WServerNews: Ask Our Readers: What would you recommend buying your kids this Christmas to learn about technology?

In this week’s newsletter

We were nerds once…and young. Known issues with Windows 10 20H2. KB4577671 knocks out BitLocker To Go. Trust the cloud, eh? Helpful resource on updating Apple devices. 7 is the new 2.  Dealing with annoying Chrome debug.log files. Netflix can be bad for your health. Plus lots more — read it all, read it here on WServerNews!

Enjoy this week’s newsletter and feel free to send us feedback on any of the topics we’ve covered — we love hearing from our readers! And please tell others about WServerNews! It’s free and always will be free — and they can subscribe to it here. Thanks!!!

 

Got questions? Ask our readers!

WServerNews goes out each week to almost 200,000 IT pro subscribers worldwide! That’s a lot of expertise to tap into. Do you need help with some technical problem or are looking for expert advice on something IT-related? Ask Our Readers by emailing your problems and/or questions to us at [email protected]

 

Mailbag

In our previous issue of WServerNews I wrote the following:

Back in September I wrote an article about a problem caused by bad sectors on the SSD drive of one of my Windows 10 machines. Towards the end of my article I mentioned some outstanding questions I still had, one of which being how to test the health of a SSD drive.

Well it turns out that Microsoft is testing a new feature for Windows 10 that will supposedly be able to detect whether your SSD is going to fail soon. In the meantime some of the ways of judging SSD health that have been suggested to be include monitoring for SMART errors 177 Wear Leveling Count (wear) and 187 Uncorrectable Error Cnt (failure). If readers have any other suggestions concerning this you can email me at [email protected]

This week a reader named Ken Berry commented as follows:

I use a tool called crystal disk info. I run it and it will tell you a percentage of expected life remaining on newer ssd drives as well as if there are enough smart errors to cause either a caution or bad flag.

  • Bad = replace now likely already lost data or the drive won’t be working for normal use.
  • Caution = replace very soon as drive has some issues and data integrity may be at risk.
  • Good = drive has reported no errors so should be good to go.
  • “Percent”= percent of the ssd drives life that is likely remaining.

There is a lot of cool details in this tool.

I replied to Ken thanking him for the suggestion and said I used to use Crystal Disk Info many years ago and had forgotten about it and so would be sure check it out again. What do other readers think about this tool if they’ve used it? Email me at [email protected]

 

Editor’s Corner

This week’s observations and ruminations from Mitch Tulloch our Senior Editor…

We were nerds once…and young

Technology constantly changes, and these days it seems to be changing faster than ever before. As IT professionals we probably know this more than anyone else. Because if we don’t stay on top of things, we’ll let left behind in the dust.

That’s not something you want to happen to your own children, right?

So the question is, How can you help young children learn about technology? And I mean learn in the sense of enjoying playing and experimenting with technology such as building things hands-on. As an example, let me share a bit of my own personal journey.

My love of all things technical probably stems from my dad who worked in the field of sound engineering and acoustics. Here’s a photo of a corner of his apartment when he was just starting out in his career:

Following in the footsteps of my dad led me into my first technology project when I was around 7 or 8 years old. Using a still working motor from a busted old record player, I turned it into a working record player using only a pin, some Meccano and a rolled-up sheet of poster paper:

It worked quite well but probably inflicted some damage on my dad’s collection of jazz records.

A few years later I started to teach myself some basic electronics. Transistors were the big thing back then, and I actually built a working tape recorder with some heads I bought from a local electronics supplier using my allowance and a one-transistor amplifier that I breadboarded all by myself. The only problem was I couldn’t get hold of a synchronous (hysteresis) motor anywhere, and the motor I ended up using drove the tape at too high a speed for the output to be intelligible for anyone but chipmunks.

By junior high I was a dedicated fan of Isaac Asimov’s books, and as a result I wanted to know everything about everything when it came to science and technology. This led to my fast advancement in mathematics (my teachers allowed me stop attending math class starting in Grade 8 and just gave me the textbook knowing I would go home and learn it end to end) and I also dabbled with electronics, physics and chemistry. Model rocketry was a big thing back then — here’s a photo of myself and best friend Mike walking back from a successful launch way out in a field somewhere:

Note the uncanny resemblance of me on the left with the young Bill Gates below:

Maybe we just had the same hair stylist.

