 So lately, with this whole coronavirus thing, people are self isolating and a lot of people, their kids aren't in school right now and they're having to resort to online courses to get their kids through the year. And I can understand this is a stressful situation for a lot of people and I've gotten a number of calls from different people regarding different issues they're having. One of the first ones I got was from someone having issues because they had an iPad that they were trying to use and apparently the school system around here, the public school system requires flash for their online classes. So first off, don't use flash. Don't ever use flash. It is not in development anymore. It's the best of my knowledge. It's just it's a dead project, meaning anything that's using it is probably old and outdated. And flash has been known for having many, many security bugs in the past. And even if you trust the site that you're going to, the school site, which I wouldn't because if they're developing in flash, I wouldn't trust the security of their system. But even if you do trust that having flash or some sort of flash type application that allows you to run flash applications on your system is opening up security hole. I understand that you're in a tight squeeze. You weren't expecting this to happen. And now these school systems are support or forcing you supposedly to do this. Yes, I suppose because I'm just going based on what people have told me. Number one, if you can and you should be able to, I would recommend if you're going to install flash, do it in a virtual machine. It's not that hard to do, get it set up in that way. It's kind of contained in a sandbox or use a piece of hardware that you don't care about that you're not using for anything that has personal information on it and then wipe the machine when you're done. And people get upset when I say this, you need to contact the school system and complain the squeaky wheel gets the oil, right? They'll go, oh, that's just it. Well, they're making us do this is how they've done it for years. The fact that this is how they've done it for years and haven't updated is part of the problem and nothing's going to change if you don't complain. If all the parents contacted and just said, hey, flash is not secure. We're going to use it this time, but you need to update that. Enough people complain. They're going to have to change it and people get upset when I tell them to do, I'm not going to do that. Do it. Don't be a coward. Do it. This is your kid's education. The fact that people who are supposedly educating your kids are suggesting flash tells you that the people who are educating your kids are idiots and you need to do something about it. So that's number one. Next issue I had, I had someone contact me and say, oh, apparently they just bought a new computer. It sounds like we're doing the school stuff and they said that it's running really slow already and they don't know if it will be able to do the school, you know, classroom stuff. Online schooling, it should be very, very simple. It shouldn't be labor intensive at all on your machine. The most labor intensive thing it should do is probably, you know, video chatting and conferencing, which even the cheapest of devices nowadays should be able to do. There's a lot of things on what type of hardware to get. You go to Walmart or wherever you should be able to get yourself a cheap little laptop for under 200 bucks. Between 200 and 300 bucks if you want to touch screen. And these machines will usually run great for just web browsing, which is all online courses are. So if your system's running slow, the only thing I recommend is with those cheap little laptops, most of them will have four megabytes of RAM. Some will only have two or three. Four is kind of like the bottom line. You don't really want to go below that for modern systems. And to go from a two megabyte, sorry. Yeah, yeah, two megabyte. I said two megabyte, two gigabyte. Two gigabyte of RAM to four gigabyte of RAM. The upgrade in price is minimal. I mean, we're talking maybe $25 to get the faster. And that's more important. Storage space on those tend to be very small because they want to do all the stuff in the con. That doesn't really matter. Because you plug a flash drive or an SD card in and store stuff. But as far as speed, these machines aren't going to be very fast. But as long as you have at least four gigs of RAM, you should be fine for doing online school stuff. That's also assuming that the people who design the online classes aren't horrible, hard developers, which maybe they are. In example, the last one, the people who are developing in Flash. Because Flash is a memory hog. Next issue I had people trying to do video conferences. And in this example, the people were using a website called Zoom, which I had never heard of before. But supposedly it's the most popular for online classes and conversations. Of course the website is going to say that. I've never heard of it before. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. Thing is, I went and I checked this out. And you should not have to install anything for any online course. Your web browser should be able to handle it all. Tests, chats, video conferencing. All that should be done in the web browser. There is no reason to install any application. The Zoom website, when you go to it, they try to get you to install the application. Luckily they support all these different formats. They support multiple versions of Linux and Windows and macOS. And you go to the website and you get a little classroom key. You go to log in. And it tries to get you to download and install this program. And I was told that there's a program you can install. There's a web browser plugin you can install. Or you can just use it in the web browser without installing anything. At least with most web browsers, or at least more common web browsers. So the question is, why is it trying to get me to install stuff? So I go there and I'm like, I can't figure out how to do this in the web browser. Well, it kept asking me, install this, install this. I said no two or three times and then a little tiny, little tiny thing popped up at the bottom of the screen. I mean, tiny, I didn't even see it the first time. Click here to just use your web browser. And it worked. It worked fine. And the best of my knowledge, there were two functionalities that were not in that web browser application that were in the main. And one is you can put up a whiteboard and everyone can draw on it. I couldn't draw on it when the teacher put up the whiteboard. And other one where you can superimpose a background behind you. Other than that, all the functionality worked and didn't have to install anything. And those two things are things that should be able to be done in web browser. They just didn't implement it because they're focusing it on, focusing on their desktop application that they want you install. And you have to ask, why do they want me to install this so bad? If my web browser can already do it, why do they want me to install it? Don't install stuff if you don't need to. 99.9% of the stuff you're going to do can be done on your computer with the software that comes with it. And if someone wants you to install something outside of that, you have to ask yourself, why? And if it's something that your web browser or other applications that are already on your system can do, then you should not be installing that application. So again, some of these companies are going to try to force you to because they want control over your machine. And I understand that you're in a situation right now that was unexpected with this whole coronavirus. You're being thrown into this and maybe you have to, but double check that you have to. Because again, like with that zoom thing, you just had to click no. I'm not going to install a couple of times and they let you use the web browser, which was fully functional besides the two functionality. I don't need to change background behind me. And the drawing on the screen would have been nice. But at the same time, I didn't, there was a share screen function. So I could just open up some, some draw application on my screen and share it. So there's that. But think about what you're doing. And I get that it's a hard time, but still it is an excuse not to be safe. And if someone's trying to get you to install something on your machine that you shouldn't be installing, you need to complain. Even if you end up doing it because you feel like you have to, you have to complain. Okay. Things don't change if you don't try to get them changed. That's it. Stay safe. And I hope you found this helpful. Have a great day.