PRIVACY AND LINUX Introducing Kodachi! A linux BUILT for privacy and security!I have had a NUMBER of customers asking – whats the most PRIVATE and SECURE system you can build? Well, for the last few weeks I’ve been playing withan odd Linux Distribution – Kodachi and have some reports for you!First of all Linux is probably familiar to most of you. Under the hood, its a unix-like operating system – very much like MacOS (I mean at the command line, not the desktop, mac commands are very similar to linux commands). Its OPEN SYSTEM. Anyone can look at the source for the kernel or the various components. This means that – well its hard to HIDE that backdoor letting the FBI come visit your computer! someone would NOTICE it. Linux exists in various flavors (‘distributions’) Mint is a popular one, aiming at a ‘good desktop experience’. Ie more like windows. Ubuntu is another very common one. I use CentOS in all my server systems – one that is NOT bleeding edge, VERY stable, and can be updated safely.So – what the heck is Kodachi? Its a distribution that is built first – foremost – and almost entirely about privacy and

TOPTECH/THE ELDEST GEEK IS ADDING A NEW STRASBURG LOCATION!BUT WE ARE STILL IN ALEXANDRIA (AND WILL REMAIN!!!) 🙂Folks think the shop is moving. ITS NOT DONT WORRY! But I live at 425 Stover in Strasburg if you need to bring something by in the meantime! Call me first! WINDOWS 11 SHOCKER! Ran into it last week.A customer brought in their 3 month old windows 11 laptop for performance issues. I was horrified to find the SSD was at 92% in Crystaldisk.This is what you might expect after SEVERAL YEARS. It turns out WINDOWS 11 is DEATH ON SSDs. And is wearing them out vastly faster than Win10.And upon reading its a COMMON issue. Win 11 does MANY unnecessary reads/writes to the drive, slowing it down and often making it SLOWER thanWindows 10!!! On a SSD – you have to realize they have a bunch of SPARE memory cells when cells start to fail. They can remap access so that a failed cellbecomes a good one (reducing the available spares). Now the life of an SSD (as measured by Crystaldisk) drops from 100% over time and is a measureof how much use the SSD has had. At some point the SSD

TOPTECH/THE ELDEST GEEK IS ADDING A NEW STRASBURG LOCATION! STILL 🙂I’m at 425 Stover if you need to bring something by in the meantime! Call me first! BIG TECH ISSUES.  AND AN INTERESTING QUESTION I WAS ASKED?ASK THE ELDEST GEEK:  ‘Which is more secure – phone calls or email’?A customer recently asked me this.  I thought for a few seconds and said NEITHER!As you have no doubt read – all emails are scanned by the NSA under the Patriot Act looking for terrorists. But – I’m willingto bet you that all phone calls are ALSO scanned.  Even old style land line calls are at some point these days convertedto data packets and sent over the internet.  Those packets can be scanned and analyzed.And if you are calling in range of an Alexa-enabled device – ALL your words are being recorded.  Some TikToker recently washorrified to find Amazon had some 30,000 hours of her voice recorded (if I recall correctly).  No point getting upset – ITS HOWALEXA WORKS!  The device is ALWAYS listening because it can never know when you are ‘about’ to say Alexa!! It has to listen alwaysin case that’s your next word!  – So – my final answer

TOPTECH/THE ELDEST GEEK IS ADDING A NEW STRASBURG LOCATION! There will be (reasonably shortly) a drop location in Strasburg! our family has moved out there! Now – the Alexandria store is not affected at all, but we will be having at least a drop off location for Strasburg, Winchester, Front Royal folks! Just means (LOL) I’ve a bit longer commute than from Lorton!The Eldest Geek has a spot in the Strasburg Emporium! Look for us there 🙂 I’m at 425 Stover if you need to bring something by in the meantime! Call first! VACCINE BLUES!Many apologies to all – I’ve been having a horrible reaction to the J&J vaccine and for almost a month I’ve had dizzy attacks, spots before eyes and the like which have greatly affected my ability to get to the shop! Hopefully this is almost at an end. Of course when I could not make it to the shop poor Alex was stuck at home with me! Your good wishes and thoughts (and prayers) are most welcome. And this is also why my newsletter is a bit delayed – been over 2 months since my last one! SOME TRULY EVIL SCAMMERS – WATCH OUT!Some of our

TOPTECH/THE ELDEST GEEK IS ADDING A NEW STRASBURG LOCATION! There will be (reasonably shortly) a drop location in Strasburg! our family has moved out there! Now – the Alexandria store is not affected at all, but we will be having at least a drop off location for Strasburg, Winchester, Front Royal folks! Just means (LOL) I’ve a bit longer commute than from Lorton!The Eldest Geek is getting a spot in the Strasburg Emporium! Look for us there 🙂 THE NEW MAC – M1 Chip. and a NEW ONE FOR SALE IN BOX!!Been playing with a M1 Chip Macbook (and have a BRAND NEW ONE IN BOX FOR SALE!)First thoughts….well. Its a RISC chip. Now I hear you ask – what is a RISC cpu? It stands for Reduced Instruction Set Chip.Its a VERY fast CPU that executes a very small instruction set. It itself is a VERY simple processor. that runs at blazing speeds!it emulates the pentium instruction set from Intel. (but could also pretty much pretend to be any other processor!)It is an ARM cpu and an outgrowth of the ARM cpus that run iPhones!WOAA – so an iPhone chip can outrun Intel’s best?Whereas an Intel chip can do

