A thanks to Dads all over the world

Even if your country doesn’t celebrate Father’s day, here’s to all of you who are Dads. Today is the day in the United States and in the UK that we celebrate Fathers.

I’m always amazed at my Dad. When my Sister and I were going through school he’d coach us through Algebra, Calculus and even Trig. I look back to how he remembered enough to be a coach and I’m amazed.  Even now he amazes me with how he embraces change and technology – even though he would argue that it was WAY easier to repair cars in the days before everything is now computerized and needs a diagnostic tool to figure out what’s wrong.

To all of the AskWoody Moderators, Plus members, and readership that are Dads, I hope you had a great Sunday and thank you for all that you’ve done over the years.

We live in an app world

This morning I went to our local lab test location to get a blood test done. Normal medical checkup for cholesterol and all that. The first time I went there you had to book the appointment ahead of time, walk up to the desk, tell the receptionist your appointment, they took your health insurance card, any payment, and then entered the testing information into the system. When you got to the technician to collect your blood, they just confirmed your name, information and took the blood (all the while I’m looking straight ahead to not look at the needle).

The next few times I went, they recommended downloading their app, booking the appointment ahead of time and even checking in for your time slot via the app. The next time I went there was a check in kiosk where you could indicate you were waiting and then when it was your time the receptionist called you to the desk, took your insurance information and entered the testing information into the system.

Fast forward to today, as my stomach was rumbling (fasting, you know), I walked into the diagnostic lab. Instead of two receptionists greeting us, there were two serve-yourself kiosks. You indicated you were there for an appointment, it asked you to place your drivers license in the scanning slot where it took a picture of the front and back of the license, it then asked you for your insurance card and took a copy of that. You were then called when it was your time and this time the technician was the one that collected the co-pay and entered the needed test into the system.

My drivers license and medical information is now digitized into computer system. Years ago it would have been a paper copy of my information in a file. There are two less employees and less help for anyone who isn’t computer savvy. If you don’t have a computer to book an appointment, good luck.

Now mind you, I’m the person who has Amazon Alexa’s in my house so when it’s Christmas time I can say “Alexa, turn on Christmas” and the Tree and all holiday lights go on the house in unison, but even I thought removing the two receptionists and moving their role to two computers is a bit much.

We may live in an app world, but we still need people. Even if someday computers have artificial intelligence, they will truly never replace people.

Master Patch List for June 14, 2022 too early to patch… yet

I’ve updated the Master Patch List tonight for today’s releases.

Key items to keep in mind – you’ll see .NET patches listed but they are not security updates. As I see issues and side effects I’ll be updating the Master Patch List page to accumulate the issues.

… so far in my early testing I’m not seeing issues but it’s early and we normally don’t start seeing trending issues until tomorrow.

6/15/2022 edit:  Possible wifi connectivity issues  after June patches installed on Windows 10 and Windows 11 — link here.

As always, thank you all for supporting the cause! Remember a mere $1 donation will give you access and if you donate $50 or more you’ll get a special code to enable text messages sent to your phone each time the Master Patch List gets updated and when I change the MS-DEFCON level.

June updates are out

Where I live it’s stone fruit season – Peaches and plums are sweet and ripe.

Where we ALL live around the world, it’s that time of the month where Redmond releases Windows updates. Even if you don’t use Windows anymore it’s the day I always review browsers on all of my devices to ensure they are up to date.

And here we go… https://patchtuesdaydashboard.com/

Remember today is not the day to be installing updates unless you are one of those kind people that LIKE to be our beta testers and have a backup. The rest of us have deferrals in place.  I’ll be updating this post during the day with early trends, and keep an eye on the Master Patch list that I will update at the end of the date and consistently after that with info.  The full report will come out in next Monday’s newsletter.

60 vulnerabilities

3 critical

0 under active attack.

Unsure if the zero day has been fixed, hang loose.

Zero day Follina and Dogpatch has been fixed, if you used the group policy workaround you can decide if you want to leave it or not, I would leave the Attack surface reduction rules in place.  If you are using 0Patch it will leave resident memory once you’ve installed the update. Dogpatch has not bee fixed, but I honestly don’t see as much concern on that one – more about this in the newsletter.

IE drops out of support BUT not removed from your computer. More on this in the newsletter.

SQL server has security updates – haven’t seen that in a long time https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=Security+Update+for+SQL+Server

6/15/2022 edit:  Possible wifi connectivity issues  after June patches installed on Windows 10 and Windows 11 — link here.

Why there isn’t just one OneNote

ONENOTE

By Mary Branscombe

OneNote started out on Windows, and it’s been a sleeper success — but getting the full set of features has been confusing.

OneNote was always intended to be the one place that you put your notes — and all the other information you need to hang on to — “Things to do, important stuff to remember, things to review, and a bunch of stuff you think you might need some day but can’t be sure,” as Chris Pratley put it when describing his original idea for OneNote back in 2000.

It’s supremely useful for that.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.24.0, 2022-06-13).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

The ASR GUI tool is safe

ON SECURITY

By Susan Bradley

Most antivirus programs flag ASR GUI as infected. Those results are false positives.

In my most recent AskWoody MS-DEFCON Alert, I recommended a tool to help you set preventive attack rules, otherwise known as ASR (Attack Surface Reduction) rules. I’ve recommended ASR GUI tool for years because Microsoft doesn’t provide an easy GUI to set rules for standalone computers.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.24.0, 2022-06-13).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Will you be able to run Windows on an Arm processor?

SILICON

By Brian Livingston

The computing scene is up in arms, so to speak, about the latest Arm technology.

Arm — which began as an acronym but is now more like a religion — is the technology that powers the latest Apple Macs, but it’s made only slight inroads into Windows machines due to software incompatibilities.

Whether or not you know anything about Arm, you’re probably already using it. Arm-based systems tend to have much lower power requirements than systems using more complex central processing units, such as Intel processors.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.24.0, 2022-06-13).

Pocket Radio Player — a world of radio stations

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

By Deanna McElveen

Living exactly halfway between two cities means we are on the broadcasting fringe of both cities’ radio stations.

Sure, I can listen to Air Supply — if I don’t mind The Farm Report being randomly inserted as I drive over hills. But I don’t have this issue at home or work, however, thanks to Internet radio.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.24.0, 2022-06-13).