Computing Simplified

09/14/2021

Stop and update your iPhone to iOS 14.8 right now

Given the severity of the exploit, you should update to iOS 14.8, macOS Big Sur 11.6, and watchOS 7.6.2 as soon as you can.

It’s once again time to update all your devices ASAP

07/07/2021

Microsoft is urging Windows users to immediately install an update after security researchers found a serious vulnerability in the operating system.

The security flaw, known as PrintNightmare, affects the Windows Print Spooler service.

[Summary - an update came out for Windows 10 (and 7!) late yesterday. This is out of the normal timing for monthly updates, because it's so severe. Apply it immediately]

Microsoft is urging Windows users to immediately install an update after security researchers found a serious vulnerability in the operating system.

05/11/2021

A warning to users of Microsoft Outlook.

The 2nd Tuesday of the month update contains a serious outlook rendering bug. If you have not yet updated, DO NOT APPLY THIS UPDATE. It truncates all messages to the first line only.

I repeat.

DO NOT APPLY THIS UPDATE.

So far, I know it applies to Office 365 and outlook 2019. I don't know what other versions it applies to.

05/09/2021

A shortcut I discovered today. Hopefully it will help others too.

If you have a 407 account, and you charge it to your business, you must download the invoices. But it's tedious, click click click 3 or 4 interactions per invoice.

But it doesn't have to be. You can download them all as a zip - you just have to find it in the navigation.

From the left side menu,
select Statements & Activity,
then Statements,
then select a number of statements and
download the entire group as a zip file.
Unzip.

11/24/2020

When sending money via e-transfer, make sure your security question is impossible to guess, not something that might be common knowledge.

Emails can, in certain circumstances, be "snooped". So the security question is a second line of defense. If it's easy to guess, that defeats the purpose.

In one example, the question was "the name of one of the beatles". There only were 4 beatles, and the system allows 4 tries.

This is a very bad question.

A Peterborough, Ont., woman says financial institutions and Interac are misleading customers by claiming e-transfers are "fully protected" after money she sent a friend was diverted to a fraudster's bank account. RBC blamed the theft on a weak email password and security question.

10/14/2020

I found this very interesting list of people who are hiring in Canada now. The list was put together by an editor at LinkedIn

While some companies are laying off workers and freezing hiring, others are hiring because demand for their services is skyrocketing.

06/19/2020

You might want to hold off on upgrading your windows 10 system to Version 2004.

Microsoft’s been testing the “final” version of Win10 May 2020 Update - better known as version 2004 - for almost six months now. The number and nature of extant problems at this late date hits a new low, even by Microsoft’s standards.

05/05/2020

Are you looking for employment during these challenging times? Not sure how to find jobs in essential industries that are open? If you're in Canada, here is a useful resource.

Your number one job right now is to make sure you and your family are safe. However, if you are available to work, there are many ways to contribute to Canada's response to COVID-19.

04/16/2020

Life in the time of Covid-19.

There's a lot of misinformation out there. Some is just well-intentioned people getting it wrong. But some is much more malignant.

Don't be a part of the "infodemic".

Partial quote from the article (the link is at the bottom)

On Feb. 3, soon after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus to be a global health emergency, an obscure Twitter account in Moscow began retweeting an American blog. It said the pathogen was a germ weapon designed to incapacitate and kill. The headline called the evidence “irrefutable” even though top scientists had already debunked that claim and declared the novel virus to be natural.

As the pandemic has swept the globe, it has been accompanied by a dangerous surge of false information — an “infodemic,” according to the World Health Organization. Analysts say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played a principal role in the spread of false information as part of his wider effort to discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within.

The House, the Senate and the nation’s intelligence agencies have typically focused on election meddling in their examinations of Mr. Putin’s long campaign. But the repercussions are wider. An investigation by The New York Times — involving scores of interviews as well as a review of scholarly papers, news reports, and Russian documents, tweets and TV shows — found that Mr. Putin has spread misinformation on issues of personal health for more than a decade.

A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses.

04/14/2020

The most comprehensive timeline on the coronavirus and the U.S. government's response. Readers suggestions welcome [email protected].

04/10/2020

Canadian Business Resilience Network goes live

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has established the Canadian Business Resilience Network in partnership with the Government of Canada to help the business community prepare and ultimately, prosper in the face of the pandemic

Prepare, Perseverer and Prosper

04/10/2020

The Oakville Town council has been very good about posting information during this trying time. In particular, the last few days, they've been trying to post information not just about the current situation, but how we extricate ourselves later.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and was going to post some of my own thoughts on the subject. But it's probably worth while sending out links for what the government says it's doing.

A lot of these links are more self-congratulatory than substantive at this point, but hopefully they will put more in as time goes on.

Ontario starts planning for economic recovery

The Ontario government has launched a new Ontario Jobs and Recovery Committee which will focus on getting businesses up and running and people back to work after the COVID-19 pandemic is over. While the government's primary focus is on combatting the virus, supporting frontline health care workers and providing immediate relief to people and businesses, this new committee will be developing a plan to stimulate economic growth and job-creation in the weeks and months ahead.

TORONTO — The Ontario government has launched a new Ontario Jobs and Recovery Committee which will focus on getting businesses up and running and people back to work after the COVID-19 pan...