Microsoft has dropped another strong hint that Windows 10 will be getting a sequel. It's now added an end date for the system. Rumors started getting louder last week that Windows 11 is on the cards. Those came partly from a Microsoft graphic that ... many took to be a not-so-hidden reference to 11 and partly from the wording some Microsoft executives used when promoting an upcoming media event. Now Microsoft has updated its support timetable documents to list Windows 10 Home and Pro as having a "retirement date" of 14 October 2025. That's the first time Microsoft has listed a date for Windows 10 ... (view more)
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A bill to boost US technology has received rare bipartisan support in the Senate. The proposed law includes measures on drones, computer chips and video app TikTok. While the "Endless Frontier Act" includes many measures targeted at the US, it also ... includes several that directly target China. They are intended to address fears not just of tech competition but also security threats. The bill passed the Senate by 68 votes to 32. President Biden has indicated he would back the bill, though it's not yet certain it will pass the House of Representatives in its current form. Some critics who are on ... (view more)
Several high-profile websites went offline for around an hour this week thanks to problems with a content delivery network (CDN). The disruption to sites like the New York Times, Amazon and Reddit was a reminder of weak points in the way the ... Internet works today. The problem also affected CNN, the United Kingdom's government sites, online video site Hulu and gaming streaming site Twitch. Not only were the sites unavailable but visitors saw a range of error messages that often weren't much help explaining the problem. (Source: theguardian.com ) The outage is widely believed to be related to ... (view more)
The rumor-mill is filled with claims Windows 11 is imminent. It doesn't seem to be based on much concrete and would certainly be a major change of attitude from Microsoft. Most of the speculation seems to trace back to a Microsoft post on Twitter ... which includes an animation of a window in the shape of the Windows logo, casting a shadow into the room. (Source: bgr.com ) The excitement comes from the fact that although the window has the horizontal line in the middle (making a cross), the shadow intentionally does not. That means the shadow somewhat resembles an 11 (or 111 depending on your ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Peter T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a friend who recently met someone on Facebook. For sake of argument I'll refer to my friend as Bob and his romantic interest as Tina. Bob says he received a friend request from Tina two days ... ago and after only 10 minutes of text messaging, things started getting hot and heavy. Tina then asked Bob to go into a video chat; as soon as he entered, Tina was already naked and playing with herself. During the chat, she stopped to message him a few times, though never spoke any words. Each time, she asked Bob to reciprocate by showing his ... (view more)
Microsoft is again bugging users to switch their default search engine to Bing. There's a way to get rid of the messages, but strangely it's hidden away in the Edge browser. The pop-up message seen by some users says that "Microsoft recommends ... different browser settings. Want to change them?" and then gives the not-entirely-comprehensive choice of "Yes, change settings" and "Maybe later". It's a sneaky message in a couple of ways. The first is that while it promises "Search that gives back time and money" and "Fast and secure search results with Bing", the message doesn't actually explain ... (view more)
Internal Google documents suggest the company intentionally made it harder for users to stop it accessing their location data. The documents have become public through a lawsuit that claims Google broke data consent rules. The state of Arizona is ... suing over the way Google handles location tracking. Officials say that even when users switched off location tracking for specific apps, Google continued tracking in the background. It only stopped when users switched off a tracking setting for the entire Android system. That's led to the lawsuit, based on the logic that Google made profits from ... (view more)
Microsoft is offering cash back to customers who shop online using the Edge browser. The program promotes both the browser and the Bing search website. It's no secret that Edge and Bing are far less popular than their Google equivalents. Indeed, ... Microsoft even adopted an "if you can't beat them" attitude by launching a new version of Edge that uses the same open-source Chromium code that powers Google Chrome. Now Microsoft is beefing up its Bing Rebates program to make it easier to use in Microsoft Edge. The program already lets customers get cashback of up to 10 percent when they purchase ... (view more)
President Biden has offered to reduce his proposed spending on improving broadband provision by a third. It's an attempt to reach a consensus with political opponents, but the debate seems to be as much about the principle as the sums involved. Back ... in March , the White House announced plans for broadband to be a key part of a proposed infrastructure spending program. The idea was to treat it in the same way as water and electricity supplies where public money has at various times paid for extending availability to areas that private providers didn't yet serve. Budget Cut Would Slow Expansion ... (view more)
Florida has banned tech sites from banning politicians from posting. The law takes effect on July 1st, 2021, but seems destined for the Supreme Court. The law was first proposed in February, shortly after Facebook and Twitter banned then-President ... Donald Trump. It's now passed the legislature and has been signed into law by the state's governor. Under the law, sites can still remove specific posts. They can also suspend a user for up to 14 days for violating its policies. No Permanent Bans However, the law bans longer suspensions or permanent bans for anyone known to be a candidate for ... (view more)
