#techsupport — Public Fediverse posts

Google ads are pushing fake tech support scams that lock up Macs and Windows PCs with alarming “infected” messages. Users can still escape.

Press and hold Escape for several seconds to exit full-screen mode and unlock the keyboard. From there, close the tab.

Another way out? - Windows: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager and end the browser. Mac: Press Cmd + Option + Esc to force-quit the browser. Reopen your browser without restoring the session. Stay alert—scams like this are everywhere.

Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what? - Ads appearing all over the Internet are trying to scam people. -Arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/google-ads-caught-delivering-convincing-scareware-ads-to-unsuspecting-users/

#apple #cyber #cybersecurity #browser #google #googleads #hacked #hackers #infected #mac #macos #machintosh #malicious #microsoft #phonescam #scam #tech #technology #techscam #techsupport #techsupportscam #virus #windows

Google ads are pushing fake tech support scams that lock up Macs and Windows PCs with alarming “infected” messages. Users can still escape.

Press and hold Escape for several seconds to exit full-screen mode and unlock the keyboard. From there, close the tab.

Another way out? - Windows: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager and end the browser. Mac: Press Cmd + Option + Esc to force-quit the browser. Reopen your browser without restoring the session. Stay alert—scams like this are everywhere.

Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what? - Ads appearing all over the Internet are trying to scam people. -Arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/google-ads-caught-delivering-convincing-scareware-ads-to-unsuspecting-users/

#apple #cyber #cybersecurity #browser #google #googleads #hacked #hackers #infected #mac #macos #machintosh #malicious #microsoft #phonescam #scam #tech #technology #techscam #techsupport #techsupportscam #virus #windows

Google ads are pushing fake tech support scams that lock up Macs and Windows PCs with alarming “infected” messages. Users can still escape.

Press and hold Escape for several seconds to exit full-screen mode and unlock the keyboard. From there, close the tab.

Another way out? - Windows: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager and end the browser. Mac: Press Cmd + Option + Esc to force-quit the browser. Reopen your browser without restoring the session. Stay alert—scams like this are everywhere.

Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what? - Ads appearing all over the Internet are trying to scam people. -Arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/google-ads-caught-delivering-convincing-scareware-ads-to-unsuspecting-users/

#apple #cyber #cybersecurity #browser #google #googleads #hacked #hackers #infected #mac #macos #machintosh #malicious #microsoft #phonescam #scam #tech #technology #techscam #techsupport #techsupportscam #virus #windows

Google ads are pushing fake tech support scams that lock up Macs and Windows PCs with alarming “infected” messages. Users can still escape.

Press and hold Escape for several seconds to exit full-screen mode and unlock the keyboard. From there, close the tab.

Another way out? - Windows: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager and end the browser. Mac: Press Cmd + Option + Esc to force-quit the browser. Reopen your browser without restoring the session. Stay alert—scams like this are everywhere.

Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what? - Ads appearing all over the Internet are trying to scam people. -Arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/google-ads-caught-delivering-convincing-scareware-ads-to-unsuspecting-users/

#apple #cyber #cybersecurity #browser #google #googleads #hacked #hackers #infected #mac #macos #machintosh #malicious #microsoft #phonescam #scam #tech #technology #techscam #techsupport #techsupportscam #virus #windows

Google ads are pushing fake tech support scams that lock up Macs and Windows PCs with alarming “infected” messages. Users can still escape.

Press and hold Escape for several seconds to exit full-screen mode and unlock the keyboard. From there, close the tab.

Another way out? - Windows: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager and end the browser. Mac: Press Cmd + Option + Esc to force-quit the browser. Reopen your browser without restoring the session. Stay alert—scams like this are everywhere.

Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what? - Ads appearing all over the Internet are trying to scam people. -Arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/google-ads-caught-delivering-convincing-scareware-ads-to-unsuspecting-users/

#apple #cyber #cybersecurity #browser #google #googleads #hacked #hackers #infected #mac #macos #machintosh #malicious #microsoft #phonescam #scam #tech #technology #techscam #techsupport #techsupportscam #virus #windows

For those who dual boot MacOs how did you partition your drives?

