Show of 28-Aug-2019
– Alexa Skills with a Harmony Remote
– Inside a Motherboard Repair Facility and who works there
– iFixit and the Right to Repair

Glen and Paul are On the Road Elsewhere
Here is some Entertainment for you while we are gone-

Radio Lab Podcast  from 2015 about the DarkNode Ransomware and its Bitcoin Blackmail
And then– Do we Need Technology to Climb the mountain K2?
Not a Bit of it!
the Ever Odd Joe Frank!

July-24-2019

Audio Archive for this show is HERE

Paule is in Virginia City, NV calling in
Glenn is in the Studio!

Notes:
– I shall be trying to load Podcasts in here>

Zen Tech
GM328 multi tester under $20
Electronic Kit Building Remains!

Hello! Some Fun THings Today.
We love decent Cell Phone Plans: Verizon Visible , and Google FI.. & how we Review some things

Amazon RING at some $200 a Bit Pricey–I tried $30-$40 XSHCam.
“BangGood.Com” HMM!

Airport 7.8.1 Firmware: released a few days ago

Older PC? Windows 7? Don’t Want/Cannot Get 10? Try Linux MINT or CloudReady ChromeOS Free

Older 64 bit MAC? Try MINT for THAT (Little luck using pre 2008 or so 32 bit MACs & FORGET G5/G6, SORRY!

Please check back around the time of the broadcast

What DOES the Fabulously Vast Google know about little ‘ol YOU?!
This is a followup to an older link we were contacted about.
And what can you do about it?
How about AMAZON and their RING systems?

___________________________________

HuaWei— what up with that? (.. Who>>??)
_____
Small Laptop, Tiny Storage… Extra Storage
Solutions…
_____

1PM PST today.
The nature of subscriptions and likes:
Twitter Examples, YouTube Examples
IE
Starlink & competeing technologies.
versus 5G.
_____________________________

_____________________________

reverse Speech!? https://reversespeech.com/
An example of a timed YouTube clip:

(note the t=xxx part)

Democracy In Iceland : )

Additional notes

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here (but link may be bad). Recent shows are here.

The intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Paul & Glenn were both in the studio today.

Today, it was Glenn who read the disclaimer:
The views expressed on this show are those of the speakers only and not necessarily those of KVMR, our board, staff, volunteers or contributors

Paul got a “mailing app” from the county about the fire safety in the area. It was a result of the recently held safety meetings. He then thought of using Twitter. He’s had a Twitter account for about 10 years ago, but he’s barely used it. He said that a lot of what gets tweeted is timely. Unlike Facebook where it can take hours or days for the info to get thru, Twitter tends to be a live stream of info.

But he found that he was bombarded with stuff he didn’t subscribe to. Then he found the checkbox in Twitter’s settings that said “show me things I might be interested in”. Unchecking that brought relief. Now he just gets to see notices about local events and a few others.

Twitter used to attempt to verify the owner of an account and used to use a blue dot to indicate some confidence in the validity of the Tweeter. Paul said people get to depend on technology to be notified of breaking events. A couple of problems with that are that the events happen so quickly, and the infrastructure can break down so you don’t get the notification. A lot of people in the Paradise Fire didn’t leave when they could have, expecting to have been notified. Paul added that he’s even gotten some tech support on Twitter.

Glenn mentioned that Instagram, a Facebook product. It’s more of a social platform than an informational one. It’s one more focused on pictures. Paul hasn”t found a lot of use for it, but Glenn likes it. He likes Dr. Jarrett in Miami for his humor

On Instagram, anyone can follow you, and you’ll be alerted when they do. It’s similar to the way Twitter, works. Facebook is different, they need your consent to follow you or they won’t see any of your content unless you give consent.