Microsoft is downplaying the floppy disk icon in Windows 10. It's part of an overhaul that will remove some design elements that have been in place since Windows 95. The changes will appear in the second big update to Windows 10 this year, ... officially called 21H2, codenamed Sun Valley. It sounds as if the update is largely going to be about appearance rather than functionality, which is either a welcome sign of leaving well alone or an indication of a lack of ambition and a fear of screwing things up, depending on your level of cynicism. As is normally the case with design refreshes, the aim ... (view more)
Google is making five tweaks to its Map services. It says the differences will make it safer and more useful. The most spectacular, if arguably gimmicky, change is to Live View. That's an augmented reality feature which lets users hold up their ... phone and see the view from their camera with overlaid information from the Maps app. It's meant for pedestrians (and preferably ones standing still) and will now include information such as details about shops and restaurants in view. It will also show the direction of chosen landmarks and show virtual street signs for navigating confusing ... (view more)
A Californian city will pay $350,000 to two men it falsely accused of hacking its Dropbox account. Officials in Fullerton, California had actually sent a link that granted the access. The case involves two bloggers, Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee, ... who wrote about local government and regularly requested documents under public record laws. As some of these files were very large, officials would often upload them to a Dropbox folder and provide a link granting access. However, one such response in 2019 also mistakenly included a link giving access to a separate folder that included documents ... (view more)
Humans as a whole spend 500 years each day completing CAPTCHA challenges according to a new estimate. The company behind the claim says USB security devices would be a more sensible way to confirm somebody is a human. The data from Cloudflare is ... about CAPTCHAs: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It's tests such as recognizing a string of letters on an unclear background or picking out images that contain a particular thing such as a boat or traffic light. The idea is to limit automated visits to a web page or form submissions, for example to limit ... (view more)
Just one in eight iPhone and iPad users have agreed to let an app track them online. They've been able to make the decision since Apple changed its rules, to the dismay of advertisers. The change is to the way iOS handles a tag known as Identifier ... for Advertisers (IDFA). It identifies an individual device and allows advertisers to piece together information from multiple sources and activities. While advertisers argue this allows for better targeted and thus more relevant (and less annoying) ads, users and privacy groups have objected to what they see as surveillance and snooping. The change ... (view more)
A bug with Windows Defender has been filling computers with thousands of largely useless files. The bug is fixed with the latest update and this is definitely an application worth keeping updated. Windows Defender (officially known as Microsoft ... Defender Antivirus) is the built-in security tool in Windows 10. The consensus view is that it's not as good as the best third-party tools, but does a decent job and is certainly a useful line of defense for the average user. Unfortunately a recent update, which took Windows Defender to version 1.1.18100.5, introduced an annoying bug. Users noticed a ... (view more)
Windows 10X, a variant designed originally for dual-screen machines, may never appear according to new reports. The system had also been tipped as an alternative to Google's Chrome OS. Microsoft officially announced it was working on Windows 10X in ... October 2019. At that time, the idea was to produce a separate Windows variant that was designed for dual-screen devices. Such devices, sometimes called clamshells, serve a variety of purposes. Some are designed to fold back completely so that users can switch between using it as a laptop and using it more like a tablet. Microsoft appeared to ... (view more)
Google has been accused of failing to do enough to tackle rip-off ads. The issue involves advertisers who mislead customers into paying for government services that should be free of charge. The accusation comes from the BBC News site and involves a ... series of services such as applying for driving or travel permits. While the official costs vary from country to country, such services often have little or no cost from a government agency. Third party sellers run websites that are vague about their status and then charge users inflated fees to apply on their behalf. Such sites are often legal as ... (view more)
Microsoft has released an optional Windows 10 update that could solve a recent problem with high CPU usage. Users who haven't had this problem can probably give the update a miss. The update, with the reference KB5001391 is optional as it's a "C ... release". That means it's made up of fixes and features that will roll out in the main update cycle later on but are available now as a preview. The main point of interest in KB5001391 is a fix for a memory problem. Microsoft hasn't made things entirely clear but it appears it's targeted at recent reports of users suddenly seeing their CPU usage ... (view more)
Internet hosting providers will have just one hour to remove terrorist content after a government request under new European laws. It's raised fears some sites may get caught up potentially faulty content filters. The law is a European Union ... regulation that will take effect in Spring 2022. It will automatically apply in all European Union countries and will be based on where a website is hosted rather than where its operators are based. A press release announcing the regulation says it covers any content (both text and audio or video) that will "that incite, solicit or contribute to terrorist ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Steve J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm a certified PC tech and I have a lot of jobs where customers want to upgrade their PC to a new system. As part of the migration process, I convert the client's old physical machine to a virtual ... machine using VMWare Converter. Once that is completed, I copy the virtual machine to the new PC and run it. The virtual machine serves two functions: 1) it's essentially a 'live' backup of the old machine, and 2) users can export their data from the virtual machine (example: bookmarks from a web browser) to the new machine in ways that a regular ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Barbara J. writes: " Dear Dennis, In early March, 2021, my elderly father was browsing the Internet when suddenly a red screen appeared and told him that his computer was infected. Conveniently, the warning message also supplied a ... 1-800 number to speak to Microsoft to 'fix' the issue. My father confirmed that the person he spoke to had a very thick Indian accent . The company that 'fixed' his computer was named Live IP Support and they charged on two separate occasions, totaling $2,700. The checks were withdrawn from his account under a company named Wowser E Services (aka ... (view more)
