QB64 Phoenix Edition v3.11.0 Released!

[SMcNeill]

A bit late but since this has not been mentioned, I get a positive with ESET detection on padlock.dll.
I know of the (old?) advice to exclude the qb64 folder from the scanners eyes.  But this never was necessary here.

The advise is still true, my personal advise is much better for all your paranoids out there:

Get rid of the virus scanner, those are the only programs which dig and hack so deep into your system that nothing works as intended anymore.

Since 12 years I run my Laptop without any protection except active firewall, not even "Defender" and such are activated and I'm surfing a lot even via open networks in cafes, airports and such and never even had to suspect anything infected it. All problems I had, in the end turned out caused by my own dullness and were easily to fix after a real investigation to understand my mistake. So even it often seems your system is infected, in most cases its just something you did wrong by yourself.

That's simply Murphy's law:
Humans doesn't behave, as the Computer expects them to behave. A Computer never does what you want, but only what's programmed.

Rho's exxperience is very much like my own.  I don't tend to have any antivirus installed or activated on my machine; nor do I tend to run a firewall very often.  I do tend to route almost all my internet through a VPN though, just so when I download something I never see those annoying, "You are a pirate!  Bad boy!  Stop it now!!", notices.

One thing I've found is that *ALL* viruses tend to be self-inflicted.  Go to a shady website and click the link that says, "You are visitor #123456789!  You win a new iPad!!"   NOPE -- You just won a virus by being a dummy!   Get an email from N3TFLIX that warns about your account being canceled.   OMG!!  Got to click the link to keep that streaming service available!  CONGRATULATIONS!! YOU WIN A VIRUS!!

It's the user who navigates to such places, follows such links, and downloads such junk, that ends up infecting their system with a virus -- and no antivirus can usually help against that!  The biggest case of getting viruses nowadays is from pirated software.  Download this torrent.  Run this game's EXE.  Three days later -- WTH is my machine now popping up laughing clowns singing, "Never gonna give you up... Never gonna let you down..."

Which is, once again, the end user's fault.  You knew there was a crack in that software.  You knew it wasn't official.  You had to disable your antivirus so it'd install...  and gosh, who woulda thunk it -- it gave you a virus?!!

"But Steve, you don't understand!  I got it from BoogerPickers.Com, where I've downloaded all my illegal Boogery stuff in the past!!"

Doesn't matter.  YOU KNEW IT WAS ILLEGAL BOOGERY STUFF!!  It's always, ALWAYS, **ALWAYS** going to have the possibility of being BAD Boogery stuff.  By installing it on your system, you're an idiot, and no antivirus in the world can protect an idiot from themselves!!

Trust me, I download as much Boogery stuff as anybody here.  The vast majority of it is probably illegal Boogery stuff and always has that possibility of being **BAD** Boogery stuff.  So how do I protect my machine from it, with no firewall or antivirus, or anything similar on it???

Windows Sandbox!!

Comes with Windows 10 and 11.  Can be installed for other systems from their store (I think).  All you do is click the sandbox icon, open up a virtual machine for use, and then install whatever the heck you want on it.  If there's any sort of antivirus, glitch, BAD Boogery, or anything else in the file, you just close the sandbox, laugh happily to yourself, and make fun of the guy who wasted all his time and effort trying to attach a virus to a file that's never going to affect YOU.

Want to visit that suspicious website?  Do it in your sandbox!  Want to click that winning link?  Do it in your sandbox!  Want to download Boogery stuff?  Install it on your sandbox!  

Antivirus not needed.  Firewall not needed.  Windows Security with it's 3214 tabs for various heurestics and cloud protections...  Not needed.  

Just put the stuff you KNOW is good is on your PC.  Install everything else in a sandbox first and see how it blows up THAT system.  And you're golden!

Viruses don't just float around in the air and infect our computers.  We expose them to them via our own actions.  Sandbox is the greatest action one can take to prevent them, and once you get in the habit of installing and testing things there first, then you'll really no longer have need for antiviruses and defenders and firewalls and rtp and kfc and McDs....