Kudos for last week’s guests and project about “Screen Dependency” (not “Addiction” as I might have Said)

– there was enough material for several hours of programming, but there is a Town Hall hosted by KVMR in April in person about this and I mean to be there  in the Audience with Questions:
– So Kindles Count? Is a Kindle a Book? Weren’t book once dreaded as an alienator of storytelling traditions?
After all it’s always Books that get Burned when Trouble Starts, right?
– Does each new generation tax the previous with progressions like these?

BBC article on newly scrapped internet privacy laws So what does this mean to Anonymous Browsing? how about SSL pages (which are increasingly prevalent).. In general your Destinations can be tracked, but what exactly you are looking at, less so. IE I can tell you are visiting parts of San Francisco but not what you are looking at there….
Backlash will hopefully kill this. Can you Subvert it? TOR Browser is a Risky Proposition
So that was what the “Do Not Track” Cookie Setting was about?
Now companies can legally ignore it (as it was only an Advisory) which they likely did anyway

Next wil likely be the Do NOT CALL Telephone listing: http://www.donotcall.gov (another Program covered Spoofed Caller ID’s-)

TAILS is an Internet Browser on a Stick to sidestep untrustworthy operating systems using Debian Linux

IOS 10.3 now out using a NEW Filing System called APFS better geared to flash memory, etc. Thought to only activate on newer devices like iPhone 6 & above. Protracted Update

WhatsApp now prominently does Video very well, circumventing possible FaceTime Blocking by cell phone company. Works Across Platforms and uses Encryption as the attack on Westminster Bridge in London showed (the attacker used WhatsSapp)

 

 

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Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
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For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

The intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

 

Glenn was in the studio. Paul called in from the Salton Sea in Southern California

 

If you’d like to call in to the show during the broadcast, call 530-265-9555. Or you can email the guys anytime: zen at kvmr dot org

Instead of using the regular studio lines, Paul called in using WhatsApp. The quality was much better this time.

Referring to last week’s show, Paul reminded listeners that George Lynn will be at a local town hall meeting at the Nevada Theater April 18 6pm to 9pm, adding that the event will be broadcast on KVMR. The topic will be screen dependencies (dependency we have on our gadgets).

Paul said he was intrigued by the subject of last week’s show and wondered if a Kindle ebook reader leads to screen dependency. He’s read many books with his Kindle while on his RV excursions and he asked “do I have screen dependency? I don’t know”.

He has a Paperwhite Kindle, an Amazon product that sells for $120. The screen looks like paper — a white screen and very sharp text for which you can select fonts of different sizes. It’s a welcome feature for Paul’s problematic eyesight.

The Kindle screen is not very responsive, but it’s not intended to show animation or even webpages. It was specifically designed for reading. Paul finds it easier to read than a book, even in bright sunlight. He loves it.

Because of his attraction to bargains, Paul got a collection of Dickens’s classics for 99 cents. They were cheap because their copyright has expired, he said. There’s free material available for the Kindle, too. And you can put your own documents on it, with some fiddling. However, there is no way to edit something on the Kindle; it’s for reading only.

There’s a link to a BBC article at the top of this page about a coming change to internet privacy laws. If it gets signed into law, your ISP (internet provider) will be permitted to keep a log of where you go. Although pages whose addresses start with https (not http) are encrypted and the ISP won’t see what you send or receive, they can tell that you used, for instance, Facebook to post an article. They “may even, in some circumstances be able to read back the URL“.
<Congress Moves to Overturn Obama-Era Online Privacy Rules>

It won’t help to anonymize your web surfing by using the incognito mode of your browser, as in Firefox. This mode only prevents the local machine (your laptop/desktop) from storing browsing information. The ISP can still tell where you go. And using the Tor browser (link at the top) makes you stand out as someone trying to hide something.

If you don’t trust your operating system <or suspect you have malware>, Tails (link at the top) is a browser on an memory stick. From the way Paul described it, it comes with the Linux operating system as well as the browser. You can then boot your computer from the stick (flash memory) to run Linux & the browser. Tails uses the Tor network.

Don called to describe his efforts to stay anonymous. He bought a computer & cell phone with cash. He then went to Microsoft Live and got an email account. “Now I never use this device with my home wi-fi”, he said. He only gets on the internet when he’s at a library or a coffee shop. “I don’t think they can catch up with me”, he said. At this point Glenn accidentally dropped Don’s call.

