TAME YOUR TECH By Susan Bradley As my dad turns 98 years young today, I am reminded that technology is deeply integrated into his daily life. Yet, much of this daily tech is not geared toward his needs. Although he is — thankfully — not in an assisted-living space, we have friends who are. They […]

ISSUE 23.31.1 • 2026-08-06 By Susan Bradley The upcoming August updates include several promised fixes for Windows Search. The August updates will include several fixes, a few of which specifically target Search. I anticipate that the August updates will also bring a bumper crop of other vulnerabilities being patched, so I’m raising the MS-DEFCON level […]

I’m sure you’ve seen the news that there have been recent cyber-attacks from external attackers on various water systems in the United States.  Just the other day, PG&E changed out the gas smart meter at my home. All these smart devices provide a ton of benefit but also the potential for risk. Does your local […]

The latest release of Firefox 153.0.3 includes several enhancements: Smart Window includes: The suggestion list now shows more results, making it easier to find history and switch to open tabs. (Bug 2019042) The assistant can now answer questions directly using web search results from Exa, instead of handing off to a search engine. (Bug 2046183, Bug […]

ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley OpenAI’s recent attack on another company’s cloud instances reminds me that sometimes we forget the basics. As we understand the situation at the moment, OpenAI’s test platform was meant to be isolated and not connected to the Internet. But because it needed to download certain items, it was given read-only […]

If you missed it the other day, SANS has a recording of its recent live-panel discussion of the OpenAI/Hugging Face breach. It points to nine questions to ask your security teams. But what about us as users of all of these systems where we don’t have a lot of control? For me, it gets back […]

In the news: Microsoft reported blowout fiscal Q4 2026 earnings today, and the stock is jumping hard in after-hours trading. Here ae the headlines: Revenue: $90.0 billion, up 18% year-over-year, well above the roughly $87.6 billion analysts expected Net income: $35.8 billion (GAAP), up 31%; diluted EPS of $4.81 GAAP / $4.74 adjusted, versus a […]

Cash may be king but pay-over-time is the new way that many manufacturers are getting around the sticker shock of technology. Apple announced its version just yesterday. Microsoft has long had a business Surface leasing program called LiftForward. And, of course, you can always pay for your cell phone over time through a phone company. […]

ISSUE 23.30.1 • 2026-07-28 By Susan Bradley • Comment about this alert Today, I want to tell you that I’m less worried about the side effects of this month’s security updates from Windows, Apple, and Linux distros. I’m more concerned about security in the AI industry in general. July saw the first side effects of […]

ON SECURITY Tracking the attacker By Susan Bradley Recently, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, and others released updates illustrating how much we are being impacted by AI. The three major vendors either sped up releases or released updates with a massive number of vulnerabilities. But does that make us more unsecure? Before I discuss some side effects […]

When I resize a hard drive’s partition, most of the time I can easily expand it. Then there are those times I have to use a third-party tool to boot under the operating system and resize the drive. It always makes me wonder why, in the year 2026, this process still has to be done […]

The latest in AI wars has to do with AI being used by attackers. There is a recent case in which a company that used to provide a chatbot app for teenagers pivoted to being a platform for machine learning. The firm is called Hugging Face. To me, that’s a non-serious company name. But what […]

I often see voice recognition software being touted as a way around keyboard issues. But the brick wall I see is spreadsheets.  Telling Excel what do to versus DOING it, it’s just something I can’t see being efficient. Recently on a list I saw someone tout this tool called Wispr flow. For the record it […]

One of the things I do in the office is keep abreast of upcoming password changes and help folks in the office navigate the change. Entra is going to be rolling out a keypass only for anyone still using phone codes. But even in the iPhone ecosystem, one of my users is having an issue with […]

ISSUE 23.29 • 2026-07-20 PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley Well, the benefits of AI are clearly here — at least in terms of bug counts. Microsoft fixed 621 vulnerabilities this time around. However, take a breath — a big breath. Even with all those fixes that encompass both Windows and .NET, the updates are pushed […]

Some Dell devices with a specific Intel driver might experience poor performance Affected platforms Client Versions Message ID Originating KB Resolved KB Windows 11, version 25H2 WI1427598 KB5095093 KB5121767 Windows 11, version 24H2 WI1427599 KB5095093 KB5121767 After installing the June 23, 2026, Windows non-security preview update (the Originating KBs listed above), a limited number of […]

One of the side effects of changing the US daylight savings time (DST) rules is that your computer systems must be adjusted. Recently, British Columbia changed its rules and, as of yet, Windows hasn’t been adjusted to reflect it. As a workaround, BC residents can select Arizona. It does not participate in DST, so its […]

On an annual basis we have to let Microsoft know if/why we want to be a MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional). And every year no matter how much Microsoft has annoyed you or me, I feel that I can do more good having a pipeline to better give feedback.  Clearly not all of my feedback […]

I’ve updated the master patch list here.  Please note I am not recommending installing updates at this time, we are just testing and reporting. I’ll be updating that page and monitoring for issues. So far there is a known issue that Microsoft is holding back updates for certain Dell machines that will have issues. It’s expected […]

Today is the day that a certain security researcher was supposed to drop something awful on the Windows ecosystem. It’s unclear to me if the “awful thing” has yet to be dropped or if it’s already been patched behind the scenes. Bottom line today is just like every other normal release date. We need to […]