APOLOGIES – again Its been a while. Super busy helping folks in these Days of the Virus!I try to get these out once a month, but I’ve had a lot going on. Its been hard on our business. and we have been working 7 days a week, keeping customers operational in this time of panic and stress.And as I may have mentioned, Danko left due to the virus and is back in Vermont. We welcome Derek Ragland who has taken his place and is doing GREAT!! PARTS DELIVERY IN THE TIME OF THE VIRUS!As some of you are painfully aware, these days getting needed parts has turned into a HUGE hassle!! Parts we used to be able to get in 2-3 days are now appearing in weeks – or months! I had an order from a HUGE ebay dealer I’ve dealt with for YEARS for a screen and it took almost a month to arrive! I called asking ‘what was going on’ (or words to that effect) – and turns out their shipping department is down to ONE dude! He was horribly apologetic – and I could not be too upset.Even huge folks like Dell are quoting weeks for something

APOLOGIES – Its been a while. Super busy helping folks in these Days of the Virus!I try to get these out once a month, but I’ve had a lot going on. Its been hard on our business (We were NOT able to get ANY PPP funding sad!!!)and we have been working 7 days a week, keeping customers operational in this time of panic and stress.BUSINESS HOURS CHANGE – I’ve started going home at 6pm not 7pm – at the end of the day we are pretty exhausted anyway!But I’ve usually been in most Sundays as well! We are here to help you whatever your needs to the best of our abilities!Please feel free to reply and contact me with any thoughts or suggestions for the newsletter!And if anyone you know would benefit send me their email and I’ll add them!We are all very grateful for our customers – especially in this time of trouble. CORONAVIRUS UPDATE – TopTech is designated as an ESSENTIAL BUSINESS and will remain OPEN!10-6 Monday through Saturday.. And Sunday by appointment. Curbsite Pickup as needed. Pickup and delivery as needed! Even masked!All of use are well currently – no sign of the VIRUS! Call us! People are

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE – TopTech is designated as an ESSENTIAL BUSINESS and will remain OPEN! 10-7 Monday through Saturday.. And Sunday by appointment. Curbsite Pickup as needed. Pickup and delivery as needed! Even masked!All of use are well currently – no sign of the VIRUS! Call us! People are coming from Rockville saying we are the only computer store open! HORRIBLE DELL BUG in Windows 10 V1903 and V1909!!!! BAD POOL CALLER blue screen of death!If you are getting blue screens with the BAD POOL CALLER error – Guess what? Its the DELL SUPPORT ASSISTANT. I kid you not. Spent hours beating on a system till I discovered that. Often this is a driver issue – and I used the Support Assistant to – update drivers! And then crashes happen!!Just uninstall it – in safe mode if necessary. Or bring it to us. What a bug!! OVERHEATING ON FOUR PORT THUNDERBOLTS! If you have a 4 port macbook pro that is overheating you may notice you are plugging the usb c charger power cord into the LEFT SIDE ports! Try charging on the RIGHT SIDE PORTS – and you may find the overheating disappears! DONT USE FILEFAULT – REALLY! Just got

Much to talk about vis a vis Coronavirus and worthy of an additional email! Hope it is appreciated!!! CORONAVIRUS UPDATE – TopTech is designated as an ESSENTIAL BUSINESS and will remain OPEN! 10-7 Monday through Saturday.. And Sunday by appointment. We have been designated ESSENTIAL RETAIL – as we repair and service computers and phones! Per the official Virginia government announcement recently. Maryland computer store have NOT been so lucky! WE STAY OPEN AND READY TO HELP YOU!And – in almost all circumstances there are LESS than 10 folks in the store so we will not expose you needlessly!All of use are well currently – no sign of the VIRUS! Meanwhile – BEST BUY has SUSPENDED Geek Squad home visits till April 20!Apple Stores are all closed till (at least) March 27! WE ARE OPEN to serve the metro area. We can go anywhere, do anything that is needed in this troubled time! WE CAN DO HOME VISITS AND CURBSIDE PICKUPS AND DELIVERIES! If you need an oncall visit, its usually $120 for first hour, $90 thereafter. For the time being we will drop the charge to $90 per hour to help customers who are concerned about bringing the system

Been busy recently – and have let my newsletter suffer!  But – here it is!! Much to discuss. CORONAVIRUS! What do do? what to be worried about??? We are in the midst of a full blown panic – and we had a customer send up a computer by masked courier the other day! Weird – but understandable! So I’ve been asked – what do we need to do regarding our computers! FIRST – on a laptop you can clean off the screen and the keyboard. BUT be careful! Do NOT spray anything directly on the keyboard.  You can get a disinfecting wipe – and gently wipe off the keys.  Or use a paper towel, spray lysol on the towel and use that to gently wipe the keyboard. YOU DON’T WANT LIQUID ON KEYBOARD.  BAD! On screens, same deal.  a wipe or a moist towelette.  BUT for a laptop, open the screen up and then put the screen down flat on the desktop (so that the keyboard is sticking up in the air).  That way nothing will run down the screen and get anywhere bad. WHAT TO USE?  Well, normal screens you can use Windex.  After all screens are covered by

TOUCHBAR Data Recovery! its possible! but NOT on 2018+!! Have been saving some folks bacon when their Touchbar (2016-2017) Macbook pro fails – but the data is important. WE CAN RECOVER IT!! This is due to an apple device – which most Apple stores don’t have and most geniuses don’t know about! Here it is in action: We removed the Macbook pro 15 touchbar motherboard (its on the right) and attached our MAC MACHINE! It uses the lifeboat connector that logically detaches the hard drive chips (the 4 chips at bottom of image) from the rest of the mac (which is dead) and presents them as a drive to any mac attached to the box! Then – we can clone the drive to an external and migrate the data to a new Mac! We paid a lot for this unit – but every time we use it – we save a customer who otherwise would lose everything as the SSD is NOT removable. We purchased it in 2016 and have it used it quite a few times – but alas in 2018 the device is rendered unusable – due to Apple’s incorporation of the T2 chip. They removed the lifeboat

