Free Republic

English: The free logo of Microsoft Windows of simple shapes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Free may be good when it comes to some things but until recently, I always thought free and OS were not synonymous with quality, unless you were talking about the poor variety. I gave Apple some grief awhile back when it made its operating system, OS X Mavericks free to download and use. Most of my criticism was directed at how we, the consumers, became Apple’s primary software testers. I also spoke harshly with respect to the degrading quality of the system software releases that could be...

Google probably knows more about you than your mother, your partner, your boss... but chances are that you have no idea of just how much it knows. Fortunately, there's an easy way to open your eyes to the scale of just what the world's most popular search engine knows about you, your interests and your peccadillos. You may find yourself squirming when you realise Google never forgets what you've been typing into its search engine over the years, but, at least afterwards, you'll be able to do something about it. First things first, take a deep breath and visit: https://history.google.com/history/...

Published: May 12, 2015 Version: 1.0 On this page Executive Summaries Exploitability Index Affected Software Detection and Deployment Tools and Guidance Acknowledgments Other Information This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for May 2015. For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications. Microsoft also provides information to help customers prioritize monthly security updates with any non-security updates that are being released on the same day as the monthly security updates. Please see the section, Other Information.

Elon Musk's relationship with Google cofounder Larry Page is complicated, to say the least. On the one hand, the two influential tech CEOs are close friends and business associates; on the other hand, Musk is genuinely worried that Page might just lead to the destruction of humanity as we know it. "I'm really worried about this," Musk is quoted as saying in Elon Musk, a new authorized biography of the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. "This," according to the book, refers to the possibility that Page would develop artificially-intelligent robots that could turn evil and have the ability to annihilate...

With Microsoft Edge, we want to fundamentally improve security over existing browsers and enable users to confidently experience the web from Windows. We have designed Microsoft Edge to defend users from increasingly sophisticated and prevalent attacks. This post covers some of the advanced technologies used to protect Microsoft Edge, including industry leading sandboxing, compiler, and memory management techniques developed in close partnership with Windows. Web Security Threats While the web is predominantly a safe environment, some sites are designed to steal money and personal information. Thieves by nature don’t care about rules, and will use any means to take advantage...

A critical vulnerability in MacKeeper, a controversial security program for Mac computers, could let attackers execute malicious commands on Macs when their owners visit specially crafted Web pages. MacKeeper’s developers acknowledged the recently discovered problem and released a fix for it Friday, saying in a blog post that users should run MacKeeper Update Tracker and install version 3.4.1 or later. [Editor's note: We have instructions on how to uninstall the MacKeeper app and how to stop MacKeeper notifications from appearing in Safari.] MacKeeper registers itself as the handler for a custom URL scheme, allowing websites to automatically call the application...

A Californian start-up is seeking funding to make a computer that will cost $9 (£6) in its most basic form. Next Thing wants $50,000 to finish development of the credit-card sized Chip computer. The first versions will have a 1Ghz processor, 512MB of Ram and 4GB of onboard storage. The gadget, due to go on general release in early 2016, could become yet another rival to the popular Raspberry Pi barebones computer.

If you’ve got an unused computer with solid state storage inside, you might want to back up its data before too long. A new research presentation shows that solid state drives can lose data over time if they aren’t powered on, especially in warmer environments. A powered-off drive in 104 degrees Fahrenheit may start seeing data loss after a couple of weeks. The information comes from Seagate’s Alvin Cox, who was part of a presentation to the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC). Though the presentation is a couple of months old, it was recently picked up by ZDNet, Slashdot...

Walmart and a host of other retailers are trying to make inroads in the mobile payments marketplace. And they're failing. One of the most interesting, least talked about wars in tech is turning into a rout. Ever since Apple launched Apple Pay last year, the iPhone maker has been waging battle against an unexpected competitor: Walmart. And America’s largest retailer is losing badly. A quick recap on the story so far: Walmart has spent years fighting for lower “interchange fees,” the 1% to 3% charge that retailers pay to card-issuing banks on every credit-card transaction the retailers process. Those fees...

Talk of Windows 10 being the 'last version' of Windows has been circulating for a year. What does this really mean? The answer: Not much. As Microsoft made clear last year by skipping "Windows 9" when going from Windows 8 to Windows 10, Windows version numbers are an arbitrary thing. That's why all this talk about Windows 10 being the "last version of Windows" is a nothing to see here moment. Many of us Microsoft watchers had been saying that Threshold (Windows 10) would be the last major version of Windows for months, if not a year. Microsoft Developer Evangelist...