My love of technology was driven not only by a desire to make things but also to understand them. This eventually led me into studying Physics at university where I was torn between two future paths: astrophysics (the really big stuff) or particle physics (the teensy-weeny stuff). Here is me many years later in the Control Room at CERN, standing beside a whiteboard displaying my Theory of Everything:

Actually I wasn’t working there at CERN, I was just visiting to write an article about their IT infrastructure for a magazine. BTW note how much weight I had put on by then — it was just a couple of years later when I started my journey from being an archetypical fat IT pro to becoming a more or less fit IT pro. Hey, thks is obviously a good time to put in a plug for our other newsletter FitITproNews!

Anyways, for reasons I won’t go into now, I eventually ended up landing in the IT profession where there never seems to be an end to the fun and interesting things you can learn.

Which brings me to the point again of this trip down memory lane. As an IT professional yourself (as most of our newsletter readers are) you probably love technology, though you might hate your job (or boss) sometimes. How then can you install (whoops! instill) this same kind of love of technology in your own children this Christmas? Especially if they’re still young, say in the 8 to 12 year old range when kids are still relatively teachable. Or maybe you don’t have young kids, but you know a friend or relative who does.

More specifically, what gifts would you buy for young kids this Christmas that would enable them to explore the incredible potential of today’s different kinds of technology? Send us your recommendations so we can share them with other readers in our coming pre-Christmas edition of WServerNews. To keep things simple we’d prefer you just send us Amazon links to things like kits and projects and learning resources that kids can use to build tech stuff or explore technology in an open-ended fashion. But we’ll also accept other kinds of recommendations if you have them, such as magazines and YouTube channels and clubs and online technology schools for children or whatever you want to recommend to techie parents in similar situations.

So please give this some thought and send your Amazon links and other recommendations to us at [email protected] and we’ll include them in our next issue so readers will still have time to buy or look into them before Christmas arrives.

Thanks a lot, and a merry ho-ho-ho to you too!

–Mitch

And now for some other news and tech tidbits…

Known issues with Windows 10 20H2

In addition to the problem of lost certificates there are some other known issues with version 20H2 you should know about before upgrading to this newest version of Windows 10. You can find the official list of these issues here on Microsoft Docs:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-information/status-windows-10-20h2

I also heard about another issue from a list message a colleague forwarded me. The issue occurred when someone tried doing in-place upgrades to 20H2 on machines where the Local Administrator account had previously been renamed. After performing the upgrade they discovered that when you tried to access user settings in the Settings app on the upgraded machine, Windows 10 crashed causing the machine to reboot. So watch out for that one as well if you plan on upgrading to 20H2.

KB4577671 knocks out BitLocker To Go

A reader emailed us to tell us that a colleague had confirmed that installing the KB4577671 hotfix is included in the October updates for Windows 10 causes USB flash drives to be no longer displayed as Removable Drives in Control Panel\System and Security\BitLocker Drive Encryption. Something to watch out for if you’re using BitLocker in your Windows 10 environment.

Trust the cloud, eh?

Many businesses and individuals rely on cloud services nowadays for their work and personal use. Some of the more popular cloud services are those provided by Google such as Gmail and G-Suite. If you’re job or life depend on reliable cloud services, take a look at the following recent article:

What it’s like to get locked out of Google indefinitely (Business Insider)

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-users-locked-out-after-years-2020-10

Now imagine that happening to you.

Got any thoughts on this? Email us at [email protected]

Helpful resource on uypdating Apple devices

I’ve discovered there’s a helpful resource on the AskWoody site where you can find update guidance for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS as well asand Apple device firmware and security. Think of it as a “patch watch” page for users of Apple devices. You can find this resource here:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/2000014-ongoing-list-of-apple-operating-system-updates/

Great stuff.

7 is the new 2

And finally, although Windows 10 is now on nearly two-thirds of computing systems surveyed by NetMarketShare, the redoubtable Windows 7 still holds a resounding second place in the hearts of computing affectionados with an entirely respectable one-fifth share of the user community.

