Meltdown and Spectre patches have been rereleased and they don’t crash AMD machines any more!   During january’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released patches for both Meltdown and Spectre. They worked, too.  Well, for Intel processors, anyway.  AMD processors didn’t have as great an experience.  Some AMD based computers ended up getting bricked.  Once the reports of this reached Microsoft, they pulled the patches, cand cancelled Patch Tuesday. On 2018-01-17, Microsoft rereleased AMD based patches for Windows 10.  What makes this a bit confusing for many is that depen ..read more

Sometimes even being one of the hottest social media platforms isn’t enough… I’ve been involved in social media platforms since before we called them social media platforms. I had an AOL account. I had a Prodigy account and a CompuServe account; and those services, by today’s standards are largely what Facebook is today. It’s funny how things change over the years. One of the newer and more popular social media platforms today, Snapchat, owned by Snap, was recently reported to have gone through a reduction in force of nearly 24 people. The company seems to be having a couple of funding and gr ..read more

My office implemented both Meltdown and Spectre patches over the weekend… In the previous weeks, both the Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilities have been making a great deal of news. At my office – a financial firm – a Windows shop running Windows 7 (like most of the business world), implemented Windows based patches this past weekend. The results, especially in some of our older hardware, haven’t been very good. Thankfully, those machines are non-critical, non-business systems: For example, those that are used to display presentations in a conference room during a meeting. Unfortunat ..read more

You’d be surprised by the answer (or at least you should have been)… I’ve been an iPhone user on and off since 2008. I started with an iPhone 3G, which I ditched inside of three months because the bloody thing couldn’t take or make a call without dropping it at least – literally – a dozen times or more. More recently, I’ve been dealing with a different iPhone problem. I’ve got iPhone 6’s and iPhone 7 Plus’ in my house. Since Apple’s whole “Batterygate” thing hit the news, things have been a bit crazy for nearly every iPhone owner I know of. Case in point – I was recently contacted by a buddy o ..read more

There’s always a chance that something that’s supposed to work, won’t… So, many – well most of you, actually – don’t know; but I was in a motor vehicle accident just after Christmas 2017. Someone lost control of their vehicle and smashed into the rear driver’s side door of my car on a very, busy US interstate highway during the evening rush hour, commute home. I spun out over three lanes of oncoming traffic and hit the wall, going about fifty (50) MPH (80.5 KPH), It wasn’t pretty; and I’m mending as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, my car was totaled; and I was forced to purchase a ne ..read more

Quickly check for Windows 10 system updates with this handy how-to… Sometimes, checking for updates on your Windows 10 PC can be a pain. You either have to swipe open the Action Center and then open Settings, or get to Settings through the Start Menu. Then, you have to scroll down to Updates and Security and click it. While this isn’t a huge deal, it can be sort of a pain, as it involves a few steps. There’s actually a much easier way of taking care of manually checking for updates. This cool tip, however, is going to require you to make some modifications to your Windows 10 computer’s Registr ..read more

In an expected 3-2 party line vote, the FCC has voted to end Net Neutrality… Well, this was disappointing; but not unexpected… Today, the United States Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to repeal the Obama-era internet regulations aimed at insuring that the internet didn’t have pay to access lanes for consumer oriented content. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai cast the landmark tying breaking vote, providing ISP’s like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon the power to control what content consumers can access. Many different groups, including Democrats, many movie studios and compani ..read more

If you have an Apple Watch Series 3 with active LTE service, you’re likely in for a nasty surprise. Back when the Apple Watch Series 3 first launched earlier in the Fall of 2017, carriers promised that LTE service for your new Series 3 Apple Watch, would cost only $10 USD per month; and it does. Sorta. In the beginning, carriers offered three months of free service and waived the activation fees. At this point, everyone that got their Series 3 Watch on the day it was first made available at the Store, is likely being charged for service. However, as I mentioned earlier, $10 bucks isn’t always ..read more

The Jelly Pro takes on the Goliath’s of the Android World with the smallest form factor since 2006 (or so)… Introduction I remember back in the day – and I’m really targeting the 2006 – 2009 time frame, just before, and right after the face of the smartphone industry changed with the impact of the release of the original iPhone in 2007, small one-handed devices were all the rage. At this point, the world was used to small, one hand operable candy bar styled phones. Phones just like the Jelly Pro. I’ve got one for review; and I’ve already done an of this phone and have posted it for everyone to ..read more

This new feature in the Fall Creators Update is taking many by surprise… If you’ve got the Fall Creators Update on your Windows 10 PC, then you’ve probably noticed a new feature that Microsoft is calling “Fast Startup.” The feature claims to improve the speed of your boot times, so you spend less time waiting on your PC to boot and more time working, being productive. Windows has this feature enabled by default, so if you’re using the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, then, you’re likely booting faster than you were before, and have likely noticed it. Most users will like the faster booting tim ..read more