Paul responded by saying “I tend to avoid anything except a local login”. Microsoft tends to badger you to login with Microsoft Live. But during the setup process there’s tiny option at the bottom that says “create a local account”. “You authenticate the account name like Don with possibly a password, but you don’t need to be online to do it. And, in fact, there’s no other reason to have an online Live account for Windows 10 or 8 or 7. There’s no other reason to do it than that Microsoft wants to sell you stuff and they want to track you”. Using access points away from home “won’t help much with the fact that Microsoft actually knows where he is”.

Paul said if you’re already set up, you can convert to a local account without losing your data. Paul said to google the words: revert windows 10 account to local. The instructions he found are at HowToGeek.
<Possibly this>

Mark called. His Firefox browser is notifying him to upgrade and he wanted to know if that’s a safe thing to do. Paul said it’s probably legitimate, but to find out, first dismiss any warning about updates. Then go to the help menu -> About. That will tell you what version of the browser you have, and you’ll know if you’re due for an update. In the same menu there’s an option to “update now”. Use that to do your update.

Paul said there’s an update to the IOS (operating system) on the iPhone 6. It’s now up to version 10.3. In this version there’s a substantial change to the underlying file system, the first change in 30 years. It used to be HPFS+ (High Performance File System). It’s now APFS (Apple filing system), which is more suited for flash drives. When Paul did his update, it took a while because it had to rewrite the entire file system. He said it freed up some memory and it runs a bit faster.
<A ZFS developer’s analysis of the good and bad in Apple’s new APFS file system>

Pilar called in from Sacramento. Her family has Mac computers and she’s looking to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network). She’s read a review of The Best VPN Services of 2017 in PC Magazine. She asked for suggestions.

Paul said that a VPN will keep an ISP from tracking you, but “the other end of a VPN now knows where you are”. What a VPN does is take the outbound data, “crams it inside the packet that goes thru the phone company with encryption, scuttles it thru the internet, god know where, it will pop somewhere completely different”. “But the place where it comes out is no longer AT&Ts IP address. It could now be somebody else’s IP address”. The point of a VPN is to look like you are in a different location, even a different country. You can make it seem your IP address is in Britain so you can get to content that’s only available to people living in Britain, for instance.

In the end, the VPN company itself can sell your information. Paul suggested a VPN called TunnelBear. He said it’s pretty easy to use. It gives you the 1st .5gig/mo of data for free. PCs & Macs have VPN built-in, but it takes some persistence to get it working. Most VPNs cost about $5/mo. A VPN will slow things down, no way around that. Some content providers can tell if you’re using a VPN. So, for instance, the BBC might deny you access after all.
<Help file for TunnelBear
Tunnelbear for Android here>

Don called back. He said his strategy for anonymity involves using a fake ID when signing up at Microsoft Live email. Then he can use that account to sign up at, say, Facebook. Paul countered by saying you’ll be followed around the internet by the cookies placed on your machine, despite having a fake email account.

Glenn read a question by Andy who said he has a 2011 iMac with OS version 10.7.5. He needs to go up to at least 10.9 to install some tax software. An Apple rep told him versions 10.8 & 10.9 are no longer available to download but can take his 10.7 directly to 10.11.

Paul said, if he has 10.7, that probably has the application called “app store” which should offer an upgrade. Click the banner at the top of the “app store” and it says get Sierra (10.12) now, but it may not allow an older machine to upgrade. So “look up in the search window 10.11 and low and behold there will be a not very prominent icon that does allow you to download 10.11, if 10.12 is too new for your machine”. It will be a free download. Also, Paul has seen someone selling flash drives with the operating system on them for about $19.

Ralph called. He has a fairly new Windows 10 machine. And about 10 days ago he could no longer connect to the internet. He tried Ethernet & wi-fi. He just gets a spinning icon that says “waiting for…(whatever your homepage is)”
– one of the Microsoft patches broke DHCP — the ability of your machine to get an address from your router.
– You have to go into Windows 10 and hard code an IP address into your Ethernet interface to get the internet working so you can then get the updates to fix the problem.
– Try unplugging then plugging in the Ethernet cable.
<This was mentioned during the 12-14-16 show>

Last Updated 12:09 AM 3-30-2017 now prominently does Video very well, circumventing possible FaceTime Blocking by cell phone company. Works Across Platforms and uses Encryption as the attack on Westminster Bridge in London showed (the attacker used WhatsSapp)