207 more weeks of this guy?

Donald Trump opened another large can of worms when he banned people from 7 [Muslim] countries for at least 90 days. It happened so fast in an executive order that many travelers from those country were off guarded and were either detained at airports or told to go back to where they came from. New York mayor said the executive order was so disorganized.

In addition, accepting refugees have been also halted. Not surprised, many countries – aside from those 7 – were upset because of the executive order. Iran responded by banning Americans to Iran for at least 90 days. Others wonder why Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, North Korea and other major terrorist [growing] countries were not included.

Trump claims that Muslim refugees could get into the US easier than Christians but [again] offered no logical reasons or proof.

Catching some off guard [in terms of time, not the expectancy], Trump announced that the US will go ahead and build a wall between the US and Mexico – with Mexico paying. The Mexican president went on TV to say that Mexico will not pay for any wall and was not happy with the announcement that the wall will be built. The Mexican president is considering canceling his trip to see Trump very soon. [The Mexican president’s poling numbers are actually lower than Trump.]

Trump claims that he and the Mexican president decided to postpone their meeting even though the Mexican president said that he canceled the meeting after Trump tweeted basically that if Mexico doesn’t pay for the wall then don’t come.

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Poutine had a chat with his padawan [Starr Wars lingo for apprentice] Donald Trump. [Of course the name “Apprentice” is also the name of Trump’s show he hosted and is somehow still listed as producer.]

The entire senior level of management officials of the State Department resigned recently, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era. Those resigned have worked with both parties. All had submitted their resignations prior to Trump’s January 20 inauguration as is required of officials holding jobs appointed by the president but some were not appointed. They were not required to leave the foreign service but chose to retire or resign for personal reasons, the department said.

Trump is ready to allow torture [such as waterboarding] against foreign detainees and to keep Guantanamo Bay, Cuba open after Obama tried [unsuccessfully] to shut down the prison as well as to reopen CIA detention facilities outside the United States. The draft directive also orders a review of interrogation methods used on terror suspects and calls for suggested modifications that would not violate the U.S. legal ban on torture. Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo would be consulted but they didn’t know of the draft executive order. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the administration looked at it during the elections but won’t be used. So why is it mentioned now?

Senior members of the Trump administration have been accused of blatant hypocrisy after it was revealed they are continuing to use personal email accounts. Key advisors to the president, Kellyanne Conway and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as press secretary Sean Spicer and chief strategist Steve Bannon, all have accounts on the Republican Party’s rnchq.org domain, and are continuing to use them in addition to their official government accounts, according to Newsweek.

According to hacker WauchulaGhost [who claimed to have hacked 500 pro-ISIS accounts], the Twitter accounts for Trump, Melania Trump and Mike Pence are more vulnerable to hackers because of a basic Twitter security setting they’re not using. With a little bit of work “he” figured out that the Twitter account for Pence is a associated with a less secure Gmail account and both Trumps also use Gmail accounts.

While Trump says he wants to create American jobs, why is his personal phone a Samsung phone – clearly not made in the USA.

Not too smart. Sean Spicer may have tweeted his password for something. 

Trump is still using his less secure Android smart phone to send out his tweets and make calls even though he was supposed to give it up 5 days ago.

“Social media postings sometimes provide an important window into a person’s mental health,” the Department of Defence tweeted. “Know what to look for.” Didn’t take long for comments such as: “@DeptofDefense have you look at the posts by your Commander in Chief? @potus needs immediate help” and “Medal of Freedom for whoever at @DeptofDefense was responsible for this, please.”

Trump tweeted that he is ordering a “major investigation” into voter fraud, revisiting unsubstantiated claims he’s made repeatedly about a rigged voting system. Trump has been fixated on his loss of the popular vote in the election and a persistent frustration that the legitimacy of his presidency is being challenged by Democrats and the media. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have finalized their election results with no reports of the kind of widespread fraud that Trump is alleging.

Trump “does believe that, I think he’s stated that before, and stated his concern of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have brought to him,” Spicer said. And then he said only that Trump “has believed that for a while based on studies and information he has.” No evidence has been made public – if it exists. Probably not.

[Unsure why Trump would bring up this nonsense. He won the election. Again this makes him look a bit unbalanced. Does he always want controversies in his term?]

A number of studies have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The Truth About Voter Fraud, a report written by experts at The Brennan Center for Justice, found voter fraud rates were between 0.00004% and 0.0009%.

Trump’s own daughter, Tiffany is registered in both Pennsylvania and New York. Did she vote in both? Trump’s Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon is registered in Florida and New York. Did he vote in both?

Spicer said that Trump believes in widespread voter fraud, in part, as a 2014 study by Jesse Richman and David Earnest found more than 14% of non-citizens in 2008 and 2010 “indicated that they were registered to vote.” But the sample was so small that it had a huge error range.

“I am to a large extent an environmentalist” Trump said. What? From a guy who doesn’t believe in climate change.

