Tech Support Dept

08/06/2026

I know, I know! It's been quite a while since I posted. I am mostly retired now, but still a responsibility to update people. Credit Kim Commando.

Patch me if you can

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando

🤯 WOW! Microsoft just patched 570 security holes in one shot, the biggest update in company history and nearly triple last month’s record. It found them by turning more than 100 AI agents loose on its own code. Two of the flaws were already being used by attackers. And Mac owners, wipe that smirk off. Apple fixed about 155 holes on your machine, too.

The Short Version: Switch on automatic updates on your PC and your Mac, then actually reboot. Steps below.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes


Microsoft just shipped the biggest security update in company history. Not big like a new snazzy desktop wallpaper. Big like 570 separate security holes patched in a single afternoon.

For scale, a normal month runs 60 to 130 fixes. Last month set a record around 210. That record lasted exactly four weeks.

Why all the security problems? AI makes it easier for the malicious to exploit Windows. Macs got hit bigtime, too. More on that below.

🤖 Why the number exploded
I thought this was interesting. Microsoft pointed AI at its own code. The company built a scanning system that runs more than 100 AI agents across its software to find, argue over and prove real bugs. Microsoft executives warned in July that we’d start seeing far more updates because of it.

Read that again. These holes were always there. Some of them for years. Nobody had the manpower to find them. Now AI does, and it never sleeps.

Good news: Microsoft spotted them. Bad news: Crooks are aiming the same kind of tools at the same code. Three of the flaws were zero-days, meaning attackers were already using two of them before a fix existed. One let intruders walk right past BitLocker encryption. That’s bad.

🍎 Mac people, this is your story, too
I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, Kim Komando, I have a Mac. This is a Windows problem. I’m all good.” Nope.

On July 27, Apple pushed macOS Tahoe 26.6 with about 155 security fixes for your Mac in one update. One of them closed a Gatekeeper bypass. That’s the bouncer that keeps sketchy apps off your Mac, and this flaw let them slip past the velvet rope. Your iPhone got almost 90 fixes in iOS 26.6 the same day.

Apple is on pace for a record year of patches in 2026. Same story, different logo.

Every major tech company is pointing AI at its own code, and the bug counts are exploding everywhere.

🔒 What you do tonight
On your Windows PC, turn on automatic updates and leave them on. Tap Start > Settings > Windows Update, click Check for updates, then switch on Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available. Same path on Windows 10.

On your Mac, do the same thing. Click the Apple menu > System Settings > General > Software Update. If you don’t see macOS 26.6 (or newer) installed, grab it now. Then click the little info button next to Automatic updates and turn everything on.

Then reboot. A patch you downloaded but never restarted for isn’t protecting anybody. I know, I know. You’ve been putting it off since spring.

Check the machines nobody thinks about. The desktop in the guest room. Your mom’s laptop. The MacBook your kid hauled home from college. Those are the ones running six months behind.

Patches close the holes we know about. They do nothing about the fake invoice in your inbox, the download your grandson clicked or the ransomware that lands on a Thursday. No patch stops those, Windows or Mac. That’s what real-time protection is for, on every device you own.

12/05/2025

Your data is completely safe on the cloud, they said. It's always reliable, they said.

Cloudflare is down, as websites are crashing with a 500 Internal Server Error. Cloudflare is investigating the reports.

08/15/2024

From Kim komando:

National Public Data, a company that collects information from nonpublic sources without consent, according to a class-action lawsuit (paywall link), has been hit by a massive data breach. The company makes money by selling personal data to employers, private investigators and anyone conducting background checks.

Hacker group USDoD allegedly broke into National Public Data’s unencrypted database before April 2024, making off with the records of a staggering 2.9 billion people. This breach not only affects every single American, but also individuals in the U.K. and Canada.

I know what you’re thinking — the population of the U.S., U.K. and Canada is about 440 million. Keep in mind that some of the breached records include duplicates. For instance, if someone goes by two names or has multiple records for other reasons, those are all in the mix.

This breach is monumental, and it’s safe to assume you’re at risk. The hackers put the entire database — which includes Social Security numbers, full names and addresses — for sale on the Dark Web for $3.5 million.

Now, this is a shocker: No one bit, so they just handed it out for free. I know all these breaches and hacks start to feel like white noise, but you can’t ignore this one.

07/10/2024

A tornado warning for Franklin Indiana. Take cover NOW

07/09/2024

I got this in this morning's from Kim Komando. And it reminded me that I haven't warned you in a long time...

🛰️ Something to ruin your sleep: Hackers’ newest target is outer space, where they could disable satellite GPS signals for airplanes, boats and cars … or take down all satellites providing the internet. The right mind could even corrupt planetary probe data, giving inaccurate atmospheric or water readings on Mars. Yikes.

First, so long as there's a trend to store your data "in the clouds," you're at serious risk of them not being there one day. Nothing beats keeping your life, your photos, your financial stuff and your other critical data ON YOUR OWN HARD DRIVE. While the cloud makes sense for data backups, so long as you have your primary copy ON YOUR OWN HARD DRIVE.

There's been a relentless push to move your programs and apps "to the cloud." This is simply a way for them to control your access and move from you buying the software, to you renting your software. This makes it very easy to shut you down if you don't pay your annual fees.

Things like Google photos and other services "on the cloud," simply aren't free forever.

By the way, thumb drives will all eventually fail, as well. Solid state drives fail, as well.

And well, nothing on the cloud is totally private and secured, forever.

