Kasey On Tech

 My Win11 Pro machine somehow cannot install Affinity by Canvas. This is straight install from the website, as I picked Windows Personal, and it downloaded a MSIX file. The install went to 100%, after downloading 681MB, then errored out with this installer error: App installation failed with error message: AppxManifest.xml(52,6): error 0x80070005: Cannot register the Canva.Affinity_3.2.3.4646_x64__8a0j1tnjnt4a4 package because the following error was encountered while registering the windows.fileTypeAssociation extension: Access is denied. Try again and contact the package publisher if the problem persists. (0x80070005) I am the administrator but I was unable to assign "run as administrator" because this MSIX installer does NOT use permissions. I've retried multiple times, and I've even tried installing the Microsoft Store version. Neither worked.  Turns out the solution is extremely UN-obvious... Download the X86 Enterprise version, NOT the personal version.  This on...

I was going to post this over in reddit's /r/cybersecurity_help, but I decided it sounds too much like a lecture.  ----- We understand that when you have "pressing" concerns, you often can't even formulate a question coherently, but please take a few moments to organize what information you have, and what questions do you have, so we can answer your questions immediately, rather than trying to draw additional details out of you which wastes both your time and ours.  Rule 0: Please read the posting guide: https://www.reddit.com//r/cybersecurity_help/wiki/guide  Rule 0.5: Please read the "10 rules" (check right hand bar at following link). Failure to follow them may result in removal of your question.  https://sh.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity_help/ Rule 0.9: Please ensure your question actually is relevant to cybersecurity. A LOT of people seem to confuse privacy with cybersecurity.  "I lost control of my Instagram account! What do I do?" -- Cybersecuri...

Recently after a bit of registry cleaning, my desktop stopped launching games from Steam. I tried to troubleshoot this, and ended up spending HOURS chasing something that seems rather popular but nobody seem to have a proper solution. The symptoms are simple: all of the shortcuts on the desktop turned into the blank "white page" icons. When you right click it, it doesn't say what app to open it with. Its type is "Internet Shortcut (url).  Deleting it and recreating it from within Steam (gear icon // Create Desktop Shortcut) doesn't help. It seems the .URL handler is completely f-ed up. I tried reinstalling Steam, and Steam actually did delete all the old files and reinstalled its own files. No change.   So I go look for a registry fix... Except...  .url is NO LONGER A SUPPORTED file type in Windows 11. It's kept in as a backward compatibility setting only. So you have to search Win10 fixes.  So I found this fix via WinhelpOnline . Download the reg zip, unzip,...

Short answer: No.  Long answer: GSM phones let you put in these dialer codes to change some settings. The codes, collectively, are known as USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) codes, sometimes called "quick codes". These settings are NOT in your phone, but on your mobile carrier's computer as a part of your account.  Generally speaking, USSD codes are used to add or remove service, or change some settings for the service. Some carriers use it for payment notification and payment status. Actual active codes are dependent on the carrier. As this is often used to just show the status of something it's also called interrogation codes, or feature access codes.  So what does *#21# actually do (note: it's actually asterisk - hash - two - one - hash)? It shows the status of call forwarding set to the five types of calls you get: voice, SMS, fax, data, and system. (NOTE: some phone vendors only show voice, SMS and data, not fax or system) And in all cases, it ...

When the FBI warns people about the scam , this is serious, but this is actually just a variation of the scam that perpetrated upon the Asian community for a while.  To make a long story short...  Stage 0  Beware when you are contacted via some method, text message, pop-up on your computer, a direct phone call, supposedly from a company that you had patronized before (a national brand, like Amazon, Best Buy, Uber, and so on). Those companies usually do NOT contact you directly, but these imposters will. Anyway, the message claims you need to call them right away to mitigate any damage.  Stage 1 When you call, the imposter will ask you to download some program so they can control your computer from afar, in order to show you some supposed "evidence" that either have been hacked or will soon be hacked, ask about your bank, and claim your bank's fraud department will be contacting you shortly. This is of course, another imposter.  Stage 2 "Your bank's fraud departm...

 After I got my cybersecurity certificates and certifications, I decided to hang out in subreddit /r/cybersecurity_help for a while, as that's where people go for help. I've noticed the questions tend to come in 3 major categories: a) I noticed something odd. Could I have been hacked?  b) I REALLY have been hacked, what do I do now?  c) I did something stupid! Could I have been hacked?  I have found that some people are just super-nervous when it comes to technology, as if they can be hacked everywhere doing nothing, while others are almost completely oblivious to the risks.  Let's discuss each in turn.  a) I noticed something odd. Could I have been hacked? OP started noticing some oddities with his or her phone, and wonders if it's connected to some previous event.  EX1: Op got a call from the doctor's office. X minutes later a call with caller ID "Health Center" arrived. Op asked for more details, and was hung up on. Op wants to know if the spammer h...

