HiWire

Finished playing Shadowrun Returns (all of it – Dead Man's Switch, Dragonfall, Hong Kong, and some user-generated campaigns) and loved it... However... I started playing Divinity: Original Sin (from the same Steam sale) again and it is incredible. At the time, I was trying to decide between it and Pillars of Eternity, but this game makes PoE look like Pac-Man. Gorgeous and funny... the voice actors are obviously having a ridiculously good time.

Happy Birthday!

Thanks, guys!

Listening to my Shuffle now... it's the tiny one with a big sound. Not looking forward to replacing it – the out of warranty fee and battery service end up costing more than its original price.

I'll miss having the option of an inexpensive iPod... my 3G 4GB iPod Shuffle is serving me well, but sales have probably fallen off a cliff in recent years.

Television – Marquee Moon

Simple is best. I've got old gear anyway, so I won't put myself up as a guinea pig if it's unnecessary. Every new standard has taken a while to implement correctly and consistently, whether it was USB, FireWire, Bluetooth, etc.

Yes, I'll probably start with an adapter if I have to hook up to USB Type-C. I think it will be a few years before this stuff becomes standard, and there aren't any new functions at the moment.

I've been thinking about getting a new MacBook and I realized that Apple has changed all the ports. Everything is Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 and the headphone jack lost its optical output with the 2016 models: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7818763?start=0&tstart=0 Have you guys done any research on DACs with Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1? I think everyone is going to be using USB Type-A to Type-C adapters until manufacturers release new products. Yes, I realize that there isn't an immediate benefit to using Type-C connections for audio. It looks like an opportunity to sell stuff all over again.

Roxette – Look Sharp!

Various Artists – Ninja Cuts: flexistentialism

No price on the SRM-T8000 yet at Munich: http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/munich-high-end-2017-headphones-personal-audio/?page=2

Good call. I'm buying a few new Macs at work and the 8GB limit of the MacBook Air is starting to look like a deal-killer. The 12" MacBook needs full Thunderbolt 3 speed instead of USB 3.0 in the next revision. Everything else inside is roughly comparable to the bigger MacBooks, otherwise.

Here's a question: are the Thunderbolt 3 ports running at full speed on both sides of the 2017 13" MacBook Pros? https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207256 The non-Touch Bar 13" MacBook Pro (MacBook Escape) seems to be a decent middle ground: http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/06/10/review-apples-new-kaby-lake-13-macbook-pro-without-touch-bar-unexpectedly-speedy-vs-2016-model

Schneider Electric says SLA batteries last about 3-5 years: http://blog.schneider-electric.com/it-management/2014/08/28/recommendations-prolonging-life-ups-battery/ That matches my experience with my APC and CyberPower UPS at work. People claim that APC is overly-conservative in their battery ratings (some of their UPS units will stop working until you get a new battery, based on the installation date of the current battery), so you might be able to get a longer life out of an SLA in your Liebert, as long as you can keep the batteries near their optimum temperature (77°F). You did the smart thing... if the replacement you ordered works properly, you can budget for more of them. If the other batteries are showing the right voltage and they can take a charge, you can leave them for now.

Gravenhurst – The Ghost In Daylight

Good question – the version I downloaded (HitmanPro 3.7 x64) gave me an option to run the program as a one-shot deal or as a perpetual scanner. I chose the one-shot option and it seems to be completely gone from my system. The only thing it left was the scan log I saved on my desktop. I didn't realize it was a Sophos product, either. The screenshot on the MalwareTips site shows the SurfRight name, which Wikipedia says Sophos acquired in 2015. Maybe they realized the original product was too much like malware itself – they'll probably lose the questionable name as they incorporate the technology into their other products.

Testing almost every free anti-virus/malware app wasn't exactly my plan for the weekend – it definitely woke me from a state of complacence. I've seen friends, family, and co-workers suffer though this kind of stuff and I'm glad the damage wasn't much worse. There's no way I would have thought an app called HitmanPro would be legit Running all the security software also seemed to uncover various little creepy-crawlies that crept into my system and data over the years... some of my files go back to the 1990s.

