So just how dangerous is an old, out of date operating system anyway?

Glaurung brought up a good point in a comment yesterday. If you never go online and/or you’re really careful, do you really need to update your OS to something new?

In my professional opinion, it depends. Didn’t you know that would be my answer? Read more

The bitcoin-train connection

Ever since Bitcoin came into prominence, there’s been a great deal of speculation about the shadowy creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Newsweek thinks they found him: A semi-retired engineer who dislikes banks and the government and the fees and difficulty associated with importing model train parts from England and Japan.

Well, if you’re going to invent a cryptocurrency, what better thing to spend it on than model train parts? Read more

Hostsman makes it easy to block malware with a hosts file

I’ve written before about using the hosts file to block domains that are hosting malware. The idea is pretty simple. There’s a known list of domains that are either hosting or controlling malware, so by blocking your computer from accessing those domains, you make it much harder to get infected in the first place, and in the event that you do get infected, at least you block access to the command and control servers.

The problem is that Windows doesn’t make this easy. Well, I found an easy way: Hostsman. You can have it up and running in minutes.

Update: Don’t mess around with hosts files. It’s more efficient and more effective to change DNS servers instead.

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