One of Paul’s favorite things to subscribe to is Youtube. He hopes it will make him a better broadcaster. One of the channels is hosted by a Scott called Scott Manly who talks about astronomy & space flight. One of the questions he tried to address recently is how come it’s so difficult to put things in orbit around the Moon? It’s has no atmosphere and only 1/5 the gravity of Earth. One of the reasons it that it turns out its gravity is less uniform than that of Earth and it’s hard to continually compensate for. Also, Paul added that the Moon wobbles a bit as it orbits the Earth, which results in our seeing about %106 of its surface over the months (the tidal locking isn’t what you might think it is).

Back to Glenn’s mental health Dr. in Miami, Glenn related that recent post quoting Jim Carrey: “you can fail at something you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love”. He said the doctor also posts depression assistance tools. And another Carrey quote: “I hope everybody can get rich and famous and we’ll have everything they have dreamed of so they will know it’s not the answer.”

Paul noted that on Facebook there a lot of local buy, sell & trade sites. They are categorized under a link called “Marketplace”. And are organized by area codes (530 for Nevada County). A lot of the stuff is free because it’s hard to get rid of, Paul ended with “If you can’t resist getting stuff you didn’t knoow you didn’t need, don’t use it”.

Jesse called. She said that she’s heard that Facebook tends to promote its groups by showing which posts are getting the most replies, especially derogatory ones. She wanted to know if it’s true and what to do about iy. Paul said he tends not to engage in controversy on Facebook. Others tend to get indignant and engage in negative ways. One of Paul’s favorite posts was: “the other day I told somebody just what I thought of them on Facebook, and you know what, they agreed with me.”

Another of Jesse’s question was about a friend of hers who runs a business and has been getting a lot of friend requests. Jesse thought that if her friend and a friend requester don’t have friends in common, you’re likely to be a subject of a bot Is Jesse right? Paul said it’s possible to get requests from people you may have met but don’t remember. It’s ok, he said to leave request pending, for maybe 30 days. Some of them may disappear because Facebook will determine them to be bots. Glenn added that one can go check out the requester’s profile. Paul also suggested creating a page just for your business, where you’ll be given a chance to pose questions to prospective members that bots will have a difficult time answering.

Glenn thanked the supporting members of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a contributing member, you can call the business office at 530-265-9073 or go to the KVMR website.>

Paul said he’s put up a Youtube link in today’s notes (see above). It comes from a website called https://reversespeech.com. It takes speech or music lyrics and converts the speech to “Satanic Verses”.

The new version of WordPress (used on the Zen Tech site) lets you paste a Youtube link in the blog page and video comes up embedded in the page. If what you want others to see starts part way into the video, use “shareable link” (below on the Youtube page), which gives you the link, but now ending in “t=”, where you enter the time you want it to start at.

Glenn reminded listeners that the guys are always open to your question. Just email to zen at kvmr dot org.

Finally, Paul said that he’s put a link on the website to recent Space X launches. He thinks they’re absolutely fascinating. It’s about the 60 satellites. They are part of a deployment that will cover 90% of the Earth with low earth-orbit communications.

Last Updated 11:03 PM 5-29-2019

Browse Securely… Check?
https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/

Crafty Chrome FAke Address Bar!

— End —

Additional notes

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
|- Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

The intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

NOTE: The next Zen Tech show will be next week 5-29-19, the 5th Wed of the month. There was no show on 5-8-19

Both Glenn & Paul were both in the studio today.

Paul started off by talking about a problem with Whatsapp that was discovered recently. Whatsapp is a communications app that’s more common in Europe where there tends to be cross boarder issues about what your number is when you go roaming. It’s able to do video, text messages, file transfers and other things.

