Microsoft keeps adding more and more stuff to Windows and it often seems to get in the way more than it helps. A "clean" installation of Windows, at this point, forces you to sign up for a Microsoft account, tries to sell you cloud storage space, and is very pushy about getting you to use Microsoft Edge and Copilot. I could go on.

Tiny11Builder is a third-party script that can take a Windows installation ISO, which you can get from Microsoft, and strip it of all of these features. Install Windows using this tool and you'll have a truly clean installation: no News, no OfficeHub, no annoying GetStarted prompts, and no junk entires in the start menu. You can always install these things later, if you want, but you'll be starting with a clean state.

First download an official Windows 11 ISO

Head to the official Microsoft page for downloading Windows. Scroll down until you see Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices. Select the version of Windows you have a product key for.

Credit: Justin Pot

Click the Download Now button. This will likely take 15 minutes or so, depending on your internet speed.

Download the script and prep your device

Now it's time to download our scripts. Head to the tiny11builder Github page and click the Code button in the top-right corner. Next click Download ZIP.

Credit: Justin Pot

Unzip that download. Now we need to configure your system to allow PowerScript to make administration changes. Open PowerShell as an administrator, which you can do by searching for "PowerShell" in the start menu and then clicking the Run as Administrator in the right side-bar.

Credit: Justin Pot

Type or copy the exact command Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted and hit Enter.

Credit: Justin Pot

You will be warned about the security implications of this—confirm that you know what you're doing and are allowing the change. You can always undo the change later by running Set-ExecutionPolicy restricted.

Make your tiny11 disk

By now your Windows 11 ISO should be finished downloading. Right-click the file and click Mount. This will open the ISO file as a virtual CD, which you can confirm by looking for it in Windows Explorer.

Credit: Justin Pot

Once you've confirmed that the disk is mounted, you can run the tiny11script, which was in the ZIP file you unzipped earlier. The simplest way to get started is to right-click the file "tiny11maker.ps1" and click Run with PowerShell.

Credit: Justin Pot

This will start the script. You will be asked for the drive letter of your virtual drive, which you can find in Windows Explorer under My Computer—look for a DVD drive that wasn't there before. You only need to type the letter and hit enter.

Credit: Justin Pot

After that, the script will ask you which version of Windows you want to make a disc for. Answer with the version you have a product key for.

Credit: Justin Pot

After that, the script will do its thing, which might take a while. When the process is done, you will see a message letting you know.

Credit: Justin Pot

There will be a brand-new ISO file in the script's directory. This ISO is perfect for setting up Windows in a virtual machine, which is how I'm hosting it, but it also works for installing to a device. You can burn this ISO file to a DVD, if you have an optical drive, or you can use a USB disk. Microsoft offers official instructions for this, which are pretty easy to follow.

However you install Windows from this ISO, know that it will be completely clean. You will not be prompted to create a Microsoft account, or even to sign in using one, and there will be no Microsoft services other than what you need in order to use the operating system. Seriously, look at this start menu:

Credit: Justin Pot

There's no clutter whatsoever, meaning you can add the applications you actually want to use. It would be nice if Microsoft offered this officially, but it's nice that there's a way for power users to get it.

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You can get this outdoor flashlight and power bank on sale for $39.99 right now (reg. $62.99), though prices can change at any time.

Movies date themselves for all kinds of reasons.

Sometimes what seemed great when we were kids looks silly to adult eyes. Other times the whys are more complicated—think Rambo III and The Living Daylights making heroes of mujahideen jihadists because, at the time, they were fighting the Soviets. Standards change, too, often for the better—we don’t look on the obvious racism of Gone with the Wind with the tolerance we once did, and we don’t celebrate the rape culture that snuck its way into 1980s comedies in the same way (at least, we say we don’t). Or maybe it’s that the language of moviemaking has changed, or that special effects that were OK back in the day are distracting to our more evolved modern eyes.

Looking back with a more critical eye is usually, in my experience, a positive thing. The cost of growth, as individuals and a culture, requires us to look back with a little embarrassment, and strive to do better. It’s not necessarily that the movies are bad (although some of these are, in all honesty, absolute shit); time complicates the legacy of most every films, but these more than most.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1953)

Even making allowances for changing attitudes, it's hard to look past the core conceit of this ostensibly charming classic musical: it's about kidnapping women en masse, taking them back to your deep backwoods hovel and holding them hostage until they fall in love with you. The kidnappees already had boyfriends and partners, which is a big part of the reason why they'd refused any such arrangement in the first place. Lest we mistake the intent of the creatives behind the show and film, a central production number called "Sobbin' Women" is all about the mythological and possibly historical rape of the Sabine women—when the men of early Rome decided to build their civilization by capturing and forcibly impregnating the women of a nearby region. The song has a goofy old time with the idea that their "loot" (as the women are referred to) might spend a lot of time sobbin'—but don't worry: "We're gonna make them sobbin' women smile!"

Or else, presumably.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1963)

There was really no need for Blake Edwards’ adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella to indulge in notably caucasian actor Mickey Rooney’s over-the-top, unquestionably racist characterization of I. Y. Yunioshi, Holly Golightly’s Asian landlord. Harkening back to the most horrific stereotypes of the World War II propaganda era, Yunioshi is presented as a squinting, bumbling, buck-toothed Orientalist stereotype whose only purpose is comic relief—the “comedy” having to do entirely with the apparently intrinsic silliness of Japanese people, in general, and funny fake teeth in particular. The character in the novella wasn’t nearly such a caricature, and Rooney’s slapstick-y turn feels out of place against the rest of the film’s subdued tone. Even contemporary reviews noted the character’s dissonance and offensiveness, and I’ve never been able to watch it without his every scene derailing an otherwise pleasurable experience. (If you struggle similarly, good news: Mickey Rooney forgives you.)

Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Franco Zeffirelli’s take on the Shakespeare play is both daring and problematic in ways that have been debated for decades. The sumptuous production dared to cast actual teenagers in the lead roles, an innovation that shouldn’t be surprising...except that it had been done so very rarely before (the previous 1936 screen version cast actors in their 30s). By heightening the emphasis on burgeoning sexuality, Zeffirelli trod a dangerous road; there’s something to be said for a clear-eyed treatment of the subject, but the film’s nudity has been controversial for decades. Just recently, stars Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting filed a lawsuit claiming that they were coerced and tricked into appearing naked in the film, allegations that place a darker cloud over the once-lionized production.

Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Bernardo Bertolucci’s erotic drama finds middle-aged widower Marlon Brando involved in a highly sus relationship with a young Parisian woman played by Maria Schneider. The movie’s most memorable scene, involving forced sex and a stick of butter, was once seen as a bit of oh-so-1970s sexual libertinism, but has since come to stain its reputation. Schneider has spoken out about the abusive treatment she experienced from Bertolucci and Brando, particularly during the filming of that scene.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Animal House (1978)

The font from which an entire era of raunchy slobs versus snobs teen comedies would spring (think Revenge of the Nerds, Police Academy, Porky’s), Animal House is tough to revisit. There are hilarious moments, but also plenty of scenes that put a spotlight to the culture of sexual aggression we’re still living in. The movie’s gooiest good guy, Pinto (Tom Hulce), has a serious debate about whether or not to rape an unconscious girl, who we later learn is 13 (he doesn’t do it, but still). John Belushi’s Bluto spies on unsuspecting sorority girls in the nude, while a trip to a roadhouse sees the movie’s only Black characters menacing our leads because they want to steal their white dates. Enlightened stuff.

Where to stream (if you care to): Netflix

Blue Lagoon (1980)

The late 1970s, a great time for American cinema as a whole, also generated a sub-genre of movies that have become increasingly uncomfortable to modern eyes. This was Woody Allen’s world, in which a movie like Manhattan, about a man in his 40s dating a 17-year-old, felt entirely reasonable, at least to all of the other men having mid-life crises and fantasizing about their own continued sexual relevance. Blue Lagoon is a bit different, in that the two primary actors (Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins) are at least age-appropriate to each other, but its story of sexual awakening on an island feels excessively prurient—as though we’re meant to appreciate their youthful innocence while gawking at their supple, mostly naked bodies. Shields herself has recently spoken about her discomfort with the film’s marketing and approach, which placed an undue emphasis on her youth (she was 14 at the time).

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Arthur (1981)

I adore Arthur (and its all-time great theme song), but it’s hard not to find the movie’s flippant attitude toward alcoholism distasteful circa 2023. Dudley Moore plays the title character as the venerable lovable drunk, a character type that goes back to Shakespeare’s Falstaff, so it’s not like the mores of the ‘80s are particularly to blame. Still, Arthur drives drunk and has a grand old time whenever he’s not being a bit of a sad-sack, and the plot’s prescription for him is the love of a good woman (a phenomenal Liza Minelli) rather than a trip down the road to recovery.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Sixteen Candles (1984)

Like much of John Hughes ‘80s output, Sixteen Candles blends elements that are thoroughly charming and funny with plot points that dated almost immediately. Most obviously, Gedde Watanabe’s Chinese exchange student Long Duk Dong is a rare instance of a person of color wandering into any of the writer/director’s films, and he is a head-to-toe Asian stereotype, his every entrance accompanied by the sound of a goddam gong. At least Hughes hired an Asian-American actor to play the character, though not distinguishing between the Chinese Dong and Japanese-American Watanabe. Less overt, but just as troubling, is the film’s relationship with consent: Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) pursues vocally uninterested Sam (Molly Ringwald) to the point that she gives him a pair of her underwear in exchange for being left alone. He later exchanges said drawers to another guy to earn some time alone with his unconscious Caroline (Haviland Morris). It’s not entirely clear what happens afterward, but it’s disturbing in any event.

Where to stream (if you care to): Netflix

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Always the least of the original Indiana Jones trilogy, Temple of Doom still has enough of a spirit of rollicking adventure (and that memorable performance from Ke Huy Quan) to recommend it, generally. The problem comes in its depiction of Hindus, and Indian culture more broadly. In attempting to recreate the spirit of adventure serials of the 1930s, the film unfortunately carries along much of the related racist baggage. The Indian characters are all either victims to be saved by Indy, or insidious cultists/organ-extracting wizards. It all leans too far into stereotypes; what was controversial at the time of its release looks worse 40 years later.

Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+ or Disney+

Short Circuit (1986)

A generally delightful kid-friendly sci-fi comedy about a robot made for war who decides that he’d much rather hang out with Ally Sheedy and Steve Gutenberg (there’s a nice message about personal identity and autonomy) is muddied by goofy comic-relief sidekick character Ben Jabituya, played by white actor Fisher Stevens in brownface makeup, and sporting an exaggerated Apu-from-The Simpsons accent alongside various tiresome malapropisms. Even worse? The character takes over the lead in the sequel.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Rambo III (1988)

The entry point in what became the Rambo series, First Blood, nodded toward dealing Vietnam-era post-traumatic stress, while the second sent Rambo after forgotten POWs. Number three sends him off to Afghanistan to rescue an old friend, and in doing so takes a definite side in the long-running conflict between the Soviet Union and Afghan Mujahideen rebels, cutting a swath through Soviet forces with a machine gun and a rocket launcher and generating a record-breaking body count (literally! Guinness named it the most violent film ever made in 1990). This wasn’t just a fantasy—supporting Afghan militant groups was a centerpiece of U.S. anti-Soviet planning for over a decade; in a sense, this is Stallone bringing dry government policy to life for children who act out American imperialism via toys, comic books, and video games based on the movie.

In the 1980s, there was no bigger threat than the Soviet Union, so anyone opposed to the USSR was automatically one of the goodies. It's complicated, of course, but many of those Afghan militants went on to form the core of what became the Taliban—so that element hasn’t aged very well. In the movie's favor, it dodges some of American cinema's Islamophobic tropes, but speaks more to America's habit of offering unwavering support for a particular faction in a region without considering the long-term consequences there or here.

Where to stream (if you care to): Paramount+

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

Driving Miss Daisy will forever stand among the ranks of highly praised, well-intentioned Oscar-winners that wowed Academy members by dealing with issues of race by forefronting the experiences and perspective of white Americans. Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman give great performances, and the whole thing has an undeniable charm—but that’s rather the point. It’s cute, with a pat “can’t we all just get along?” take on racial harmony. Do the Right Thing, an undeniable classic with a far more complex and nuanced story to tell, came out the same year and wasn’t even nominated.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Dances with Wolves (1990)

From Driving Miss Daisy we jump one year later to 1990's Dances With Wolves, another well-intentioned but awkward attempt by a white filmmaker to tackle race relations. This one mangles history while also including problematic portrayals of indigenous Americans: the Sioux characters are largely in the “noble savage” mode, while the Pawnee characters are exclusively villainous. The biggest problem is the tired white savior narrative, in which a Caucasian character is not only our guide to the world of indigenous Americans, but the hero of the story. Because, as we know from history, white people were definitely on the side of indigenous North Americans.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime

Chasing Amy (1997)

Chasing Amy feels like a movie that could have worked, if there were any queer voices behind the scenes. The story of Holden (Ben Affleck’s) pursuit of lesbian-identified Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) could have been an exploration of sexual fluidity, or of bisexuality, but instead it plays as a straight guy’s fantasy—spend enough time with the hot lesbian, and you’ll land her eventually. It’s well-intentioned, mostly, and so close to working, but the emphasis on a hetero dude’s desire for an unattainable woman means that it winds up feeling a lot less groundbreaking than it thinks it is.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime or Paramount+

Conspiracy Theory (1997)

For some reason, this splashy Mel Gibson/Julia Roberts-starring, Richard Donner-directed thriller, in which it turns out the paranoid loner’s ramblings about a vast, global network of deception turn out to be exactly spot on, hits different in the post-Jan. 6, mid-pandemic, anti-vax era. Weird. (Also, Mel Gibson, oof.)