#macos #techsupport #Apple #foss #linux

For those who dual boot MacOs how did you partition your drives?

#macos #techsupport #Apple #foss #linux

For those who dual boot MacOs how did you partition your drives?

#macos #techsupport #Apple #foss #linux

For those who dual boot MacOs how did you partition your drives?

#macos #techsupport #Apple #foss #linux

For those who dual boot MacOs how did you partition your drives?

#macos #techsupport #Apple #foss #linux

Please stop breaking things that worked, Every Company

Fun times with Clip Studio Assets:

A few days ago, I got an email that some unspecified subset of the CSP materials that I’ve uploaded were “deleted” for review, then “unpublished” because they were re-evaluated as failing the Sensitive Content Moderation Policy.

Most of my materials are backgrounds/textures that I made for art pieces, so I tend to include the finished art in the preview. About 10 of them had been unpublished.

Some, like the art with poses I literally referenced from a Steamy Romance Novel cover, seem fair enough — it’s not exactly R-rated, but I can understand a moderator evaluating that as “excessive physical intimacy.”

But the one with two fully-clothed chibi figures hugging? Come on.

The “unpublished” email included a vague reference to “diverse users of many age groups, regions, and cultures, each with varying attitudes toward what is considered sensitive content.” Looking at the ones of mine that got zapped, including the most fluffy and G-rated: every one of them included something romantic between an m/m or f/f couple.

Sure does seem to imply that “varying attitudes” is a euphemism for “some of our users are angry homophobes.”

So, okay, I edited a couple of material previews to remove the understandably-spicy art pieces, including the romance-novel one. Figured I would see if those passed the re-review, then decide how many of the others I wanted to pick fights about.

On the morning of the 25th, I get a new email with the subject “Incorrectly flagged materials have been restored” that includes the following:

We have restored materials that were incorrectly flagged on Clip Studio Assets, and are reviewing all other unpublished materials. We deeply apologize for any concern.
The issue was caused by flaws in our review process, which have now been revised. We would also like to clarify that AI is not used for moderation.

As each material is being verified and republished on a case-by-case basis, we are currently unable to send personalized notifications regarding specific content statuses.

Wow. This was a mass screw-up, huh?

As of this posting, the status of my previously-axed materials is all over the place. Examples:

• This speckle brush was un-flagged and restored (the preview includes a G-rated face kiss)
• This ice-rink background redirects to the Clip Studio Assets homepage (the preview included this image of 2 fully-clothed skaters who aren’t even touching)
• This dark-purple background shows up as a non-editable preview when I’m logged-in, and an error message of “This material is unavailable” when logged-out (the preview included this art of a fully-clothed forehead kiss – screenshot above)
• This desert background says “This material is unavailable” even when I’m logged-in (the preview included the romance-novel art, but I already edited it to remove that)

Will any of those have changed by the time you’re reading this post? Who knows! Kinda sounds like it might take A While to mop this mess up.

—

Fun times with Google Docs:

As of the 24th, Gdocs (on mobile) had stopped respecting several of my settings, including “don’t auto-replace normal quotes with curly-quotes” and “don’t auto-turn URLs into links.”

The first one was mildly annoying, because I don’t want a WIP draft to end up getting posted with half ” and half “ depending on how recently I edited the line.

The second one was an active nuisance, because if you type something as innocuous as “this…is a problem”, Gdocs helpfully tries to convert that to a “.is” link.

I was kinda expecting this to be an indefinite new problem. Based on the precedent that, back at the start of August, my phone keyboard stopped respecting my “don’t suggest emojis” while typing” setting:

Every time I use the word “time”, it thinks I want a watch emoji. If I type out a number, it thinks I want the next word to be the emoji of the number. If I type a few letters that happen to be at the start of a country name, one of the slots that could be autosuggesting The Word I Actually Mean is clogged up with the country’s flag emoji.

It’s been almost 2 months, and the setting is still broken.

So it was a surprise and a relief when I opened a draft on the evening of the 25th to type something during my commute, and realized the curly-quotes were no longer happening.

Gdocs was also auto-replacing “two hyphens in a row” with “an en-dash”, which I actually liked. (I type most blog posts in the WP editor, which replaces them with em-dashes in the published version. That works too.) Got home, went into the Gdocs menu (Tools → Preferences → Substitutions), and customized it so it’ll start doing en-dashes again.

Will the software manage to respect that setting, or will it eventually faceplant too? Stay tuned to find out, I guess.

Please stop breaking things that worked, Every Company

Fun times with Clip Studio Assets:

A few days ago, I got an email that some unspecified subset of the CSP materials that I’ve uploaded were “deleted” for review, then “unpublished” because they were re-evaluated as failing the Sensitive Content Moderation Policy.

Most of my materials are backgrounds/textures that I made for art pieces, so I tend to include the finished art in the preview. About 10 of them had been unpublished.

Some, like the art with poses I literally referenced from a Steamy Romance Novel cover, seem fair enough — it’s not exactly R-rated, but I can understand a moderator evaluating that as “excessive physical intimacy.”

But the one with two fully-clothed chibi figures hugging? Come on.

The “unpublished” email included a vague reference to “diverse users of many age groups, regions, and cultures, each with varying attitudes toward what is considered sensitive content.” Looking at the ones of mine that got zapped, including the most fluffy and G-rated: every one of them included something romantic between an m/m or f/f couple.

Sure does seem to imply that “varying attitudes” is a euphemism for “some of our users are angry homophobes.”

So, okay, I edited a couple of material previews to remove the understandably-spicy art pieces, including the romance-novel one. Figured I would see if those passed the re-review, then decide how many of the others I wanted to pick fights about.

On the morning of the 25th, I get a new email with the subject “Incorrectly flagged materials have been restored” that includes the following:

We have restored materials that were incorrectly flagged on Clip Studio Assets, and are reviewing all other unpublished materials. We deeply apologize for any concern.
The issue was caused by flaws in our review process, which have now been revised. We would also like to clarify that AI is not used for moderation.

As each material is being verified and republished on a case-by-case basis, we are currently unable to send personalized notifications regarding specific content statuses.

Wow. This was a mass screw-up, huh?

As of this posting, the status of my previously-axed materials is all over the place. Examples:

• This speckle brush was un-flagged and restored (the preview includes a G-rated face kiss)
• This ice-rink background redirects to the Clip Studio Assets homepage (the preview included this image of 2 fully-clothed skaters who aren’t even touching)
• This dark-purple background shows up as a non-editable preview when I’m logged-in, and an error message of “This material is unavailable” when logged-out (the preview included this art of a fully-clothed forehead kiss – screenshot above)
• This desert background says “This material is unavailable” even when I’m logged-in (the preview included the romance-novel art, but I already edited it to remove that)

Will any of those have changed by the time you’re reading this post? Who knows! Kinda sounds like it might take A While to mop this mess up.

—

Fun times with Google Docs:

As of the 24th, Gdocs (on mobile) had stopped respecting several of my settings, including “don’t auto-replace normal quotes with curly-quotes” and “don’t auto-turn URLs into links.”

The first one was mildly annoying, because I don’t want a WIP draft to end up getting posted with half ” and half “ depending on how recently I edited the line.

The second one was an active nuisance, because if you type something as innocuous as “this…is a problem”, Gdocs helpfully tries to convert that to a “.is” link.

I was kinda expecting this to be an indefinite new problem. Based on the precedent that, back at the start of August, my phone keyboard stopped respecting my “don’t suggest emojis” while typing” setting:

Every time I use the word “time”, it thinks I want a watch emoji. If I type out a number, it thinks I want the next word to be the emoji of the number. If I type a few letters that happen to be at the start of a country name, one of the slots that could be autosuggesting The Word I Actually Mean is clogged up with the country’s flag emoji.

It’s been almost 2 months, and the setting is still broken.

So it was a surprise and a relief when I opened a draft on the evening of the 25th to type something during my commute, and realized the curly-quotes were no longer happening.

