Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Let’s finish the job.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

The words do not have to be perfect.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

No one could have predicted…

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Tech News: Update WordPress NOW!

Tech News: Update WordPress NOW!

by | 26 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Folks,

I’ll be launching the new and improved Buttons plugin later this morning and making a few small tweaks. Please note – improved by Major Major Major Major, in his first help-behind-the-scenes.  Please give him a well-earned pat on the back.

But the real focus of this post is to encourage you who have WordPress sites to update them ASAP. There is a critical security bug in 4.7.1 that’s been fixed, and tens of thousands of WordPress sites are being hacked because folks haven’t updated them to 4.7.2. So, if you have a WordPress site, no matter how tiny and under-read, please take 5 minutes to update it to this more secure version.

I have a big tech post half written for next week covering a bunch of privacy and security ideas, and a more personal one that I hope to publish soon.

And as a reader-turned-client has encouraged me, know that I am available for hire to help on your site, to sort out tech issues in general, and to help secure your privacy and digital stuff.  Just use the Contact a Frontpager form and I’ll get back to you asap. No issue is too small, and I am happy to refuse things that are too big or out of my skillset.

Besides all that, have a great weekend, and keep all Americans, our residents, and guests in your thoughts and prayers. There are a lot of scared people among us, something not felt since the Red Scare.  That drove my mom to live overseas as she couldn’t stand the cultural environment back then. She has confided in me the temptations to move overseas again, but I’ve convinced her that this is home, and we resist.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

26Comments

  4. 4.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Major Major Major Major: Thank you for your hard work! I just finished testing and altering the plugin so it’s ours and not the standard one. So no updates wipe out our work. I’m going to test my changes, then launch here. I plan to edit the graphic resource to make it grayer and less dark, but otherwise I think we’re golden. Another day I’ll tweak placement. Thanks again, I meant to credit you above but I’ll make sure everyone know that you helped a lot! :)

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I’ve convinced her that this is home, and we resist.

    Yes. We can’t allow them to forget that.

  8. 8.

    Alain the site fixer

    Thank Master Programmer Major Major Major Major. He made it happen. I still want to lighten them and maybe move them a hair, but they’re good enough for now.

  10. 10.

    drdavechemist

    Alain (or any other experts), it looks like this would only apply if I am hosting a WordPress site on my own server and not if I am using WordPress.com as the host–is that correct?

  11. 11.

    Larkspur

    @Major Major Major Major: MajorMajorMajorMajor: hugs hugs hugs hugs. You too, Alain.

    A friend just sent me a link to an article in Wired which all of y’all might have seen already. Here’s the link: Congress’ Phone System is Broken, But It’s Still Your Best Shot.

    Included is this little tidbit I didn’t know about:

    …There are some obvious solutions to the Congressional phone problem, but few easy ones. Everyone I spoke to pointed to the fact that each House member is only allowed to hire 18 people, a number that hasn’t changed in decades even as district populations have swelled. When that number was decided, Schuman says almost incredulously, “there was no email. Now email is huge. Tidal waves of overwhelming communications.” A legislator’s understanding of their district is remarkably linked to who they’ve talked to recently….

  16. 16.

    Alain the site fixer

    For those using tablets in landscape mode, the mobile site is missing the menu button. I know and have to rework the mobile site to fix that. Next week. If you rotate tablet to portrait view the menu item should show up at top right.

  20. 20.

    sharl

    An OP that contains multitudes, in only a few paragraphs!
    Thanks for all you do Alain, and thanks as well to Major Major Major Major.

  24. 24.

    laura

    Four Hazzahs for Major Major Major Major and each of the buttons, along with kudos to the Site Fixer!

  26. 26.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Just a late note to say thanks for the reminder I have three active WordPress blogs, all on my own server I run her at home, into which I have a business class cable account with hack spit Comcast. Although, I admit, my contract had expired end of lat year, and when I called to offer to just cancel completely VOIP and Internet, they offered me their highest speed bundle, including 20 Mbps upload, and a purported 150 down (which in real life means about 85-90), at less than my previous contract, I said OK and signed a new contract.

    Anyway, late Friday afternoon I sat down and upgraded all three of our blogs to latest WordPress version. A manual upgrade, the run on a Windows 2012 R2 server. On one of them I had to reindex all the posts in the database, but then things started working again. All told, since they are pretty simple sites for the most part, quick and smooth.

    Again, thanks for the reminder.

    I have decided, since I am adding a few more IP blocks from China and Russia detected trying to hack into my email server, that I will just translate the firewall rules from my LINUX email server into the rules on the Windows server, just dropping all traffic from the worst offenders. It is the least I can do. It is fascinating to read the log summaries on the email serve and see just how constant the attempts to do SASL authentication via my webmail is, or often the spammers try to inject email using badly formed HELO requests, that are preemptively rejected. I use three of the major spam blocklists, and on average they reject dozens of email every day. On a little personal servers which used to have a hundred accounts, but I have collapsed them all into just a dozen new ones. The old addresses using old names from the prior server, that were exposed for decades, get all the spam attempts, because they are out there.

    And while I am ranting, has anyone else noticed how, since Trump took office, the criminal scum who call your home phones all day, and even in the middle of the night, have ramped up the unsolicited and still illegal calls? And the junk faxes? It is reeling out of control. We are on the verge of just turning off the phone ringer, i.e. muting it, and letting everything go to voice mail, and check and call back the legitimate calls.

Comments are closed.