Windows and Proprietary Software
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Cygwin 3.4.0 Is Here as the Last Release Supporting Windows 7 and 8 [Ed: In 2022 people would be far better off using something like VirtualBox with a GNU/Linux distro]
Cygwin, a Linux-like environment for Windows, released version 3.4.0, comes with full ASLR enabled by default.
Cygwin is a well-known tool among computer users who, in the recent past, have been looking for a way to run Linux emulation on Windows. But, of course, we’re talking about days when Windows and Linux were on opposite sides of the fence, and concepts like Windows Subsystem for Linux seemed more like a script for a science-fiction movie.
Let’s explain in a few words what Cygwin is. It is a set of open-source tools that enable Linux applications to be compiled and executed on a Microsoft Windows from a Linux-like command line interface. The tool was developed by Cygnus Solutions, which Red Hat later acquired.
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Microsoft could face its first antitrust fight in years over ‘Call of Duty’
Microsoft fired its opening salvo in what could be a major confrontation with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the tech giant’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. On Monday, Microsoft President Brad Smith penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal saying that the deal would benefit gamers and developers by making Microsoft more competitive with rival Sony.
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Microsoft: November updates break ODBC database connections
Microsoft is working to address a new known issue affecting apps using ODBC database connections after installing the November 2022 Patch Tuesday Windows updates.
According to Redmond, affected apps might fail to connect to databases via connections using the Microsoft ODBC SQL Server driver.
"After installing this update, apps that use ODBC connections through Microsoft ODBC SQL Server Driver (sqlsrv32.dll) to access databases might not connect," Microsoft explains.
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Cyberattack on top Indian hospital highlights security risk [iophk: Windows TCO]
More than 173,000 hospitals have registered with a federal program to digitize health records since its launch in September 2021. The program assigns patients numbers that are linked to medical information stored by hospitals on their own servers or in cloud-based storage. Experts fear that hospitals may not have the expertise to ensure digital security.
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Google Takeout and Data Portability
Google Takeout has been around for a decade. It's a feature that allows you to export your entire Google data history in a series of zip files. Google search history, Google Docs, Contacts, Calendar, Maps, Wallet, Voice, and many other Google products are included in the data export. Other companies like Meta have similar services.
However, nobody really uses these data export tools. There are no competing products that make use of this data. Other than a few curious downloaders or some tin-foil programmers who want to keep backups of their data, it seems more like a failed exercise in data portability.