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Spawn (1997)

Not spending a lot of time on janky effects here...times change, standards change, and things that look funky to us now might have been cool as sh*t back in the day. Not so much with Spawn, a movie that blends some impressively dark superhero action with some very dumb nonsense...and ties it all together with some CGI that looked silly even at the time. Spawn's visit to hell, in particular, involves shots that look hardly better than video games of the era. the cartoon adaptation does a much better job with the source material.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Never Been Kissed (1999)

On the surface, a cute movie starring the consistently delightful Drew Barrymore as a 25-year-old copy editor who takes an assignment to go undercover as a high school student and finds herself getting hot for teacher Michael Vartan. The two begin a flirtatious relationship which (fortunately) doesn’t go anywhere before Barrymore’s character outs herself...at which point the teacher becomes deeply upset about her lies. And possibly about her not being an actual teenager? Without ever quite crossing the line, the movie is rife with creepy subtext. Odds are that the high school student you think is hot is not going to turn out to be secretly older, so probably don’t flirt with them.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

American Beauty (1999)

We could spend all day talking about American Beauty's fall from beloved Best Picture winner to a movie that's largely been forgotten, if not openly mocked. Some of that's a little unfair: Suburban ennui in the 1990s was more in the zeitgeist than it is now, and there were people (white people, mostly) who had genuinely come to feel that life had gotten too stable, and boring, and that the draw of conformity was the biggest threat. Following 9/11, the Iraq War, and Donald Trump, those fears have come to look a bit, well, overstated.

But there are more specific reasons why American Beauty plays less well: the first involves Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) a violent conservative who turns out to be a closeted gay man, and who is driven so insane by the contradiction that he turns to murder. Even the film's gay writer and gay director can't quite make that old trope fly. More than that, though, is in Kevin Spacey's lead character. He's obsessed with Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), a 16-year-old neighbor, and we're meant to see his leering lust for her as a metaphor of some kind, and also his decision to finally accept her as a human child and not an acceptable object of lust as somehow redemptive. If it was once hard to do that, it's nearly impossible given the actor's fall from grace.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Shallow Hal (2001)

Shallow Hal stars Jack Black as a man who’s hypnotized into seeing only the inner beauty in people, leading the appropriately shallow character to overlook the weight of new love interest Rosie, played by then-recent Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit. He only sees a skinny Rosie, and it all winds up having something to do with the idea that we shouldn’t be so concerned with what’s on the outside. The problem (and this isn’t uncommon in this kind of movie), is that the feel-good message is completely belied by a near-constant barrage of fat jokes (never mind that fact that representing “inner beauty” by conforming to conventional beauty standards is shallow in a different way). Even the otherwise sweet finale, in which Hal sees and accepts Rosie as she truly is, includes a last jab as Hal tries to pick her up only to find that, of course, he can’t.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

The Mummy Returns (2001)

The second Mummy movie is a smudged copy of the throwback adventure of the 1999 original, if enjoyable on its own terms. But oh boy have the VFX dated poorly. To say that the title’s Scorpion King (motion-captured by Dwayne Johnson, in his feature debut) look like something from a video game does a disservice to video games, even 22-year-old ones. Brendan Fraser has defended the effects as janky fun. I’m more or less willing to go down that road with him, but the fact remains what looked subpar in 2001 is positively jarring in 2023.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

The Notebook (2004)

Standing tall as one of the many love stories that look less romantic than creepy to modern eyes, The Notebook includes a scene in which the male lead (Ryan Gosling) dangles from the top of a ferris wheel and threatens to fall to his mangled death if Rachel McAdams’ Allie continues to clearly and loudly refuse to date him. Cute!

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime

Crash (2005)

“Maybe we’re all a little racist?” is, I guess, the point inexplicable Best Picture winner Crash is trying to make, while pretending that’s some kind of revelation. Excessively ironic, and chockful of redemption arcs for its white characters, it presents a mawkish idea of racial harmony that’s too pat and simplistic, by far, but especially in 2023. It won awards because some Academy members weren’t going to vote for the homo cowboy movie, and I can’t imagine many have bothered watching it since. (Don Cheadle’s great, at least.)

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

We talk about Hollywood's history of whitewashing in casting, but casting white people in non-white roles isn't the only potential problem: Here, director Rob Marshall and company assembled a talented Asian cast, but didn't bother distinguishing beyond that. Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh, Chinese and Malaysian actresses respectively, were cast to play the Japanese leads in this very distinctly Japan-set story. Japanese audiences (or, really, anyone who could be bothered to tell the difference) were disappointed that non-Japanese performers were playing geishas, and Chinese audiences were upset because of the uncomfortable historical connections between geisha culture and sex slavery.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon Prime

World Trade Center (2006)

Oliver Stone's take on the events of September 11 received middling reviews, which would be fine, but its reputation is marred by a couple of things: First, Oliver Stone's increasingly loony conspiracy theories, some of which involve September 11, have made it increasingly difficult to approach his movies objectively. The movie doesn't get into any of that, but it does make a smaller, but altogether uglier casting choice: 9/11 rescuer Jason Thomas is a U.S. Marine who also happens to be a black American. Oliver Stone and company cast white actor William Mapother in the role, which they claimed was just a mistake when pressed. Not buying it.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

2012 (2009)

This Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick has a pretty fabulous cast: Thandiwe Newton, John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, etc. But otherwise, it’s about as generic as these things get. Add to that the fact that it was created to capitalize on the weird idea that the world would to an end in 2012 (thanks to a deliberate misreading of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican calendars), and there’s really no reason to revisit the film. Now if the world had actually ended...

Where to stream (if you care to): Netflix

The Blind Side (2009)

Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for her performance in The Blind Side; it’s hard to deny her charm, and she gives an excellent performance, but her star power only exacerbates the fundamental problem with this story. While very much based on facts, the emphasis is placed not on star-in-the-making Mike Oher, who spent years shuttling between foster care and his substance-dependent birth mother, but instead on the wealthy white family who "adopted" him. It’s all fairly watchable, but the movie can’t overcome the problems of its white savior narrative. More recently, Michael Oher has alleged that it's all pretty much bullshit—that he was never formally adopted by the family, who instead convinced him to make them his business conservators. The Tuohys and their two birth children all received huge royalties from this film, while Oher himself received nothing. If that's all the case, it rather dramatically drives home the problem with white savior narratives that center the wrong people.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

The Help (2011)

Though relatively recent, and full of sterling performances that earned Oscar nominations, The Help feels like a throwback in its framing of the Civil Rights movement. On the surface, it feels like a charming, feel-good movie about people coming together, but the experience of Black domestic workers in the 1960s is told from an almost entirely white perspective (perhaps not surprising given that there were very few non-white filmmakers with significant roles behind the camera; also true of the source novel). Despite her Oscar nomination, Viola Davis has expressed her disappointment in very strong terms, saying that by appearing here she "betrayed myself, and my people." More than a decade on, we might (maybe) be more sensitive to the fact that the era was about the challenges faced by, and victories earned by, black Americans—not the learning curve of a white suburban lady named "Skeeter."