From Trump’s own Twitter account, he says 2 pictures from his inauguration will be hung in the press room at the White House. But if you look closely, the date is January 21st, 2017 – not 20th. [Click on the image in this link showing the crowd.]

In other news, amateur hour. The Trump administration had to recall a press release after they spelled UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s first name wrong. No “H” in the first release.

Trump already signed at least 14 executive orders. Way more than the last half dozen presidents combined.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway says that recent threats have forced her to receive an extra layer of security, and she apparently blames the news media. She has Secret Service protection. “We have packages delivered to my house with white substances.” But remember that she’s on the propaganda team. Did she actually get threats and received “white substances”.

A Trump administration freeze on new Environmental Protection Agency contracts and grant awards raised fears that states and other recipients could lose essential funding for drinking water protection, hazardous waste oversight and a host of other programs — while a communications blackout left them dangling in uncertainty. Emails to staff banning press releases, blog updates or posts to the agency’s social media accounts contributed to the information vacuum. Some have created “rogue” Twitter accounts to get around the decree.

Buried at the end of a confirmation hearing last week of Jeff Sessions, who if confirmed will take the helm at the Justice Dept. under the new administration, is a note saying as attorney general is in favor of putting backdoors in encryption.

An online reporter from LifeZette [a pro-Trump site] was able to ask a question at a White House press conferences and briefings where normally only major news outlets are traditionally allowed. I guess we’ll see Breitbart soon…

Trump warned business leaders that he would impose a “substantial border tax” on companies that move their manufacturing out of the United States, while promising tax advantages to companies that produce products domestically. So companies can either jump ship [say to Canada as it is close to the US] or build in the US and watch either their profits to shrink [which won’t help their stock] to keep the prices steady or increase prices because the labor in the US is higher than most countries.

A lawsuit alleged that President Donald Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his business to accept payments from foreign governments. Trump is violating the so-called emoluments clause in the Constitution that prohibits him from receiving money from diplomats for stays at his hotels or foreign governments for leases of office space in his buildings, according to the suit filed by a legal watchdog group.

Trump said that he would hand over control of his company to his two adult sons. He announced several other measures in an attempt to mollify critics who contend that his financial interest as head of a global real estate company could conflict with his pursuit of the public good. Problem is that there has been no indication he has done anything about it.

Humor time – not fake news:

British PM Theresa May almost did not make the trip to Washington recently after rumors when out that Donald Trump was about to issue an executive order for the US to build a wall between the US and the UK and the UK would have to pay.

 

Receiving Email from a Yahoo account warning

You may receive an Email from a friend [or someone in the family] who has a Yahoo account. [The Email address sent from may not be a Yahoo account but the person has one.]

In the Email, which may not have a subject, it will give you most likely a one line paragraph and to click on a link.

It may be something like:

“You can’t miss it! http://blahblahblax.com/Johnny It’s my favorite one!”

The site above does not exist but is an example. Replace “Johnny” with the name of the person that sent it to you.

DON’T Click on the link in the Email.

Verify with the individual if they sent it. Do not reply to that Email directly.

I have received two of these the past couple of days. These are probably related to one of the two huge hacks on Yahoo over the past couple of years or so.

 

Trump’s first weekend in charge, hmmm

WhiteHouse.gov immediately wiped pages on LGBT rights, civil rights, climate change, and health care from its “issues” section after Donald Trump took the oath of office. Sad. Sad. Sad.

CNN had photographs of the crowds at the National Mall comparing Trump’s crowd during his oath [just after noon] versus Barack Obama’s crowd in 2009 at an unknown time. Clearly Obama won. Some estimates put Obama’s crowd at 1.8 million. Obama had temperatures in the 20Fs while Trump had his in the 40Fs. As of 11am, Metro [transit] ridership was 513,000 for Obama and just 153,000 for Trump. Other examples was Obama in 2013 at 317,000 and George W. Bush at 197,000 in 2005. Metro, Washington’s subway system, tweeted Saturday’s women’s march there were 275,000 trips taken Saturday by 11 a.m.

“I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well,” Trump said. He also called the media liars for fabricating the totals. As if he is a crowd numbers expert! Trump’s team call it Alt-Facts according to Kellyanne Conway.

Even press secretary, Sean Spicer, claimed that it was the biggest crowd ever for an inauguration. Who are they kidding?

Look here. [2017 on the left, 2009 on the right.]

In the U.S., Nielsen estimates 31 million viewers watched TV coverage, but that’s less than Barack Obama’s [38 million] and Ronald Reagan’s first inaugurations. Trump tweeted his was higher than Obama’s second inauguration but failed to mention Obama’s first.

I didn’t watch the inauguration at all except the odd 10-15 seconds here or there but I wonder if any of the national coverage including show the many protesters as the motorcade went by.

The National Mall’s administration were told to remove the tweets related to the number of people attending the 2009 and 2017 inauguration.

During the 2009 and 20013 inauguration as Obama went by the Canadian Embassy to Congress, the 3 RCMP Mounties in front of the embassy saluted. When Trump went by, no salute. Someone at the embassy said they were too close to each other to salute. Looked that way on video.

Trump was at it again on Twitter. He’s taking credit that he has created jobs when companies have said the jobs created have nothing to do with him and were ongoing. When a NBC Today correspondent said that Trump’s impact on job creation “(according to the companies we hear from,) it is very small or nonexistent,” Trump went on a rampage used his standard “fake news” comment and saying that “No wonder the Today Show on biased @NBC is doing so badly compared to its glorious past. Little credibility!” In fact, NBC is #2 in the morning shows and #1 among 25- to 54-year-olds, the key demographic for advertisers.

At the CIA, in front of the wall that honors those who died while serving their country, Trump lies say that he never had anything against the CIA or intelligence community. He then rants about the media. The outgoing CIA director had some not so kind words for him.

Remember throughout the election campaign, Trump refused to release his tax information claiming that he was in the middle of being audited [hinting that it would be released after]? Well now advisor Kellyanne Conway says that Trump will never release them. [BTW, that is a long audit.]

Meanwhile far-right/alt-right site Breitbart News has a running list of announcements titled “Trump Jobs Boom”. That’s more like “fake news”.

Meanwhile, GM to lay off 2,000 workers on inauguration day. For that, I’m sure Trump will blame it on Obama. That is 1,200 workers in Lordstown, OH and 800 in Lansing, MI. Trump not rescuing their jobs. Trump thanked GM this week after GM said it would hire and “retain” 2,000 in the coming years. So that doesn’t mean just 2,000 hired. An additional 1300 GM employees in Detroit will lose their job in March.

“Americans to Trump: Enough With the Tweets,” the headline said, citing a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. According to the poll, 69% of Americans are wary of Trump’s Twitter habit.

Trump said in an interview on “Fox & Friends” that he doesn’t “like to tweet,” but has to use the social network to respond to the “dishonest media.” Ha. Ha. Ha. Why doesn’t he let one of his stooges respond then.

Seeing that the quality of acts at the inauguration concert was razor thin, Azealia Banks stepped in. Still didn’t help much!

From the bookies, they say there is anywhere between a 20% and a 50% chance Trump will be impeached in his only term. A 500 to 1 chance that Trump will repaint the White House gold.

Vladimir Poutine says Trump would never try to coax a contestant that Trump had helped organize because while they are beautiful but “low class”. Nice.

Rudy Giuliani has been tapped to “lend expertise” and to advise the Trump administration on cybersecurity. The former New York mayor “will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cybersecurity problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector,” said a brief statement from the incoming Trump administration. Giuliani is the chief executive of his own private-sector cybersecurity venture, Giuliani Partners.

After leaving office as mayor of New York at the end of 2001, this venture claims to offer “a comprehensive range of security and crisis management services.” His consulting firm has hired controversial staffers, and has worked for questionable clientele, reports have said. The company seems to be raking it in for a company that nobody knows what the company actually does. But it is raking in money. Unsure for what. Reminds me of money laundering or fraud. Money comes in but no work done others than something with the 2016 Olympics.

A report from Canadian real-estate agency Royal LePage suggests many Americans who oppose incoming president Donald Trump continue showing a desire to purchase property in Canada. The company says U.S. traffic on its website surged 329 per cent the day after the U.S. election Nov. 8 and climbed 210.1 per cent year-over-year the week after Trump’s victory. For all of November, says Royal LePage, U.S. traffic to its site grew 73.7 per cent over 2015 and rose 40.9 per cent annually in the fourth quarter. During that three-month period, the report says U.S. interest in real estate was primarily focused on Canada’s largest markets, with Ontario, B.C. and Quebec receiving 72.7 per cent of all U.S. regional page views. Three-quarters of the American inquiries concerned residential properties.

Not surprising, a contradiction for the Trump Organization. A month ago Trump vowed to do “no new deals” while in office. Now his company will still pursue US deals – but he won’t control the company.

While some ethics officials have said that foreign leaders who pay for rooms and services at his various hotels would run afoul of the constitutional ban on foreign gifts or payments to the president, Dillon referred to it as a “fair-value exchange.”

Bookies are taking odds or chances of whether he will be impeached in the next 4 years. Anywhere from 20% to 50%. The highest pay-out with the lowest odds is 500/1 from Paddy Power – if the Republican paints his entire White House gold.

Samantha Bee, the late-night comic, referred to adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway as the president-elect’s “omnipresent spokescobra” for her ability to transform his “upended port-a-potty of a campaign” and labelling her a “soulless, Machiavellian despot”. “I know Kellyanne doesn’t believe those homophobic and sexist things in her heart because Kellyanne doesn’t believe anything in her heart,” she said. “She will say literally anything.”

