In many peoples opinion Slashdot and SourceForge have been going down hill for quite a while. Slashdotters often lampoon the site. SourceForge has gotten so bad that it regularly appears on malware site block lists.
I hope this move will bring these sites to their former glory.
Articles:
SourceForge and Slashdot Have Been Sold (Foss Force)
Slashdot and SourceForge Sold, Now Under New Management (Slashdot)
Computer News
Thursday Random Stuff…
New Nvidia Drivers
Nvidia Game Ready 361.75 WHQL Drivers
Windows 7 Diagnostics Tracking Service
I had to update my article on this topic because Microsoft keeps playing games with us.
Google Wants The Web To Be HTTPS Too
It is my belief that everything on the web should be as secure as we can make it. To that end I have done my part by making this site all HTTPS.
Website operators, it is time to get your act together because Google Will Soon Shame All Websites That Are Unencrypted.
Back To The Future
DeLoreans are coming back. “Flux Capacitors for everyone!” exclaimed one fan.
Not the original company, and it will set you back at least $100,000.
Tuesday Random Stuff…
Firefox 44
Download 32-bit (en-US)
Download 64-bit (en-US)
Download other systems and languages
Release Notes
CCleaner 5.14
The monthly update for CCleaner has been released.
Download
Release Notes
***Pay attention during install. May attempt to install unwanted programs.
Etc…
Most of your Facebook friends couldn’t care less about you
Reminder, Disney sux:
Ex-Disney IT workers sue after being asked to train their own H-1B replacements
Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers With Immigrants
Wednesday Wild, Wonderful, Wacky News
Well, it is Wednesday and there is some news. No guarantees after that…
Linux Malware
Well frack. There is a Linux Trojan that takes screenshots every 30 seconds and apparently Android 2-factor authentication has been pwned.
Et tu, Intel?
Intel’s Driver Update Utility has a security flaw. It has been fixed. Download it here.
Software Updates
Audacity 2.1.2 (download)
VirtualBox 5.0.14
Planet Nine
The stargazers at Caltech say they found a ninth planet. I’m still pissed they took Pluto away. That’s just wrong. Once you have a Disney character named after you there should be no take-backs.
Etc…
Star Wars: Episode VIII delayed until December 2017
How to seal a bag of chips without a clip
Sunday Random Stuff…
More Privacy News
Pew research has a rather lengthy discussion on privacy. The topic and discussion are very interesting and worth the read. I question the results of the survey as it was an online survey of “461 U.S. adults and nine online focus groups of 80 people”. Very small group of people and I don’t particularly trust online surveys. For instance, does anyone think the polls on this TweakHound.com are an accurate representation of anything other than the way readers of this site feel? I certainly don’t. I put them up because it’s fun and it gives me some insight to my readership.
Speaking Of Online Surveys
Lots of sites copied info from a Computerworld article quoting a survey that nobody can read. Well, you can read it but it’ll cost you $500.00.
The survey “Fielded online through Survata in late September 2015, the survey asked 1,009 U.S. adults about their attitudes toward Microsoft’s latest operating system:“.
The gist of the Computerworld article is that 60% of Win10 users had a favorable opinion of the OS. Interestingly, 37% of those were Windows Insiders.
Personally I question the usefulness of an online survey of only 1009 people that is over 3 months old.
No Old Windows On New Hardware
ARSTechnica – Skylake users given 18 months to upgrade to Windows 10
Neowin – Microsoft will not support older Windows versions on upcoming PC hardware
Paul Thurrott – Microsoft Finds Another Way to Force Windows 10 Upgrade on Businesses
The above posts are based on Terry Myerson’s Windows 10 Embracing Silicon Innovation blog post. He said in part,
“Going forward, as new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support. This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon. For example, Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming “8996” silicon, and AMD’s upcoming “Bristol Ridge” silicon.”
In a nutshell, new hardware will need new Windows. Some folks are pissed about it. I understand their feelings but I’m not sure how much care about this issue. I’ll run the OS I desire and virtualize the rest.
Site News
Thank you all for hanging in with me this last week and coming back here. I’m still trying to tweak the best settings for the speed of this site.
Tuesday Random Stuff…
Flash Updated
APSB16-01 Security Updates Available for Adobe Flash Player
Flash for IE
Flash for other browsers
Main download page
Windows 8/8.1/10 users check Windows Update. Microsoft will get around to updating it…eventually.
