Geekly Update - 06 October 2021
How soon will you be assimilated into the Metaverse? Are SSDs more (or less) reliable than traditional hard drives? Is Amazon's smart refrigerator destined to harvest your last shred of privacy? And what's the deal with mushballs and Uranus? Get answers in today's Geekly Update... it's jam-packed with the latest tech news. This issue is guaranteed to make you 146% smarter -- you'll see why. Read, think, and, comment! |
The AskBobRankin Geekly Update
Maybe you've heard about something called the Metaverse, and wondered what that's all about. If so, read What Is The Metaverse, And Do I Have To Care? to find out if the Metaverse will assimilate you, or if it's just Second Life reincarnated.
Frances Haugen, better known as the Facebook Whistleblower, is the former Facebook data scientist who went public in a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday. Haugen claims that Facebook deliberately "amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest" in order to maximize profits. But the folks at CBS News shouldn't be shocked. They (and most of the rest of the media) have pretty much the same agenda.
It may be coincidence, but the next morning, Some People Did Something, causing Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to go dark for about 6 hours. Billions of users around the globe twitched nervously, unable to post updates or send messages. According to one report, an industrial angle grinder was needed to cut through steel bars housing a critical server. Facebook says the unprecedented outage was caused by “configuration changes on the backbone routers.” Speculation about hacks and inside jobs abound.
Retailer Neiman Marcus just announced they suffered a data breach in May 2020, giving hackers and dark web miscreants 17 months to exploit stolen customer information including names, account passwords, credit card numbers, and answers to security questions. The company says only 4.6 million customers were affected, so probably nothing to see here, move along, people.
Cloud storage vendor Backblaze keeps detailed stats on the many thousands of hard drives that they employ to store customer backups. It has long been assumed that solid-state drives, which have no moving parts, fail less often than old-school spinning-disk magnetic hard disk drives. So Backblaze compared the stats for their SSDs and HDDs, and found that SSDs appear to have a slightly lower failure rate, but because they've only had SSDs since 2018, they don't have enough historical data to say for sure. Bottom line, buy an SSD for speed, and hope for longevity.
If you don't like the idea of paying a subscription fee for software, you now have the option to purchase a copy of Office 2021 for a one-time fee of $150. Office Home and Student 2021 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Teams for PC and Mac. Microsoft 365 Personal, the company's cloud-based alternative, costs $70 per year. (You also have the option to use one of the free office suites that are compatible with MS Office. See my article Still Using Microsoft Office… Why?)
Microsoft also officially launched Windows 11 this week. But Lansweeper, an IT asset management firm, gathered data on 30 million Windows PCs from 60,000 organizations and found that over 55% of business workstations are not capable of being upgraded. A large percentage of pre-2019 computers don't meet the strict Windows 11 hardware requirements.
This just in from the Sour Cream and Bacon Bits Department: Amazon already knows what's in your bedroom, living room, kitchen, and closets. Now they want to see inside your fridge. A report from Business Insider claims that Amazon is working on a smart refrigerator that can monitor your buying patterns and suggest new products or recipes. Oh, and your Cheez Whiz expired last year.
A ZDNet contributor says your iPhone 13 doesn't belong to you. The design makes it nearly impossible for third-party repairers to replace the display or battery, and you can't swap genuine parts from one iPhone to another. "Apple," he says, "wants to block all repairs that it doesn't get money from." (AppleCare is on track to bring in about $70 billion this year.)
And finally, today's Just Here for the Headline: "Mushballs – Giant, Slushy Hailstones Stash Away Missing Ammonia at Uranus". Okay, Neptune seems to be involved as well.
Your thoughts on these topics are welcome. Post your comment or question below...
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This article was posted by Bob Rankin on 6 Oct 2021
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Most recent comments on "Geekly Update - 06 October 2021"
Posted by:
bb
06 Oct 2021
I just upgraded a "unsupported" Toshiba C655 laptop, first released in 2011, from Windows 10 to Windows 11 home without losing any programs or files. Fully activated, no complaints from Microsoft.
Not surprisingly it works fine – there is nothing in Windows 11 that *requires* secure boot, UEFI, a TPM, or a new CPU made in the last 3 years. Internet searches found at least 3 ways of doing this, and for me it didn’t even throw up a warning while upgrading.
I have no argument against needing additional things in an OS - IF THEY ARE USED AND NEEDED. Apparently the new hardware requirements for Windows 11 are just to sell new PCs.