... Easter had a top-secret job offer. If Moseley accepted, he would have to commit for four years, he couldn't tell anyone about the job and he would have to accept the job before knowing what it was. "And he said, 'You've got 30 seconds and if you don't say yes, this conversation never happened.' Well, that was just too intriguing to turn down," Moseley says. "So I said, 'Absolutely.' And he'd given me a telephone number and an intersection." ...

In yet another sign that Microsoft is a very different animal these days, the company has released PowerShell DSC (desired state configuration) for Linux. PowerShell DSC is a server configuration tool that has hitherto driven Windows Server boxen. But Microsoft's now decided it has a “commitment to common management of heterogeneous assets in your datacenter or the public cloud”, so has added Linux-wrangling features to the tool. The new code can cope with CentOS, Debian GNU/Linux, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Ubuntu Server. Once you get it up and running you can enjoy the...

Researchers find more serious flaws. Lenovo has been accused of putting users at "massive security risk" through newly-discovered flaws in its online product update service which allow hackers to download malware onto user systems through a man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attack. The holes were revealed by security firm IOActive, just weeks after Lenovo was found to be shipping PCs with pre-installed ‘Superfish' adware that also left its users open to MITM attacks. In an advisory today, IOActive researchers Michael Milvich and Sofiane Talmat said they had discovered “high-severity” privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Lenovo's system update service, which enables users to download the...

With the sizes slimming down, it is certainly not a huge surprise that we have a Chip sized computer amidst us. What is really astonishing is the fact that this chip sized computer costs only $9 and can do literally everything for you. The Chip as it has been named runs on Linux and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as well.In fact, CHIP from Next Thing Co. also offers a VGA or an HDMI post for monitors, adding immense versatility to it. To be true, this is certainly one invention that all of us might just have been looking forward to.CHIP has...

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 16.20.51 Prominent community developer and jailbreaker Comex has posted a video showing a successful hack of Watch OS to get the device running a web browser. In the video, Comex has managed to get the Google homepage to render on the small Watch display. Apple does not include a Safari browser app on the Watch, for obvious reasons. The video shows that scrolling around even basic web pages on a tiny display is impractical. More importantly, the video shows that it is possible to get the Watch to run arbitrary code. This could be the...

During a recent study, researchers found that women with a glam look although attract men more easily, men usually don’t trust them. However, the findings of the study are suggesting that women find well-groomed men more reliable. These findings have made the already complicated world of online dating even more complicated. Those who think that uploading their hottest picture is the best way of getting suitable dating partners should take the above findings into consideration; this is because by looking too hot you might make people feel that you are “too hot to trust”. The said study was conducted for...

SASSY Carly Fiorina Has a Unique Way of Dealing with Chuck Todd. The link takes you to the DC home page where the piece is proceeded by the super title "SASSY" while the article itself doesn't include that reference. I just find it interesting choice of words. Sassy? Has Ted Cruz been Sassy? I bet bitchy and hysterical will be used too at some point. I know it was meant lovingly but others might not see that way.

Market declines will continue in 2015 as PC growth engines grind to a halt Shanghai, Palo Alto, Singapore and Reading (UK) – The global PC market, including tablets, experienced an annual decline of 7% in Q1 2015, reaching 115.7 million units worldwide. Apple held on to first place despite a 16% decline in its total PC shipments. It shipped 17.2 million units, taking a 15% share of the market. Lenovo and HP, second and third place respectively, both saw single-digit shipment growth in Q1 2015 and increases in market share. Samsung narrowly held on to fourth spot as its declining...

Storage. It's not a sexy topic. But everyone uses it in some way or another. You have iPhones, you have computers. Everyone knows how important a person's data is. But it doesn't just "disappear." Or does it? New research suggests that newer solid-state hard drives, which are faster and offer better performance, are vulnerable to an inherent flaw -- they lose data when they're left dormant in storage for periods of time where the temperature isn't properly regulated. The worrying factor is that the period of time can be weeks, months, but even in some circumstances -- just a few...

Many media analysts worry that the algorithm-powered way most American get their news on sites like Facebook leads to a "bubble" -- where users eventually only see news and perspectives that they agree with. It's a problem if you believe the capital-T Truth can only be reached by challenging your own viewpoint. But that's your problem, because it's your fault, says Facebook. After studying millions of its most political users, Facebook released a research report in the journal Science this week officially placing the blame for myopic news feeds not on its algorithms, but on users' choices. "In the end,...