An Israeli company developed tools that can be used to spy on human rights activist and journalists. The tools can be installed on phones using a defect in Whatsapp just by a call to the phone using the app, the call doesn’t even have to be answered. Glenn said that he wasn’t sure if Whatsapp has been patched and cautioned users to keep all of their apps updated.
<From what I was able to determine, the Android version has been fixed. Just update it. The following articles have more info.
WhatsApp Users Targeted By Spyware — Here’s What You Need To Know
WhatsApp flaw let spies take control with calls alone (Update)>

If you want to see what apps are currently running on your phone, tap the square <double rectangle, I think> on the Android or double tap the home button on the iPhone. You can then stop Whatsapp from running. But if you have notification turned on, there’s still a piece of Whatsapp that runs in the background. So you might want to turn off notifications, too.

Glenn found that the contact list in his iPhone has an option to use Whatsapp instead of his phone company to call an individual. But he found a drawback. If he doesn’t give Whatsapp permission to use his contact list, Whatsapp doesn’t let him enter and dial a phone number manually.

Paul read the disclaimer:
The views expressed on this show, and most others for that matter, are those of the speakers only and are not necessarily, although they might be, those of KVMR, our board, staff, volunteers or contributors.

Glenn reminded listeners that they can ask questions or make comments by email at zen at kvmr dot org or by calling into the studio at 530-265-9555.

Paul explained that the Zen Tech web site has basically 2 types of content — posts and pages. Posts are blog entries that are dated, mainly the show notes, Pages are a more static content and contain more general info about the show itself. He also noted that he had to delete the Google calendar on the web site because it was having problems, but he added a search function.

Debra called with a question about saving the audio she’s listening to on the internet from the WTF website <this may be it>. She said the newer audio was downloadable but older contents wasn’t. Debra uses a Mac computer.
– If there is an audio file and it’s not a podcast (if you just click on a link and then hear it), try right clicking it and select “download this link”
– Paul suggested she contact the website for instructions. She already did and was told Stitcher was hosting the old content. Stitcher told her she will have to pay to be able to download.
– Glenn jumped in to say that there is a way to capture video or audio on a Mac as you are listening. Paul said the process is called “audio capture”. It seemed like Paul did a search for words similar to “audio capture mac” but he didn’t say specifically what he found. There are similar options for the PC. <I don’t know about Win7, 8 or 10, but XP has the Sound Recorder to capture audio. Perhaps some useful info here >
– Try a free program called VLC (Videolan). It can play almost anything and has a record function to capture it. It’s for both the PC and Mac. There is a learning period to get the settings right, read the manual or do a search for “record using videolan”.

For people looking to download Youtube videos there is y2mate.com. You just paste the link to the video on their website. Instructions are on the site. Paul thought it might be capable of getting the audio files from Stitcher. <Another Youtube download site was mentioned on the 1-9-19 show>

Ellen called. She wanted to know how to tether her phone using the Cricket phone service. She once heard that it was possible to tether using a particular website, but she couldn’t recall it.
– Up to a few years ago you could jailbreak the iPhone so you could do things Apple didn’t want you to do, presumably tethering. But now Apple has it locked down pretty tightly. Ellen said she has an Android.
– If you use the one of the 5 major carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile…), they allow you to tether as part of the premium price you pay for their service. With the next tier of providers like Cricket you won’t have that option.
– Paul said that it was once possible to tether using the website Ellen mentioned, but didn’t think it is anymore. He asked listeners to call in with a solution.
– Ellen added that with Cricket, she gets 5gigs of data and unlimited talk & text for $35.
– Glenn said he uses PuretalkUSA.com. He gets unlimited data (5gigs at high speed & then it’s throttled) and he can use the phone as a hotspot (tethering). It’s $40/mo and you get 10% off if you use auto-pay with your credit card.
– Some carriers have a separate plan that provides a mi-fi hotspot.
– AT&T has a box that creates a hotspot for you.