Google Chrome users, ditto.
Firefox 43.0.3
Fixed:
On some Windows configurations, improve the decoding of some videos on YouTube
Fix network issue when using Nvidia’s Network Access Manager
Download 32-bit (en-US)
Download 64-bit (en-US)
Download other systems and languages
Release Notes
Interesting Reads
Recently Bought a Windows Computer? Microsoft Probably Has Your Encryption Key
In Defense of the Server GUI
Techno-skeptics’ objection growing louder
Lemmy – Born To Lose, Lived To Win
Meadowlark Lemon, Harlem Globetrotters’ Dazzling Court Jester, Dies at 83 (If you aren’t familiar with his work, check YouTube)
Tuesday News
Firefox 43
Download 32-bit (en-US)
Download 64-bit (en-US)
Download other systems and languages
Release Notes
Destroy Windows Spying Updated
Build 716 released, “fixes”.
AMD Drivers
ARSTechnica reports AMD will open source drivers as well as “substantially upgrade its open source Linux drivers”.
Wednesday Morning News
Google Chrome Updated
“The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 47 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Chrome 47.0.2526.73 contains a number of fixes and improvements — a list of changes is available in the log. Watch out for upcoming Chrome and Chromium blog posts about new features and big efforts delivered in 47…
This update includes 41 security fixes.”
Download or update from within the program.
New Nvidia Drivers
GeForce Game Ready Driver 359.06 WHQL available for Windows Vista – Win10.
“Windows 10 Fixed Issues
There are no new fixed issues to report for this release.
Windows 8.1/Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Vista Fixed Issues
Call of Duty: Black Ops III crashes on NVIDIA hardware.”
Download
Release Notes
Site News
Last week I switched the site font to Open Sans. I wanted to make the site easier to read across platforms and operating systems. I think it looks better too.
Open Sans is a free Google Font. As of this writing there are over 1700 FREE fonts/font variants. Many of them are awesome. Here are some download links if you’re interested.
Google Fonts (main page)
Google Fonts (github) (has download all link)
Download all Google Fonts: https://github.com/google/fonts/archive/master.zip
Open Sans
I downloaded all, extracted, then searched that folder for ttf fonts ( *.ttf ).
Then I copied them to a separate folder and installed the ones I liked.
Random Tuesday Stuff…
DiagTrack
My post on DiagTrack was picked up by a number of places including Forbes, Betanews, and Softpedia.
Paul Thurrott seems to be rather upset about “articles like this”. I’m honored!
I wonder what he thinks about this?!
I should note, again, that I did not make this discovery alone. I had help from a reader.
CCleaner Monthly Update
Download
Release Notes
***Pay attention during install. May attempt to install unwanted programs.
FYI – I use the portable version.
Release Notes v5.12.5431 (24 Nov 2015)
– Improved Firefox 42 Cache cleaning.
– Improved Google Chrome Download History cleaning.
– Improved Skip UAC on Windows 10.
– Improved detection and cleaning of portable browsers.
– Optimized cleaning rules loading routine.
– Improved localization and language support.
– Minor GUI Improvements.
– Minor bug fixes.
Aw man, I want one.
Star Trek Communicator prototype was a final frontier too far for Google
Lucas Out
George Lucas is done with Star Wars. He gave us episodes 4,5, and 6 but he also gave us episodes 1,2, and 3, and, Jar Jar Binks. Still, that’s too bad.
Monday Random Stuff…
Playing a little catch-up today!
DWS Lite 1.6
Destroy Windows Spying updated.
“FINAL VERSION Spy fully functional blocks at the moment. For the program will be released only bug fixes, and minor changes after this release.”
7-Zip
My go-to Swiss army knife of file extractors has released its 1st non-beta in 5 years!
(Thanks to David M. for the heads up!)
Samsung 850 EVO 1TB Firmware
User A.G. reports that he just got a notification that firmware version EMT02B6Q was available for his drive despite the fact it was reported released in September.
A quick Google search shows a few other folks asking about it this week too. If you have one of these you may want to fire up the latest SSD Magician and check.
Stuff From Around The Web…
TrueCrypt is safer than previously reported, detailed analysis concludes
Administrative Tools in Windows 10
Fedora 23 Xfce review
Windows 10 pilot rollouts will surge in early 2016, says Gartner
Comcast injects copyright warnings into browsers, raising privacy concerns