A campaign group claims Facebook lets users target ads at children based on interests such as smoking, drinking alcohol and gambling. Facebook says it has adequate measures to find and block such ads both before and after publication. The claims ... come from Reset Australia, which says it ran an experiment posing as the fictional "Ozzie News Network." It set up an advertising account on Facebook to see what options were available. In theory, Facebook has an outright ban on advertising adult topics such as alcohol to under 18s. Reset Australia says this failed in two ways: it was able to target ... (view more)
Nearly 30 Android and Roku apps hijacked phones to defraud advertisers. Although users never saw the ads, they may have noticed increased data use and slowed performance. The scammers used the apps distributed in the official Google Play store to ... build up a network of almost a million compromised Android devices. The "PARETO" botnet then used the phones to issue bogus requests to advertisers while making the devices appear to be Smart TV sets. That was particularly appealing to advertisers because of the belief viewers are more likely to pay attention to an ad on a TV screen than on a phone. ... (view more)
Moves by Apple to restrict ad tracking have prompted a war of words with Facebook and a legal battle with advertisers. They both object to changes that require express permission for some tracking. The arguments are over the "identifier for ... advertisers" or IDFA. That's a specific code for each iPhone or iPad which can be used by advertisers to track activity by device users. Until now its been possible to use IDFA with express user consent and then combine it with other data to build up a picture of the individual for targeted advertising. The iOS 14.5 update to the iPhone and iPad operating ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Steve G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just upgraded my PC to Windows 10 and I noticed that Windows Media Player no longer plays DVDs in Windows 10 . In Windows 7 it worked without a problem. I researched this issue and it appears that ... this 'feature' was removed on purpose because newer PCs and laptops do not have DVD players. As such, Microsoft has dropped all support for Windows 10 DVD playback in Windows Media Player. I plan on purchasing a thin ultrabook laptop (with no DVD player) soon. As such, I'd like to convert my DVDs into AVI or MP4 (for example) so I ... (view more)
Microsoft is to make it easier to build breaks into videoconferencing schedules. The move is designed to overcome a mismatch between technology "efficiency" and the real world. Automated scheduling tools make sense as a way for businesses to ... efficiently find and arrange times for people to get together. By default, most tools will schedule a meeting for a "round" time period such as 30 or 60 minutes. In an era when the vast majority of meetings were in person, that wasn't necessarily a problem. Back-to-back meetings were rare and even when they happened, meetings would naturally end a few ... (view more)
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has urged the public to use its Internet speed testing app. As with Netflix's tool, it's not just for the benefit of users. The FCC Speed Test App, which works for both WiFi and mobile data connections, ... has the usual simple "one-tap" functionality of such tools. By default is measures upload and download speeds plus latency. That's a measure of how quickly data transmission starts, which can be important for services such as online gaming. (Source: theverge.com ) Speed Maps Boosted Users can also switch on settings to measure jitter and packet loss ... (view more)
The Chrome browser is getting a couple of new features that some may find useful. Sharing links and finding previous pages could both get easier. The first feature is already available in Chrome 90, the latest version of the browser for the general ... public. It works on computers, though won't appear on the iOS and Android apps till later. The feature simply lets users create a link that points to a specific location on a page, rather than just containing the URL. The idea is to make is easier to share a link to something specific in a lengthy page. This isn't the same as internal text links ( ... (view more)
Proposed laws in Europe would ban some forms of artificial intelligence while restricting others. But critics say the proposals are too vague to be workable in practice. The proposals, expected to be formally published in the next few weeks, come ... from the European Commission. If approved by the European Parliament they could become a regulation that takes immediate legal effect across all European Union countries. It's not yet clear if and how the rules would extend to businesses in other countries as happens with data protection rules. Under the proposals, only AI used by the military or for ... (view more)
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My name is Dennis Faas and I am a senior systems administrator and IT technical analyst specializing in cyber crimes (sextortion / blackmail / tech support scams) with over 20 years experience; I also run this website! If you need technical assistance , I can help. Click here to email me now; optionally, you can review my resume here. You can also read how I can fix your computer over the Internet (also includes user reviews).
My name is Dennis Faas and I am a senior systems administrator and IT technical analyst specializing in cyber crimes (sextortion / blackmail / tech support scams) with over 20 years experience; I also run this website! If you need technical assistance , I can help. Click here to email me now; optionally, you can review my resume here. You can also read how I can fix your computer over the Internet (also includes user reviews).
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