What's New

VideoLAN, maker of the popular VLC Media Player for various desktop and mobile operating systems, plan to release VLC 3.0 final to the public soon.

Update: VLC 3.0 is out.

The new version of the multimedia player is already on the official FTP server. The company released a total of nine release candidate builds before that and used these builds to fix various issues before the final release.

Microsoft released non-security updates for the Office suites Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 2013, and Microsoft Office 2016 on the February 2018 Office Patch Day.

The first Tuesday of each month is Office Patch Day at Microsoft but the company limits the releases to non-security updates. Security updates follow on the second Tuesday of each month.

Please note that the updates apply not to click-to-run installations of Microsoft Office, for instance Office 365 Home, but only to msi-installer-based editions.

Rather than a very straightforward tutorial type article, I thought I would tell you a true story of what happened to me immediately before writing this, and how I solved it.

A lot happens in the background when you upgrade Windows 10 to a new version. All of it is automated and of little interest to the user or admin unless something goes wrong.

If the worst case scenario happens, you end up with an unusable version of Windows 10 or the previous version of Windows if the rollback was successful.

Error codes may point you in the right direction, but more often than not it is essential to analyze log files that Windows creates during the upgrade process.

While there are plenty of things online that can break your concentration or focus on a task, autoplaying video or audio surely is at the top of "don't like" list for many Internet users.

One has to distinguish between autoplaying media with and without sound, as that makes a difference. While you can ignore videos that play automatically if they are silent for the most part, it is impossible to do so if sound is enabled by default.

After launching YouTube Go in India about a year ago, Google is in the process of rolling out YouTube Go to more than 130 countries. While the app may not yet be available in your country, the chance is good that it will become available eventually.

Mozilla introduced Sync functionality in Firefox a long time ago. Sync came in the form of the add-on Mozilla Weave first but was integrated into the Firefox web browser later on to provide all users of the browser with sync functionality.

Mozilla changed how Sync works in Firefox with the release of Firefox 29 by switching over to a new account system that allowed authentication using an email address and password opposed to keys that the previous version of Sync required.

GPU DeClicker is a free program for Microsoft Windows systems to remove "clicks", "pops", "bit rots" and other types of noise from audio files.

Designed primarily for audio files recorded from vinyl disks, GPU DeClicker removes noise from any supported audio file you throw at it.

The current version of the program is listed as beta. While it works fine as it is, it comes without graphical user interface as this is still on the developer's to-do list.

I was greeted by a Recovery error message the other day when I powered up a PC running Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system. The recovery screen stated that "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired. The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors".

The PC shut down properly the day before and the whole thing was mysterious. The Recovery screen suggested to use recovery tools or contact a PC administrator or the PC/Device manufacturer for assistance.

Read on to find out how I repaired the PC and how you can do it as well.

Trend Micro security researchers identified 89 different malicious extensions for Google Chrome that use Session Replay functionality to log user activity while using the browser.

Session Replay scripts are analytics scripts that record user activity on websites. Companies use it to understand what users do on their sites by recording mouse movement, keyboard input and other interactions with the page in question.

Research suggests that nearly 1% of the top 50,000 Alexa websites use Session Replay scripts including WordPress, Microsoft, Adobe, Godaddy or Softonic.

The author of the popular Firefox add-on Tab Mix Plus released the first version of the upcoming WebExtensions-based version of Tab Mix Plus yesterday.

The extension is available under a new URL on the Mozilla Add-ons Store to separate the classic add-on from the new.

When Microsoft revealed Windows 10 S in mid-2017, some believed that it was a return of the dead-before-it-shipped operating system Windows RT.

It was a low-cost version of Windows 10 designed for low-end hardware and "light-use" environments, and it only supported Windows Store apps.

Blocksum is a puzzle game for Windows PCs that mixes elements from Tetris, 2020 (if that game existed back in 2007), and Dr. Mario.

Whereas you try to fill lines completely in Tetris to remove them and move blocks of the same number next to each other in 2020, you use basic math in Blocksum to create adjacent blocks of the same sum to have them all removed at once.

On Jan. 30., Redhat announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire CoreOS, Inc, for $250 million. CoreOS, is a major player in the containers and virtualization area of the corporate server / development world.

Adobe released the security advisory APSA18-01 for Flash Player that confirms a critical security vulnerability in Flash Player 28.0.0.137 and earlier.

Flash Player 28.0.0.137 is the most recent version of the program which means that all installed versions of Flash are affected by it.

Affected products: