Off the back of Microsoft announcing price increases for its Xbox and Surface laptops. Sony increasing the price of their nearly 6 year old PlayStation 5, and the Steam Deck increasing in price to a point, that it’s probably not worth buying any more.
In late June, Apple announced price increases of up to 20% on most of its main products including laptops desktops tablets and the AppleTV. However, the iPhone appears to be exempt from these hikes for now.
This is significant because Apple rarely changes the prices of its current product range. Which suggests tech prices are likely to stay high for the foreseeable future, which isn’t great news for new releases. Take the new Steam Machine for example; it might have already priced itself out of the market.
Under 16’s to be barred from Social Media in UK
Prime Minister Kier Starmer last month announced that anyone under the age of 16 will be banned from social media. Something that will take place from the beginning of 2027, and unlike a similar ban in Australia, will be extended to all social media platforms.
While the ban has been generally well received by child safety advocates. I would have preferred to have seen a more systematic approach, with a ban on phones in schools first. Particularly as private schools in the UK, like Eton, banned them 2 years ago.
What’s interesting about implementing a phone ban, is that we now have data that shows that such a ban works. Where according to an article in Engadget, Norway found that such a ban:
led to a reduction in bullying, better grades and a significant decrease in the number of visits to psychologists for mental health issues. These results were especially potent with girls.
While banning phones in school would be a smaller step than a full social media ban. That little step could have been used as a stick to threaten social media platforms to get their houses in order.
Something that should have been done a decade ago, after we all found out about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and later still when Frances Haugen blew the whistle on Facebook before a Parliamentary committee.
Did your computer update its Secure Boot certificate?
While Microsoft did issue warnings in April that the certificate used for something called secure boot was about to expire. Let’s be honest how many people actually saw the notices, or realise how important updating that certificate is.
For anyone unfamiliar with secure boot. This is a feature built into a Windows computers firmware, that is design to protect against malware and root-kit attacks. However, as the certificate that it uses to validate itself is due to expire. This certificate needs to be replaced.
Luckily, in most instances a software update should automatically update your computers firmware, or just add a new secure boot certificate. However, as a computer will still work using the old certificate. It’s a good idea to check which certificate your computer is using.
In order to do this in Windows 11. If you open Settings – Privacy & Security and then choose Device Security. Under the heading Secure Boot you will be informed as to the status of your computers secure boot certificate. If the certificate is out of date, then it might be a good idea to check with the manufacturer of your computer as to a fix.
Update the secure boot certificate on an AMD Framework Laptop running Windows 11.
If you have an AMD framework laptop running windows 11. Even if its using the latest firmware, you might find (like me) that the certificate did not update. This seems to be because the old certificate was cached, so was still being used. Which means you have to manually empty the cache in order to use the updated secure boot certificate.
If after updating your Framework laptop with the latest firmware. You find your still using the old secure boot certificate. We were able to fix the problem by doing the following:
- Power down the computer.
- Power it back up, but before the Framework logo appears, repeatedly press the F2 key until the BIOS/UEFI screen appears.
For whatever reason if you can’t get your Framework laptop to boot the BIOS/UEFI. Load Windows, and then accessed the BIOS/UEFI via Settings – System – Recovery. Then under Advanced startup, click Restart now. When the PC restarts, a blue menu will appear. Select Troubleshoot – Advanced options – UEFI Firmware Settings. Then finally click Restart to enter the BIOS.
- In the BIOS select Administer Secure Boot.
- Enable Restore Secure Boot to Factory Settings.
- Save and Re-boot Windows.
When Windows loads, we found that we had to wait a short while before the new secure boot certificate would register.
Content releases for this month
At the moment a massive heat bloom is hanging over Europe. Which unfortunately has put a stop to all video shoots and any audio recordings in the Mydoodads studio. So we have decided to take this opportunity to work on things that can be done either under a parasol in the garden, or in an air conditioned cafe.
Which will mean that for July we will not be releasing any new content but instead focusing on tidying up the web site. As we would like to reduce the number of plug-ins we use, optimise the speed of the site, check that all posts are still relevant and maybe change the embedded video player from Vimeo to Gumlet.
If you would like to see what some of these changes will look like. As a test, in our latest post (What’s in my tech toolkit | MSI MP161 portable monitor), we used the Gumlet player for the first time. Which not only plays nicely with the website theme we use, but also allows us to reintroduce comments to our posts.
