ISSUE 23.19 • 2026-05-11 MICROSOFT 365 By Peter Deegan Outlook email rules are undergoing a major — and mostly unheralded — change. They’re going online. If the mailbox is stored online in a Microsoft-hosted service such as Outlook.com or Microsoft 365, then Outlook rules will run only in the cloud, not locally on your PC. […]

LEGAL BRIEF By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq. To err is no longer the exclusive province of humans. Apologies to Alexander Pope. Artificial intelligence has progressed from hallucinating to enticing humans to join in the hallucination. We need a new term for hybrid human-AI errors caused by reliance on AI hallucinations. I propose “mistaiks.” Read the […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen I just finished cleaning the carpets. Tomorrow, I have a load of soil and manure being delivered for the raised garden beds. Before I get into that, I’m going to help you spring-clean your computer. I’m not talking about blowing the fans out — you already know how to do […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley We might be a bit busy in the next few months. Not with updates, but dealing with headlines. Why? Because AI tools are now turning to the task of reviewing a lot of code that hasn’t been looked at in a long time. First up? No, not Windows. Not Apple. […]

ISSUE 23.18 • 2026-05-04 HARDWARE By Will Fastie Somewhere in the AskWoody archives, you’ll find an article stating my ultimate goal — to reduce the number of PCs on my desk from four to one. Hah. That didn’t happen. I did manage to cut it down to two, though. Then I bought a Mac mini. […]

HARDWARE By Will Fastie Physically putting the NAS together is easy. Setup takes some time. You’d think somewhere along the line I’d have deployed network-attached storage for someone, client or friend. This is the first time. It’s different from putting together a RAID solution for a business’s server or creating a mirror for my own […]

HARDWARE By Will Fastie With the NAS now up and running with an accessible storage volume, it’s time to make it useful. What’s useful? As stated in the previous articles, I want the contents of my D: drive out of my daily driver, Obsidian. But I still want all that data to be easily accessible. […]

ISSUE 23.17 • 2026-04-27 Look for our BONUS issue on May 4, 2026!! WINDOWS 11 By Lance Whitney A virtual machine provides the freedom and flexibility to work with different versions of Windows and play with new or untested apps and features. As a technology writer and journalist, I often have to test and review […]

PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston The maker of the popular Claude large language model (LLM) — which became the number-one download from US app stores in February 2026 — recently announced a powerful service called Claude Mythos. The new LLM has reportedly discovered thousands of security holes in every major operating system and Web browser. […]

WINDOWS 11 By Martin Brinkmann Here’s a surprising speed boost for everyday, heavy-duty tasks. It works on many Windows setups and costs nothing. When Microsoft rolled out Dev Drive for Windows 11 back in 2023, it slapped a massive “For Developers Only” sign on the feature. The pitch was that enterprise programmers compiling millions of […]

ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley One thing the World Wide Web has done in recent years is introduce new ways to scam, trick, entice, and generally be a drag on our time — and potentially a hit to our pocketbooks. Here are some threats I’ve seen in recent months. Read the full story in our […]

ISSUE 23.16 • 2026-04-20 Look for our BONUS issue on May 4, 2026!! SILICON By Matthew S. Smith Intel is back, baby … maybe? Once the undisputed king of CPUs, Intel entered a long, spiraling descent in the 2010s. This is a reality I know better than most, though (regrettably) not as well as some. […]

PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston I explained in my April 6, 2026, column that USB devices are becoming one of the most common ways hackers spread malware, using modified little gizmos that stroll past firewalls and are undetectable by security suites. At the end of that column, I promised to give you new information as […]

MICROSOFT 365 By Peter Deegan Copilot for Microsoft 365 is changing plans, prices, and features so often that it’s hard for anyone to keep up. Microsoft has just changed Copilot arrangements for business and enterprise users.  It’s not easy to keep track of what’s available when there are around 80 different products with the Copilot […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley One of my complaints on behalf of consumers is that information about the new security certificates for Secure Boot has been vague — nearly hidden. Unless you are an AskWoody reader, you might not even be aware that there is an issue with Secure Boot certificates — not to mention […]

ISSUE 23.15 • 2026-04-13 FROM THE FORUMS By Will Fastie Last week, we published a Public Defender column by Brian Livingston titled Any USB drive or cable you plug in might be a silent killer. You might have seen the reaction in the column’s forum topic. The forum exploded. So did my inbox. Read the […]

AI By Michael A. Covington Malfunctioning AI can hurt people. Preventing harm isn’t easy. To detect automatically whether an AI system is giving people bad advice, for instance, you’d need an AI that is smarter than the original one; and if you had it, you’d have used it in the first place. You see the […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen There are certain phrases that I type over and over and over again. “Be sure to run as administrator.” “Always read the license agreement.” “Happy Computing.” “No! I ordered the lavender Converse!” I’m sure my fingers would still type them if I nodded off. So when I stumbled across Quick […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley Someone recently asked whether they could install just the security part of Apple updates and ignore all the other parts. Just as with Microsoft Windows, the ability to get just the code that pertains to security issues, without changing anything else, is no longer an option. Neither Microsoft nor Apple […]

ISSUE 23.14 • 2026-04-06 PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston As if we didn’t already have enough malware to worry about, malicious hackers and state-sponsored cybercrime teams are turning ordinary-looking USB drives and cables into weapons that can infect or fry — within a single second — any computer or electronic component you plug them into. […]