Posted by:
Jonathan
06 Oct 2021
An FTC Report to Congress Examined Anti-Competitive Repair Restrictions, Recommends Ways to Expand Consumers’ Repair Options.
If you’re told that your warranty was voided or that it will be voided because of a previous independent repair, we want to hear about it. Report it to the FTC at ReportFraud dot ftc dot gov.
Posted by:
Daniel Wiener
06 Oct 2021
Most of the time there's no strong reason to upgrade a software program or a computer when everything is working fine and meeting your needs. My principle computer is 7 years old, with Windows 7 Professional (which Microsoft still sometimes sends updates for). Although our family has additional computers, it would be an enormous pain to transfer all my programs and files to a newer one and risk some of my stuff failing. Similarly, I have no need to update my Quicken 2013 program. Regarding MS Office, back in 2014 my company offered employees an incredible deal: Purchase Office 2013 (including Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, PowerPoint, etc.) for just $9.95. I jumped at that, and have subsequently loaded it onto a number of computers without any problems. I have no need to update any of those programs to a more recent version, and I would NEVER want to trust cloud-based software or pay an annual fee.
Computer manufacturers and cell phone vendors and software companies have reached a level of maturity that obviates new versions. So they have only fluff and minor improvements to attempt to upsell with and thereby try to prevent their revenue streams from crashing. It works to the extent that many customers are enamored with buying the latest and greatest thing, even if it's only marginally greater (if that). Others like myself prefer the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" strategy.
Posted by:
Jonathan
06 Oct 2021
A few months ago our credit card offered free monitoring of our personal info on the dark web. It is free and we receive a report each month.
It is another little thing we can do to fight fraud, or at least know sooner than companies let us know our info is out there after a breach, if it has been used or offered for sale etc.
Posted by:
Kathleen A Dombrowski
07 Oct 2021
"Some People Did Something" Good One! Microsoft mail was down off and on all day too. Hotmail, Outlook.com and Live Mail. Something to do w/Business's that use Facebook were using Office Outlook???
Posted by:
Eli Marcus
07 Oct 2021
I am so glad that I don't use Facebook anymore...
although, not having access to Whatsapp and Instagram was a bit annoying... although I have many friends that moved to Signal messenger last year...
I am also glad I don't have to deal with Windows anymore, since I work at Red Hat (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and use only Linux platforms in the office and at home (Linux Mint).
I used to be a fan of Apple many years ago, when it was still open to community contributions and collaboration, but these days, it just seems to me like a another greedy money grubbing monopoly to stay away from...
Posted by:
SamG
10 Oct 2021
Since Windows XP Microsoft has been "upgrading" operating systems and trashing hardware and programs while doing so. Windows 98 and Dos gaming was the last time it was simple to use a joystick (what's a Joystick?) or controller. So thank you Eli for contributing to Linux. Which is even working on programming to run Windows games. In anticipation of installing and running Windows 10 (and 11) I dual boot Linux Mint on my laptops. And find that Mint can perform most of the common tasks Windows does. Boots quicker and shuts down quicker than Windows. But both my main laptops have hardware problems. One overheats. The lid hinge wore and broke on the other. After regurgitating Microsoft Windows operating systems for years, let's hope Linux continues to develop and flourish.
Posted by:
GregC
14 Oct 2021
MICROSOFT OFFICE FOR LESS:
Windows 10 will be fully supported for over FOUR more years. Only one of my Win 10 computers is upgradeable to Win 11, but at this point I am not concerned. A lot can change in four+ years so who knows what will happen?
Regarding MS Office, I haven't used Office for years. My friends buys licenses on ebay for a pittance, if they quite working after 6 months who cares? He installed Office on my laptop 5 years ago, I used it once, but it still works fine after all these years!
If you want to pay a whole lot less, but feel uncomfortable with ebay, there a few reputable places to buy legitimate MS licenses. Here is one from a youtuber I frequent: https://www.cdkdeals.com/office2019-professional-plus-cd-key-global.html?sscid=49981
I can never understand why MSoft pounds it to the little guy, and virtually GIVES AWAY its software to the likes of DELL. 15 years ago I used to sell computers, but couldn't compete when Dell was buying MSoft software for 10% of what I had to pay. Windows and Office would cost me $300, much more than the profit on an $1,500 computer.
On the plus side, MS has given away millions of copies of Win 10 for free so they are not completely without good points.