TODAY!

• Slide Scanners– Any Good?
• Cheap Cine Film Converters– any good? Consider Provenance AND “ICE”
• See: Chinese company WOLVERINE
  

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  iPhone pList Hacking- for Tethering AND to Allow FaceTime over Cell!

• Glenn return a non upgradeable Mac Mini.
• Google Drive App as backup??

 

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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.

 

Both Glenn & Paul were in the studio today.

 

If you want to contact the guys by email use zen at kvmr dot org. Glenn said he’s not sure the email issue mentioned on the last show has been resolved. <I think they’ll get the mail eventually>.

Glenn reminded listeners that there’s a KVMR app for both Android & Apple devices that lets you listen to the live broadcasts <and offers additonal features.>

Glenn thanked those who support KVMR. There was a membership drive last week that was a great success.

Paul warned listeners about popups or even audio recordings in their webpage warning them that their computer has been compromised and that they should call an 800 number. When you call, they might say they’re from a well-known company like Microsoft, but they can be anywhere in the world. They tell you that you can’t continue until you give them access to your computer to fix it, for a price. Paul said, Mac users are more likely to fall for the scam because they don’t encounter these types of scams as often as PC users, who have learned to be more suspicious.

When asked what he would do in such a situation, Glenn said he would call his computer technician. Glenn went on to say no major company would call you to say they’ve detected a problem with your computer. It’s always a scam. You might get a similar scam in an email. Paul said that webpages themselves might be subverted as was the case with the Zen Tech site 2 weeks ago when someone broke in because Paul didn’t do a timely update of WordPress. <See last week’s show for more details>

Paul went on to say that LexisNexis & the New York Times web sites have been broken into in the past. You might not notice it right away but eventually a malicious page would popup that might be hard to close of because it won’t have a close button. He said Firefox had tried to deal with such pages but it reduced usability.

When you don’t see a way to close the offending webpage, try the following. On the Mac use the key combination Option + Apple + Escape and kill the browser you were using. On the PC you can do essentially the same thing, but use the keys Control + Alt + Delete to bring up the task manager. You can even shut down your computer, “in a orderly way”, Paul said. <You might try closing just the tab in your browser that has the bad webpage>. 99% of the time your machine is not infected, it’s just displaying a scam page, he said.

Glenn suggested to talk to a computer technician and discuss the situation, if you are already paying someone who initiated this ploy. Remember you might have 60 to 90 days to dispute credit card payments you’ve already made to the scammers.

Paul said Ublock Origin, mentioned on last show, will help prevent these popups. It uses a database of places that originate ads & popups. But the database, by its nature, is always a little behind so it won’t include the newest popups. It works in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and, with a bit of work, in Explorer.

If you’d like to talk to the guys during the show, call 530-265-9555.

On the 1-25-17 show Glenn talked about the Android smart watch he bought, At that time, he forgot to say he paid $14.99 for it. He bought it off a Chinese website called newfrog.com.

He said it’s pretty useless. About all he can do is use Bluethooth he can answer his iPhone, but it has to be so close he might as well just pick up the iPhone. Everything else requires a data source. But without built-in wi-fi, he’ll need a SIM card and cellular service to go online and get apps. <Last week’s show mentioned a cheap cellular plan>.

Paul noted that these sorts of devices get such wide distribution that communities form to hack them <to add functionality>.

Paul mentioned that the internet of things (IOT) devices, which includes watches, have been used to launch denial of service (DDOS) attacks. But, he noted, if you can’t get on the internet, the problem doesn’t occur. <There was some discussion about IOT on the 1-11-17 show.>

Paul bought a knockoff of the Fitbit device for about $15 and it works pretty well, he said. It has an has accelerometer to detect movement and keep track of his sleep/wake cycles and count his foot steps. Some of these devices (but not his) can record heart rate and other “activity”. At the end of the day, it can send the data it’s recorded to an Android or Apple device for further inspection.

Tony called. He said Siri can tell you what planes are now flying over head. The guys tried it in the studio and Siri came back with the website www.rsvlts.com. <Maybe this> The search site used by Siri to find the website was bing.com.

Paul said he doesn’t like Bing. He said he discovered how get Siri to use Google instead — put the word google in front of your search terms.

Paul said the tail numbers on an aircraft can be looked up to get info about it. You can find out the history of the plane you’re about to board.

Tony said a friend of his had to upgrade to the Sierra operating system to get the latest version of Final Cut to work. When he did that he was also required to buy a $9.95 iCloud account for more drive space that Sierra required. Normally, you get 5 gig on iCloud for free. Paul’s solution was to use the properties (the cog icon) to find the iCloud settings. There are check boxes you can set to specify what gets synched. You can uncheck what you don’t want to be backed up. With fewer things to back up, Sierra won’t require the upgraded iCloud account.

Paul said it’s ok to buy the extra storage but be aware of how it’s being used. It may be unnecessary and, if you don’t keep track of what’s going on, you may eventually need even more storage space. Consider storing your data locally, not on iCloud. To see how much of iCloud you’re using, on the iPhone go to setting -> iCloud -> manage.

Glenn went online to get more details about the extra iCloud storage and found it’s 99 cents a month for 50 gig.

Glenn also suggested looking at the settings in Final Cut and seeing if it can be set to store its data locally and not on iCloud.

Paul had encountered the problem of not having enough free memory on his iPhone when trying to install the 1.6 gigs of the IOS 10 upgrade. He removed about 2 gig of data to gain back some space but the free space only changed from .5 gig to about .75 gig. He discovered he had to do a factory reset of the phone to gain back the space he thought he should have. The steps are…
1) Back up the phone. Plug the iPhone into iTunes and choose the option to “back up to this machine”.
2) Do a cleaning of unwanted data & apps and back up again.
3) Reset the phone completely by going to settings -> general -> reset and pick “erase all content and settings”. It will then ask you for your Apple ID and password.
4) Plug it back into iTunes and choose the option to “restore it from a backup”.

Glenn said not everything is backed/restored. Personal preferences like font size & accessibility have to be set again.

Paul said he avoids using iCloud for backing up pictures thru Photo Stream because they won’t be deleted from the phone. Instead, he plugs it into a Mac to pull the pictures off. The Mac itself has a Time Machine backup. <I assume he then deletes the photos from the phone>.

Donna called. She bought a Mac to replace and older one and is having problems she hasn’t encountered before. When she has her mouse cursor over a link, the link will open without being clicked. She’s used to clicking on links.
– Glenn vaguely recalled that there is a setting in Safari to tell it to open a link if the mouse is over it for a specified amount of time
– Be sure the Mac is up to date. Go to the Apple logo and check for updates. You may have to go to the Apple logo -> About -> updates.
– You can also go to the app store and get the Sierra operating system.

Donna uses a trackpad and Paul thought there might be a problem with it. He suggested trying an external mouse and see if the problem persists. Or go to preferences and reset the trackpad settings or maybe experiment with different settings. Paul said command + shift + 3 on the Mac will take a screenshot of what you’re looking at, <Presumably to keep track of your settings so you can put them back>.

Paul also mentioned a $99 slide scanner and a cine film scanner for $200 from Wolverine. The link is at the top of this page

Last Updated 12:10 AM 2-23-2017