SORRY FOR DELAY – its bit a while I know! Have had some health issues and been super busy, and I had not realized it had been a while since my last newsletter and some of you asked me where it was! Well – I have had a few thoughts 🙂 MOJAVE ODDITIES – Office 2011 is being killed! If you have upgraded to Mojave – there are several things you need to know! Office 2011 which I’ve used for years is being killed.  It wont run anymore!  After the second mojave update, NO 32 bit software packages will be permitted to run and – you guessed it!  Office 2011 is a 32 bit package. Microsoft has stated they will NOT produce a 64 bit package of it (though they do provide both 32 and 64 bit versions of Office 2016) – and so folks – thats i! You have to upgrade ot Office 2016 – no choice! Why not Office 365?  Well — Office 365 is their subscription package – and costs $99 per year – for the rest of your life! Office 2016 (which we can install on your system for about $90) – is good forever! APPLECARE

The New T2 chip what is it? why do I want it? or DO I want it?? Apple has incorporated its own chip (the T2) in all new 2018 iMac’s and MacBook (pros and airs). This chip introduces some radical changes. A few are of value to users.  Some are neutral. Some are harmful and some are disastrous. Lets look a bit closer. Its the chip in the upper quadrant of this image. Some background (from https://tidbits.com/2019/04/05/what-does-the-t2-chip-mean-for-mac-usage/) The company introduced the T1 in late 2016 to handle the fingerprint processing for Touch ID sensors in the first Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pros, and it also helped lock down sensitive components like the built-in microphones and cameras. Further, the T1 took over the System Management Controller (SMC), which is responsible for heat and power management, battery charging, and sleeping and waking the Mac. Finally, the T1 determines if MacOS is running on actual Apple hardware. The T2 picks up from there, with four major capabilities: It takes over all access to built-in solid-state drives, enabling real-time encryption and decryption so your data is never stored in the clear It provides the processing power that lets you invoke Siri with “Hey Siri” It offers

RUNNING Sierra and High Sierra on older Macs! YES! There are now patched versions for Sierra and High Sierra that let you run these even on OLDER Macs – where Apple wont let you upgrade!  We can report that it seems to work well – there are a few wrinkles – some Airport wireless cards simply will NOT work, but we have installed it on a number of 2008 2009 2010 Macs where otherwise you were stuck at Yosemite! MORE PHISHING We are seeing these more and more and customers keep asking me!  Emails which contain an old email address (and your password!) claiming this is ‘proof’ they have hacked you and a nice bitcoin address to send $ to!  THEY ARE FAKE. ALL OF THEM. AND THEY CAN DO NOTHING TO YOU – THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN ON YOUR COMPUTER!  IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE! Also, more occurrences of the pop-up box that tells you your system is infected and ‘Microsoft’ wants you to know so they can Help you! ITS A SCAM.  Microsoft – Apple – Dell – NONE OF THEM care about YOUR computer and they will NEVER alert YOU in this manner! You will lose your money –

MORE BLUFFS – They are getting common!! Many customers (and myself as well) have been receiving threatening emails claiming access to your system, planting viruses, got proof you are into child pornography and the like.  They are really getting common and I’ve seen more and more of them (and have had customers report them). Also getting more common is the pop-up window when you are online telling you Microsoft has detected a virus and giving you a number to call! If you do call they will CLAIM to be Microsoft – and thats when your problem begin!  First they want access to your system then they want a credit card sometimes for a ‘lifetime’ protection against further problems. ***** ITS ALL A LIE!  NOTHING THEY TELL YOU IS TRUE (starting with them being with Microsoft) **** Your problems BEGIN if you respond to these!!  I have some customers (I’ve very fond of all of you) who seem to be vulnerable – just had one call me after he got infested thinking he had a ‘warranty’ that would pay for virus removal – and it was the scammers who bit him a while back! NOTHING THEY TELL YOU IS TRUE!!! Now to his

BLUFF RANSOMWARE EMAILS! BE WARNED – BUT NOT TOO CONCERNED! NO NEED TOPAY THEM! Many customers (and myself as well) have been receiving threatening emails claiming access to your system, planting viruses, got proof you are into child pornography and the like. –EXAMPLE– Hi‌ So‌ I a‌m the‌ ha‌cke‌r who‌ cra‌cke‌d yo‌u‌r e‌-ma‌i‌l a‌nd de‌vi‌ce‌ a‌ se‌ve‌ra‌l mo‌nths ba‌ck. Yo‌u‌ type‌d i‌n yo‌u‌r pa‌sswo‌rd o‌n o‌ne‌ o‌f the‌ we‌b pa‌ge‌s yo‌u‌ vi‌si‌te‌d, a‌nd I i‌nte‌rce‌pte‌d thi‌s. He‌re‌ i‌s yo‌u‌r pa‌sswo‌rd fro‌m **YOURACTUALEMAILADDRESS** o‌n ti‌me‌ o‌f ha‌ck: **YOURACTUALPASSWORD** Of co‌u‌rse‌ yo‌u‌ ca‌n wi‌ll cha‌nge‌ i‌t, o‌r e‌ve‌n a‌lre‌a‌dy cha‌nge‌d i‌t. Ho‌we‌ve‌r thi‌s do‌e‌sn’t me‌a‌n mu‌ch, my ma‌li‌ci‌o‌u‌s so‌ftwa‌re‌ mo‌di‌fi‌e‌d i‌t e‌a‌ch a‌nd e‌ve‌ry ti‌me‌. Do‌ no‌t try to‌ ge‌t i‌n to‌u‌ch wi‌th me‌ o‌r e‌ve‌n fi‌nd me‌, i‌t i‌s i‌mpo‌ssi‌ble‌, si‌nce‌ I se‌nt yo‌u‌ e‌ma‌i‌l fro‌m yo‌u‌r a‌cco‌u‌nt o‌nly. By me‌a‌ns o‌f yo‌u‌r e‌ma‌i‌l, I u‌plo‌a‌de‌d ma‌li‌ci‌o‌u‌s pro‌gra‌m co‌de‌ to‌ yo‌u‌r Ope‌ra‌ti‌o‌n Syste‌m. I sa‌ve‌d yo‌u‌r e‌nti‌re‌ co‌nta‌cts a‌lo‌ng wi‌th bu‌ddi‌e‌s, co‌lle‌a‌gu‌e‌s, lo‌ve‌d o‌ne‌s a‌nd a‌lso‌ a‌ co‌mpre‌he‌nsi‌ve‌ hi‌sto‌ry o‌f vi‌si‌ts to‌ the‌ Wo‌rld-wi‌de‌-we‌b re‌so‌u‌rce‌s. Fu‌rthe‌rmo‌re‌ I i‌nsta‌lle‌d a‌ Vi‌ru‌s o‌n yo‌u‌r syste‌m. Yo‌u‌ a‌re‌n’t my o‌nly vi‌cti‌m, I typi‌ca‌lly lo‌ck pcs a‌nd a‌sk fo‌r the‌ ra‌nso‌m. No‌ne‌the‌le‌ss I e‌nde‌d u‌p

