Tech Wrap-Up 9-29-2022, which is National Coffee Day. On one hand, I feel like I waited a whole year for Coffee Day to arrive. On the other hand, every day is pretty much coffee day at my place. If every day is Coffee Day, then why do we need a special National Coffee Day to satisfy our caffeine addictions? I recommend we convert Coffee Day into Top-Shelf Coffee Day or Premium Coffee Day, a day in which it is OK for coffee addicts to splurge on a rare single-origin coffee or a small batch, local, artisanal coffee roaster’s wares. While we are at it, let us use freshly ground coffee beans and the pour-over method to produce the finest cup of delicious black coffee with a layer of bubbly foam on top. While you choose between Jamaica Blue Mountain and Hawaiian Kona, Tech Help Knowledgebase wraps up the day with a summary of today’s most engaging stories from our social media feeds. We order the story summaries below by user engagement (posts with the most likes, shares, clicks, hashtag clicks, and detail expands) and by the number of impressions received. Our human-curated social media feeds include links to technology news, how-to and help articles, and video tutorials for common issues.
Stories curated for our feeds are from our staff writers or culled from third-party sources that produce content related to the categories covered by our site. See the summaries and links below for today’s top stories by user engagement. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to interact with our feeds.
Today’s Tech Wrap-Up
1. Never-before-seen malware has infected hundreds of Linux and Windows devices (Ars Technica)
The term “never-before-seen” often evokes a sense of wonder or perhaps fear. In the case of a never-before-seen malware called Chaos, it evokes the latter. The cross-platform malware has infected Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD devices, as well as office routers and enterprise servers. The Black Lotus Labs research group believes Chaos emerged around April 16 this year and continues to grow today. Staging servers used to infect new devices grew from 39 in May to 111 this past Tuesday. Chaos infections are concentrated in Europe with smaller infections in North and South America. The best defense against Chaos is to keep routers and servers updated, use strong passwords, and use multi-factor authentication (MFA) when possible.
2. Brave Will Soon Block Cookie Consent Notifications (Thurrott)
Running in Brave’s pre-release Nightly version is an option to block those annoying cookie consent notifications on desktop and Android (iOS coming later). Brave says the notifications, which are required by EU law, present a privacy issue since the cookies help to track users online, “introducing the exact harm the consent systems were supposed to prevent.”
3. Web apps on Windows are getting closer to their native counterparts (The Verge)
A new feature introduced by Microsoft, known as Window Controls Overlay, lets developers customize the title bar of their progressive web apps (PWAs). It is just one of the many ways PWAs start to look like native Windows apps. A Microsoft senior program manager says, “Recently, with many new web capabilities in the Chromium browser engine and UX changes in Microsoft Edge and on Windows, installed desktop web apps are really starting to look and feel like native apps.”
4. Google Chrome wants to make it easier to search your web history (TechRadar)
The address bar in Google Chrome is known as the omnibox because it serves a variety of functions. Now, Google is adding new shortcut functionality that should make it easier to search your web history. For example, a user may type @history into the omnibox to display a search of a recently-visited page. Other options include @bookmarks to look through saved pages, @tabs to search open tabs and more. The feature is still in beta, so look for it in a future Chrome and ChromeOS update.
5. Windows 11 update causing Blue Screen of Death – how to fix it (Tom’s Guide)
Imagine your excitement at finally updating to Windows 11 update 22H2 only to have your excitement dashed by a blue screen of death (BSOD). You do not need to imagine it because it is happening to some users. Luckily, a fix is available to prevent it from happening. Windows 11 users with devices that run an 11th-generation Intel Core “Rocket Lake” processor seem to be the ones impacted by the BSOD. If that is you, try updating your device’s Intel Smart Sound Technology driver.
6. Android apps are getting a ‘major’ Google TTS quality upgrade (9 to 5 Google)
A major text-to-speech audio quality upgrade is coming to Android apps. The update will bring “clearer, more natural voices” and “a significant side-by-side quality increase” to the feature.
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Henry Irvine, Contributing Technology Writer, translates more than a decade of internet technology experience in product and customer relationship management into practical help and how-to content. Look for him on Bay Area trails, music venues, or sausage shacks when he’s not writing. Don’t call him Hank if you see him. Seriously. Hank on Twitter
