08 Monday Jul 2019
Tags
link: https://mashable.com/article/how-to-block-email-pixel-tracking/
Here’s something you might want to think about next time you check your email: chances are, at least some of your messages are being tracked.
From how many times you open a message, the time of day, and even what city you’re in, the very act of reading an email can send a surprising amount of data back to the sender, even if you never respond.
03 Wednesday Jan 2018
link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/
more info here: https://meltdownattack.com
It seems there is a deep flaw in Intel 64 bit CPUs that may let malware access kernel memory – a bad thing. The OS work arounds for this will cut performance significantly. Technical details are in the linked article.
Windows and Linux are to issue update shortly. Apple’s macOS (nee OS X) has been patched since version 10.3.2
So, if you are contemplating a computer purchase I think you should delay buying until Intel fixes the CPU defect and announces which CPU lines are fixed. Then make sure a fixed chip is in the computer you want.
28 Tuesday Nov 2017
Hard to believe … but the latest High Sierra bug lets a user authenticate as root without a password. Oops. Glad I took this OS off my iMac this weekend.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/28/root_access_bypass_macos_high_sierra/
26 Sunday Nov 2017
Posted in Computers
Tags
I just used SuperDuper to recover my iMac! It worked great. Good job Shirt Pocket software!!
I had update my 2012 iMac from Sierra 10.12.x to High Sierra 10.13.1 All seemed OK at first but then my disk volumes on 2 external drives disappeared at random times. I tried macOS’s disk utility repair process which did not remedy the situation. I online chatted with Apple, the tech suggested I boot from my recovery partition and then reinstall the OS manually via the internet. I didn’t really want to do this, since it’s a generic we-hope-it-works kind of process.
Instead, I got out the external drive with a bootable image I made with the SuperDuper program right before I updated. Yes, I have done this kind of thing before. I worked in engineering/software development/MIS/IT for 4 decades and I learned the hard way that updates are not always improvements.
So, I connected my SuperDuper boot volume and rebooted the iMac, holding the Option key down. This lets you boot from any attached bootable volume. Selecting the SuperDuper volume brought up my 10.12.x system exactly as it was the moment I made the backup. I then ran SuperDuper, copied from the backup to the iMac internal disk. Shut down, disconnected the backup disk, then restarted. My iMac was restored!
Nice. See how important a backup is?
12 Friday May 2017
Tags
Note: the NHS is England’s medical/health system
The NHS has been hit as part of a global cyber-attack that threw hospitals and businesses in the UK and across the world into chaos.
The unprecedented attack on Friday affected 12 countries and at least 16 NHS trusts in the UK, compromising British IT systems that underpin patient safety. Staff across the NHS were locked out of their computers and trusts had to divert emergency patients.
…
“If large numbers of NHS organisations failed to act on a critical notice from Microsoft two months ago, then whose fault is that?” Anderson said. “This is the sort of thing for which the secretary of state should get roasted in parliament.”
Alan Woodward, visiting professor of computing at the University of Surrey, said that the attack’s success “is likely to be because some organisations have either not applied the patch released by Microsoft, or they are using outdated operating systems”.
Amazingly, NHS’s failure to maintain their Windows PCs is the reason they are in trouble today.
Here’s some more info: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/a-massive-ransomware-attack-on-the-nhs/526524/
Dagny's Desk 