November 2024

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear "ad break"; probably TV or streaming ads.

What you probably did not have in mind is a new system that Facebook is rolling out to users in the European Union after it received a lot of flak for its "subscribe and pay money" or "continue to see ads" prompts in the EU.

Apple has released a critical update for macOS to patch a couple of zero-day vulnerabilities. The security patches are also available for iPhones and iPads.

Microsoft has released a lot of hardware throughout the years. Prominent examples are the company's Surface line of Windows devices, but also peripherals and other hardware.

The United States Department of Justice may force Google to sell Chrome. The news comes a few months after the company was found guilty of maintaining an illegal search monopoly.

Well, this is not completely unexpected, I had mentioned this in my previous coverage of the antitrust lawsuit.

I have visited Athens and Rome in the past couple of months and took a laptop with me to work from there. I refuse to use open Wi-Fi access points at airports, coffee shops, hotels or other locations.

The main reason for that is security and privacy. It is too easy to get attacked or your data snagged away. For that reason, I have switched to using my Android device as a mobile hotspot provider whenever I need to access the Internet, but do not have Ethernet or private Wi-Fi available.

Gmail users had an easy, but mostly superfluous, alias system at their disposal from the very beginning. I mentioned the trick in 2006 for the first time here on this blog. All you have to do is add +text to the username of the email address.

OpenAI has released the official ChatGPT app for Windows for all users. The company had released the desktop app for macOS in June 2024, before following it up with a Windows version that was released about a month ago.

Weak passwords continue to be a problem on today's Internet. It seems that many users continue to pick weak passwords that were weak 20 years ago and continue to be the weakest of the weak. It is probably part convenience and part not-knowing-better that play a role here.

VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion are now free for all users. Didn't Broadcom make them free already in March 2024?

Windows users who use a browser like Chrome on their devices as the main daily driver may be targeted by Microsoft's latest attempt at persuading them to switch to Edge.

The details:

• Microsoft Edge suddenly starts on system start on the devices.
• It displays a prompt that advertises the benefits of Edge.
• This prompt includes an option to import data from other browsers; checked by default.

When Edge launches on start, it displays the "Enhance your browsing experience with Copilot in Microsoft Edge" prompt.