My computer got hit by malware yesterday, which took all day to eliminate. Since there wasn't a lot of specific info online, I thought I'd post this in case it hits anyone else. Most of the web results point to 2012 recommendations that are out of date. This particular redirect hijacks your address bar and search results (for all your browsers) to SearchMagnified or SearchingMagnified, obvious bogus domains that will no doubt take you to further exploit sites. It also redirected direct links and bookmarks to these sites. I looked through the list of browser settings and add-ons (I don't run any), running processes, installed software, and even the hosts file and DNS settings, after dumping cache files and cookies in the browsers and refreshing them. Nothing obvious showed in the list of add-ons, processes, startup entries, or the Registry. It went right through Avira Antivirus and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – neither was able to detect anything wrong with a full scan. Windows Defender was, of course, useless. First, I downloaded and installed (sequentially) a bunch of free antivirus apps, all of which have relatively good standing in their industry – Bitdefender, Avast, AVG, Kaspersky. I updated definitions and ran a full scan with each, which took all day and turned up nothing. I also uninstalled each app before trying the next one, which meant a lot of restarting. I also used the following anti-malware apps – Malwarebytes AdwCleaner and Spybot Search & Destroy. No results there, either. Eventually, I found a general help page on browser hijacks at the MalwareTips website (dodgy-sounding, I know, but I was at my wits' end by that point). Going directly to the applications the page referenced (rather than clicking through their links), I followed their recommendations step by step: 1. Kaspersky TDSSKiller (rootkit detection and removal) – no results 2. RKill (process blocker removal) – no results 3. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware – no results 4. HitmanPro – we have a winner! HitmanPro listed a small number of tracking cookies (low threat), and removed 1 malware from a 2016 archive file. Deleting these fixed the browsers. 5. Zemana Anti-Malware – did not try 6. Reset browser to default settings – already tried. No effect Takeaway lessons and reminders (most of these are pretty obvious): 1. Have up-to-date backups of your critical data as well as a system image 2. Make sure you know if System Restore is working if you have to revert Windows 3. Consider changing your user level down from Administrator 4. None of the browsers were safe. Modern hijacks are able to affect all of them. Windows 10 is obviously still vulnerable to drive-by website exploits 5. Have a second computing device, and at least a large flash drive or external hard drive to boot from in extremis 6. Hard drives are slow... the painful process of scanning the entire system (many hours) would have been much less painful on an SSD 8. Hybrid vigor: if you have the resources, experiment with multiple operating systems and virtualization to reduce your exposure 9. Keep a variety of these free anti-virus and anti-malware tools on an easily-accessible disk, and update them regularly. None of them are guaranteed to find all your viruses, spyware, adware, malware, and ransomware by themselves, so keep your options open. Paid security software (Norton, McAfee, premium versions of the vendors listed above) probably has the same pitfalls. 10. Update all your passwords and login information after an attack. Scan other volumes (e.g., external and networked drives) to ensure data security 11. Using cloud services reduces your reliance on a single device/system, but can introduce new weaknesses 12. Prepare for the worst-case scenario. Know what steps you would take if you lost all your data and possibly the entire computer (e.g., comparable to a theft, loss, or hardware failure) Conclusions: I suspected from the start that it was a simple browser hijack, but doing a thorough inspection with multiple programs confirmed the system and its data is essentially clean (I am running free Sophos Home now). I hadn't heard of a lot of the tools listed above, but they obviously vary in their effectiveness. In the end, I didn't lose any data and I only lost a day. It is important to act as quickly as possible against system security problems. You can't always rely on a previous set of security tools, so stay up to date and limit your vulnerabilities.

Goldie – Timeless

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult – Sexplosion! Various Artists – Verve Unmixed 4

Patrick Rothfuss – The Wise Man's Fear I was excited to start this book but it turned out to be an epic fail. Started this one immediately afterwards to get the bad taste out: Guy Gavriel Kay – A Song for Arbonne

Shivaree – I Oughtta Give You A Shot in the Head for Making Me Live in This Dump The Stranglers – Rattus Norvegicus

Matthew Sweet – Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu

Tricky – Pre-Millenium Tension I'm not sure if anything he's done since this one has reached the same heights (or lows, depending on your mood)...