This is not new. 40 years ago, even before the Internet went public, I had just locked down the systems at Purolator Courier in Mississauga, Ontario. I had just written and installed a monitor that watched for wrong passwords and repeated attempts. Before I locked it down, when you connected it said,

WELCOME TO PUROLATOR COURIER. PLEASE LOG IN

Then you were allowed to make repeated attempts at entering a userid and password.

When I had locked it down, people were greeted with...
..
..

Nothing. A blank screen. And I was able to see and save the origin request of the attempt. I generated a report and it was on my desk in the morning.

Turns out, one morning I actually had a report on my desk. And my first call was to the owner of the packet switching network (a precursor to the Internet).

Within an hour I was on a conference call with the owner, and the RCMP, the Mounties, the Canadian equivalent of the FBI. And they didn't have a clue what to do.

So there I was, just 30 years old at the time, training the Mounties how to "get their man." So far, no serious infraction of the law. But they were now being monitored. (You're always being monitored when you're on line).

Within two weeks, with the Mounties watching, the perpetrators arrived at the entry point of a new system, with a big banner that read something like:

WELCOME TO ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LIMITED. PLEASE LOG IN.

And so they did. Easy Peasy, with a userid of MASTER and a password of MASTER.

They got in, and poked around. And they crashed the computer, and got disconnected.

The computer was the monitoring and controlling computer for a Nuclear Power Generating Station, just outside of Toronto, called Darlington.

And without the controls, I think things staring going very wrong in the reactor. I think things started getting very hot.

But there was no meltdown. There was no repeat of Three Mile Island. Because the Feds were watching everything, and got on the phone to Atomic Energy.

The first people to ever stand trial for "hacking" in Canada, and I had spotted them first, without, I may add, them ever penetrating the computer I was responsible for.

So your data, all the stuff that's important to you, or important to keep out the hands of the bad guys, it's at risk. If it's not the bad guys, it's the government spying, or it's the very present danger that "the cloud" goes away, forever, or your computer fails, or your thumb drives fail.

So what's a person to do?

Keep your computer in good shape. Firewalls, virus detectors, and regular scanning is a first step. Keeping your finances and your banking off-line wherever possible. Don't allow your financial institutions to move your statements to "the cloud." Know what scams are happening, and watch out for them.

Don't trust your data to thumb drives along. Thumb drives and solid state drives in modern computers are all eventually going to fail, and when they're dark and reset, your data is irretrievable.

So multiple backups, and for this, you can even use the cloud as one backup (of several). Thumb drives. Burn CDs or DVDs of your data. And keep a copy of everything off-site, like a safe deposit box in case your house goes up in flames (hopefully when you're not there).

Take action now.

06/08/2024

you know those endless medicare advantage ads you see on tv.
They're a very bad choice. Read this.

Medicare Advantage enrollees report treatment denials and delays in payment, leading to harmful outcomes in healthcare

05/17/2024

https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/05/17/several-states-take-steps-to-block-a-central-bank-digital-currency-003192?utm_source=240517-NRU-PN&keycode=240517-NRU-PN&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=content

this is important

Several states have taken action over the last two years in an effort to block the implementation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the United States.

04/30/2024

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gen-z-job-seeker-refused-111141880.html

It was 1979, and I'd been working as a computer programmer about 5 years. I was living and working in suburban Montreal. And a job opened up in Toronto with the Cadillac Fairview Corp, builders of the Eaton Center,, all the Fairview Malls, and a lot of residential development in the US and Canada.

After a brief phone interview, I was given a problem to solve. It involved writing a computer program (in COBOL) to solve, and they wanted to see my solution, and my code, and a test run to prove I got the right results.

Hours later, I had an elegant solution. And I sent it to them.

And they called. Fly down to Toronto, for an interview, meet with us, and then fly home.

My wife was pregnant with our first son. Very close to her due date.

I flew down, and they asked me about my solution. They told me what the IT dept was doing. They told me about the job. Then they offered me the job, on the spot. A good step up in salary. 100% relocation assistance. My wife's parents were living nearby, so we had a place to live while we looked for a home. I started work for them, and they truly paid for everything, including bridge financing while we bought a house, and were waiting for the sale in Montreal to close, giving us the money.

I worked for a wonderful man, Robert H Parker, and later a couple of others. I whipped a poorly written system of programs (that crashed nightly) into the most robust system they had, (I needed to, as it crashed every night, and needed emergency patching to get the job done). And I needed the sleep.

I was named the top COBOL consultant, and I really knew my stuff. I learned how to make code error free. That is still something most programmers cannot do.

I left after 5 years, having worked out my contract. And I was hired by a computer manufacturer. I was on a team that developed a Network Session Exerciser. It's a fancy name for PING, and I eventually was a one man team. It was a terrific time in my life. Even though I had to battle managers who wanted to force me to send out the software before it was error free.

Anyhow, that was a long story, wasn't it.

So I was reminded, by this news story, that the job applicant failed because the "test" would be too much work.

So there is a lesson here. Be the exceptional one. Do the test. Work hard working hard. Be the best. It pays off.

I ended up with a reputation in two countries. When I later moved to the US, and eventually worked for myself, I got a call from FAO Schwarz, the toy stores, to solve a problem no one else could solve in their Indianapolis store near Circle Center. Of course, I solved it, within a couple of hours. They'd spent a great deal on previous techies, none who were up to the job.

Just be exceptional.

A job applicant refused to complete an aptitude test because it "seemed like a lot of work." It cost them the job, but now the employer who admitted he was put off has come under fire.

04/18/2024

I need help. If you have a full sized chain saw and a stronger back than I, please consider helping. The truck emerged w only a few scratches. About 25% done.