Linked: Windows 10 is a security disaster waiting to happen. How will Microsoft clean up its mess?
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Linked: Windows 10 is a security disaster waiting to happen. How will Microsoft clean up its mess?

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

Ed Bott raises an interesting question about people using PCs that don’t meet the requirements in terms of hardware security for Windows 11 but who own otherwise perfectly fine computers. In 2025, when Microsoft stops patching Windows 10, how many computers will still be out there, in use, connected to the internet, and vulnerable.

But in the quote above, Ed raises another point that maybe we should be thinking about more. What happens to all the hardware that is no longer supported as technology advances? It ends up in a landfill. That’s not good. That’s not even acceptable.

Linked: Crowd-Sourced Suspicion Apps Are Out of Control
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Linked: Crowd-Sourced Suspicion Apps Are Out of Control

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of years. We tend to think of the “Big Tech” apps and social networks as being the problem in the digital world, but really it’s all these little places too, because, as they describe, they don’t just keep us informed of actual events in our neighborhoods, they keep us informed of every single instance of something that someone finds suspicious.

This, in turn, makes us go from living in a relatively calm neighborhood to believing we are just one or two days away from the Purge.

Linked: The shortage of tech workers is about to become an even bigger problem for everyone
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Linked: The shortage of tech workers is about to become an even bigger problem for everyone

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

The shift in tech skills is one of the contributing factors, but it’s not that technology has been changing, because that ALWAYS happens. It’s the insistence that employers can find people with a skill that didn’t even exist 2-3 years ago instead of actually developing the people they already have, or hiring people who can continue to adjust and learn these skills.

How many jobs are going unfilled because you’re looking for someone with expertise in a technology that has only been around for the last 1-2 years? How do you expect there to be a bunch of experts on this technology? How do you expect recent graduates to be familiar with the technology that their college curriculum hasn’t even caught up to yet?

It’s not possible. So you might want to start adjusting your hiring, recruitment, and staff development processes, because that’s how you shrink the talent gap, by creating the talent yourself.

Apple’s Image Scanning Tool is, Well, Complicated
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Apple’s Image Scanning Tool is, Well, Complicated

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

At first blush, the idea of scanning images synced up to iCloud for child sexual abuse materials against the hash list of known CSAM images seems like a good idea. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself, I want tech companies to takes some initiative to deal with this issue. They also want to scan images on kids’ phones using AI to see if kids are getting into any trouble with sending or receiving sexual material. Again, that sounds like a good thing. But, as the EFF points out, this all requires a backdoor, and backdoors, once created, almost never remain used for just one purpose.

Linked: “I’m totally screwed.” WD My Book Live users wake up to find their data deleted
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Linked: “I’m totally screwed.” WD My Book Live users wake up to find their data deleted

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

I hope the folks who lost data can somehow get it back. Losing data to a failure of any kind is a pain in the ass. On the other hand, if the ransomware plague has taught us anything, it’s to have backups, online and offline. Because anything connected to the infected device is at risk, but if I have a copy that isn’t connected to anything, it’s safe.

Yes, it’s more work. Yes, it takes time and effort.

So does figuring out how to deal with losing all of your data.