Lincoln Spector: Hate Facebook? There are alternatives

My name is Lincoln, and I’m a Facebook addict.

Lincoln Spector is back with a Facebook takedown that’s different — there are problems, yes, but there are also alternatives. You aren’t stuck in the Zuckerberg rut. Get going with a site that doesn’t sell you out to Cambridge Analytica or Russian poll trolls.

Out this morning to all AskWoody Plus members in Newsletter 16.4.0.

Deanna’s Freeware Spotlight: Rons WebLynx

Don’t know about you, but my list of browser Favorites goes on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Tools in all of the browsers for managing links are rudimentary: They work fine if you have a hundred links, but when your collection swells to hundreds or even thousands, they just can’t keep up.

Enter Rons WebLynx from freeware guru Aaron Stewart. Intuitive, logical, and powerful.

Details in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.4.0, which went out this morning to all of our Plus members.

Patch Lady Podcast – changing your DNS

Woody recently had a post talking about changing the DNS settings on your network adapter, but I think there’s an easier way – in your router.  So here’s a visual how to of how I do it on my router at home:

(if you want to download the mp4 – the link is here)

Mozilla stops rollout of its latest version of Firefox, version 65

Lawrence Abrams on BleepingComputer says

Mozilla has halted the automatic updates to Firefox 65 as users are unable to browse web sites due to certificate errors. These errors are being caused by conflicts between various antivirus program’s HTTPS scanning and Firefox 65.

Here in the browsers forum we have confirmation from Charlie and others.

Abrams goes on to say:

If you have upgraded to Firefox 65 and are seeing errors when browsing the web that state the “Connection is not secure”, then you are most likely affected by this bug and seeing a conflict between the browser and your antivirus software.

And offers two workarounds. Various antivirus manufacturers are also distributing a bypass.

AskWoody Alert 16.3.2 just went out

If you’re a Plus member, you should’ve received an AskWoody Plus Alert in the past few minutes. It points you to the change to MS-DEFCON 4, and the associated Computerworld article.

(I’ve wanted to do this for years! Yipppeeee!)

Anyway, if you’re a Plus member,and you don’t get the Alert in the next hour or so, check your spam folder (make sure Editor@AskWoody.com is whitelisted). If you don’t see the email, hit me up on CustomerSupport@AskWoody.com. Our mail delivery system, MailChimp, is very cautious about messages that bounce, for whatever reason. Easier to clean out the pipes from this end….

Have a good weekend, everybody.

MS-DEFCON 4: There are a couple of niggling problems, but they’re for (ahem) edge-use cases. Go ahead and get Windows/Office patched

For almost everybody, now’s a good time to apply the January patches.

As usual, there are some tricks.

Details in Computerworld Woody on Windows.

Windows 7 market share UP in January

No, I don’t believe the numbers. But this one’s gotta tickle yer fancy.

According to NetMarketShare, Win7 went from 36.90% share in December to 37.19% in January.

At the same time, Win10 went from 39.22 to 40.90%.

Don’t believe the numbers. Do believe the sentiment.

Gregg Keizer will have a much better breakdown later today. I’ll update this post when it’s up.

DNS Flag Day: We’re buckled in over here

February 1 is DNS Flag Day – a day when the people who support the internet’s lookup pages (think phone book — if you’re old enough to remember what those are) start to get rid of decades-old bypasses that are gumming up the works.

If your connection runs through a Windows Server you may see a complaint that “Minor problems detected” for your connection.

You don’t need to worry about it. We’re hunkered down here and ready to enter the 21st century.