”
Chris Hoffman
“We want Microsoft to understand the problem, take it seriously, and make some real changes…We’d be happier if Microsoft would stop breaking things.”
Ed Bott
“Customers who are running an officially released version of Windows should not have to sign up as beta testers to get critical fixes…And don’t get me started on the Microsoft Answers forum, where overwhelmed volunteer moderators routinely paste boilerplate replies to customers reporting genuine issues. Good luck finding actual help there. Mainstream customers running a released version of Windows shouldn’t have to spend hours hunting down information about issues and updates.“

Patch Tuesday

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Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 have updates.

Windows 7
November 13, 2018—KB4467106 (Security-only update)
November 13, 2018—KB4467107 (Monthly Rollup)

Windows 8.1
November 13, 2018—KB4467703 (Security-only update)
November 13, 2018—KB4467697 (Monthly Rollup)

Windows 10
Build 1809 –
November 13, 2018—KB4464455 (OS Build 17763.107)
November 13, 2018—KB4467708 (OS Build 17763.134)
Build 1803 – November 13, 2018—KB4467702 (OS Build 17134.407)
Build 1709 – November 13, 2018—KB4467686 (OS Build 16299.785)
Build 1703 – November 13, 2018—KB4467696 (OS Build 15063.1446)

Additionally Windows 8.1 & 10 have Flash updates.

Win10 “October” Update
Windows 10, version 1809 Re-Released
When you have it offered to you is anyone’s guess.
Media Creation Tool / ISOs available here: Download Windows 10 Disc Image (ISO File)