Which CPU is best? Hold on to your hats!

Best CPU December 20202020 has been a crap year all around, but the battle of the fastest processor has been pretty interesting.

AMD is rising, Intel seems to be falling, and Apple recently switched to their own home-grown ARM-based chips.

So, which is best? Which CPU is the fastest?

As usual, it’s complicated…

Going forward, let’s just say that 2021 will be an even more interesting year as the battle heats up and consumers get more speed, lower power consumption, and even lower prices!

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Is Big Tech in Big Trouble? It depends…

Big Tech is in Big Trouble!For awhile now, we’ve been hearing rumors of anti-trust actions against the four main Big Tech companies.

Recently, the word is that actual charges will be brought starting in June of this year.

When you put all the recent stories together – along with some other interesting events involving Big Tech – it DOES look like something is finally about to happen.

But will any of it actually change anything?

It’s easy to be cynical, but I do see an opportunity here to make a difference…

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Smart Speakers are totally safe and privacy-enhancing (just kidding)

Home Assistant Self-DestructA recent study about smart speakers revealed that they are, in a word, crap.

The study, entitled, WHEN SPEAKERS ARE ALL EARS: Understanding when smart speakers mistakenly record conversations, revealed that these smart gizmos are very often activated by words and phrases that have little to do with anything.

Of course, that means they are recording and sending audio clips when they really shouldn’t be.

Not to worry, though – we are reassured by the researchers that it’s no big deal!

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Mac malware surged in 2019 – true or false?

MacOS MalwareMacs were in the news again this week as Malwarebytes released a report claiming that for the first time ever, malware on Macs outpaced that of Windows-based PCs in 2019.

It sounds like a total nightmare for Apple users!

But hang on a sec… Malwarebytes released the report, and they have been promoting their Mac version of their anti-malware software recently.

So, what’s the real deal here?

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Time to ditch QuickTime for Windows

Windows + QuickTime = Uh-oh!Here’s a fun one:

The Department of Homeland Security (??) announced that QuickTime for Windows has 2 nasty security flaws.

They also say that Apple is no longer providing updates for QuickTime for Windows, so they are recommending that QuickTime be uninstalled from Windows machines.

So… DHS? What?!

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How to Block Apple Bonjour on your Local Network

Block Bonjour!Bonjour is Apple’s way of doing zero-configuration networking. It’s a bit of software that does three things:

  1. Service discovery on the local network (LAN)
  2. IP address assignment/sharing
  3. Hostname resolution

Normally, things like IP address assignment are handled by DHCP. With Bonjour, the idea is that all you have to do is plug your gizmos in, and turn them on. Bonjour will then “scan” the network, and all devices and services on the LAN will be automagically configured for you. Each gizmo will have an automatically configured IP and hostname, and you’re done.

This is great, except when you don’t want Bonjour to do its thing. Perhaps you have a mostly Windows/Linux LAN, or you want to restrict access to a certain group of computers on your LAN that are separated from the rest by a physical home router/firewall. Bonjour makes this rather difficult, since it sneaks by basic IP/MAC filtering you might set in your router.

So, how do you block Bonjour?

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Musings on the Death of Steve Jobs

Well, heck, everyone else is talking about it incessantly, so why not me, too?

Of course, there are much more important topics to be worried about, like the fact that the global economic and political situation seems to be destabilizing in numerous ways. But this is a techie blog, so we’ll forget about all that for now.

Since Jobs died, I have read far too many tributes about all the wonderful contributions he made to the tech world. Well, to be fair, he was more or less responsible for many shifts in the tech industry. Whether or not those shifts have actually benefited humanity as a whole, well… that’s a whole other ball of wax.

He was also, according to many reports, quite an ass at times. And let’s not forget about the infamous Reality Distortion Field (henceforth referred to as the RDF)…

Apple’s new lack of a its Reality Distortion Field is the primary reason why I believe that Jobs’ death is in fact the beginning of the end for Apple.

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Why the World Will Soon Be Using Only Apple Products

I have to say that I simply can’t stand it any more.

I’m talking about Apple and their damned lawsuits. They are suing anyone and everyone who makes any product that even remotely resembles an iThing (gosh, I hope they don’t sue me for putting that lowercase “i” in front of the word “Thing”!).

Seriously, all computers look alike. Mostly that’s because they all use the same exact components, and they all serve the same basic function. The same is true of tablet devices and cell phones.

So how is it that Apple gets away with actually forbidding other companies from even selling their products now?

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