Gdocs was also auto-replacing “two hyphens in a row” with “an en-dash”, which I actually liked. (I type most blog posts in the WP editor, which replaces them with em-dashes in the published version. That works too.) Got home, went into the Gdocs menu (Tools → Preferences → Substitutions), and customized it so it’ll start doing en-dashes again.

Will the software manage to respect that setting, or will it eventually faceplant too? Stay tuned to find out, I guess.

Please stop breaking things that worked, Every Company

Fun times with Clip Studio Assets:

A few days ago, I got an email that some unspecified subset of the CSP materials that I’ve uploaded were “deleted” for review, then “unpublished” because they were re-evaluated as failing the Sensitive Content Moderation Policy.

Most of my materials are backgrounds/textures that I made for art pieces, so I tend to include the finished art in the preview. About 10 of them had been unpublished.

Some, like the art with poses I literally referenced from a Steamy Romance Novel cover, seem fair enough — it’s not exactly R-rated, but I can understand a moderator evaluating that as “excessive physical intimacy.”

But the one with two fully-clothed chibi figures hugging? Come on.

The “unpublished” email included a vague reference to “diverse users of many age groups, regions, and cultures, each with varying attitudes toward what is considered sensitive content.” Looking at the ones of mine that got zapped, including the most fluffy and G-rated: every one of them included something romantic between an m/m or f/f couple.

Sure does seem to imply that “varying attitudes” is a euphemism for “some of our users are angry homophobes.”

So, okay, I edited a couple of material previews to remove the understandably-spicy art pieces, including the romance-novel one. Figured I would see if those passed the re-review, then decide how many of the others I wanted to pick fights about.

On the morning of the 25th, I get a new email with the subject “Incorrectly flagged materials have been restored” that includes the following:

We have restored materials that were incorrectly flagged on Clip Studio Assets, and are reviewing all other unpublished materials. We deeply apologize for any concern.
The issue was caused by flaws in our review process, which have now been revised. We would also like to clarify that AI is not used for moderation.

As each material is being verified and republished on a case-by-case basis, we are currently unable to send personalized notifications regarding specific content statuses.

Wow. This was a mass screw-up, huh?

As of this posting, the status of my previously-axed materials is all over the place. Examples:

• This speckle brush was un-flagged and restored (the preview includes a G-rated face kiss)
• This ice-rink background redirects to the Clip Studio Assets homepage (the preview included this image of 2 fully-clothed skaters who aren’t even touching)
• This dark-purple background shows up as a non-editable preview when I’m logged-in, and an error message of “This material is unavailable” when logged-out (the preview included this art of a fully-clothed forehead kiss – screenshot above)
• This desert background says “This material is unavailable” even when I’m logged-in (the preview included the romance-novel art, but I already edited it to remove that)

Will any of those have changed by the time you’re reading this post? Who knows! Kinda sounds like it might take A While to mop this mess up.

—

Fun times with Google Docs:

As of the 24th, Gdocs (on mobile) had stopped respecting several of my settings, including “don’t auto-replace normal quotes with curly-quotes” and “don’t auto-turn URLs into links.”

The first one was mildly annoying, because I don’t want a WIP draft to end up getting posted with half ” and half “ depending on how recently I edited the line.

The second one was an active nuisance, because if you type something as innocuous as “this…is a problem”, Gdocs helpfully tries to convert that to a “.is” link.

I was kinda expecting this to be an indefinite new problem. Based on the precedent that, back at the start of August, my phone keyboard stopped respecting my “don’t suggest emojis” while typing” setting:

Every time I use the word “time”, it thinks I want a watch emoji. If I type out a number, it thinks I want the next word to be the emoji of the number. If I type a few letters that happen to be at the start of a country name, one of the slots that could be autosuggesting The Word I Actually Mean is clogged up with the country’s flag emoji.

It’s been almost 2 months, and the setting is still broken.

So it was a surprise and a relief when I opened a draft on the evening of the 25th to type something during my commute, and realized the curly-quotes were no longer happening.

Gdocs was also auto-replacing “two hyphens in a row” with “an en-dash”, which I actually liked. (I type most blog posts in the WP editor, which replaces them with em-dashes in the published version. That works too.) Got home, went into the Gdocs menu (Tools → Preferences → Substitutions), and customized it so it’ll start doing en-dashes again.