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL – and what *I* have to be thankful for! Here is wishing all my customers and readers a most Happy Thanksgiving! Its been a tough year – recovering from the Mt Vernon Fire that destroyed my store last Christmas Day! Right after the fire, I was horribly depressed.  Thought – ‘how can I go on’ and the like.  It was pretty rough at first! But – the outpouring of support I got from you all was wonderful.  And uplifting. Fortunately – nothing important was destroyed.  By which I mean, my wonderful co workers Alex and Danko were fine, and no one was hurt in the fire! Yes, I lost a lot of STUFF.  About $400000 worth.  and no, I didnt have insurance.  My homeowners paid a fraction of it for personal losses, and I have to appreciate that.  But – all the THINGS I lost were only after all things.  My mineral collection that I spent 50 years collecting was lost.  But my wife was always worried ‘what if you get hit by a bus? what would happen to them’ and I had been considering trying to sell off parts of it just because – it

WIN1804 BREAKS SMB Networks!  AND WIN1809 is out OCTOBER 2 & REPORTEDLY WIPES DOCUMENT FOLDER etc?? HUGE PROBLEM being reported BACK UP BEFORE UPGRADE OR YOU MAY LOSE YOUR DOC FOLDER! WIN1809 started rolling out yesterday – and already MAJOR MAJOR PROBLEMS!  You MUST MUST backup your user folder BEFORE THE UPGRADE! Various sources are reporting USER DOCUMENT FOLDER GETS DELETED!!!!!  Yes, you read it right! Also – if your system has a newer 6th+ gen Intel chip and you see a COMPATIBILITY problem with the Intel Display Audio with it wanting you to confirm – ABORT THE UPGRADE AT ONCE! Also – WIN1803 breaks SMB! Danger Will Robinson – anyone with a variety of external devices may have noticed – suddenly – that their external drive, big screen TV, and other streaming devices – may no longer talk to their Windows computer after the newest upgrade!  And ‘network neighborhood’ no longer shows such devices!  What gives? Well, in a nutshell – Microsoft – no warning – no alert – disabled the SMB V1 networking protocol. This an old – old protocol dating from windows 3.1.  And – it has always been rock solid!  But it had vulnerabilities and the Wannacry ransomware

END OF DAYS.  The Mt Vernon Antique Center was demolished this week. DEVASTATED. It is with a very heavy heart that I have to report that Sam demolished the Mt Vernon Antique Center this week.  I had promises from him that we would get a chance to attempt recovery – I had a customer ready to run a small excavator with a grappling arm to lift the roof off my second floor shop (which was still standing after all this time).  I got a chance a week ago sunday to go in and actually climbed a ladder got onto it and saw what was needed.  Beams had to be lifted.  asphalt chunks from the roof had to be removed.  TUESDAY I was promised would be the day we could actually get parts of the roof off.  And – demolition would begin in a week or two. Instead, tuesday saw the arrival of a BIG crane and they started knocking things down. I protested. I threatened to report him to the EPA.  Nothing helped.  Dump trucks arrived thursday and its now virtually all gone. I’m devastated.  Personally, I lost $400,000 because of the fire. We got a small fraction of it

GREAT NEWS FOR THE ELDEST GEEK! TOP TECH is OPEN! Come visit! Our new address is 8332 Richmond Highway, Suite 205! Check out our nice SIGN on Richmond Highway: “Home of the Eldest Geek” 🙂 We have had the store running for a while now – drop by for a visit! We are open 10-7 Mon-Sat and sundays by appointment. INCLUDING TUESDAYS!! 🙂 FBI ROUTER WARNING.  How bad is it? what do you need to do? There was a warning recently from the FBI about a new kind of malware that affects routers and NAS boxes called VPNFilter. This malware affects older home and small officer outers by firms Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, QNAP and TP-Link. (For a list of specific models, click here.) The instruction is just to reboot the router and you are ok.  Well, more or less.  Not really!  The malware can survive a reboot. What you really need to do if you are worried is do a factory reset – and you will lose wireless settings, SSID names, passwords, and any other things you did since you got the router! Do you need to reboot it?  Sure.  A factory reset?  if so make sure you have all