In the days after Donald Trump’s election, stores in midtown Manhattan watched a stream of foot traffic slow to a trickle as gates went up and police officers fanned out. Security restrictions near Fifth Avenue’s gilded Trump Tower have eased somewhat since then, but small businesses and people who live nearby are still worried about four years of inconvenient detours.

Manhattan Borough President Gail Brewer said there are at least 105 businesses on 56th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues employing over 1100 people. [So for all the claims from Trump of new jobs for Americans, here could be some job losses.]

Odd fact: The top states for pain killers and the top states for heroin users were all Trump winning states.

Oh. If you haven’t noticed. I haven’t called Trump by his title….

Further changes to Windows Update

Back in October, Microsoft started to release cumulative or roll-up packages for Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2.

They consist of a security only package that has all the updates for that month only. They call it the Security Only Quality Update [SOQU].

There is also the monthly roll-up which includes all security and non-security updates since October 2016. They call it the Security Monthly Quality Update [SMQU].

If you install the SMQU, it will bring you up to date quite fast. It also replaces all SMQUs since October 2016]. It technically also replaces all SOQUs since October 2016 as well.

If you just want security updates, you would need to install every monthly SOQU available from October 2016 and on.

From October 2016 to January 2017 the SOQU contained all supported Internet Explorer updates. As of February 2017, Microsoft has removed IE from the SOQU and IE will be a separate update. This was requested by enterprise clients. [The SMQU will still incorporate the latest IE update.] As usual, none of the updates will upgrade your version of IE.

Months with no new Windows security or reliability fixes will not have a SOQU or SMQU release. [Of course with Windows, that gets a bit unlikely!]

Confused?

 

 

It’s the end of the US, but do they feel fine?

At precisely this time in 12 hours, the US has its 45th president. Good luck.

In just a single day, Trump went on a rant against America’s closest allies, calling NATO obsolete, praising the UK for leaving the European Union, and expressing uncertainty that he will get along with German chancellor Angela Merkel. Two days later, he said the American dollar was too high. Sure enough [for example], the Canadian dollar rose a cent against the US dollar.

According to a new CNN/ORC poll, Donald Trump will take office Friday with the lowest approval ratings for any recent president and his transition efforts. His approval rating is 44 percentage points below President Obama and the transition efforts are 20 percentage points lower than Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Not surprise, Trump had to fire back on Twitter saying “The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.”

Four in ten say Trump is qualified to server according to another poll.

A new CNN/ORC poll finds Obama’s approval rating stands at 60%, his best mark since June of his first year in office. Compared with other outgoing presidents, Obama lands near the top of the list, outranked only by Bill Clinton’s 66% in January 2001 and Ronald Reagan’s 64% in January 1989. About two-thirds (65%) say Obama’s presidency was a success, including about half (49%) who say that was due to Obama’s personal strengths rather than circumstances outside his control.

Amid those glowing reviews, one-quarter of Americans (25%) say Obama is one of the nation’s greatest presidents, far outpacing the share who felt that way about other recent presidents as their terms ended (11% described Reagan that way, 10% Clinton, and 5% or fewer said so about either President Bush). Still, nearly as many (23%) call Obama a poor president, more than said so about Reagan, Clinton or the first president Bush, but well below the 46% who said George W. Bush was a poor president as he prepared to leave the White House.

In the U.S. capital, the incoming president received four per cent of the vote — the worst result for any major party nominee in the district, ever.

With Trump in charge soon, some Americans were so happy that ObamaCare will be pulled. They then say that they are happy “the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” won’t be touched. They like it. It’s the same thing.

Trump’s tweets may already land him in hot water – with his daughter. He tweeted @Ivanka instead of @IvankaTrump. – two different accounts. Whomever uses @Ivanka will get very popular shortly [or not]. Trump had retweeted a message from a Twitter user that said his daughter was “great, a woman with real character and class.”

Trump was tweeting whether or not outgoing CIA chief John Brennan was the “the leaker of fake news”.

Trump likes to start fights and this one isn’t even from Twitter. Fashion designer Tom Ford has said he declined to dress Melania Trump years ago, saying “she’s not necessarily my image.” Seems The Donald remembers petty things like these. So he had his buddy, hotel owner Steve Wynn to pull selling Tom Ford cosmetics and sunglasses. Trump said Wynn thought what Ford said was terrible. So why now? Trump told Fox his wife never asked Ford to dress her as first lady and “doesn’t like” Ford or his designs.

The Secret Service says a vehicle in a motorcade for Vice-President-elect Mike Pence struck a D.C. police reserve officer according to TV station which reports that police say the officer was conducting traffic control in northwest Washington on Wednesday afternoon when a vehicle in the motorcade hit him.

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” Expect the US to go further into deficit then.

