May 2024 Office non-Security Updates have been released

Office non-Security updates have been released Tuesday, May 7, 2024. They are not included in the DEFCON-4 approval for the April 2024 patches. Unless you have a specific need to install them, you should wait until Susan Bradley (Patch Lady) approves them and any problems have been reported.

Remember, Susan’s patching sequence and recommendations are based on a business environment that has IT support and may have time constraints on the updating process. Consumer patching should be more cautious due to limited technical and mechanical resources. The latter is the reason for the AskWoody DEFCON system.

Office 2016
Update for Microsoft Outlook 2016 (KB5002593)

Office 2016 reached  End of Mainstream Support on October 13, 2020. EOS for Office 2016 is October 14, 2025.

Updates are for the .msi version (perpetual). Office 365 and C2R are not included.

Security updates for all supported versions of Microsoft Office are released on the second Tuesday of the month (Patch Tuesday).

Ethics and computing

COMMENTARY

By Michael A. Covington

Computer ethics and AI ethics are easier than you think, for one big reason.

That reason is simple: if it’s wrong to do something without a computer, it’s still wrong to do it with a computer.

See how much puzzlement that principle clears away.

Consider, for example, the teenagers in several places who have reportedly used generative AI to create realistic nude pictures of their classmates. How should they be treated? Exactly as if they had been good artists and had drawn the images by hand. The only difference is that computers made it easier. Computers don’t change what’s right or wrong.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.19.0, 2024-05-06).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Settings

WINDOWS 11

By Ed Tittel

The Settings app in Windows 11 remains endlessly under development, with the transition from Control Panel and Microsoft Management consoles far from complete.

With the introduction of Windows 8, Microsoft began a slow and deliberate changeover in how setup, configuration, and related settings are handled. In this first of a series of stories about the Settings app and Control Panel, we’ll take a long, hard look at Settings and describe where Control Panel still appears under the Settings umbrella.

Surprisingly, I must give Microsoft due credit. In a close examination of Control Panel holdovers that appear occasionally under the Settings umbrella, the number of such occurrences is substantially lower than I believed when I began this investigation.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.19.0, 2024-05-06).

DesktopOK — No more screaming when your icons get scrambled

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

By Deanna McElveen

I have two large monitors and a lot of icons filling those screens. It may look like utter chaos, but my brain knows exactly where each icon is located.

So when some poorly crafted software leaves my icons all neatly stacked to the left side of my main monitor, I want to neatly stack some skulls!

DesktopOK by Nenad Hrg (one of my favorite developers) can put your mind at ease by allowing you to save the layout of your desktop icons. If things go south and your icons get messed with, you can quickly restore them. Want different layouts for different screen resolutions or users? No problem! DesktopOK can save as many backups as you want.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.19.0, 2024-05-06).

The Windows 11 disconnect

PATCH WATCH

By Susan Bradley

Despite my being a CPA, earnings calls are not usually a part of my technology coverage for Patch Watch.

I’m making an exception. I read the transcript of the Microsoft Fiscal Year 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call and found myself concerned with CEO Satya Nadella’s remarks. In the call, Nadella addressed recent problems Microsoft had encountered with security — from the company itself being hacked due to its own lack of attention to OAuth, to attackers breaking through using various other means.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.19.0, 2024-05-06).

Microsoft is not fixing its mess

By Susan Bradley

Microsoft has now made it official. It does not plan to fix the mess it made with KB5034441.

As you may recall, I was not pleased with how Microsoft handled this vulnerability. It took a sledgehammer to a problem that should have been handled with a precision tool. Instead of explaining the risks and letting business patchers make their own deployment calls, it shoved out an update that to this day is blocked on my sister’s Windows 10 PC due to the lack of sufficient space in the recovery partition.

Read the full Plus Alert (21.18.1, 2024-05-03).

Did hackers buy Roku devices — using your credit card?

PUBLIC DEFENDER

By Brian Livingston

In a pair of serious security breaches in the past two months, hackers tried username-password combinations found on the Dark Web. They attempted to log on to more than half a million accounts at Roku.

Hundreds of users who had unwisely stored their full credit-card numbers with Roku were exploited by the hackers. The victims’ credit-card numbers on file enabled the perps to buy anything in the Roku store.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.18.0, 2024-04-29).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Understanding Office document formats

OFFICE

By Mary Branscombe

Inside every Office file is a hierarchy of formats and XML markup.

If you understand these structures, you can use that knowledge to extract information directly from most Office app files.

When Word, Excel, and PowerPoint first came out, they stored documents in proprietary binary file formats, with text, styles, page layout, and multimedia all encoded in the same file. That was fairly efficient: the binary file is compact, and there’s only one file to copy per document when you want to move it around or share it with someone.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.18.0, 2024-04-29).