All I can say to that is MW7GA!

🙂

Got more thoughts about anything in this newsletter?

Email us at [email protected]!

Tell all your friends about WServerNews!

Please let all your friends and colleagues in the IT profession know about our newsletter. Tell them our latest issues can be found at wservernews.com while older issues dating back to 1997 can be found in our archive. And let them know also that they can receive WServerNews each week in their inbox by subscribing to it here. Thank you!

 

Tip of the Week

>> Got any IT pro tips you’d like to share with other readers of our newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

Dealing with annoying Chrome debug.log files

Since the Chromium-based Brave Browser last updated itself on my main work laptop a few weeks ago, I’ve been getting annoying debug.log files popping up in some of the folders on my machine. When I open them they look something like this:

These are apparently caused by a bug in the latest version of the Chromium browsing engine, and Bleeping Computer has a fix you can use if you’ve been getting these things too:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-and-edge-are-creating-random-debuglog-log-files/

 

Admin Toolbox

>> Got any admin tools or software you’d like to recommend to our readers? Email us at [email protected]

Are you drowning in a flood of emails? Try email archiving from MailStore: increase your productivity, reduce IT costs, and don’t lose another important email again:

http://www.mailstore.com

Sysmalogic Active Directory Report Builder is a simple to use multi-domain auditing tool for compliance requirements that provides AD reporting at a moment’s notice:

http://www.sysmalogic.com/

Host Profiles CLI Fling (hostprofilescli) is a command-line utility that allows vSphere administrators to perform several operations with Host Profiles that are either not currently possible through existing user interfaces, or possible only through graphical interfaces:

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/host-profiles-cli?src=so_5a314d05e49f5&cid=70134000001SkJn

Active Directory Replication PowerShell Module makes checking Active Directory replication easier and richer than repadmin.exe:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/780a2272-06f9-4895-827e-9f56bc9272c4

 

Factoid – Netflix can be bad for your health

Our previous factoid and question was this:

Fact: Vinyl-Record Sales Top Compact Discs for First Time in 34 Years

Question: Do any of our newsletter readers still listen to vinyl? And for that matter, do any of you still listen to CDs? Why or why not?

Mike Soar of Blue Triangle IT Solutions in Toronto, Canada responded by saying:

Enjoy reading your newsletter.

[EDITOR: Thanks!]

I guess I am a bit on the older side because I have both vinyl and CDs. I enjoy jazz and have a few hundred CDs that I play regularly. In fact two years ago I purchased a new CD player for let’s say more than I should have spent but the quality of the sound is very good. Yes, when our son and his girlfriend come over for dinner they just shake their head at me and wonder why anyone would still buy a CD let alone spend money on a new CD player. I think he kind of gets the vinyl part as it seems to be a “cool” thing these days. For me I can look over and see the records and the CDs and say I have something tangible not just a bunch of bits and bytes stored in some cloud somewhere. For a guy who manages computers day in and day out for more years than I want to remember, you would think I would have everything digitized and streamed but you know when the Internet is down or the streaming service gets sold or bankrupt, I will still be enjoying my music. Or maybe I am now just a grumpy old man….

Have a good week.

[EDITOR: You too!]

Ted Bodfish from London, Ontario here in Canada also had something to say about this topic:

Hi Mitch, You are really into blasts from the past, eh?

I am puzzled and amused by the surge in vinyl record sales. My son, in his 20s and with a degree in Media Studies, has an expanding collection of vinyl recordings.

Vinyl records are analog recordings that do not faithfully reproduce the original sound. It changes the sound, but I guess many people like that distorted sound better — some claim it is ‘warmer’. Every time you play a vinyl record you reduce the quality of the recording, so vinyl records wear out.

One of the first vinyl LPs I purchased (back in the 60s, oh my) had a flaw on one of the tracks. It flipped into the next groove. The music at that point was a long, drawn-out chord that lasted about one revolution of the disc and I didn’t realize the tune was missing something. I had been playing it on the record grinder built into my parents’ console stereo. It wasn’t until later when I purchased a higher quality turntable that could handle the flaw that I heard that track the way it was intended by the artists.

