Techno babel, decoded.

There is a lot of talk about Virtual Machines now but the reality is that it's not for everyone.  TLDR:  Do you play online or graphic intensive games? Don't use a VM.               Do you do heavy video editing or work?  Don't use a VM.               Do you browse on the web ALOT?  It might be a good idea to use a VM.               Do you watch a lot of porn? It might be a good idea to use a VM. Now, for a more in depth look at when and why to virtualize a computer.  Let's say you are heavily into gaming, but you want to keep your work stuff separate from your gaming stuff.  So on your Windows computer you create a Virtual Machine which is basically a computer within the computer.  Microsoft does this through a special service called Hyper-V which is just a fancy name for software based hardware. There are other virtual machine vendors out there like VMware, Virtual Box, Parallels. What a virtual machine does is create a virtual physical computer which you c

Today we are going to talk about how much drive space you need at home. Let me start with a story from when I was young.  I convinced my parents (This was before I could even drive) to buy me a 100 meg hard drive for my computer.  I was amazed at how much space there was on this thing and I never thought I would fill it up.  (Of course I was limited to 56k bandwidth at the time aka dial-up.)   Now I can take pictures and videos on my mobile phone that could fill up that old hard drive in a matter of seconds. Fast forward many years and we create a lot of data.  No really, a lot of freaking data.   I want on a trip recently and took a lot of pictures and videos and in one weekend I created about 100 gigs of data.  Now that is a lot of data and it was about 6 or 8 hours of HD video plus a lot of 10-12 mega pixel photos from a family vacation.  But that is a lot of data.   I am going to fill up my hard drives quick.   The largest drive I currently have is a 3TB (TeraByte) or 3,000 gig

If you are like me you find it hard to keep track of the multitude of passwords you use everyday.  Email, social media, work login, banking, every website now has their own "account" with their own special requirements for passwords.    How do you keep track of it all?  Well, some people have a sticky note under their keyboard (THIS IS NOT SAFE)! Some people keep a spreadsheet on their computer.  (This doesn't help you login to your computer if you forget that password). Here is what I use that has made my life real easy.  I use Keepass (no I have not been compensated by password safe in any way for this).   https://keepass.info/ I keep a keepass safe on my dropbox.  *GASP* Yes I keep my passwords on the cloud.  SHOCKING!    Here is why I'm not worried, I use a LONG password for this.  30+ Characters but REALLY easy for ME to remember but not for anyone else.  Create a passphrase or sentence and use that as your master password and then all your passwords beco

Let me give you the short and simple breakdown. UPDATED at 8:35est 1-3-18: This vulnerability affects AMD and many mobile chipsets as well. This means that basically every modern chipsets and OS is affected by this security vulnerability. Update:This should say INTEL, AMD and ARM instead of just INTEL. Original: INTEL has a bug in the way hardware addresses virtual memory in the chip.   This could allow hackers to access a lot of information that they shouldn't be able to and make it easier for them to take over your computer.  This will affect EVERY INTEL chip regardless of the Operating System.   All the Operating System vendors are releasing patches very soon to address this issue so it is CRITICAL that you DO YOUR PATCHES! On windows systems you are going to take a performance hit.  Your system will be slower after the patch, up to 30% slower.  Mac OS has been patched since 10.3.2 (if you aren't on this version upgrade ASAP.) and Linux should be getting a patch t

So I am pretty happy with most things Google and I don't mind most of the information gathering going on, but this latest report seems a bit sketchy and like a violation of privacy to me.  I am not a lawyer, but the practice of capturing location data even when you have location services disabled is questionable at best.   See this link for details.   google-collects-android-users-locations-even-when-location-services-are-disabled I know that location services can be enabled on a phone remotely by 911, but the fact that my location is continuously being monitored.  I mean, how am I supposed to hide the trips to the casino when I was supposed to be working?   I know Google and parent company Alphabet claim this is to provide the best ad experience possible, but you know what, I don't WANT that good of an Ad experience. I don't want to be tempted by Ad's every time I look at something.   I'm really good at not buying things everyday but the goal is to saturate you

Two easy things you can do to help you prevent infection on your home computer. (This assumes you already have some antivirus on there). I don't need to go into details why this is important and why you need to keep yourself safe.  If you don't know ask me and I'll write it in another post. 1.  DISABLE AUTO PLAY!    - Here is why this is SO important!  This is how malware gets INSTALLED on your computer.   You could download an email with an attached file, you move your mouse over the file, and hidden in the information that would display for that file is a script that would auto run that malware and install it on your system.   You might not even see any visible sign it installed, but suddenly your computer is sending spam, or mining bitcoins which you are getting a share of.  (Wow that's just mean.)  The scripts leverage the auto play functionality built into windows.   If that ability is turned off, you have just eliminated that threat. I once worked somewhere

While I know many of you probably aren't as tech savvy and don't have the need to access your home system remotely, it is very convenient for a lot of reasons. I often find myself using my home machine to test and see if there are network issues at my office.  Or maybe I was working on a project on my home computer and I forgot to save it to the cloud or a usb stick.  With TeamViewer I can remote connect to my desktop from my phone or any other device.   I use the free version since I mostly use it to help my dad fix his machine when he downloads something not so good. https://www.teamviewer.us/ I have not been paid or compensated by Teamviewer in any way other than making use of their product which is most excellent.

Hello folks, I know I have not been on in a while but I had a realization today when I showed one of my co-workers how I use google photos to back up all my pictures and video files!  Yes, all.  I realized what is second nature and common to me isn't for a lot of people so I'm going to resume sharing out my life tips.   Let's face it, what you really care about in life is your pics and videos.  Nobody cares if your tax returns file gets deleted.   But Pictures and Videos, those are our Memories!    Now... When I say BACKUP, I do mean BACKUP, as in oh my gosh my house burned down and all my computers are melted.   This is not , a sync like MS One Drive or Dropbox.    So what is this magical service where I can backup my pics and vids for free? *** Google Photos ***    Yes REALLY!  So for those who already have an Android phone you can set your phone to automatically backup to google photos.  But you can also adjust the google photos "app&qu