In Loper, the Supreme Court has made it harder to empower users

LEGAL BRIEF

By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq.

Mainstream media attention has been focused on the more dramatic Supreme Court decisions of the past few weeks, but another recent decision is potentially of greater importance to the user community.

From the legal-nerd perspective, that case involved the viability of the Chevron doctrine, a rule that had given federal administrative agencies great deference in deciding how much authority they had.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.29.0, 2024-07-15).

Capture basics for video tape

PERSONAL MEDIA

By Will Fastie

Video tape was introduced to the US consumer market nearly 50 years ago, in 1976. It created a consumer boom, but the machines that recorded and played video tapes are dying off.

Worse, support is waning for the technology to get the video off all that old tape and into a digital form more suitable for use today.

The process is not complicated, once you know a few tricks and have the appropriate hardware and software at hand.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.29.0, 2024-07-15).

No break from vulnerabilities

PATCH WATCH

By Susan Bradley

Microsoft is releasing updates for a large number of vulnerabilities this month.

Meanwhile, Apple is busy working on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, tvOS 18, HomePod software 18, and watchOS 11. Currently, the updates are released for developers and will soon be coming to the public for beta testing. The Mac OS preview for Sequoia will bring artificial intelligence to Mac models with Apple silicon.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.29.0, 2024-07-15).

Tonight

The other day Brian wrote an article about how Social media is killing our kids. I think its damaging us too.

Tomorrow, I urge you to say hello to someone you don’t know. Start a conversation with a neighbor you haven’t talked with in a while.  Let’s find common ground and not “sides” in this world. Life is too precious.

Comments will be turned off and thank you for understanding.

Patch List for July 2024

We’re still in testing mode for this month’s updates. I’ve updated the master patch list here.

In my early consumer testing we’re seeing some folks having issues getting Office updated. My recommendation is to put it on defer and wait until Microsoft gets to the bottom of the issue.

For business patchers this is a month with a lot of SQL updates.  If you rely on RDGateway be aware that some are reporting crashes in TSgateway after installing the updates.

If you use radius server – be aware of  KB5040268

Server print problems with SAP — see link

As always, thank you all for supporting the cause! Remember we use the “name your price” model where you can choose how much you will pay for  a membership . Plus membership gives 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.

More details about these updates in Monday’s newsletter.  You are missing out if you don’t sign up. All content is human made with our own blood, sweat, tears, fingers and brain power and 100% AI free.  Therefore, if I’ve fat fingered any KB numbers or if you have any questions, as always post in the forums and I’ll follow up!

July updates out – still tracking Office updating issues

July updates are out and as usual Microsoft is dribbling out changes.

At this time we are tracking an issue with SOME (not all) Office 2019 installs. My advice is to sit tight and not start ripping out Office.

In addition, you might start seeing the name of Outlook change to “classic” Outlook. Remember we’re in this awkward transition right now between classic Outlook (aka the one that works) and New Outlook (aka the one that is missing features like offline use, support for plug ins – they have to be rewritten). My advice if you are on Microsoft 365 is to ensure you are on the slower patching channel. More in next week’s Patch Watch.

For now settle in, ensure your backups are working, let those that test these patches do their thing and I’ll be running my own tests on various workstations, servers, etc., as well as keeping an eye out for side effects.

Adobe released updates for Premier Pro, InDesign and Bridge (nothing for PDF)

Here are some of the changes for Windows 10:

Note this is JUST for EU:

• New!  We are advancing the Copilot experience on Windows. The Copilot app is now pinned to the taskbar and behaves like an app. This gives you the benefits of a typical app experience. For example, you can resize, move, and snap the window. For existing Windows 10 PCs, the timing of availability and delivery method will vary. This might not be available to all users because it will roll out gradually.Important This feature only applies to new Windows 10 PCs and new Copilot+ PCs that ship to the European Economic Area (EEA)and other markets where Copilot is available.

Finding the Achilles’ heel of TPM

BEN’S WORKSHOP

By Ben Myers

Eclypsium, a security firm, recently discovered a vulnerability in the system-board firmware supporting the Trusted Platform Mode (TPM) for a wide range of Intel processors.

As described by an Eclypsium blog entry, it is “a high impact vulnerability (CVE-2024-0762 with a reported CVSS of 7.5) in the Phoenix SecureCore UEFI firmware that runs on multiple families of Intel Core desktop and mobile processors.”

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.28.0, 2024-07-08).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Social-media apps are killing our kids. Do adults care?

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

Rates of suicide and self-harm among teens and preteens in the US and other countries have doubled, tripled, and even quintupled in the past dozen years. Now we may finally know why.

An explosive front-page article in The Wall Street Journal on June 21, 2024, revealed that Instagram — with more than 2 billion monthly active users — feeds disturbing videos to viewers who register as minors. The website’s Reels stream, the newspaper said, feeds to teenagers three times as many sex videos as it sends to adults over the age of 30, 1.7 times as much violence, and 4.1 times as much bullying.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.28.0, 2024-07-08).