GREAT NEWS FOR THE ELDEST GEEK! WE HAVE A NEW LOCATION! I am happy to announce that we have signed a lease on a new space, and we will be in the Marcel Center – a strip mall a few blocks down and on the other side from Mt Vernon Antique Center.  The address is 8332 Richmond Highway, Suite 205! We are getting it painted now! Further news – we are merging with one of the other better computer folks, Daryl of Mt Vernon Computers – and our new venture will be TOP TECH “Home of the Eldest Geek” 🙂 Same folks, Me, Alex, Danko and we will also have Mohammed as well! We will be doing the same things – including our gold & silver business – as well as some of our other oddball activities. WHY A NEW NAME?? Well, we had been talking to some other folks for years about doing a ‘real shop’. Well – when my shop burned down – seemed like a good time to revisit the discussion! We will have a NICE BIG SIGN on Richmond Highway (Route 1) to let you all know. Phone number will be unchanged – 703-436-4756 will be

WELCOME to New Readers – If you are new to this newsletter just a word of explanation – I do this newsletter roughly once a month – and I put in it various things that I’ve observed in the computer world, mac world, windows world and sometimes more 🙂 I never do anything else with this list so if you are worried you might appear on someone else’s mailing list have no fear. Never have done that never would. And I will remove you immediately if you request. (and if you get it again please feel free to yell at me and I WILL make sure you are not inconvenienced again!) That said – welcome and enjoy.  And if you have any questions or comments feel free to opine! CIA Dump – and the Russians  I’ve noted in a couple of newsletters my disbelief that the Russians had anything to do with the election ‘hacking’.  In a nutshell I’ve known Russian hackers and folks they are PLENTY good enough to NOT LEAVE FINGERPRINTS.  Good enough that if they got into your server YOU WOULD NEVER KNOW. Now this week via Wikileaks we get a dump of CIA documents and one

GREAT NEWS FOR THE ELDEST GEEK! TOP TECH is OPEN! Come visit! Our new address is 8332 Richmond Highway, Suite 205! Check out our nice SIGN on Richmond Highway: “Home of the Eldest Geek” 🙂 We have had the store running for a while now – drop by for a visit! We are open 10-7 Mon-Sat and sundays by appointment.  INCLUDING TUESDAYS!! 🙂 MT VERNON FIRE UPDATE FROM THE ELDEST GEEK I went to a presentation from the Fairfax Fire Marshall a few weeks ago – and there will never be an official cause of the fire.  They have however ruled out arson. Sam will have to demolish it soon, but I’m still trying to get in there and do some excavation – hopefully to retrieve SOMETHING RECENT WINDOWS 10 UPDATES There have been quite a few folks who have had their computers hobbled or hosed by recent security updates.  I am at a loss to explain WHY Windows 10 (and 8) get themselves tied into knots as has been happening, but it is clearly an issue.  Something seems to get stuck in Windows’ throat – and it cant clear it.  It just keeps recycling, updating, saying ‘Restoring previous version’

GREAT NEWS FOR THE ELDEST GEEK! WE HAVE A NEW LOCATION! I am happy to announce that we have signed a lease on a new space, and we will be in the Marcel Center – a strip mall a few blocks down and on the other side from Mt Vernon Antique Center.  The address is 8332 Richmond Highway, Suite 205! We are getting it painted now! Further news – we are merging with one of the other better computer folks, Daryl of Mt Vernon Computers – and our new venture will be TOP TECH “Home of the Eldest Geek” 🙂 Same folks, Me, Alex, Danko and we will also have Daryl and Arin his wife from time to time! We will be doing the same things – including our gold & silver business – as well as some of our other oddball activities. WHY A NEW NAME?? Well, we had been talking to Daryl of Mt Vernon Computers for years about doing a ‘real shop’.  He’s a good compliment to what we do – and he’s a great fellow. We have been doing things for each other for years anyway. Well – when my shop burned down – seemed like

MT VERNON FIRE UPDATE FROM THE ELDEST (and temporarily Homeless) GEEK Its not been a week since the fire (Monday Night).  I’ve put up some images on my website www.theeldestgeek.com Insurance folks have NOT let anyone onsite.  They are concerned about injury if a beam were to fall on someone going through the rubble! As to the dealers – to many of them its devastating.  Like most (if not all) malls I’m sure insurance was up to each individual store. We – the Eldest Geek – had no insurance against fire.  I had been considering getting some against theft but decided finally that one or two laptops that might be swiped in a year would not make sense to insure against.  I NEVER considered any fire risk.  The fire folks checked it not infrequently and we always seemed to be in good shape.  After all the building had stood since 1946! But in the not quite week since the fire I’ve had MANY thoughts. First – some QUESTIONS and ANSWERS for my customers 🙂 WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT COMPUTERS THAT WERE IN FOR REPAIR? Let me know best as you can what you had.  I have records of all

dont usually write these emails this often (as you all well know) but I’ve been asked by quite a few of you what you can DO about KRACK – the new WIFI vulnerability that has recently made big news. Well – read on!  And as well I picked up some SUPER nice laptops that need homes including the BEST Gamer I’ve ever run into! MORE ABOUT KRACK NEW WIFI VULNERABILITY – and what you can do now! As I noted in my last newsletter – KRACK has exposed a huge flaw in all of our existing wifi networks.  And its serious, allowing a user to gain access to your network without your permission. And – you read the Microsoft claims to have ‘fixed’ it.  Frankly that’s nonsense – its NOT an OS problem (Apple Mac OSX or Windows) – its a ROUTER problem (the device that both creates and controls access to your wifi network!)  MICROSOFT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT! So Question – what can that DO and what can you do about it? A user getting on your wifi network means they can get access to your resources on your local system. They can print on your

