Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
By now you’ve probably heard about the dangerous VPNFilter malware that’s attacking routers all over the globe.
If you haven’t, this is an insidious strain of malware that could potentially allow a hacker to take control of your router and use it for a wide variety of illicit purposes.
What’s more, the malware can even remove itself after a time and brick your router in the process. [Read more…]
The recent explosion in the number of Internet users installing ad blockers has greatly reduced the amount of advertising revenue being earned by many online publishers.
Truth be told, I use ad blockers on all my browsers myself, and I doubt if I’ll ever surf the web without them again.
Publishers hate ad blockers because the ads they place on their websites never make it to the reader’s web browser. And as one would expect, every blocked ad represents a loss of revenue.
But guess what? The publishers have no one but themselves to blame for this huge loss of income. To understand why that is, it’s important to consider the history of online advertising… [Read more…]
If you’re like me you’ve probably grown used to seeing the green “Secure” indicator in the address bar when you visit a secure website with the Chrome web browser.
That simple word “Secure” and green padlock gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling about the websites I visit because I know that any information I might supply to them will be encrypted before it’s transmitted across the Internet to their server.
Well, here’s a little heads-up: Google will soon be eliminating that comforting “Secure” designation from Chrome. [Read more…]
Question from Glen J.: I have what is probably a very odd request. I need a low powered video card that doesn’t use a fan.
The video card in my PC has always been very noisy, and now the fan has started making screeching noises and the blades are wobbly (bad bearings perhaps?).
My question is can I buy a simple low powered, fanless video card that will work in a PCIe slot? I don’t need anything fancy, just something to drive my 21″ LCD monitor. I wouldn’t even replace the bad card at all were it not for the fact that my motherboard doesn’t have integrated video.
Any help you can provide will be very appreciated. [Read more…]
Question from Dolly F.: I bought a Surface Pro 4 back in December and I recently started noticing a very faint, but irritating screen flicker.
I’ve tried changing pretty much all the available screen settings and installed all the latest updates but I just can’t get the flickering to stop.
This is absolutely driving me up the wall!
If you can tell me how to get this to stop you’ll be my hero lol. Thanks for your help in advance. Love your site by the way.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]