Where to stream: Hulu

Passengers (2016)

In Passengers, interspace traveler Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes up in his hibernation pod 90 years too early; the ship is on its way to a new Earth, and he’s now facing the rest of his life awake and alone, with no way to return to sleep. A sad situation, sure, until he notices a pretty face among the other sleepers (Jennifer Lawrence) and decides to cyber-stalk the details of her life (she’s a journalist) before waking her up and pretending it was a malfunction. She eventually discovers his deception—which has destroyed her dreams and plans and condemned her to live out the rest of her life with no one for company but Chris Pratt—and, sure, she’s mad—at first. But she gets over it and they live happily ever after. It’s as good a metaphor for destructive and toxic masculinity as you’re likely to find, except that the self-justifying creep here isn’t just our point-of-view character, he’s presented as the empathetic hero.

Where to stream (if you care to): Amazon

Justice League (2017)

There’s a part of me that appreciates the chaos era of DC superhero films—a time when a movie’s plot could turn on the presence of a jar of piss (thanks, Batman v Superman), but the first wave of Warner Bros’ attempts at a cinematic universe fell apart about midway through its first team-up movie. Contrasted with the airless, meticulous self-management of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the all-over-the-board DC style has been interesting to follow, anyway. Justice League, originally intended to be a huge, two-movie tentpole, was ultimately whittled down and cobbled together by two drastically different directors (Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon), and it never feels like anything other than the Frankenstein’s monster it is. Snyder’s later, much longer cut still isn’t particularly great, but at least it feels like the product of a singular (misguided) vision. Also the special effects look like they cost more than $15.

Where to stream (if you care to): Hulu, Amazon or Max

The Flash (2023)

In a similar vein, though this one feels like an even lower blow: The Flash had aged out of relevance well before it was even released. Delayed, in part, because of Covid, the movie became another victim of the increasingly problematic behavior and legal troubles of its star, Ezra Miller. It's tough to market a superhero tentpole movie when you’re mostly hoping that people will forget who's playing the lead. At the same time, decreasing returns on DC movies in general meant that this attempt at a soft reboot was already pretty well doomed without any of that: By the time it came out, Warner Bros. and company had already made clear that they had no interest in continuing the adventures of the Zack Snyder -era characters. Attempts to create a DC multiverse here felt more ghoulish than anything else, the CGI recreations of beloved actors like Christopher Reeve feeling tacky rather than moving—I suppose that, given recent discussions over actors AI likenesses, that bit might come to feel like a sign of things to come—but, at the moment, just feels like all the more reason to let the dead rest.

Where to stream (if you care to): Max or Amazon

Developers in North America are more likely than their counterparts in other regions to see generative AI as a tool that can improve the security of the code they’re writing, according to a report by market research firm Evans Data Corp. The company’s most recent Global Development Survey found that 37.6% of programmers from North..

The post N.A. Developers Optimistic About Generative AI and Code Security appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Authors/Presenters: *Yafei Wu, Cong Sun, Dongrui Zeng, Gang Tan, Siqi Ma, Peicheng Wang*

Many thanks to USENIX for publishing their outstanding USENIX Security ’23 Presenter’s content, and the organizations strong commitment to Open Access.
Originating from the conference’s events situated at the Anaheim Marriott; and via the organizations YouTube channel.

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The post USENIX Security ’23 – LibScan: Towards More Precise Third-Party Library Identification for Android Applications appeared first on Security Boulevard.

The warning underscores the importance of a collaborative approach to AI security involving stakeholders across different domains, including data science and infrastructure.

The post AI Adoption Prompts Security Advisory from NSA appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Steam's refund policy has been a big hit with players since it was introduced in 2015. You can ask for a refund on any game within two weeks of purchase as long as you haven't played it for more than two hours. This policy is so famous, there are many speedrunners who try to finish games within this two-hour window and get a refund. Until now, this policy had a loophole: Play time didn't count for some pre-release games. This meant you could play any game in Advanced Access for as long as you liked and then refund it, so long as you didn't accrue more than two hours of additional game time after launch.

What is Advanced Access on Steam?

Steam defines Advanced Access as the ability to play the final version of a game before release. Think of it as being able to pay extra to get into Disney World an hour before everyone else. Plenty of games include a few days or even a week of Advanced Access in their deluxe purchase bundles, and to help make this clearer, Steam has added a new label on the store page for games in Advanced Access.

Credit: Valve Corporation

Advanced Access is different from Early Access, where developers release games that are still in development and use Steam sales as a means of funding. While Early Access games were not vulnerable to this loophole, some players abused the refund policy on Advanced Access games to get dozens of hours of play in before a game's official release, only to refund it and snag all that play time for free.

Steam has fixed the Advanced Access refund loophole

On Steam's refunds page, the company has changed its policy to stop players from exploiting this loophole. The updated wording is as follows:

REFUNDS ON TITLES PURCHASED PRIOR TO RELEASE DATE

When you purchase a title on Steam prior to the release date, the two-hour playtime limit for refunds will apply (except for beta testing), but the 14-day period for refunds will not start until the release date. For example, if you purchase a game that is in Early Access or Advanced Access, any playtime will count against the two-hour refund limit. If you pre-purchase a title which is not playable prior to the release date, you can request a refund at any time prior to release of that title, and the standard 14-day/two-hour refund period will apply starting on the game’s release date.

Previously, the 14-day/two-hour clock started only after the game's official release date. Now, you'll have to be careful if you're impulse buying games that look promising. At the time of writing, TopSpin 2K25 is in Advanced Access, so if you start playing it now, know that your refund clock will be ticking.

A variety of music-focused content is streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime in May. First up is the second season of Behind the Music (May 1) with episodes featuring Bell Biv DeVoe, Trace Adkins, and Wolfgang Van Halen, followed by Kiss The Future (May 7), a documentary film about U2's awareness-raising campaign for the crisis in Sarajevo, Bosnia, during their 1993 tour. Later in the month, catch LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza (May 21) about the birth and impact of the music festival.

On the drama side, there are new episodes of The Chi (May 10) following the characters' lives on the South Side of Chicago, and the final season of the supernatural series Evil (May 23). And on May 17, catch the premieres of both RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars (season 9) and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked (season 6).