MORE HIGH SIERRA ISSUES! HUGE SECURITY FLAW – and Filesystem changes! There have been additional problems with High Sierra – And it was revealed last week you can log in as ‘root’ with NO password onto any mac running High Sierra. Thats a WOWSER of a flaw – and Apple has been working on it.  It DOES require access to your Mac but if you have upgraded – you might consider a downgrade (we can help and hopefully you did make a full TM backup before the upgrade!) Also – Apple has introduced a NEW filesystem – which will automatically be invoked if you have a Solid State Drive in your Mac.  High Sierra will automatically reformat it as APFS not the normal HFS – and other macs will NOT BE ABLE TO READ THIS DRIVE!!! This is being done for performance – it makes solid state drives perform better. If you DONT have an SSD nothing will be done.  But if you do, the upgrade is pretty much ONE WAY! BEWARE! Windows 10 – FALL CREATORS UPDATE – issues! There are a few minor issues with the newest Windows 10 update which may cause the upgrade to fail or

MAC OS 13 – High Sierra.  Upgrade or no?  short answer NOT YET I have been evaluating High Sierra the lastest Mac OSX – and there are a number of serious issues.  They fall into various categories. Work arounds are available for some, but far from all.  For now STAY AWAY.  A number of customers have reported problems to me after they upgraded and I’ve seen several on a test laptop I’ve been playing with. 1 – HORRIBLE battery life on macbooks.  This is a killer all by itself.  they are aware and working on it! 2 – SLOW PERFORMANCE.  Usually some background task is not working right and its sucking up all the process power.  Need to disable things till you find the culprit and then see what can be done! 3 – SOFTWARE INCOMPATIBILITIES – ranging from smaller packages (gnucash) to biggies like Adobe CS4.  And if you use CS4 be aware Adobe has NOT committed to making it High Sierra Compatible. All of these are AFTER its properly installed by the way. For now – DANGER WILL ROBINSON. Halt and Catch Fire  – Series Finale. I’ve been watching this for the last 3 years and its been

ALL ABOUT KRACK NEW WIFI VULNERABILITY – I’ve had a quite number of customers ask me about KRACK – the subject of quite a bit of recent news! Well – here is the scoop. KRACK – the name comes from Key Re-installation Attack. It exploits a weakness in the WPA protocol that protects Wifi traffic, which pretty much means everyone and I mean EVERYONE using Wifi is affected. For years we used WEP as the security protocol and more recently as weaknesses in that security method were discovered (you are able to discover the WEP key with any good laptop and a couple hours of computing) a new security method called WPA was implemented and at this point it has largely replaced WEP. But WPA has a flaw – there is a 4 step process in negotiating access to your secure network.  This process is ‘robust’ and is designed to handle momentary losses of connection so that your computer can reattach easily to the network. The problem is that the process that makes it ‘robust’ has a serious flaw and when you tell the network you are ‘re-attaching’ after losing connection the WPA protocol allows itself to be played –

THE RUSSIAN THING I have been watching this with considerable interest (as I’ve pointed out several times) and I’ve been asked recently -whats changed? whats different? and what do we really KNOW. These are interesting questions – but fundamentally I’m still convinced that Russia had NOTHING to do with the hacks. Not because they might have wanted to do mischief.  Heck I’m sure they do.  But because THEY WOULD NOT HAVE LEFT ANY INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE. I cant say it too strongly. I’ve MET Russian hackers plenty good enough to cover their tracks.  Completely. YOU WOULD NEVER KNOW they had visited! But – I hear you say ‘there are IPs coming from Kiev’ – alas (and here I speak authoritatively) that means NOTHING. Check out hidemyass.com. They gave me a free account to play with their system.  What does it do you ask.  Its an IP Proxy service.  I can log into their site and through their site I can log into anything else (your server for example) and I can pick where I want to be from.  Sweden?  South Africa? or maybe Kiev? ANYTHING I do during that session will appear to be done by an IP address in –

Artificial Intelligence (AI)  and Jobs in the future We are getting VERY close to a true AI system folks.  And the implications are rather huge. No I’m not talking about Watson – I’m far from impressed by it.  A true AI system. And I can tell you where it will start (been saying this for years btw) – as a help desk. And it will speak to you.  Properly.  Answer all your questions – and it will speak with an Indian Accent! (not being racist btw – it would sound that way because YOU will be much more accepting of it!) You wont be able to trick it with ‘are you a computer?’ and it will do its job happily, 24 hours per day, 365 days a year. And it will displace many many thousands who now are working on this kind of job. And it will be licensed to every company on the planet to do a job that is both thankless – and not much appreciated by the callers! and ALL help desks will be run by it.  Airlines.  Banks.  Brokerages. Credit Cards. Computer firms. This alone will displace MANY MANY workers world wide. And this will only

SSD UPGRADE IN YOUR FUTURE? MAC? PC? iMac? BEWARE YOUTUBE!!! I’ve been struck in having 3 customers very recently who all purchased SSD upgrade kits for their Imacs. In each case it seemed to be a simple job and youtube showed how to do it.  All led to major problems if not disaster. BEWARE YOUTUBE VIDEOS.  Its often – VERY OFTEN – much harder than they make it seem!  Take these with several teaspoons of salt! A SSD upgrade is great.  I just gave myself a Christmas present of a 2 TB HHD for my 2011 Macbook pro. And it loved it! But the Imacs especially the new ones, and Mac Minis are awkward to work on – and therein lies the danger! It is VERY easy to mess these up.  The Imacs take quite a bit of care to remove the screen (and the newer Thin iMacs have the screen secured by gluetape).  And once you have the screen out there is VERY LITTLE PLAY in the various cables.  It is almost a two person job – one to hold the screen and another to remove and replace the cables on the screen for removal and reinstallation later.  In