The Google Cybersecurity Certificate and the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity are two of the most popular cybersecurity certifications available. Both certifications cover a wide range of topics, including network security, application security, and security operations. However, there are some key differences between the two certifications. Both Google Cybersecurity Certificate and the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity are considered entry-level certifications The Google Cybersecurity Certificate is very friendly for people who did not come from a computer background, but if you already know IT, Linux, SQL, or Python, you will have an advantage here. You will also learn some practical cybersecurity tools, such as SIEM and Splunk log reading, and you will end up trying to write incident report logs, short analysis reports, and so on.   The ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity is more focused on theoretical and base level knowledge, with a bit more discussion on the differences among in...

I decided to look into another introductory cybersecurity certification after finishing the Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate back in June in 5 days. Took me a while due to other obligations, but I finally decided on "Certified in Cybersecurity" by ISC2, and I started last Thursday.  I finished all coursework by Saturday, and I was waiting for the peer-graded assignments to be graded. That was when I realized this is only half the battle (yes, I am quite bad at research sometimes). This is a prep course for the actual ISC2 CC certification exam, and that cost $199.  So I went on Google to look for a discount code, as there often are for these.  That is when I found that ISC2 is doing a "One Million CC" initiative... It will give away 1 million CC prep course and exams absolutely free to people around the world. It's even available in languages such a Spanish, German, Chinese, and Japanese, in addition to English! That's right... the self-paced C...

One day, I was browsing Temu, when I came across this 6-key macro keyboard with a twist knob, and it's for a ridiculous price of like... $13.93 with free shipping.  So I ordered one.  It's here, and it's exactly as advertised... Except for one thing: there is no manual, and no driver. There is NO paper in the box either. And the listing has no instructions.  However, it is basically this item on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Keyboard-Mechanical-Photoshop-Software/dp/B0B7B4MP29/ At least the Amazon seller put up a link to their copy of the driver: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MvJGXrs-HVSmthIK4Z8NJZKMB8Ha4ZSr/view Which I have scanned and tested. And it works for the Temu one too. It's the same board.  The program needs to be unzipped and copied to a directory on your HD. It has no "installer".  The EXE is called "MINI Keyboard V02.1.1" The interface is also pretty crap, But basically, it goes like this.  The "keys" are mapp...

As of May and June 2023, there were a lot of buzz about the Google Cybersecurity professional certificate issued in conjunction with Coursera.  So I took the 8 course certificate program, and I was able to finish it in 5 days (May 31st to June 4th), which is so fast, it was within the 7 day trial period, so I did not pay anything (normally $49.00 USD).  I did go in with a couple unfair advantages: * I already know SQL * I already know Python * I was an IT professional  * I have taken a cybersecurity intro course before * I was also between jobs so I have a LOT of time to dedicate to studying * I have taken many Coursera courses before (back in early 2020) So is the course any good? I think it is a good course for people who have no idea what to expect, and this will give them a taste on what a job in cybersecurity will involve. The video lectures are relatively short, and there were a LOT of emphasis on the non-traditional non-technical background of many of the Google em...

Hi, I am Captain Chang, an IT professional, and veteran of multiple Coursera certificates, most of them finished in 10 days or less. Recently, I finished the Google Cybersecurity Certificate in 5 days. A link to that video is in the description.  To me, Coursera education is a cheap introduction to a career you are considering, from data science and information technology to cybersecurity and user interface design, and a lot more for less than $50 a month. However, to get the most out of Coursera, there are some strategies you should follow.  While the strategies I talk about after this mainly applies to the the cybersecurity certificate, most of the tips should work in general toward other technical Coursera professional certificate programs as well. 1. Understanding how Coursera payment works Coursera is usually organized around "certificate programs", which has several courses. For example, the cybersecurity certificate course from Google / Coursera has 8 courses. [insert ...

Everybody is talking about AI. ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney...  (By the way, if you ran out of credits on Midjourney, Blue Willow will let you generate UNLIMITED amount of art. Maybe there will be more invites... ) And someone made something that can run on your home gaming PC... Provided you have a good (read: gaming) video card... Called Invoke.ai. It's so good, they're going commercial .  So why am I talking about this? Turns out, you *can* still download and install InvokeAI on your own PC . It just requires a little more work.  So I went ahead and downloaded the installer... run it, and promptly hit a bug...  invokeAI configuration error: npyscreen module not found Searching the net shows this problem is fairly well-know, but nobody had tracked down what caused this problem or have a fix for it. Someone claimed manually installing the stuff works, but it did not work for me.  I happen to know a little Python (both the programming and the environme...

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