Trump has already stated that he would claw back President Obama’s sanctions against Russia regarding Ukraine and Crimea incursions.

A women’s march on DC on the day after the inauguration is expected to have 1800 bus loads [those registered] at the time of this blog was sent out. In comparison 400 registered buses for the inauguration.

Banned for those sitting close to the stage for inauguration include: umbrellas, guns, fireworks, backpacks, balloons, drums, whistles, and selfie sticks.

Few Canadians appear inclined to celebrate this year’s event, if polls are to be believed. A mere 18 per cent told an Angus Reid survey in November that they were somewhat or very pleased with Trump’s win.

Canada’s event usually draws a strong turnout given the prime location as the only foreign embassy in the area, near the National Mall and right along the parade route. On Friday, Donald Trump will take the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol to become the 45th president, then pass the embassy and its string of Canadian flags on the way to the White House. 1800 showed up at the last inauguration party. Expect poutine, tourtiere [a meat pie originating from Quebec, usually made with finely diced pork, veal or beef], beef and Canadian beer to be served.

The performers list for the inauguration looks a bit pathetic. At this time, the best known is Toby Keith followed by Lee Greenwood. One list didn’t even list Wayne Newton or Paul Anka, which I mentioned before. After that you have 3 Doors Down [one hit wonder in Kryptonite 16+ years ago] and Jackie Evancho from “America’s Got Talent” to sing the national anthem [her career is about to be toast!]. Then it gets worse. The “B Street band” – a tribute band based on Bruce Springsteen’s music was supposed to perform. Add Sam Moore from the duo Sam and Dave. Add some of the Radio City Rockettes. After that you have nobodies.

Initially a tribute band called the B Street band were to perform but the band leader saying the decision was based on the respect they have for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Some believe a backlash was also a reason.

Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli will not be performing at Trump’s inauguration. He’s received death threats if he performs. Trump’s people said he was never invited [save face?].

Can’t wait to see what the estimates of the crowd will be compared to previous inaugurations. I’m sure anything less than Obamas’ and Trump while start to whine on Twitter. Unsure who does the official estimates for inaugurations but usually the cops usually give an estimate. He’ll have someone in his team say that it’s at least triple the official estimates. Although he may just say it is 10 times the official estimates and not say where that figure came from [top of his head].

They expect maybe 900,000 but that will probably drop as it is expected to be a cloudy day with rain in the forecast. The umbrella ban doesn’t help. [Or the main  guest!]

Estimates that the inauguration will cost $200 million US including over $100 million for security.

Two days before his swearing in, Donald Trump has forked over $25 million to settle three Trump University fraud lawsuits. The Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, originally known as Trump University, delivered the payment, plaintiffs’ lawyers told CNNMoney. The settlement was reached in November shortly after the election. It kept the president-elect from having to testify in a trial. Students said they were promised access to private financing options that never materialized, and concluded the program was effectively a bait-and-switch. Though initial seminars were free, attendees alleged that teachers only used them to get students to shell out for paid sessions.

Trump finally got a tweet right: After civil right icon John Lewis said he hasn’t missed an inauguration in a long time, someone in Trump’s entourage did some research and found out that Lewis wasn’t at George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001. Trump tweeted it. In an interview he called Lewis’ error “a really big lie”. Exaggeration and Lewis is older than Trump.

Already a couple of nicknames have shown up: Commander in Thief, Groper in Chief.

Personally, I’ll be watching the 2009 inauguration on YouTube.

 

How to restore an uninstalled Windows 10 app

If you have somehow uninstalled a Windows 10 app [the ones that came with Windows 10], you can restore the app. There are a number of ways but this method seems the least confusing [well to me]:

Find PowerShell in the Start menu [choose one that says “PowerShell” and not “PowerShell (x86)” or the others].

• Right click on it and select “Run as administrator”. A big deep blue window opens up.
• Run the command:

Get-Appxpackage –Allusers

• Because of the number of applications, I would suggest you redirect the output to a text file.

Get-Appxpackage –Allusers > c:\temp\output.txt

• You can use a different name. Use a location to save the text file and you have rights to save it there. You will be deleting it after.
• Open your output.txt file.
• Find the application that you want to restore. For our example, it will be the “Windows Store”.
• So look for and copy the text to the right of “FullPackageName” under “Windows Store”.
• So for this version of Windows 10 that I’m using [Windows 10 Pro v1611 64-bit] it is “Microsoft.WindowsStore_11610.1001.10.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe”.
• Now build/copy the following line:

Add-AppxPackage -register “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\XXX\AppxManifest.xml” –DisableDevelopmentMode

• Replace XXX with “Microsoft.WindowsStore_11610.1001.10.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe” [no quotes] in my example and you should be left with

Add-AppxPackage -register “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsStore_11610.1001.10.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\AppxManifest.xml” –DisableDevelopmentMode

• Copy the full line [to the clip board].
• Go into the big deep blue PowerShell window, and right click on the top line where you have the PowerShell command prompt. It should automatically insert the line that you “built” two lines above. Hit the “Enter” key.