CDs are digital recordings sampled at 44kHz, which is a much higher frequency than the human ear can detect. The data on CDs is not compressed or altered artificially. When converted back to analog the sounds produced by a reasonable quality CD player are a faithful representation of the original sound. In my humble opinion, the quality of the sound more closely matches the original sound when compared to the distorted sound produced by a vinyl disc player. CDs do not wear out if they are played often, although there are other issues which may cause CDs to fail.

MP3 recordings use lossy compression to reduce the size of the data recording. That means when the recording is converted back to analog sound it does not have the same quality as the original sound. Many people are put off by this and tar CDs with the same brush.

I think the drop in CD sales is due to the popularity of streaming services because most young people are adopting a minimalist strategy and don’t want to build up a large physical library of stuff. Those who do want to collect things may see vinyl as ‘In’, or ‘Groovy’ (excuse the pun).

As for your question, I don’t listen to any music, except sometimes when I’m driving and turn on the radio. While working I find background music distracting and avoid it. I worked in an office that had music piped through the phone system. I figured out how to disable that so I could enjoy the sound of silence (with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel).

When I go out for a walk for exercise I listen to news and current affairs available on an app from my national broadcaster. That’s the CBC Listen App, in case you are wondering.

What’s CBC, Ted? Isn’t that something derived from the Cannabis plant?

LOL.

And finally Martin Urwaleck the IT-Leiter for Pharmazeutische Gehaltskasse in Wein (Vienna) Austria says:

I’m using both vinyl and CDs — I’ve got a lot of 7″ and 12″ singles that I like to hear from time to time and I see no reason to buy them on CD (most oft hem are not available anyway). I’m digitizing some oft he more important from time to time so I can hear them on the road. The current count of my records is ~600 LPs, ~1200 CDs and ~200 7″ singles — and I’ve inherited ~ 300 grammophone records that I can’t play at the moment (I guess I’ll make me a Xmas present and buy a record player for them).

My reasons for using CDs and vinyl records:

  1. A lot of the music I hear is not available on streaming platforms
  2. I have no streaming client for my HiFi
  3. Streaming quality often sucks
  4. It’s faster to find a specific vinyl or CD in my media center than on a streaming client
  5. I simply love them!

I replied to Martin by saying that I totally agreed, especially about point 3 streaming quality and also point 5 as I like to handle and look at real physical objects instead of just electrons. I also said that point number 1 also applies in our case to watching movies as most of the DVDs we love watching (i.e. foreign or obscure movies) are not available on NetFlix.

Which brings me to this week’s factoid:

Fact: There are good arguments for cancelling your Netflix subscription

Source: https://blog.rapidweblaunch.com/why-should-cancel-netflix-account/

Question: Fascinating article to read. As someone who stopped watching television completely about 15 years ago and only buys disks of interesting moves (e.g. foreign films) I personally would concur with most of what Patrick Antinozzi says in his article. What about you? During these difficult times of the pandemic, has Netflix been helpful stress release or has it become an unhealthy addiction for you?

Email your answers to [email protected]

 

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Conference Calendar

>> Got an IT conference or event happening that you’d like to promote in our newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

DevOpsCon — Nov 30-Dec 3 in Munich, Germany

https://devopscon.io/munich/

2021 Conferences (subject to change)

Microsoft Ignite — March TBD (virtual)

https://myignite.microsoft.com/home

Microsoft MVP Global Summit — March TBD (virtual)

https://mvp.microsoft.com/summit

Black Hat Asia — May 4-7 (location TBD)

https://www.blackhat.com/upcoming.html#asia

RSA Conference — May 17-20 in San Francisco

https://www.rsaconference.com/usa

Black Hat USA — Jul. 31-Aug. 3 in Las Vegas

https://www.blackhat.com/upcoming.html#usa

DEF CON 29 — Aug. 5-8 in Las Vegas

https://www.defcon.org/

VMworld — Aug 30-Sept 1 in San Francisco

https://www.vmworld.com/en/index.html

Black Hat Europe – Dec 7-10 (virtual)

https://www.blackhat.com/upcoming.html#europe

Cisco Live Melbourne — Dec 7-10 in Melbourne, Australia

https://www.ciscolive.com/apjc.html

 

