Brief information for slightly older readers who are still familiar with Woody Leonhard and his platform askwoody.com. Woody Leonhard, who was born in the USA in October 1951, passed away on Saturday, March 8, 2025, at the age of 73 (if I haven't miscalculated). He last lived with his second wife in Thailand, where he spent his time doing things outside of IT.
[German]Just a quick question to ask if people have run into problems with the D3D9 DLL under Windows 11, or if forced updates of Nvidia drivers have been observed? I've come across a few reports and articles that I can't really classify at the moment. The question is whether there are anyone affected.
[German]The Amazon Echo smart speaker can also recognize voice commands. There are now reports that the device will send everything spoken to Amazon servers from March 28, 2025. This is said to have been announced to owners in the USA by email from Amazon. The owners of these devices have therefore effectively bought a surveillance device made by Amazon.
[German]This is an exciting development that can be observed right now. Large European companies such as Airbus Industries, Dassault Systems and 90 other smaller European technology companies and lobby groups are calling for a digitally independent infrastructure to be established in Europe and for Europe to free itself from its dependence on the US tech industry. This is probably a reaction to the volatility of US policy.
[German]Data protection is a critical item in healthcare organizations. It's not always solved in "the best way". Back in November 2024, I came across a study dealing with data protection in the healthcare sector. The frustrating statement: "45% of healthcare organizations have problems ensuring data protection for their 'customers' or patients".
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[English]I'm posting another security alert here on the blog that I've had since mid-December 2024 but has "stuck". There was a critical vulnerability CVE-2024-49147 in the Microsoft Update Catalog that allowed privilege escalations in the Microsoft Update Catalog. This vulnerability was closed by Microsoft.
[German]Some users of Roku video streaming devices are currently angry. Whenever they want to stream something via Roku, videos are played at the start that have to be watched by force. According to reports, the US provider Roku has confirmed that this is a test. They are probably testing users' frustration tolerance and the revenue generated by playing video ads.
[German]I'm dragging a separate topic here into a blog post that Microsoft has brought to administrators and users with the March 2025 patchday. I have received reports that the KB5053598 update is causing problems with RDP connections. These RDP connections are terminated after a short time. I posted this in the German blog a few days ago and received further confirmations.
[German]Microsoft has confirmed that Copilot will be uninstalled on some Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems as a result of the March 2025 updates. Those affected should install Copilot from the Store. However, I am currently not really sure whether this affects European users at all or whether readers are using Copilot on Windows 11 and are affected.
[German]I still have a report from the security researchers at CyberNews from the end of 2024, which looked at cyber security at companies in Europe and the USA. The surprising finding for me was that European companies suffer more security incidents from cyber attacks than US companies.
MVP:
2013 – 2016
WIMVP:
2017 – 2020