If there is no error, it will bring you back to the PowerShell command prompt. Now if you go to the Start menu, your application should be back [in our example, it show up as “Store”].

Note: I am not a PowerShell expert. So, if something is missing, I can’t help. At worst case, this procedure should do nothing.

 

Another interesting week from Trump

Classified documents presented recently to President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings have said. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources.

Trump said prior to the beginning of the confirmation sessions that all his confirmation picks will be confirmed. Uh huh.

At his first press conference in months, Trump slammed Buzzfeed News earlier in the press conference for publishing the unsubstantiated documents in their entirety. Trump called Buzzfeed News a “failing pile of garbage” and suggested the website would suffer the consequences of reporting on the material.

Trump wouldn’t even take questions from a CNN reporter saying CNN was “terrible,” repeatedly telling him to be quiet and “No, I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news!” The exchange came the day after CNN and several other news outlets reported that U.S. intelligence officials had briefed Trump and President Barack Obama on unsubstantiated claims that Moscow had compromising financial and personal information [unusual sexual activities] about the president-elect, including scandalous allegations of a sexual nature.

Not surprisingly, Trump vehemently refuted the reports calling them “fake news”, a “political witch hunt”, and “tremendous blot” on the record of the intelligence community if material with any such allegations had been released. As well, he says that United States is hacked by other countries as well, including China – brushing it off as if it wasn’t critical.

Trump claimed that the documents, which were placed next to him as he spoke, were evidence of the preparations he had made to give over control of his businesses to his sons. He pointed at those documents and claimed they were just part of the various papers required to separate Trump from his business and each pointed at the pile repeatedly as proof that the preparations were being made. Problem is that the sheets were the wrong size [not legal] and blank! See here.

A bunch of people [off camera] at the news conference clapped at the end. Supposedly they all worked for Trump. Probably told them to clap or “You’re fired!”

President-elect Donald Trump harshly responded to civil rights icon [he walked with Martin Luther King Jr. and was at Selma] and Georgia Rep. John Lewis, calling him “all talk” and “no action” after Lewis said Trump was not a “legitimate” president. “Congressman  John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested).” Not surprising, outrage from the civil rights movement. I gather Trump doesn’t know his background.

Trump says he’ll be President for 8 years – heaven forbid!

He also says there is no US laws that say he can’t run the country and his company. Maybe not, but there are ethics laws.

Trump expects “massive” crowds for his inauguration. I suspect when the rough estimates of the crowd comes in from the authorities, Trump will say they are very wrong and will use some way inflated number saying he’s an expert in estimating crowd sizes [like he said he was an expert in hacking].

Trump still is having a hard time finding performers for his inauguration. Supposedly, the biggest name is Las Vegas veteran Wayne Newton – although Canadian Paul Anka may have accepted. While performers have been almost exclusively from the US, Trump has tried to bring in foreign talent [including Celine Dion] and all have so far declined with British singer Charlotte Church calling him a “tyrant” after declining. Why is it that Trump has to bring in non-Americans? President Obama’s first inauguration had maybe a couple of dozen American performers and U2.

Classical teenage singer Jackie Evancho had album sales “skykrocketed” [according to Trump] after her December 14 announcement that she’ll sing the national anthem. But some could attribute that to her Christmas albums sell well during the holidays and Evancho appeared on an NBC holiday special December 19. Even then, it wasn’t sales that “skykrocketed”. Another Trump exaggeration.

Broadway star Jennifer Holliday decided not to attend the inauguration after the inauguration committee pre-emptively announced her appearance before she decided to perform and because of the outcry from the LGBTQ community.

Charles Brotman, the 89-year-old who once the voice of the Washington Senators baseball team, has announced every inauguration parade since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957. But not anymore. He was sent his “pink slip” by Email from trump’s transition team. In his place, the Trump team has tapped Steve Ray, a “youngster” as a 58-year-old Washington-based freelance announcer who has worked with the MLB’s Washington Nationals and for local radio stations. Brotman will be honored as “announcer chairman emeritus” – which means nothing. Brotman he thinks it smacks of political payback.

From the story mentioned in the previous blog entry, publisher HarperCollins said that it will stop selling a book by Monica Crowley that a CNN investigation found to have more than 50 instances of plagiarism.

Trump will transfer his business holdings to a trust, but he won’t sell them — stopping short of what ethics lawyers say is the only sure-fire way to avoid conflicts of interest. All of Trump’s business and financial assets will be placed into the trust before he is inaugurated January 20, according to a lawyer involved in the arrangement. It was not immediately clear who will control the trust. Trump will resign his role at the Trump Organization, his worldwide empire, and transfer control to his two adult sons and an in-house executive, the lawyer said. In the weeks since his election, the Trump Organization terminated all unfinished deals, and Ivanka Trump, who is expected to move to Washington and play a role in his presidency, will relinquish her roles at the Trump Organization, the lawyer said.