Paul talked a bit about Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO), which are these lower tier cellular providers, like Cricket. He said there is a great Wikipedia article that explains them and gives a pretty through listing if them. <More about MVNOs in the 8-24-16 show notes>

Nick called to talk about privacy. There was a primetime CBS news segment about the big 5 cellular providers and how they know where your cell phone is. He said there was a misstatement at the end implying that if you don’t want them to know where you are, just turn of location services. Both Glenn and Paul agreed that it’s untrue. The cell towers triangulate to find your location and the carriers can keep a history of where you’ve been. It’s the cell towers that can find you and not that you’re using the web with location services turned on. However, turning off location services when you’re using an app can keep the app from knowing where you are.

Law enforcement is supposed to get a warrant to find out who’s been using a particular cell tower — separate warrant for each tower. Paul thinks that process is routinely abused. And Nick said data from towers is often sold in a somewhat anonymized form, but it’s usually easy to trace down what cell phone belongs to which person. <So, I guess, it’s as easy for the cops to buy the data as to serve a warrant for it.> Nick said if you truly don’t want to be tracked, turn the phone off or put it in a tin box.

Paul also said that switching out the SIM card of the phone won’t help. Each phone has a unique identifying serial number called IMEI
<More about IMEI in the 11-14-12 show notes>

Last night Michael Anderson gave a talk at the Nevada County Tech Center about the fiber optic cables that run thru the county. In summary, there is a lot of fiber in Nevada County that was installed with TARP funds. That fiber is available to neighborhoods that are close to it. But the neighborhoods have to get organized and take the initiative by calling local representatives.

Paul asked what it might cost to tap into the fiber. Nick gave the example of local community of initially 20 but now 30 people. It cost them less than $1000 each and monthly rates that are competitive with the big 5 providers (about $100/mo).

Paul recently got a postcard inviting him to join nextdoor.com. It’s a way for people in a community to connect with each other so they know what’s going on in their neighborhood. The vetting process for joining is substantial and involves sending back personal info via postal mail. Right now he is in lurking mode — he can read but not contribute — as he evaluates the service. He also speculated that it would be a way for a community work toward getting fiber optic cable deployed.

At the end, Paul quickly mentioned zombieload, which exploits of Intel CPU in a way similar to Meltdown and Spectre. <Meltdown & Spectre were covered in the 1-10-18 & 1-24-18 shows>
<New secret-spilling flaw affects almost every Intel chip since 2011
ZombieLoad Attacks May Affect All Intel CPUs Since 2011: What to Do Now
Intel: You don’t need to disable Hyper-Threading to protect against the ZombieLoad CPU exploit>

Last Updated 11:53 PM 5-22-2019

Paul read the disclaimer:

 Programs & sites often mentioned during the shows. All, I think, are free!! Some make money with Ads on the Pages, so be careful which link you click! SOME offer a Chekcbox to install things like Yahoo! Toolbar that they get a small Commission from. Always EXCLUDE such things.

For a description of how to save audio you're listening to over the internet, see the bottom of this page.

Let's start with those free utilities that passively help report what exactly your machine is and does…. IE they do not change anything but just provide useful information about the PC every time they are run…

BELARC PC Inventory Program; the free download is here
CPUID from HERE identifies Brain, memory type and maker etc.
SPEEDFAN Hard Disk and machine temperature and fan S.M.A.R.T. Troubleshooter
WinDirStat gives statistics about your hard drive usage
memtest86 gives info about the computers memory.
The machine has to be booted from separate media like a bootable CD, floppy or flash drive

Ckean up 'intrinsic' Windows slowdowns: In general THIS
site is Very Informative: http://www.blackviper.com and I have used many of its notes for the presentaion:
USE WITH CAUTION!
For XP Optimizing: http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm
For Vista Optimizing: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm
Yes, Windows SEVERN Now already!: http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/supertweaks.htm

This section lists programs that will optimize the PC by cleaning defragmenting and otherwise improving things..

CCLEANER – Venerable Cleaner of Crap off PCs! Removed temporary/scratch and cache files that can accumulate over time and slow things down. Also has a REASOBALY good Registry Cleaner

EUSING Registry Cleaner Trims entries in the single datafile Windows uses called the Registry that are orphaned or are otherwise wrong..

