Sep 13, 2017
Paule In-Studio. Glenn will Call In
It’s Recovery Month – a 12 month a year issue
A Bit About VPN & http://www.purevpn.com
iPhone X and commodity/Consumerism, and why Good Design is Like Pornography!
(you know what it is when you see it but cannot easily define it)
Jony Ive & Dieter Rams, * ‘Originality’ apropos Emulating things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Rams
The EquiFax Fiasco & what to (try) to Do
Irma, Harvey and the Red Cross and What to Do– Due Diligence.
Milo Yiannopoulos and the role of agent provocateurs (is that the correct plural form?!)
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.
Paul was in the studio. Glenn called in.
Reading from today’s show notes (above), Paul said that this is National Recovery Month, and gave a link to a government website for substance use and mental health disorders.
Since the law has changed to allow internet usage information to be logged and sold, virtual private networks (VPN) are a way to keep your browsing habits private. Normally, a provider such as AT&T or Comcast, for example, can gather the info about what sites you visit. If your connection to a website is secure (the URL starts with https, not http) the content of your transactions will remain private, only the destination information can be logged.
A VPN may be built into an operating system or added as a separate program. It will encrypt the data exchanged between you and the website before sending it over the public internet (Comcast, AT&T, etc.). A drawback is that the VPN company itself can gather & sell your info. <Do some research before picking the company.>
Paul has been experimenting with Pure VPN It’s based in Hong Kong and has about 100+ peer points around the world. You can pick any of those locations and make it appear your connection is originating from there.
<For example, the BBC makes some of its content available only to citizens of the UK. You can use a VPN to make it look like you are located in Britain when trying to access it.>
In checking out Pure VPN, Paul googled the words: purevpn issues. He found some bad reviews, saying that the service doesn’t keep the DNS lookups private. <DNS is domain name service, which converts the name of a website into numbers that are needed to connect to it>. As a consequence, AT&T (if that’s your provider) is able see who you’re connecting to while using Pure VPN. The data itself is still being encrypted and remains private.
Paul said that the iPhone 10 has just come out with IOS version 11. He noted that there is no iPhone 9. He then talked a bit about design.
<Apple Unveils iPhone X and 8 Models as It Upgrades TV Set-Top Box
The Samsung S8 came out recently, too. I don’t think it was ever mentioned on the show…
The Samsung Galaxy S8 has 27 features the iPhone lacks>
Jony Ive has been the iPhone’s designer for a long time. He followed in the tradition of a German designer named Dieter Rams, who also worked for Apple. Rams formulated 10 principles of good design. <See the Wikipedia article link at the top of this page>. Paul listed the principles and made some related remarks.
Equifax had data from about 140 million accounts stolen. You may be in their database even if you think you have nothing to do with them, Paul said. Paul made a connection, which wasn’t clear to me, between Equifax and Milo Yiannopoulos. He said, both Equifax and Milo Yiannopoulos (link above) have appeared on Facebook and elsewhere with basically false and misleading statements.
Paul said he’s seen numerous sites that ask you to fill in your data to get money back from Equifax, but they are really scams. There is a reliable site you can go to, and he posted the link to it at the top of this page.
<An NBC article on the Equifax hack.
A how to freeze your credit: here and here>
Glenn, who had called in, said he was disturbed to learn that Equifax knew about the breach for a month before making it public. In that time, some managers from Equifax divested their company stock.
Glenn also said that if you go to the Equifax to check if your info was compromised, the terms and conditions state that you give up your right to sue them later. <I also heard this, but then later heard Equifax changed their terms to rescind the waiver. Their website seems to reflect this. Paul’s follow-up statement seemed to concur>.
Glenn said you can also freeze your account to prevent anyone from getting credit in your name. In some states it won’t cost you anything, in others it’s $10 at each of the 3 big credit-reporting agencies. You can still continue using the credit card as before.
Paul mentioned Lifelock, which is a service that’s suppose to protect your identity. But they got sued for failing to do that, Paul said.
The disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed on KVMR are those of the speaker only and not necessarily those of KVMR management, staff or underwriters
Paul said you’re entitled to an annual review of your credit status. You’ll also be able to see if anyone has made credit inquiries. Also, when your card is stolen or lost, report it right away, because the credit card companies will try to find a way to make you liable for unauthorized charges.
Another solution is not to have a credit card, Paul said. But that doesn’t mean the credit reporting agencies don’t have info about you. They gather the info from all sort of places — bank accounts & cash transactions.
Paul said he’s head that it is possible to change your social security number. But it can be a difficult process. Paul said he has used a fake social security number in those places where it’s only function is to identify him. <Like a password or an optional security question. Obviously, don’t do this where it’s used for things like tax reporting or Medicare etc.>
Glenn found a couple of computers for a friend. They were Windows 7 machines made by Dell with 2 terabyte hard drives, Intel core I5 processors and 8 gig of RAM. They cost less than $230 each from Ebay. They had a 90 day warranty but Ebay offered a 3 year warranty for an additional $21.
He used the transfer facility that comes with Win7 to transfer the data from the old machines. He said to use the Start Button & search for Easy Transfer. There are 3 ways to connect the machines — a local network, a special cable or flash drive.
It took 2 To 3 Hours to do the transfer over the local network. One machine had about 60 gig the other about 90 gig of data to transfer. Applications like Word or Quicken were not transferred. Glenn had trouble finding out how to print some of the reports on what was transferred and what wasn’t. He could see the report on the screen but couldn’t find the file associated with it. He said he’ll do more sleuthing on how to do that.
XP doesn’t have the Easy Transfer software but it can be downloaded and installed, Paul said. The Mac has something similar called Migration Assistant. He seemed to say that it does transfers from a Windows machine to the Mac.
While he was talking, Glenn found how to print the reports he talked about earlier. He had to look at the bottom of Internet Explorer where it says “‘this is blocked content. Do you want to allow it’ went you’re opening appinfo.html.” The file was on the C: drive in a hidden folder.
An .html file on the machine is treated with some suspicion because it’s possible to have some malicious content, more so than what’s on the internet, Paul said. That’s why Glenn was asked to unblock it.
The guys talked briefly about how Microsoft went about getting people to upgrade to Windows 10. It was suggested before that people use the GWX Control Panel to manage their upgrade options. <See the notes for the 5-11-16 show.>
If you want to contact the guys, email at zen at kvmr dot org.
“The Red Cross is not all it should be,” practice due diligence, Paul said. He didn’t say you shouldn’t donate to the Red Cross, but do some research for the best way to help the victums of the recent hurricanes.
Glenn invited people to tune in to the Flea Market show tomorrow at 1pm.
Last Updated 12:55 AM 9-14-2017