SIERRA – whats the story now? OS Sierra seems to be acceptable now – and we are putting it on our newer macs 🙂 And I’ve just installed it on MY macbook – and make sure you immediately get to 10.12.2 updates! Apply ALL updates. So far, so good!  I like it and it seems to be nice and snappy on my 2011 Macbook Pro Call us with any problems!   WINDOWS 10 ISSUES – and the Anniversary update!It looks now like a LOT of the windows 10 issues (and there have been many) seem to be fixed with the Anniversary update.  I’ve had many many differing odd problems.  Disappearing wireless (WLAN config service simply refused to start and error was untraceable) – odd touch screen behaviour, jerky keyboard, odd video problems – and voila! Install that Anniversary update from a USB stick from within your windows and many problems seem to go away!!! Of course, back up first if at all possible! RUSSIAN HACKING? Really? I’ve been following the DNC and Podesta hacks and been watching with considerable interest the current round of fingerpointing – at Russia!Now in a former life I was a very good hacker (with a

HACKING – whats the story? I’ve been asked a lot recently about hacking. Folks thinking they had been hacked. Worried about their data. Their computers. Their servers. Their websites…. so let me explain. Hacking takes MANY forms. Often is not malicious. People just wondering ‘what does the computer at 192.xxx.yyy.zzz do??’. My own servers are attacked. All. The. Time. I see every day, every hour, people trying to log in. But – they dont make it. Hacking personal accounts also happens all the time. Just had a customer tell me Google had alerted her that someone had tried to access her account. And we ready about hacking in the news all the time! the DNC. Hillary’s server. Bank of America. Target. So – whats going on? and what can YOU do about it? Lets examine the kinds of hacking … and start with what hacking is. Hacking is trying to access a system that you dont have access do. For many purposes. In olden times (and yes I used to be one many years ago) it was just curiosity. Computers were NEW. I would locate a computer modem on a phone number in Boulder Colorado and I would wonder what

Thoughts on the Galaxy Note 5 – and android google lock is broken! I’ve been loving my Galaxy S5 for quite a while – and just picked up a Note 5 and have been evaluating it! So far – thoughts – it looks super good.  it is MUCH faster, snappier, and though I thought I was buying a 64gb model (it was only a 32 sigh) – its still VERY nice for my use. Moving between phones is really easy – Samsung Smart Switch uses an audio connection (speaker on one to mic on the other) to move data – and its FAST.  Moved 6gb in just a few minutes.  And yes it copies everything you would want to move! Now – my S5 did have some pluses – the 128gb MicroSD is a very nice feature.  But I got an android-usb-microSD converter and I can have my microSD as an external drive. Upon reflection I was torrenting things like Game of Thrones and movies.  These chew up space. But with the android-microsod adapter I can copy these things onto my external drive and keep my 32gb plenty big! I think 32gb will be plenty for me. And (fortunately) it

JULY 29 HAS PASSED.  FREE WIN10 UPGRADE DONE. I’ve gone back and forth many times over my own possible upgrade. I’ve decided AGAINST doing it.  For several reasons. One – my own laptop is a 2011 17in Macbook Pro.  Best laptop Apple has made.  And Apple in their wisdom decided in BootCamp6 to limit windows 10 drivers – to 2012 and newer computers! Yes, I could have done the upgrade and dealt with various of the issues that result – and resolved all of them. But it gave me a good time to think. Windows 10 has been around a year.  And I’ve run into MANY problems.  And they have NOT been fixed!! One of the most common is the sluggish behaviour that you discover is because your disk is being beaten within an inch of its life!  (Disk Usage revealed by Task Manager – is 100% and pegged!) It turns out Windows 10 is trying to be too clever by half and it tries to predict what parts of the disk drive you will need NEXT – and preloads them for faster performance.  Great if its right. Terrible if its wrong – you get a condition called Thrashing where

MEMORIAL DAY A good day for reflection – on our country and on the various aspects of our lives! And a good day to remember the veterans.  I see many at the Antique Center (we are open today btw) – and its hard to overstate the debt we as a nation owe to those willing to put on the uniform! I’m having a sale – and if any of you know military folks who need help with their computers – its 25% off this week. FUTURE OF APPLE I’ve been thinking a lot of what Apple is going to do – without Steve Jobs as the driving force.  And I’m starting to conclude that they may be in some trouble.  Apple maybe like Polaroid after the death of Edward Land – or maybe even Cray after Seymour Cray died in a car crash. Never heard of Cray Computers?  Check out the first paragraph from Wikipedia. –snip– Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][1] – October 5, 1996[2]) was an American electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a

RANSOMWARE REVISITED Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water! Last email I reported on some notable successes in the fight against ransomware – but alas with TeslaCrypt 3.01 – the nasties have removed the weakness that allowed TeslaCrypt up to v3 to be decoded with some (but not much) effort. Current versions are back to pretty much unbreakable. And we are seeing a new series of Ransomware Attacks. Last week you heard of Maryland’s MedStar Health hospital network being attacked – it was by a variant called Samsam.  And 10 hospitals had to go without access to their networked files. Samsam is VERY effective – and is a multilayer attack. It gets administrative access to the Windows Servers (one good Reason I NEVER USE WINDOW SERVERS lol) through a variety of well known exploits.  Some of them are old, but all too often Windows Admins dont ever update their Servers!  Talos Labs recently discovered some 2 million systems vulnerable just to one server exploit (Jboss) that has been known for quite a while! And bear in mind – these attacks are VERY frequent.  And you only hear about them VERY rarely.  Most companies will

RANSOMWARE NEWS – GOOD AT THAT! You have maybe read my recent scriblings concerning Ransomware! Well – we have some GOOD NEWS! I was at a customer last week and I successfully decrypted a Teslacrypt attacked system – WITHOUT PAYING ANY MONEY!!! In fact – if you have ANY TeslaCrypt variation (it renames your files to end in .ecs, .xxx, .vvv and similar and puts how_recover+xxxx files everywhere) I CAN UNLOCK THEM FOR YOU! And if you have been attacked by CoinVault or Bitcrypt – I can unlock those as well — WITH FULL DATA RECOVERY! Attacked by ransomware yourself?  or know anyone who has been and currently is without their files send them over and we will HELP them! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE you ask?  Well – oddly 2 different ways.  CoinVault has been taken down by some smart action on the part of the Netherlands police unit – which captured a FULLY FUNCTIONING RANSOMWARE SERVER.  They were able to extract ALL the keys and make them available so that we can obtain the needed key – free of charge! And with Teslacrypt – a flaw in the methodology of the kidnappers allows me to within minutes or a