Podcast Corner

Terraform vs Bicep/ARM with Steve Buchanan (RunAsRadio)

http://runasradio.com/

The Future Of Networking With Simon Sharwood (Heavy Networking)

https://packetpushers.net/series/weekly-show/

SRM and VMware Cloud DR (Virtually Speaking)

https://www.vspeakingpodcast.com/

Handheld Wi-Fi Tools with netAlly (Clear To Send)

https://www.cleartosend.net/

YOU get sanctions, and YOU get sanctions (Risky Business)

https://risky.biz/netcasts/risky-business/

Planning Tasks in ToDo with Planner in Teams with My Tasks (Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast)

https://www.msclouditpropodcast.com/

Upcoming Cloud Conferences, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Graph Updates (Microsoft Cloud Show)

http://www.microsoftcloudshow.com/podcast

 

New on Techgenix.com

Learning red-hot datacenter skills without breaking the bank

Learning datacenter skills doesn’t have to be expensive. You can learn some hot technologies at your own pace — and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

https://techgenix.com/learning-datacenter-skills/

Have you really tested your disaster recovery plan?

How do you simulate a disaster to see whether your disaster recovery plan is ready to handle anything? It’s not easy, especially for a datacenter.

https://techgenix.com/tested-your-disaster-recovery-plan/

When only a hard reboot will do: Datacenter remote management power cycling

Sometimes only a hard reboot can get your datacenter running. These remote management power cycling options may save you a trip in the middle of the night.

https://techgenix.com/datacenter-power-cycling-hard-reboot/

SOS for SSDs: How to avoid solid-state drives firmware failure

Solid-state drives are great. They’re terrific. They’re blazing fast. Except when all SSDs suddenly fail at the same time.

https://techgenix.com/solid-state-drives-firmware-failure/

Trench Tales: Poor or missing IT documentation can leave you feeling lost

When you assume responsibility for IT at a company and discover their network and IT documentation is poor or missing, it’s time to start scrambling.

https://techgenix.com/missing-it-documentation/

 

Fun videos from Flixxy

Urban Freeride – Lyon and Paris – Fabio Wibmer

Freestyle street trials and pro mountain bike rider Fabio Wibmer’s amazing stunts in Lyon and Paris, France.

https://www.flixxy.com/urban-freeride-lyon-and-paris-fabio-wibmer.htm

Swiss Rocket Bicycle

Breaking the World Speed Record for Mountain Bikes (236 km/h – 147 mph)

https://www.flixxy.com/swiss-rocket-bicycle.htm

The Bicycle Car

An amazing combination of bicycle and car – designed and built by Swedish design engineer Mikael Kjellman.

https://www.flixxy.com/the-bicycle-car.htm

16 Girls + 1 Bicycle = Awesome

China’s got Talent: Bicycle Acrobatics. Perfect coordination, agility, balance and teamwork.

https://www.flixxy.com/chinese-bicycle-acrobatics.htm

 

More articles of interest

3 key ways DevOps benefits a business

DevOps adoption can strain an organization. Is it worth the effort? Here’s what a business should expect to gain when implementing DevOps and continuous delivery.

https://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/feature/3-key-ways-DevOps-benefits-a-business?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020September25_TG_A1

VDI testing checklist: Key steps to test a VDI deployment

Whether IT is running VDI for the first time or simply tweaking the back-end hardware, admins should follow a VDI testing checklist to ensure positive UX and sufficient desktop resources.

https://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/feature/How-to-plan-a-VDI-test-before-a-full-deployment?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020September25_TG_A2

Windows file systems showdown: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and ReFS

Some older file formats continue to find life in the enterprise decades after they were developed for their versatility — in certain situations.

https://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/answer/Whats-the-difference-between-FAT32-FAT16-and-NTFS?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020September25_TG_A3

Common virtual disaster recovery errors and how to avoid them

Frequently testing a disaster recovery plan is one reliable way to ensure that a virtual recovery will go smoothly and not set an organization back.

https://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/tip/Common-virtual-disaster-recovery-errors-and-how-to-avoid-them?Offer=Content_Partner_OTHR-_2020September25_TG_A4

 

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Got feedback about anything in this issue of WServerNews? Email us at [email protected]

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