Here’s everything else coming to the service in May. Note that titles with an asterisk are exclusive to Paramount+ With Showtime; everything else is also available to subscribers on the ad-supported plan. Those with two asterisks are available to Paramount+ With Showtime users streaming live on CBS and to all subscribers the following day.

Paramount+ Originals and premieres coming in May 2024

Arriving May 1

• Behind the Music, Season 2 premiere

Arriving May 7

• Kiss The Future, premiere

Arriving May 10

• The Chi Season 6, new episodes

Arriving May 14

• Pillowcase Murders, premiere

Arriving May 17

• Mourning in Lod, premiere

• RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, Season 9 premiere

• RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked, Season 6 premiere

Arriving May 21

• LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza, premiere

Arriving May 23

• Evil, final season premiere

Arriving May 30

• Pyramid Game, premiere

TV shows coming to Paramount+ in May 2024

Arriving May 1

• Charles: The New King

• PAW Patrol (Season 9)

• PAW Patrol: Dino Rescue

• PAW Patrol: Rescue Knights

• The Mightiest (Season 1)

Arriving May 8

• Teen Mom: The Next Chapter (Season 1)

Arriving May 15

• Love & Hip Hop: Miami (Season 5)

Arriving May 22

• Aerial Adventures (Season 1)

Arriving May 29

• CMT Giants (2022)

• CMT Storytellers (Seasons 1-2)

• CMT Summer Camp Seasons (2022-2023)

• CMT Summer Sessions (Season 2)

Movies coming to Paramount+ in May 2024

Arriving May 1

• All About the Benjamins

• Annihilation

• Anything for Fame*

• Baywatch

• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

• Belly*

• Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club*

• Big Jake

• Big Night

• Black Lotus*

• Boogie Nights

• Clockstoppers

• Crawl

• Days of Heaven

• Double Jeopardy

• Ella Enchanted

• Everybody Wants Some!!

• Faster

• Fences

• Fire In The Sky

• Flight Of The Intruder

• Four Brothers

• Frida*

• Ghost

• Harriet The Spy

• Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

• Hellraiser IV: Bloodline

• Hellraiser V: Inferno

• Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker

• Hellraiser VII: Deader

• Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld

• How She Move*

• I Know What You Did Last Summer*

• I Still Know What You Did Last Summer*

• I'll See You in My Dreams*

• Imagine That

• In the Cut

• Indecent Proposal

• Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

• Joy Ride

• Kelly & Cal*

• Kinky Boots*

• Maid in Manhattan*

• Margot At The Wedding*

• Marvin's Room*

• Mommie Dearest*

• No Country for Old Men

• Once Upon A Time In The West

• Point Break

• Revolutionary Road*

• Rocketman

• Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

• Serpico

• Shall We Dance?*

• Shane

• Sliver

• Stand By Me*

• Terms of Endearment

• The Accused

• The Back-up Plan

• The Gift*

• The Golden Child

• The Guilt Trip

• The Hateful Eight*

• The Haunting

• The Joy Luck Club

• The Longest Yard

• The Mechanic

• The Original Kings of Comedy*

• The Prince Of Tides

• The Terminal

• True Grit

• True Grit

• Vantage Point

• Virtuosity

• What's Eating Gilbert Grape*

• What's Your Number?

• Zoolander 2

Arriving May 15

• The Boss Baby 2: Family Business

Arriving May 18

• Supernova*

Arriving May 25

• National Lampoon's Van Wilder - The Rise of Taj*

Arriving May 28

• 3 Generations*

Arriving May 31

• Black Christmas*

If you want to start tracking how many calories you eat—whether for weight loss, weight gain, or just out of curiosity—here’s a primer. Calorie tracking is pretty easy once you’ve gotten the hang of it, but getting started can be confusing. With the right tools and the right habits, however, you’ll be on top of your own personal calorie numbers in no time.

What are calories and why do people count them? 

Calories are a measure of energy. The more exercise you do, for example, the more calories you need to fuel that activity. Everything you eat has a calorie number attached to it (whether it’s on a label or not). In general, we eat about the same number of calories we burn. 

Amazingly, our bodies can keep us at a roughly steady weight by making us hungrier if we haven’t eaten enough calories today, or making us feel full if we’ve had a lot. That said, consistently eating less than you burn results in weight loss; eating more than you burn results in weight gain. 

How do I know how many calories I should eat? 

Most of the time, you should eat roughly the same number of calories each day that your body burns. That number varies from person to person. A 4’9”, 100-pound woman who only does light exercise might burn 1,440 calories per day. A six-foot, 280-pound man who does heavy workouts twice a day might burn 4,309. Most of us are somewhere in between, in the 2,000 to 3,000 calorie range.

I discuss calorie burn a little more here. Even though food labels use a 2,000-calorie diet to calibrate their “daily values” of various nutrients, the truth is that we each burn a different number of calories, and most of us burn more than 2,000. (The average for adults was, years ago, calculated to be 2,350. The FDA ended up going with 2,000 in part because they thought a round number was easier to understand.) 

So if you would like to lose weight, you’ll want to eat slightly less than you burn. If you want to gain weight—as many people do when they’re trying to gain muscle—you’ll want to eat more calories than you burn. A good rule of thumb is to subtract 200-500 calories from what you burn, and that will be a good number for weight loss. Do the opposite if you’re trying to gain.

Now that you understand the logic, you just need a starting estimate of how many calories you burn. If you already track calories, you can probably figure this out by what you usually eat when your weight is stable. Otherwise, plug your information into a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calulator like the one at tdeecalculator.net. Remember that any calculated number is only an estimate, and ultimately you’ll find out whether it’s correct by noticing what happens to your weight when you eat that number. 

If you use a Fitbit or other gadget that estimates your calorie burn each day, that's also a good place to get a starting number. Just remember that this is also an estimate, and could still be off by a few hundred calories in either direction.

How do I find out how many calories are in a food? 

The easiest way to get a calorie number for a food is to look at its label. Or if your food doesn’t have a label, search for the name of the food plus “calories” and pay attention to the serving size and the source of the information. For example, when I google “apple calories,” I get a result telling me that a medium apple, about 3 inches in diameter, is 95 calories. The source is given as the USDA, which maintains a database of common food items. Here’s the entry for apples. It defaults to a 100-gram serving, but you can change the “portion” dropdown to show you the medium apple.

When you’re eating at a restaurant, calorie counts are sometimes shown next to each food item. If they aren’t, check the restaurant’s website, or search the restaurant’s name plus “nutrition information.” Often there’s a PDF hidden somewhere on their website with a bunch of calorie counts—and, often, other information like protein and carbohydrate content.

That said, there’s a simpler way that people usually use when tracking calories: You use a calorie tracking app.