WHATS THE FBI iPhone APPLE STORY ABOUT? You have all been reading about the iPhone that the San Bernardino terrorist left behind and the FBI lawsuit trying to force Apple to ‘unlock’ the phone. So – lets talk about it. Whats involved? and what does it mean? and what are the implications? The Story of Encryption. Encryption is any method of concealing information by changing the text into something (hopefully) indecipherable. Its been used since the time of the Romans (at least). Substitution ciphers replace one letter by another.  That film about the Enigma machine (German encryption device during WWII) is a great example. You type in a message and out pop a different encrypted message. One letter at a time.  And the German’s considered it unbreakable. Well – it wasnt.  Due to a German error in their methodology More recently (first discussed in a Scientific American article in the 1960’s) – Public Key Encryption was invented. This was a method where you took two VERY large numbers, one called your Private Key, and the other your Public Key. You Advertise your Public key to the world.  with your Private key you encode a message of whatever length.  And you

APPLE Issues – USB C cables – and Office problems with El Capitan! A BIG warning to folks with the NEW Macbooks that use USB C. STAY AWAY FROM CHEAPIE USB-C CABLES! From FIRST HAND experience – as well as hearing it from others – cheap third party usb-c cables can DESTROY THE PORT IN YOUR MAC! You read right – there are cheapie USBC cables out there that will cause the USBC port to handle much too much current, damaging it! (and you best not tell Apple what happened or your warranty WILL BE VOIDED!) DANGER FOLKS – stick with apple store cables at least for the time being! Office 2016 appears to have been fixed by the most recent El Capitan update – along with a microsoft office 2016 update. I hear that the 2011 problems may persist however. But I still would not upgrade till more definitive info is available.  Just got another El Capitan ugprade in the shop yesterday with the corresponding headaches. Audio problems.  Office Problems. and safari problems.  This new version has been an Apple Nightmare. I though only Microsoft was supposed to roll out horrible OSes (Vista anyone)? AGAIN – anyone thinking of

You’ve no doubt seen the stupid ads on TV by PC Matic. And your friends have expressed their concerns. And we at the Eldest Geek have had a LOT of calls and customer visits related to the ending of support for Windows XP… In one word – this is garbage. XP will NOT stop working (as some fear) – it will simply work the same way it always has. The only thing is they are discontinuing ‘fixes’ for XP. And its not like they have been fixing much recently anyway! its an operating system that is over 10 years old at this point. So – your computers will continue to function – as they always have. Nothing will change. In fact, all that you will notice is – no more Windows Updates. In fact, you can turn OFF Windows Update (very slightly speeding up your computer as it no longer has to check for them!) Now – are the hackers rushing to take advantage of Microsoft’s actions? HARDLY – Who really cares about finding NEW security holes in XP these days??? THEY ARE ALL BUSY FINDING THE SECURITY HOLES IN WINDOWS *8*!!!!! Now – back to that PC Matic Ad.

A lot of any computer person’s work these days is virus and data security/recovery. And at The Eldest Geek we have unrivaled expertise here. A lot of computer shops (and G**k Squads) can do little more than back up the data and wipe and restore the system. But you lose all your software! And THEN you find you cant find the CD for TurboTax 2009! We almost NEVER have to do this – we kill the viruses with a variety of tools. And we are almost successful. If you are in range of our shop (soon to be one in Canada!) come on down and we’ll do it right. If you aren’t, be aware of these steps – and you MAY be able to save your setup! 1) Use System Restore to back the system up to a date prior to the infections. The viruses are usually still there, but its much easier to kill them if you can go back to before they started their malevolent activities! 2) ELIMINATE Norton and McAfee. These charge lots of $$$ and do a POOR job of protecting the system. I can’t tell you HOW often badly infected systems come in the shop

I’ve been watching blogs and such like for years and never really seen the need to participate – but slowly I’ve been changing my opinion and we will be getting into Facbook – and here is my first Blog entry! Blogs are rather interesting – because they have really been around for a LONG time. The fellow with the best claim to a blog is surely Jerry Pournelle – his articles (Chaos Manor in Byte Magazine) were indeed the prototype for a blog. each month you got to read of his Adventures in Computing – all the big names would send him their newest offerings in the hope of a comment – and the trials and tribulations were most entertaining to read! He is at Jerry Pournelle I’ve even met him several times, and his thoughts are usually MOST worthwhile reading unlike much of the drivel that you see passing for blogging these days.

WELCOME TO MY NEWSLETTER!  – from TheEldest Geek! I’ve been asked several times if I would do a newsletter – and I’ve done one for my Mac Customers for some time – so here goes my general attempt. (and to be honest, following up with customers is NOT one of my strong points so I’ll try to do this as well to keep in touch!) Note – if you already get the Mac emails these will be close. And if you DONT want them I’ll take you off the list immediately just reply. SNOWMAGEDDON 2016! Hopefully you all are snug riding out what may be the biggest snowfall since 1922! But – while you are there with power and warmth THIS is a good time to get some things done!BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP! Get your backup drive out and make sure Time Machine has a FULL backup of your system! With this much snow we can never know WHEN (hopefuly not, but what the heck!) power might be lost. In ANY storm, make sure your Time Machine is current. Because when power fails – in the time during failure and just when its coming back on, your house current may go