Obviously, I had nothing better to do this weekend than to deal with how much Windows 10 endless update cycle sucks.

The endless spiral of death
The endless spiral of death

I keep hearing how “Windows 10 isn’t that bad,” but here is one of my predictions coming true before my very eyes!

The minute I read Microsoft’s pronouncement that you can no longer hide updates, I predicted that someone (not necessarily me, mind you, but so be it) would have a really hard time with this because it would obviously go into a spiral if an update failed. Well, the above screen tells you all.

Now I just need to replace my TV card so I put Linux on this thing. Seriously.

 

OS X logo

You’ve heard it more than once, I’m sure: “I cannot get infected because I have a Mac.”

Well, not only is it not true, but my experience has been that while Mac viruses and other malware are far fewer in number, they are often as bad or worse than the garden variety you encounter on Windows. The reason? There are far fewer of them. Malwarebytes tackles this in a recent article.

One tall tale is Macs are impervious to malware, so you needn’t worry about cybersecurity solutions. Antivirus and anti-malware protection is for the PCs. We’re here to bust that myth.

Source: Anti-malware for Mac | Malwarebytes Labs

LinkedIn logo

The story that LinkedIn was hacked broke yesterday, but how does it affect you?

Yesterday, Motherboard broke the story that LinkedIn was hacked. However, it turns out that it was actually four years ago, so why is it news today? More to the point, should you run out and change your password? Turns out, maybe, maybe not.

Continue reading “LinkedIn Was Hacked, Should You Change Your Password?”

spy silhouette

Technically, I would definitely call this “spyware” rather than the run-of-the-mill adware if the adware uploads screenshots!

A new adware has been discovered that performs a severe privacy breach by uploading a screenshot of the user’s active windows to a server under their control. This means that any info on the screen, whether it is a tax return, password manager, or corporate secrets is now available the adware company.

Source: Adware uploads Screenshot of your Active Windows without your Permission

Microsoft recently introduced Bash on Ubuntu on Windows 10 for developers. Does it work?

Not long ago, I was unable to use TeamViewer to remote into my laptop to use ssh. So, I attempted to install putty and other tools in order to ssh into a server from a Windows 10 machine. My disappointment in how it worked was even larger than I would have anticipated.

It seems weird that we are decades into using the Internet, and Windows tools still really lack at doing server support. Apparently, I am not alone, though, and Microsoft has included a bash shell from no less than Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, in their latest developer release.

And, I even heard it would support ssh.

This gave me a burning desire to at least give it a try.

The downside is that I had to get my computer back onto the Windows Insider Program, which meant re-enabling a lot of the more chatty portions of Windows 10 that were locked down for privacy reasons. However, that’s part of the deal that you are supposed to give feedback and such as part of the program, so this is actually a case where some of these otherwise intrusive elements makes sense.

Well, I finally got the Insider preview installed, and I enabled the Subsystem for Linux (Beta). You can read more about the entire procedure at FossBytes‘ “How To Install And Run Bash On Ubuntu On Windows 10 Right Now“. I opened a command prompt and typed “bash” and pressed [Enter]. The installation took a little longer than I had anticipated, but a while later I had an actual bash shell.

OK, but is this anything like opening a terminal in Linux? Can I really ssh and paste a password into the shell instead of typing everything on the command line like it’s 1993?

Sure enough, I opened a browser and copied the password from LastPass and pasted it into the bash window and I was on! Not only did ssh work, but the entire command window behaved similarly to a terminal window in Linux!

OK, I’m not giving up Arch tomorrow, but at least if I’m stuck on a Windows box, I can at least use familiar tools and not have to rely upon programs that simply don’t live up to the expectations.