What is the best calorie tracking app? 

There are tons of good (or at least not horrible) calorie tracking apps out there. Cronometer is my pick: It’s got all the features you need even in the free version, and it’s goal-neutral, so you can use it whether you’re trying to gain weight, lose weight, or neither. 

The most popular calorie tracking app is probably MyFitnessPal, which is baffling because it’s easily the worst one out there. The calorie information is often inaccurate, the interface is pretty in-your-face about weight loss whether you’re interested in that or not, and basic features like the barcode scanner are only available in the paid version. We have a roundup of alternatives to MyFitnessPal here. 

When you use a calorie tracking app, you’ll search within the app for the food that you just ate (or that you’re about to eat). At first you’ll find this practice clunky: You’ll have to choose the right item from the database, and then try to figure out how large a serving you just ate. Packaged foods are easiest to track, which adds an extra wrinkle if you’re also trying to eat more whole or homemade foods. Bear with this, though: Habits are skills, and as you develop all the mini-skills that make up calorie tracking, the habit becomes second nature.

How do I select an accurate serving size for the food I’m tracking? 

As you gain more practice, you’ll get pretty good at eyeballing serving sizes. But as you’re getting used to it, make a habit of measuring or weighing food when you can. At this point I can pretty accurately eyeball the difference between a cup of rice and a half-cup of rice, for example. I know that a three-ounce serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards, or a little smaller than the palm of your hand (depending, I suppose, on how big your hand is). A “serving” of peanut butter is two tablespoons; measure this out at least once so you can get a sense of whether your usual serving is more or less than that. 

To be more precise, you can start using a food scale. This makes your life easier in so many ways. For example, you can: 

• Place your toast on the scale, zero it, and then spread on the peanut butter. Weigh the peanut-buttered toast, and you’ll know exactly how many grams of peanut butter you used.

• Weigh out your desired portion of chicken, vegetables, or anything else you’re eating. 

• Portion a meal equally by weighing the whole thing, and then weighing each portion so that it contains ¼ of the total (if you’re making a four-serving meal).

• Place a container of, say, yogurt on the scale, and zero it. Then you can scoop yogurt from that container into the blender as you’re making a smoothie. This requires a “negative tare” feature, but it’s great for when you’re adding ingredients to containers you can’t weigh directly, like a blender or a pot on the stovetop. You just weigh the container the food is coming from. 

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How do I count the calories in homemade food? 

Your calorie tracking app should have a way of  creating a recipe. Add in the ingredients, and make sure to say how many servings the recipe makes if you’re cooking for a group or making multiple servings for meal prep. Make sure to include all the ingredients, including cooking oil and condiments.

How do I count calories in a meal somebody else made? 

If you don’t know exactly what’s in something, you can guess. The easiest way is to look up a restaurant food that is similar and eyeball the portion. 

What do I do if there’s an oil or sauce with my food and I don’t eat all of it? 

Unfortunately there’s no easy adjustment to make here. Maybe you’re leaving a ton of calories behind, but it will be hard to separate that out mathematically from the other components that you did eat. In this case I just pretend I ate the whole thing, sauce and all. If there’s a ton of sauce and I’m sure I’m leaving lots of calories behind, I’ll log it as 0.9 instead of one serving.

Do I need to track everything, every day? 

There are no food-tracking police (thank god), so no, you don’t have to do anything. But if you’re trying to get a roughly accurate estimate of how many calories you eat each day, you really should log everything, as much as you can. If you snack on a cookie, put a cookie into your app. 

I’ll sometimes skip an entire day of tracking, but I won’t log a partial day. If I eat 1,200 calories before dinner, and then go to a party and eat 15 different little things that are impossible to accurately track, I might say “fuck it” and delete the whole day.  But I wouldn’t leave it at 1,200, because looking back, it will seem like that entire day was only 1,200 calories. If I know I ate more than usual and I want to make sure my tracking shows it, I'll pick a placeholder like a restaurant meal (my app actually has an entry for "Thanksgiving") and log whatever gets me, say, 3,000 calories of that.

Along the same lines, it’s tempting to not log things you think you “shouldn’t” be eating, but this backfires. In reality, if I’m eating 2,500 calories and only logging 2,000, I would look at my app and think, wow, I’m eating 2,000 calories and not losing weight. I would start to feel like I needed to eat even less than 2,000, and I might fall into one of those vicious cycles of restricting myself to smaller meals and then finding myself eating more untracked “cheat” meals. This is not a healthy way of eating, and tends to get worse over time. Instead, I log it all. If I know I’m eating 2,500 calories and not losing weight, I would be able to appreciate the fact that my body can put 2,500 calories to good use every day. I would then eat slightly less—maybe 2,200—and see if that might be a more effective and sustainable approach. 

Or to put it another way: if you log everything, you can be honest with yourself and kinder to yourself. You just have to look at the numbers as neutral data, not as a judgement on whether you’re being “good.” 

As the financial industry increasingly adopts digital processes, it faces a growing array of cybersecurity threats. Cybercriminals target sensitive customer data held by retail banks and credit unions, exploiting vulnerabilities in digital systems to steal valuable information such as personally identifiable information (PII), account details, and payment card data. These attacks, which include phishing, malware, […]

The post The Role of Threat Intelligence in Financial Data Protection appeared first on Enzoic.

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No one ever brags about their roof. We all have know people who actually send you photos of their perfectly manicured garden, or someone who speakings lovingly of their new kitchen backsplash. But the roof? No one thinks about their roof—until it starts leaking.

Roof leaks always happen at the least opportune moment—like, when it’s actively pouring out. If you experience the horror of water dripping from places water’s not supposed to drip from, hopefully you have a roofer in your contacts and can get them over for an inspection pronto. But before you make that call, don’t waste any time—you’ve got some roof triage to do if you want to limit the damage from a roof leak.

Clear and contain

Your first priority is preventing damage. This is the moment to spring into action:

• Move stuff out of the way. Any furniture, electronics, or rugs should be immediately removed from the area where the water is dripping.

• Cover the stuff you can’t move, like a big, heavy couch or any built-in furniture. Any kind of plastic sheeting will do in a pinch. If the water leak is significant, you might also place the furniture legs in plastic containers or raise it up on risers if you’re unable to move it.

• Contain the water—place a bucket underneath the stream and mop up the floor to prevent the water from soaking into the flooring. If the water leak is causing your ceiling or wall to bulge like a balloon, pop the bulge to let the water drain; otherwise, the water will just slowly soak into areas far away from the leak.

Consider keeping a roof leak diverter (or two) in storage. These tarp-like contraptions attach to the ceiling and divert the water into a hose that can be run to a drain. This way you don’t have to worry about emptying a bucket while keeping your floors dry.

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Roof triage

Once you’ve restored order to the interior of your house, it’s time to see if you can put a temporary fix into place.

