What's New

Given that I have been writing the odd article here and there about server work, hosting, VPS and the like, I thought that perhaps an article about editing configuration files / text documents in a command line scenario might be a good idea.

There are a few major text editors out there, some more user-friendly while some are more complex but bring extra power and configuration (I'm looking at you Vim.)

The move from legacy add-ons to WebExtensions introduces a permissions system that is similar to the one used by Google Chrome extensions.

WebExtensions may request certain permissions. These are displayed to the user during installation, and are also listed on the add-ons page on the Mozilla website.

Add-on authors may integrate new functionality and additional permissions in add-on updates. This is required for instance when the add-on uses new APIs that require extra permissions.

Google plans to remove the two YouTube features Video Editor and Photo slideshows from the popular video hosting and streaming service.

Nintendo may be working on the next console of its retro revival series: the Nintendo N64 Classic Mini, or short N64 Classic.

Nintendo's classic consoles are very popular. The company released the NES Classic console back in 2016 which started the craze. The SNES Classic Edition will be out in September 2017, and it appears that the company is not finished yet.

Motion Stills, an experimental short video creation application by Google, has been released by the company for the Android platform.

Google launched Motion Stills in June 2016 for iOS, and has now brought the application to Android as well.

Google lists the application as experimental and hints that it may integrate the functionality into company products such as Google Photos if it is well received.

Mozilla has just released Firefox Focus 1.1 for Android. Firefox Focus is a mobile browser that puts the much of its focus on user privacy.

The organization released Firefox Focus -- known as Firefox Klar in German speaking countries -- about a month ago for Android.

More than one million Android users have downloaded and installed the mobile browser in the past month. The browser is not only popular, but also highly rated with its review score of 4.5 based on more than 9100 ratings at the time of writing.

Wireshark 2.4.0 is a major new version of the popular network protocol analyzer for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X devices.

The application is available as a 32-bit and 64-bit installer for Windows, and as a portable version for Windows as well. One of the new features is experimental support for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows installer packages (msi).

The WebExtension version of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin has landed on Mozilla's official Add-ons website for the Firefox web browser.

A big upcoming shift from legacy add-ons to WebExtensions forces add-on developers to port their legacy add-ons to ensure compatibility with Firefox 57 and newer versions of the browser.

Microsoft confirmed to Zdnet yesterday that it will support PCs with Intel's Clover Trail processor with security updates until 2023.

Microsoft announced today that it is expanding support for OneDrive's version history feature to all file types stored by the service.

OneDrive supported the restoration of document file formats by using the service's version history feature up until recently.

Avast just announced that the company has acquired the software company Piriform, best known for the software program CCleaner for Windows.

Microsoft plans to roll out a change in the coming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update that aims to reduce the time the computer is installing the update.

The new feature shifts some processes which are currently processed during installation of the update.

Microsoft separates Windows 10 updates into online and offline phases. The process begins with the online phase. Windows Update finds a new update for the PC and starts to download it.

Malwarebytes AdwCleaner 7.0 has been released; it is a complete rewrite of the security application that Malwarebytes, maker of the popular security solution Malwarebytes, acquired in October 2016.

AdwCleaner is a specialized tool for Windows that scans the system for adware or changes caused by adware to remove those and restore the previous state of the system.

So, I recently purchased a new (used, but new to me) laptop, that had a 1TB 5400RPM Hard Disk in it, granted the laptop is fairly powerful and capable of modern gaming, rendering, and number crunching thanks to a 4th generation i7 CPU and a Dedicated 2GB GDDR5 GPU. However, the HDD seemed to be running awfully slowly, even for a 5400RPM drive.

The most recent build of Microsoft Edge on the Windows 10 Insider channel comes with a change that hides some preferences on the browser's about:Flags page.

Microsoft Edge is a rather bare bones web browser when you compare its feature set to other browsers out there. It is like Notepad on Windows, a good but not great program that you can use for basic tasks.

When you compare options that Edge ships with, with those of Google Chrome or Firefox, you will soon realize that you don't get a lot of them in the default Windows 10 browser.