AVG aint been ish for a while but I expected better of Avast…. oops on me…
Mozilla removed today four Firefox extensions made by Avast and its subsidiary AVG after receiving credible reports that the extensions were harvesting user data and browsing histories. Continue reading
New toys to play with… I can use this for some things hehehehe
VideoCleaner is a forensic video enhancement application that is used by law enformencement agencies and forensic experts.
Technically it is not an application on its own, but a script executed in a different software, but for the sake of understanding what it does, let’s call it a program. Continue reading
One of my best kept secrets when I used to clean up folks PCs… still dunno how much I trust Kapersky and their ties to the Russian government
Your antivirus or antimalware suite keeps your system clean. At least, it does most of the time. Security programs are better than ever, but some malware still squeezes through the gaps. There is also the other common issue: the human touch. Where there is a human, there is a chance for malware to slip through. Continue reading
I may check this out myself because Emby & Plex were OK but I like options…
When you install a media server program on your computer, it becomes your host server. You can connect to it from your phone and stream the media that’s stored on your computer’s hard drive. Think of it like YouTube or Spotify, but your computer is the server and the content that is available is based on the media files on the computer. Continue reading
Good info here….
You probably know that your smartphone’s operating system needs to be regularly updated to protect against security vulnerabilities. But your SIM card can be a source of security vulnerabilities too. Here we’ll show you some ways hackers can use SIM cards to gain access to devices, and advice on how you can keep your SIM card safe. Continue reading
While getting my new setup together, I have been doin a lil gaming especially BroForce since I can pick it up and play anywhere…. Continue reading
I had this BS happen to a couple accounts of mine…. smh @ Google
Spammers have found a way to add unwanted phishing and scam events to people’s Google Calendars without their permission. Here’s how to stop spammers from adding things to your calendar without your permission. Continue reading
This brings back so many memories…
Early internet users communicated with each other via Bulletin Board Systems, or BBS. Popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, these digital hubs allowed users to dial-up on a modem and chat on public message boards or through private chats, play text-based games, and even transfer files, from computer art to cracked software.
Pirated software, known as “warez,” was accompanied by ANSI art—a form of flashy hacker graffiti that credited the software crackers responsible for providing the illicit files. Eventually, ANSI art became its own subculture, with computer artists competing to develop new fonts and imagery in all its 8-bit glory.
A new documentary, The Art of Warez, directed by artist and filmmaker Oliver Payne in collaboration with one-time ANSI artist Kevin Bouton-Scott, dives into this world of warez and ANSI art. Payne told Motherboard that he met Bouton-Scott while teaching a course on video games at ArtCenter in Pasadena, California. The former ANSI artist schooled Payne on warez and ANSI subculture.
“Whilst graffiti exists illegally on private and public property, ANSI originally existed on (and to take credit for) illegally pirated software,” Payne said. “As they are criminal activities, both require anonymity and the use of a tag name to achieve notoriety within the scene. The best artists create fresh fonts using crazy color combinations and go hard to make as many dope ANSIs as they can. It’s totally hacker graffiti and the folk art movement of the proto cyber crime scene.”
Bouton-Scott said that ANSI art still feels mysterious to him after all these years. A graffiti artist as a kid, his transition into the ANSI scene felt completely natural to him.
“We were all completely obsessed with this stuff, going to enormous lengths to make the artwork and get the art packs together, trying to get good reviews in the electronic magazines that would write about all the latest work,” Bouton Scott said.
Payne thinks it’s remarkable that something so cool could remain virtually unknown. Bouton-Scott noted that many ANSI artists, who were also into coding and making VGA graphics and demos, later became graphic designers and likely influenced the look of the early web.
“As youth subcultures go, this might be the best one,” Payne said. “It combines so many wonderful things—hacking, video games, graffiti, freedom of information, fantasy art, mecha anime, anarchist literature, comic book monsters, [phone] phreaking.”
Bouton-Scott said the digital archivist Jason Scott, who works for the Internet Archive, teamed up with RaD MaN, founder of the ANSI group ACiD, to create a database of the art packs that still existed in the early 2000s. They are now available for download on Scott’s website, textfiles.com.
For Bouton-Scott, the ANSI scene has no contemporary parallel. But if there were one, he believes it would be comprised of teenagers, as social media for “creative adults” is dominated by entrepreneurialism, branding, and self-commodification.
“The ANSI scene was quite the opposite of this,” said Bouton-Scott. “It was a self-contained labor of love, pro-crime, anti-copyright, facilitating the very real need of free-software for young computer users.”
The Art of Warez, produced by safecrackers x somesuch, premieres online today (July 31) at SafeCrackers.
Seems like Time Machine for Windows….
If you have used Windows System Restore, you may know that it isn’t always reliable. To make matters worse, it may not even be enabled on some machines by default.
RollBack Rx is a free to use Windows Time Machine software which is in many regards better in my opinion. The program is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows from Windows XP on including Windows 10. Continue reading
I delete my google recordings once a month… and that was before I knew people were listening although I always assumed they were…
It’s been in the news for weeks: Employees and contractors at Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are listening to recordings of you talking to voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana. Here’s how to stop humans from listening in. Continue reading