Start in the attic, if you have one. You might see the source of your leak immediately, or you might have to go hunting for it. Bring a flashlight and look for damp spots, slow seeping water, or literal holes in your roof. If you see obvious damage, you can try patching it from the inside with some roof cement or roofing tape, but keep in mind that while a successful interior patch might spare the inside of your house from further damage, the leak in your roof will still be there and will require repair.

If you don’t have an attic or you can’t see any obvious leaks from inside, your next step might be to get up on your roof. This is where you should be very careful—it’s a bad idea to head up onto your roof during a rainstorm. Wait for the storm to pass, and follow best safety practices at all times when you do go up there. When you do get up on your roof, it’s time for some detective work:

• Remember that water flows, so the source of your leak might not be directly above or even near the spot where the water came out inside your house.

• First, look for obvious damage: Missing or visually damaged shingles, flashing that has pulled away, stains or sunken areas, tears or cracks in the roof membrane.

• If you don’t see anything immediately obvious, look at the most common problem areas: places where vent pipes emerge from the roof, where two planes meet, flashing around chimneys or skylights, and roof valleys.

Once you’ve identified one or more potential sources of the leak, you can apply some roof cement (make sure it’s explicitly for use in wet conditions if the roof is still damp or if it’s lightly raining) or even some Flex Paste. If you’re dealing with discrete damage to your roof, this might stop the leak until you can have a proper repair done.

If you can’t identify a specific area to patch (or as an added layer of protection if you do patch), you can throw a tarp over the area where you suspect the leak is. The tarp should be at least six millimeters thick, and you’ll need enough of it to extend several feet around the leaking area. In a pinch, you can just weigh the tarp down with some lumber, but ideally you would secure the tarp to your roof using roofing nails.

Document

Finally, document the damage, especially if you have an insurance policy that includes roof coverage. If you wait until after the repairs are done, you might find your insurer reluctant to pay out on the claim. A few quick photos of the inside and outside as well as any damaged furniture or electronics will go a long way toward making that claim go smoothly. Plus, when you contact a licensed roofer about getting your roof repaired or replaced, you can send them the photos so they can determine the scale of the problem.

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At SafeBreach’s 2023 Validate East Summit, security experts discussed their approaches to developing a successful BAS program.

The post Architecting Cyber Resilience: Building Your Breach and Attack Simulation Program appeared first on SafeBreach.

The post Architecting Cyber Resilience: Building Your Breach and Attack Simulation Program appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Windows 11 has a search bar in the taskbar and the Start menu, which lets you look for things both on your computer and on the internet. But if you click any results from the internet, Windows will open them in Microsoft Edge, even if that's not your default browser. Luckily, there's a way to override this and force Windows to open links in your preferred browser.

Install MSEdgeRedirect to force Windows 11 to use your favorite browser

MSEdgeRedirect is the best way to stop Microsoft Edge from firing up every time you use Windows search. The app will also stop Edge from launching randomly, plus it'll let you use third-party services instead of Microsoft's own options for news, weather, and other live updates. Installing it is as simple as going through a couple of setup screens.

Credit: Pranay Parab/MSEdgeRedirect

One of these setup screens asks you to choose an installation mode. For most people, Active Mode is recommended. On the next page, you'll see a number of Active Mode preferences. First, select Edge Stable unless you're running a beta build of the browser. After that, go through the preferences to stop other Microsoft redirects such as Bing Discover, Bing Images, Bing Search, MSN News, MSN Weather, etc. For each of these, MSEdgeRedirect offers a few alternatives, so take your pick.

Take control of your browser and search engine

Once the app is installed, Windows 11's search bar will be a lot more useful. Now, internet links will open in your default browser and use your preferred search engine.

MSEdgeRedirect is a great way to fix Windows 11's default settings. But you can take it a step further. Some people really dislike how Microsoft has slowed down the search function by trying to show results from the internet. Luckily, you can remove internet results from Windows search, and focus on the apps and files that live on your PC.

It's no secret that Apple products work well with one another. But you might not know you can actually turn your iPad into a high-quality secondary display for your Mac. Whether you have a desktop setup, or you’re traveling, you can use your iPad as a wireless display to showcase any app from your computer. It’s as easy as screen mirroring your Mac to your TV, thanks to a relatively hidden macOS feature called Sidecar.

What you need to use your iPad as a display

First, the requirements. You’ll need a Mac running macOS Catalina or higher, and an iPad running iPadOS 13 or higher. There are some hardware restrictions as well, though every MacBook Pro released after 2016, and MacBook Air released after 2018 will work. In general, the latest Macs from the last 5 years are supported. The same goes for the iPads as well. All models of iPad Pros work, and every iPad 6th generation and newer, as well as iPad Air 3rd generation and newer will work here.

Still, you might need to do some work on the software side. First, both devices have to be signed in from the same Apple ID, and you have to use two-factor authentication. To use this feature wirelessly, you have to enable Bluetooth, wifi, and Handoff on your iPad. To enable Handoff, go to Settings > General > Airplay & Handoff > Handoff. If you’re using tethering on your iPad or your Mac, this feature won’t work. 

How to connect your iPad as a second display to your Mac 

Now that the housekeeping is done, you can set up your iPad as a secondary display. First, place the iPad next to the Mac, turn on the display, and unlock it. 

Next, go to Control Center on your Mac, click Screen Mirroring, and choose your iPad from the list. 

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

To use it as a secondary monitor, make sure you choose the Use As Separate Display option. You’ll notice your iPad will instantly show your Mac’s screen, including the menu bar, and some apps might even move to the iPad screen. To help you out, the iPad can show a sidebar, plus touch bar controls that are useful if you’re using the iPad away from your Mac. If you want more screen space for your Mac apps, we suggest disabling both the sidebar and the touch bar. You can do this on your Mac under System Settings > Displays.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The above instructions will work if you’re using macOS Monterey and higher. If you’re using macOS Big Sur, you’ll find the mirroring menu in Control Center's Display section. 

Lastly, make sure how you’ve placed your iPad in physical space aligns with how your macOS software is set up. If you’ve ever attached an external monitor to your Mac, and tried to use it next to your MacBook, you’ll be familiar with this. 

Essentially, you can tell macOS that your iPad sits on the left or right of the Mac so that your cursor can seamlessly move from one screen to another. To do this, go to System Settings > Displays. Here, you’ll see the current arrangement of your displays. If the default option works for you, then you don't need to do anything. 

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

If you want to move your iPad screen position, click the Arrange button, freely drag the iPad screen to where it is in your physical space, and click the Done button.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Everything you can do with your iPad as a second display 

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Now that you're all set up, you can freely move your cursor between your Mac display and your iPad, and you can use the iPad like it's any other external display. This is similar to Apple’s other feature, Universal Control, where you can use the keyboard and mouse on your Mac with a connected iPad. The crucial difference with Sidecar, however, is that your Mac screen is also extended to the iPad. With Universal Control, your iPad still displays iPadOS. 