Updated features in the Windows 10 Creator Update

The list below is based on the latest Windows Insider build that beta testers are using [and may change] when Windows 10 v1703 is released in the spring. It is being dubbed the Creator Update by Microsoft. It is not the complete list but highlights some of the updates.

• You can now to organize and personal your tiles in Start menu into folders.
• OneNote 2016’s popular screen capture feature is built into Windows 10. Use Win+Shift+S to capture a region of your screen and copy it to anywhere. It is expected to be removed as a feature of OneNote 2016. [Note: If using OneNote but not using windows 10, there is a registry fix to bring it back].
• PC’s health section includes more options for Device performance and extra health scans for an in-depth report.
• When running Windows for the first time [after an upgrade or a new computer], a female voice will guide you and exclaim some options. The voice can be disabled.
• Added is an option that will enable you to pause updates on your computer for up to 35 days and allow you to decide whether or not to include driver updates. This capability will not be available on the Home edition.
• Also added is logic to better detect if the PC’s display is actively being used for something, such as projecting, and avoid attempting to restart.
• Home edition of Windows will now have Active hours increased to up to 18-hour maximum.
• You will now be able to change resolution straight from the main Display Settings page.
• An improved performance and smoothness when resizing GDI-based Desktop applications [such as File Explorer, Notepad, Task Manager, ….] and UWP apps [such as Outlook Mail, Photo]. When resizing UWP apps, the window frame background will be transparent as the app adjusts.
• The new device settings combine the Bluetooth and Connected devices pages to offer a single place to manage all of your devices/peripherals. They can all now be discovered and managed from the same place using the same UI. You can also disconnect and reconnect your Bluetooth audio devices directly from the settings page.
• High DPI support will be enabled for GDI-based applications.
• Settings pages now contain additional information on the right or bottom [depending on the window size} that will provide feedback, support links, etc.
• App related settings have moved out of System into a new category called Apps.
• The header on the landing page for each Settings category will now stay in place as you pan the page.
• You can easily pick between the colors you’ve decided on in the past on some screens.
• The Settings app now contains the theme management [formerly in the Control Panel.

 

1469 days until the next Presidential inauguration!

A bit of trivia: Name the action movie in the mid-1990s mentions both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the movie? Scroll to the bottom…]

“I know a lot about hacking.” Boy now Trump is a computer specialist! Trump claimed to have inside information on the matter, which he said he would reveal within the week of saying so – and didn’t. Judging from the history of Trump, it won’t be during that week, the next or the week after. Or maybe ever.

All sixteen federal intelligence agencies in the US plus two private independent security firms all concluded that Russia was involved in the hacking.

“What I can say is that we don’t believe that intelligence efforts should interfere into politics, certainly,” Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said. So this is the equivalent of saying the intelligence agencies should not say that their government was hacked into.

“This report that everyone keeps talking about is not final,” the President-elect’s incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer said. So why was the report released? Did the report say it wasn’t final?

“As President-elect he is privy to information most people aren’t,” Spicer said. Ok, so why mention anything until you can release it.

“And if you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong.” True but who knows. With the time wasted going in, the WMDs could have been moved or buried.

Trump’s people can’t get things right. Reince Priebus stated that Trump finally acknowledged that the US was hacked and Trump has promised to retaliate but Trump advisor [and all around odd-ball – for the lack of kind words] Kellyanne Conway keeps on using “alleged” hack because the Russians [she claims] were unsuccessful.

Trump is blaming the DNC for the lack of security to their network but Trump fails to blame the RNC [they were hacked but supposedly (or on purposely)] no leaked data or various government agencies.

Trump having his children or son-in-law as advisors could go against a law created in the mid-1960s which stipulates that family members cannot be advisors or paid. They may be one some committees but unpaid and clear of advising the President. But remember – this is Donald Trump. What’s another potentially broken law?

A full repeal of Obamacare by Trump would cost $350 billion over the next decade, according to a new analysis from the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. This makes its wholesale dismantling much more complicated. Trump himself said [depending on the weather it seems] will either pull all of Obamacare or take the “best” pieces.

The GOP and Trump claim removing Obamacare would be their first item of business. But they have not said what they would replace it with. There is talk that even giving children of illegal immigrants health care as part of Obamacare would be pulled as well as the guarantee of health care even with pre-existing conditions. An estimate 20 million Americans who didn’t have health care prior to Obamacare could potentially lose their health care.

Trump went to Twitter [as usual] to lash out at Meryl Streep after she made comments about him at the Golden Globe Awards. He responded in his usual fashion calling her “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood” and denying he “groveled” at someone during the campaign. If The Pope was to make comments about him I wonder how he’d respond? “Over-rate Pope”? “Pope who has done nothing?” He is a humorless and easily offended public persona.