Will the software manage to respect that setting, or will it eventually faceplant too? Stay tuned to find out, I guess.

Please stop breaking things that worked, Every Company

Fun times with Clip Studio Assets:

A few days ago, I got an email that some unspecified subset of the CSP materials that I’ve uploaded were “deleted” for review, then “unpublished” because they were re-evaluated as failing the Sensitive Content Moderation Policy.

Most of my materials are backgrounds/textures that I made for art pieces, so I tend to include the finished art in the preview. About 10 of them had been unpublished.

Some, like the art with poses I literally referenced from a Steamy Romance Novel cover, seem fair enough — it’s not exactly R-rated, but I can understand a moderator evaluating that as “excessive physical intimacy.”

But the one with two fully-clothed chibi figures hugging? Come on.

The “unpublished” email included a vague reference to “diverse users of many age groups, regions, and cultures, each with varying attitudes toward what is considered sensitive content.” Looking at the ones of mine that got zapped, including the most fluffy and G-rated: every one of them included something romantic between an m/m or f/f couple.

Sure does seem to imply that “varying attitudes” is a euphemism for “some of our users are angry homophobes.”

So, okay, I edited a couple of material previews to remove the understandably-spicy art pieces, including the romance-novel one. Figured I would see if those passed the re-review, then decide how many of the others I wanted to pick fights about.

On the morning of the 25th, I get a new email with the subject “Incorrectly flagged materials have been restored” that includes the following:

We have restored materials that were incorrectly flagged on Clip Studio Assets, and are reviewing all other unpublished materials. We deeply apologize for any concern.
The issue was caused by flaws in our review process, which have now been revised. We would also like to clarify that AI is not used for moderation.

As each material is being verified and republished on a case-by-case basis, we are currently unable to send personalized notifications regarding specific content statuses.

Wow. This was a mass screw-up, huh?

As of this posting, the status of my previously-axed materials is all over the place. Examples:

• This speckle brush was un-flagged and restored (the preview includes a G-rated face kiss)
• This ice-rink background redirects to the Clip Studio Assets homepage (the preview included this image of 2 fully-clothed skaters who aren’t even touching)
• This dark-purple background shows up as a non-editable preview when I’m logged-in, and an error message of “This material is unavailable” when logged-out (the preview included this art of a fully-clothed forehead kiss – screenshot above)
• This desert background says “This material is unavailable” even when I’m logged-in (the preview included the romance-novel art, but I already edited it to remove that)

Will any of those have changed by the time you’re reading this post? Who knows! Kinda sounds like it might take A While to mop this mess up.

—

Fun times with Google Docs:

As of the 24th, Gdocs (on mobile) had stopped respecting several of my settings, including “don’t auto-replace normal quotes with curly-quotes” and “don’t auto-turn URLs into links.”

The first one was mildly annoying, because I don’t want a WIP draft to end up getting posted with half ” and half “ depending on how recently I edited the line.

The second one was an active nuisance, because if you type something as innocuous as “this…is a problem”, Gdocs helpfully tries to convert that to a “.is” link.

I was kinda expecting this to be an indefinite new problem. Based on the precedent that, back at the start of August, my phone keyboard stopped respecting my “don’t suggest emojis” while typing” setting:

Every time I use the word “time”, it thinks I want a watch emoji. If I type out a number, it thinks I want the next word to be the emoji of the number. If I type a few letters that happen to be at the start of a country name, one of the slots that could be autosuggesting The Word I Actually Mean is clogged up with the country’s flag emoji.

It’s been almost 2 months, and the setting is still broken.

So it was a surprise and a relief when I opened a draft on the evening of the 25th to type something during my commute, and realized the curly-quotes were no longer happening.

Gdocs was also auto-replacing “two hyphens in a row” with “an en-dash”, which I actually liked. (I type most blog posts in the WP editor, which replaces them with em-dashes in the published version. That works too.) Got home, went into the Gdocs menu (Tools → Preferences → Substitutions), and customized it so it’ll start doing en-dashes again.