NTREGOPT  Optimizes the Registry by converging fragmented parts of the branches of the database and clearing empty entries.. I Think. REBOOT after thsi one.

MYDEFRAG is a simple Disk Defragmenter that in default install mode provides an ingenious screen saving defragmentation routine

REVO UNINSTALLER uninstall programs.
Mentioned in the May 22, 2010 show.

Spybot AntiMal/Spyware Software (Home Page) <or maybe here>

AVG Free Anti Virus. Or…
For those who don't want to deal with a download manager to get AVG (e.g. if you're using a library's computer), you should be able to get the file directly here:
http://free.avg.com/us-en/download-free-all-product

Thunderbird (email & Usenet client)
Firefox (a web browser, many plugins, more basic interface)
Opera (a web browser, some plugins, more user-friendly interface)
UBUNTU Linux an alternative operating system
For the PC there's Syncback Lite, a free backup program
Blender is a suite free tools for 3d graphic creation

Ad-Aware anti-spyware form Lavasoft
Zone Alarm firewall (for those without XP + service pack 2)
Audacity Audio editor
Audacity plugin called Lame (for saving your work in mp3 format)

crucial.com gives info similar to mentest86
Winamp plays audio files

Picasa a picture editing & managing 
Paint Shop Pro is now a Corel product but earlier free versions can be found
   The version I got at this location seems to be working ok but USE AT YOUR OWN RISk.

Black Light Anti-Rootkit 
   mentioned in show notes here and here

Openoffice is mentioned. It's a great alternative to Microsoft office and handles many of its file types.

LibreOffice is similar to OpenOffice. It branched off of OpenOffice when it looked like Oracle wanted to make money off of OpenOffice. Though they've backed off that idea, OpenOffice seems to be struggling and it's my impression that more people are going with LibreOffice. Here are some articles about it.
1) Former OpenOffice.org developers offer their first stable OpenOffice competitor
2) OpenOffice.org vs. LibreOffice
3) Facing closure, OpenOffice.org begs for survival. (This article has a link to more about LibreOffice)
4) Apache asserts OpenOffice stewardship

Gmail is an web based email service; can be used as a POP & SMTP mail service.
Google Docs is sort of like using Microsoft Office online

Check your connection speed with speedtest.net

This is intended to allow you to record while you're listening to streaming audio over the internet, like the Zentech show.

It's my understanding that not all audio cards support this feature, the newer the computer/audio card the LESS likely the support. Supposedly, the hardware manufacturers have bent to the demands of the recording industry who don't want you be able to record. But, this is simple enough and can be undone if you're not happy.

Preface:
These instructions are for Windows XP.
The Task Bar is the bar with the row of buttons beginning with the "Start" button, and is usually at the bottom of the screen. The System Tray is the portion of the Task Bar at the opposite end of the "Start" button which includes the clock.

Right-click on the speaker icon in the System Tray.
Then left-click on "Open Volume Control".

In the window that opens, go to Options and click on Properties.
In the window that opens, put a dot next to the "Recording" button in "Adjust volume for" section.
In "Show the following volume controls" section, put check mark next to "Stereo Mix". Click OK

You'll see the that the "Master Volume" window has changed to "Recording Control" and one of the items is "Stereo Mix".
In the Stereo Mix column put a check mark next to "Select". Initially, you should probably adjust the slider in that column to somewhere near the middle.

That's it. You can close the volume control window.

You can use the Windows Sound Recorder to capture and save the audio from radio programs, but it seems to record 1 minutes at a time — you have to keep clicking the record button for more minutes — whether you're using "Stereo Mix" or not. So you may want to use something better like Audacity. Links to it and a plugin for saving in MP3 format are given above.

You can find Sound Recorder by going to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Entertainment

Last updated: 4:09 PM 10/16/2011