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

If you don’t like dragging and dropping windows between the Mac and the iPad, there’s a shortcut for you. Hover over the Maximize button on any macOS window, and you’ll see an option to move the window to the iPad. I like using this option because it automatically resizes the window to take up the full iPad display. 

This feature does disables the touch screen on your iPad, so it's not the touch screen Mac of your dreams. That said, Sidecar does support Apple Pencil. You can use your Pencil to draw on the screen, and you can even go to System Settings > Displays to enable the double-tap feature on the Apple Pencil, which lets you make selections on your iPad. 

Traditional security controls like MFA and PAM are bypassed easily by threat actors on a regular basis. Threat actors prefer breaking into organizations using legitimate credentials so they can achieve their goals undetected, often until it is too late. To combat this growing threat, organizations now need to find a way to accurately detect and […]

The post Watch: “Behavior Doesn’t Lie:” The Power of ML for Identity Threat Detection and Response appeared first on RevealSecurity.

The post Watch: “Behavior Doesn’t Lie:” The Power of ML for Identity Threat Detection and Response appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Effective management of software dependencies is critical for ensuring both security and operational efficiency of applications.

The post Sonatype Lifecycle best practices: Getting started and managing SBOMs appeared first on Security Boulevard.

The gardening world is full of old wives' tales full of purported methods to grow the biggest tomatoes or tallest sunflowers. One of those stories is that tea is beneficial for your garden because it creates nitrogen, and the tannic acid benefits the pH of the soil. In truth, while tea will compost in your garden just like any other organic matter and likely isn’t doing any harm, there’s no science to suggest that tea, itself, has any specific benefit to your yard, either. Absolutely everything you compost will produce nitrogen, and any acid will affect the pH of your soil (which isn’t always desirable). I consulted with many garden centers as well as Concentrates, a well-regarded farm supply known for their mineral and fertilizer supplement stock, as well as their considerable knowledge of organic farming. No one working there had ever practiced this or could figure out any particular way tea would benefit your yard.

Tea is just dried and processed plant matter

Growing herbs in your garden is probably one of the most rewarding crops, particularly perennial herbs. While many herbs, like chamomile and mint, can be used to make herbal tea on their own, real tea leaves come from a tea plant, camellia sinensis. While it’s unlikely your local nursery will sell it, you can order this flower online as a start and plant it in your garden. Once the plant flowers, you can harvest and dry the buds and make your own tea. No matter what you make your tea with, whether it be herbal or camellia, when you’re done drinking, what’s left is bound for the trash unless you compost it. If you’re making tea with what you grew yourself, you likely aren’t using tea bags, so you can just place the spent tea in your compost and go back to your life. It should compost just fine, and would count as a green part of your compost (which is made up of wet, nitrogen-rich matter balanced with dry, carbon-based matter). 

If you buy tea, then you need to consider what the teabag is made of. While most teabags are compostable, some have polypropylene in them and those should not be composted. Remove any staples or string, unless you are sure it is 100% cotton string, and remove the paper tag in case it has any coating on it. If you’re concerned about the teabag, you can just empty it into your compost and toss the bag. 

Consider where you put compost with tea in it

Your soil has a delicate pH. Most plants enjoy a neutral pH, and gardeners go to the trouble of measuring the soil’s pH to determine that its in the right range. Some plants benefit from slightly more acidic pH, but slightly is the key word there. Blueberries, azaleas and strawberries are examples of plants that benefit from that higher acidity. Any acid is going to make your soil more acidic, and real tea (not herbal) contains tannins, which produce tannic acid. Just like tea is a plant, tannic acid is produced by trees and other plants as they decay, too. It’s not that tannic acid is specifically bad, it’s that it’s not particularly beneficial, either. If you are adding it into the environment on purpose, you’ll want to ensure the soil pH isn’t becoming too acidic for what you’re trying to grow.

Compost made with tea should not be confused with “compost tea”

If you garden enough, you’ll hear the phrase “compost tea” and how good it is for your garden, but that phrase does not refer to actual tea. Rather, this is the drippings of your worms or compost, which can produce a highly nutritious water fertilizer for your garden. Many worm towers actually come with spigots to collect this brew for use, but you would never drink this.

The shift to cloud computing has enhanced the resilience and security of most organizations. In this era of unparalleled agility and scalability, data-centric security can offer transformational opportunities for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) to improve data protection, compliance, and operational efficiencies, thereby strengthening customer trust. Despite this, a layered defense model is still necessary […]

The post The CISO’s Top Priority: Elevating Data-Centric Security appeared first on Blog.

The post The CISO’s Top Priority: Elevating Data-Centric Security appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Authors/Presenters: *Wansen Wang, Wenchao Huang, Zhaoyi Meng, Yan Xiong, Fuyou Miao, Xianjin Fang, Caichang Tu, Renjie Ji*

Many thanks to USENIX for publishing their outstanding USENIX Security ’23 Presenter’s content, and the organizations strong commitment to Open Access.
Originating from the conference’s events situated at the Anaheim Marriott; and via the organizations YouTube channel.

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It wasn’t too long ago that new Ubuntu releases were major happenings in the Linux world, as it was the default Linux distribution for many, both old and newcomers, in the desktop Linux space. These days, Ubuntu release hit a little different, with Canonical’s focus having shifted much more to the enterprise, and several aspects of the distribution being decidedly unpopular, like the snap package management system.

Still, Ubuntu is probably still one of the most popular, if not the most popular, distributions out there, so any new release, like today’s Ubuntu 24.0 LTS, is still a big deal.

Ubuntu Desktop brings the Subiquity installer to an LTS for the first time. In addition to a refreshed user experience and a minimal install by default, the installer now includes experimental support for ZFS and TPM-based full disk encryption and the ability to import auto-install configurations. Post install, users will be greeted with the latest GNOME 46 alongside a new App Center and firmware-updater. Netplan is now the default for networking configuration and supports bidirectionality with NetworkManager.

↫ Utkarsh Gupta on ubuntu-announce

Of course, all the various other Ubuntu editions have also seen new releases: Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Unity, and Xubuntu. Yes, that’s a long list. They all mostly share the same improvements as Ubuntu’s main course, but paired with the latest versions of the respective desktop environments instead.

Except for Kubuntu. Unlike just about any other major distribution released over the last few months, such as Fedora 40 only a few days ago, Kubuntu does not ship with the new KDE Plasma 6, opting for Plasma 5.27.11 instead. There simply wasn’t enough time between the release of Plasma 6 and the Ubuntu feature freeze, so they made the – in my opinion – understandable call to stick to Plasma 5 for now, moving Plasma 6 to the next release later this year.