Will the software manage to respect that setting, or will it eventually faceplant too? Stay tuned to find out, I guess.

Please stop breaking things that worked, Every Company

Fun times with Clip Studio Assets:

A few days ago, I got an email that some unspecified subset of the CSP materials that I’ve uploaded were “deleted” for review, then “unpublished” because they were re-evaluated as failing the Sensitive Content Moderation Policy.

Most of my materials are backgrounds/textures that I made for art pieces, so I tend to include the finished art in the preview. About 10 of them had been unpublished.

Some, like the art with poses I literally referenced from a Steamy Romance Novel cover, seem fair enough — it’s not exactly R-rated, but I can understand a moderator evaluating that as “excessive physical intimacy.”

But the one with two fully-clothed chibi figures hugging? Come on.

The “unpublished” email included a vague reference to “diverse users of many age groups, regions, and cultures, each with varying attitudes toward what is considered sensitive content.” Looking at the ones of mine that got zapped, including the most fluffy and G-rated: every one of them included something romantic between an m/m or f/f couple.

Sure does seem to imply that “varying attitudes” is a euphemism for “some of our users are angry homophobes.”

So, okay, I edited a couple of material previews to remove the understandably-spicy art pieces, including the romance-novel one. Figured I would see if those passed the re-review, then decide how many of the others I wanted to pick fights about.

On the morning of the 25th, I get a new email with the subject “Incorrectly flagged materials have been restored” that includes the following:

We have restored materials that were incorrectly flagged on Clip Studio Assets, and are reviewing all other unpublished materials. We deeply apologize for any concern.
The issue was caused by flaws in our review process, which have now been revised. We would also like to clarify that AI is not used for moderation.

As each material is being verified and republished on a case-by-case basis, we are currently unable to send personalized notifications regarding specific content statuses.

Wow. This was a mass screw-up, huh?

As of this posting, the status of my previously-axed materials is all over the place. Examples:

• This speckle brush was un-flagged and restored (the preview includes a G-rated face kiss)
• This ice-rink background redirects to the Clip Studio Assets homepage (the preview included this image of 2 fully-clothed skaters who aren’t even touching)
• This dark-purple background shows up as a non-editable preview when I’m logged-in, and an error message of “This material is unavailable” when logged-out (the preview included this art of a fully-clothed forehead kiss – screenshot above)
• This desert background says “This material is unavailable” even when I’m logged-in (the preview included the romance-novel art, but I already edited it to remove that)

Will any of those have changed by the time you’re reading this post? Who knows! Kinda sounds like it might take A While to mop this mess up.

—

Fun times with Google Docs:

As of the 24th, Gdocs (on mobile) had stopped respecting several of my settings, including “don’t auto-replace normal quotes with curly-quotes” and “don’t auto-turn URLs into links.”

The first one was mildly annoying, because I don’t want a WIP draft to end up getting posted with half ” and half “ depending on how recently I edited the line.

The second one was an active nuisance, because if you type something as innocuous as “this…is a problem”, Gdocs helpfully tries to convert that to a “.is” link.

I was kinda expecting this to be an indefinite new problem. Based on the precedent that, back at the start of August, my phone keyboard stopped respecting my “don’t suggest emojis” while typing” setting:

Every time I use the word “time”, it thinks I want a watch emoji. If I type out a number, it thinks I want the next word to be the emoji of the number. If I type a few letters that happen to be at the start of a country name, one of the slots that could be autosuggesting The Word I Actually Mean is clogged up with the country’s flag emoji.

It’s been almost 2 months, and the setting is still broken.

So it was a surprise and a relief when I opened a draft on the evening of the 25th to type something during my commute, and realized the curly-quotes were no longer happening.

Gdocs was also auto-replacing “two hyphens in a row” with “an en-dash”, which I actually liked. (I type most blog posts in the WP editor, which replaces them with em-dashes in the published version. That works too.) Got home, went into the Gdocs menu (Tools → Preferences → Substitutions), and customized it so it’ll start doing en-dashes again.

Will the software manage to respect that setting, or will it eventually faceplant too? Stay tuned to find out, I guess.