Trump to criticize Saturday Night Live as “biased” and “unwatchable” on Twitter during the campaign after Alec Baldwin made fun of his looks and manner. But the show just recorded its best ratings in 24 years, thanks to a toxic and highly divisive U.S. presidential election.

Actor Alex Baldwin making fun at Trump with a knock off of “Make America Great Again” in Russian….

Arnold Schwarzenegger took over as “host” on Celebrity Apprentice [which Trump still has a production credit but doesn’t do anything]. Trump went after “Arnie” after the ratings have dropped but also poked fun at him because he supported (John) Kasich and Hillary (Clinton). Arnie did respond in Twitter with “I wish you the best of luck and I hope you’ll work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings.”

Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have decided to attend the inauguration to do so out of a sense of duty and respect for the American democratic process. So has George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter [who previous agreed to attend].

In another about face [well partially] Trump has said he will push to build the “Great Wall” between the US and Mexico now and send Mexico the invoice later. He doesn’t want to wait on the wall. There are currently 700 miles of fence along that track, with another approximately 1,200 miles either open, nearly impossible to actually build on or impassable.

Melania Trump, taking lessons from her husband, has warned that she will sue anyone who calls her an “ex-hooker”. If you recall, a story stated that she came to the US with a non-work visa and yet she was supposedly a model at Trump’s modeling agency. The story said she pulled in $20,000 within months. I would guess not all was modeling – especially since the agency couldn’t put her on their payroll legally. Get the drift?

Conservative author and television personality Monica Crowley, whom Donald Trump has tapped for a top national security communications role, plagiarized large sections of her 2012 book, a CNN review has found. The review of Crowley’s June 2012 book, “What The (Bleep) Just Happened,” found upwards of 50 examples of plagiarism from numerous sources, including the copying with minor changes of news articles, other columnists, think tanks, and Wikipedia.

Trump wants to create a “team” within 90 days of his inauguration on how to tackle hacking. First, you know Trump. It will be long after 90 days – if ever. Second, doesn’t the US already have an intelligence division to handle this? Oh ya. Trump doesn’t trust them.

Trump’s tweeting could cause problems. As of now they have been minor but if he tweets a bad comment, it could cause ripples.

In an example of bad tweeting Trump said “General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!” In fact most Cruzes are made in Ohio for the US market. The Cruze hatchback is made in Mexico for the international market although maybe 4500 care shipped to the US. After the tweet, GM’s stock market price briefly went down.

During the election campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate or scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement as a means of protecting and creating U.S. jobs. But while NAFTA is still valid, dishing out a “border tax” isn’t allowed.

Then Trump whined again on Twitter about Toyota opening a plant in Mexico and again with the “border tax” except he was technically defending Canada because the “lost” jobs would actually be Canadian jobs. Oh. He got the location in Mexico wrong.

It’s been a policy that when a new president comes in, all the appointments from the previous administration are recalled. Generally they leave by inauguration day. But with the Trump administration, they want everyone out by inauguration day. No exceptions or extensions. That means pulling kids out of school in the middle of the school year, canceling charity galas and supposedly in one case cancer treatment.

Oh. What ever happened to Trump releasing his tax returns. Maybe it includes the fact that it will show Trump’s connections to Russian businesses.

Trivia answer: Die Hard With A Vengeance [the third Die Hard movie with Bruce Willis]. At one point in conversations between the characters of Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, both names came up. Interesting to note that Clinton’s name came up related to the presidency.

Smart TV can be hit with randomware

This is getting ridiculous.

A guy posted online on Christmas day that a relative’s smart TV appears to be infected with a version of the Cyber.Police ransomware, also known as FLocker, Frantic Locker, or Dogspectus.

The infected TV is one of the last generations of LG smart TVs that ran Google TV, a smart TV platform developed by Google together with Intel, Sony, and Logitech. Google TV launched in 2010, but Google discontinued the project in June 2014.

The guy tried to reset the TV to factory settings, but the reset procedure available online didn’t work. When the software engineer contacted LG, the company told him to visit one of their service centers, where one of its employees could reset his TV and charge supposedly $340.

The relatives said they downloaded an app to watch a movie. Halfway through the movie, TV froze and booted to this screen below. Unknown where the app came from.

Symantec and Trend Micro [in separate reports] concluded that removing ransomware from smart TV’s won’t be easy for most to remove.

Google has started working on Android TV, an Android-based smart TV platform, similar to Google TV, meaning that Android malware remains a valid threat for a large chunk of the smart TV market.
Here’s a link created by the guy on how to reset a LG smart TV [jump to about 4:50 to find out how to reset, if you are bored]. The guy yacks a bit too much. Could of done this in just a couple of minutes at the most.

There was a comment elsewhere that it could be a hoax, but the screen in the video looks legitimate.