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TekBits Technology News

What is wsappx and why is causing high cpu load?

When I launched the most recent version of Windows 10 today I noticed high cpu load almost immediately.

I opened the Windows Task Manager with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Esc, clicked on the more details link and found the Windows process wsappx to be the cause (Note: the process may display as wsappx (2) or wsappx (3) as well).

Cpu use would go as high as 30% and while it went down at times, it did go up almost immediately again in the same moment.

Hybrid Analysis: analyze Windows files in a browser sandbox

Whenever I find a new program to review here on this site, I run it through a series of security tests first to make sure that it is not malicious or problematic in other ways.

Services like Virustotal are indispensable for that as they scan these files using dozens of different antivirus engines. While that increases the likelihood of false positives as well, the results are useful most of the time especially if no hits are returned by the service.

Free Upgrade to Windows 10 Final for all Windows Insider users?

Microsoft announced not long ago that Windows 10 would be available as a free upgrade for eligible systems for the first year.

This announcement caused confusion on several levels. First, the wording was vague and some journalists and end users suggested that Microsoft would charge users who upgraded after that one-year period.

Some even suggested that Microsoft would introduce a subscription-based system instead similar to the company's successful Office 365 subscription-based system.

Experience classic Windows versions in your browser

While it is theoretically still possible to install past -- and now unsupported -- Windows operating systems on modern machines, it may be difficult to do so especially when it comes to pre-Windows 95 systems.

If you just want to relive memories of the past or check out how things have changed in recent years, emulation may be an better option.

Programmers have created browser-based emulators for various Microsoft operating systems that you can load at any time without having to install and set up those operating systems first before you can do so.

The end of Superfish?

When you open the homepage of the advertising company Superfish right now you see a simple statement on it instead of information about the company or its products.

It reads: "Superfish is currently transitioning our focus - but we are still offering our patented visual search technology to our partners. If interested in working with us contact [email protected]".

Not Another PDF Scanner 2 review

If you do a lot of document scanning on a regular basis, you may find the tool that ships with your printer not suitable for that task as it is usually bare bones and not really user friendly.

While there are enough alternatives available, many image viewers and editing programs come with scanning capabilities for instance, specialized programs may offer better functionality than those.

Not Another PDF Scanner 2 is a free open source program for Windows that is such an application. It is available as a portable version and installer which both work identical.

This is Flickr’s new upload tool for Windows and Mac

Remember Flickr? The last big update the site received dates back to 2013 when it upgraded free accounts to 1 TB of storage and introduced several other changes to the site.

In a blog post entitled "It's finally easy to upload, access, organize, edit, and share any photo you've ever taken" Flickr announced the next major update to the site that it just launched.

Mozilla adds -webkit prefix emulation to select sites in Firefox

Mozilla has added a new feature to Firefox 39 which emulates some -webkit prefixes on select sites to improve compatibility of those sites in the Firefox browser.

One issue that you may run into when browsing sites on the Internet is that web developers may have used vendor specific prefixes for styling. While that is not an issue if alternatives have been implemented, it can cause display issues when that is not the case.

Common prefixes are webkit, used by Chromium-based browsers, moz, used by Mozilla-based browsers, and ms used by Internet Explorer.

Pale Moon 25.4 is out

Pale Moon 25.4 has just been published. The new version of the web browser is already available via the browser's automatic update feature and the official website.

The release is a major update that introduces several important fixes and changes to Pale Moon. Apart from that, it is patching several security issues making it a mandatory update for all users of the browser.

As far as major improvements are concerned, there are a few that need to be mentioned.

Two new Chrome accessibility extensions released by Google

Google's Accessibility team has released two new Chrome extensions recently that improve the browser's accessibility in two specific ways.

Animation Policy is a Chrome extension that gives you more control over animated image formats in the browser.

Animations run in a never ending loop in Chrome by default which is not always the best usability experience especially since there is no quick option  to stop the animation once the image has loaded fully in the browser.