New Forms of Gambling Addiction: Loot Boxes
Avatars versus Reality.. Which is Which? DEEP FAKES
Russian Internet Research Agency and their Pro/Anti/Vax/Abortion/Party Research
… And Why. YHBTYHL
Gaming Page Ranking with Conspiracies : Giving you More of what you did before..
Title 47 Federal Law  The Comminications Decency Act and its meanings

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 and outro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Glenn & Paul were both in the studio today.

Glenn thanked the people who made donations to KVMR during the recent membership drive, <If you’d like to become a supporting member, you can call the KVMR office at 530-265-9073 or visit the website.>

Admitting he rarely plays video games, Paul talked about Loot Boxes <see the link above>. You might get video games for free on the internet but to improve your chance of progressing, you buy things while you play, like extra armor, a key or invisibility cloak. The prices of such objects are cheap but they are adjusted dynamically as you play to maximize the profit for the game’s creator.

Paul went on to talk about Deep Fakes. <See the link above>. This is where a video of a US President or even an admired personality is made to say something they didn’t, with the facial expressions and mouth movement to match. The idea got its start in the Pixar animation studios where they do live action capture. Our laws do not yet deal with Deep Fakes, he added.

How do you tell if what’s said has been faked? “What would happen if you would like it if they had said that”, he asked. For example, if you saw the faked CEO of Wells Fargo saying everyone is going to get a million dollars put into their accounts.
<Advancing Face-Swap Apps Blur More Lines>
<The Reality-Distorting Tools Of The Future>
<Create a digital synthesized clone copy of your voice>
<Radiolab did a story on deepfakes:>

After telling the listeners that they can call in to the show at 530-265-9555, Glenn 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.

Glenn continued with some weather-related announcements. Butte County Sheriff’s office issued evacuation orders as of 7:30 this morning for the Richvale area between the Sacramento River and Highway 99, from Nelson Shippy Road to Highway 162. In the Chico area, Andrew Court, Magnus Court, Vosca Drive and Taffy Ave have flooding problems.

Glenn reminded listeners that when it’s raining or in fog, state law requires that you have your headlights on — not your daytime running lights, DRLs. Turning on the DRLs does not turn on your rear lights.

Marilyn called about a problem she has with her email. Her email is blocked when she sends it to a Gmail account. She gets a notification that it’s Bulk or Unsolicited mail or Unauthenticated. There’s no problem sending email to other systems.

Paul told her to look at the header of the returned email (that didn’t go thru). Invoke the option to look at the entire header. Wade thru the entire thing and you should find a link that you can copy and paste into your browser. The link says something like google.com/article/question15/id=… Go to that address to find out what’s happening and then send what you found out to your internet service provider <whose email service you use>. They will have to fix things on their end.

Marilyn also said that she had sent the guys some email earlier in Feb and had not heard back and hadn’t received a failure notification. Glenn said he hasn’t seen any email from her. Paul said that all emails to the kvmr.org domain is handled by Gmail using the non-profit Gsuite. So it’s possible that Google blocked that email too.

Glenn suggested she use Thunderbird as her email program to replace the Outlook she’s using now. She said she used it on her old Windows XP and it worked wonderfully. But on her new Windows 7 machine, when she clicks to send an email, she gets the warning “Add security exception. You are about to override how Thunderbird identifies this site. Legitimate banks, stores and others will not ask you to do this”.

Paul realized what’s going on. When you use Thunderbird or Outlook, they “use certificates to go back and forth to make sure you’re connected to the site you think you’re connected to”. If the warning is coming from your current internet service provider, then they’ve screwed up the certificate. Gmail should never say that because their certificates are always valid.

Paul suggested they talk off the air to resolve the problem. In the mean time, she should take pictures of the error messages on the screen and send them to him.

Dave called. He seemed impressed with the Lexus (car) when a woman told him that the windshield wipers come on automatically when rain is detected. Paul related the trouble he and Glenn had getting into a Tesla, which they had a chance to see at the Roseville Galleria recently. They had trouble finding the door handle. And the trunk was a mystery too, until they realized there was a button on a screen that had to be pushed to open it.

The guys talked a bit about the automation found on modern cars: warning on the dash if a headlight is burned out, tire pressure indicator, warning if you stray across the yellow line (Lane Assist), adaptive cruse control that keeps the right distance from the car ahead and automatic braking in heavy traffic.

Jamey called. He’s using Sonic for his internet provider and Open VPN, which is an open source program. Sonic set him up with the VPN but doesn’t support it. When he uses the VPN, the keyboard starts missing letters and the mouse starts missing clicks. And when he has a diminished screen, its border flickers. He called Sonic but they don’t know what’s going on, the VPN is not their product.
<Sonic might be the same as Sacramento Fusion that was mentioned in the 8-24-11 show>

Paul thought the problem may be the result of the VPN putting a heavy burden on the CPU. It uses a lot of resources to do it’s job. Hit Control+Alt+Delete to bring up the task manager and look under processes and you might see that the VPN is using up a lot of processor time. Look for other processes that may be using up the CPU’s time.

Paul suggested he install a utility called Process Explorer. Google those 2 words and be sure you end up on the Microsoft site. It’s much better than Task Manager. It not only shows you a process, but also what started it. And it helps you google to get more info, just right-click on it.

Process Explorer is only about 2megs and it doesn’t need to be “installed”, just run it. If you experiment and kill a process, and Windows no longer works right, you can restart Windows and be back in business.

Finally, Paul briefly mentioned the Russian Internet Research Agency <see the link above>. This is the group that interfered with the US elections by trolling in the social media sites. They would foment animosity by arguing for both sides of an issue and thereby perpetuating acrimony.

Last Updated 1:51 AM 2-28-2019

TODAY!
– from last Week HomeWork: MICROBIT 

• How About the Pi Zero?! All from Raspberry PI
• Be Your Own DJ Free! MIXXX  It can read iTunes Playlists. Steep Learning Curve though!
• Linux Users of WMA Office, Libre Office: Where’s Arial, Verdana etc?!
• Tiny Real Virtual Servers! VULTR and Digital Ocean
• Fixing an iPod Classic with 1.8″ 40-pin Drive

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 and outro music was by Pentatonix.

Note that there will not be a Zen Tech show on Feb 13 due to a membership drive.

Both Paul & Glenn were in the studio today.

Glenn started off talking about paying thru your bank. Zelle & Venmo are a couple of the more popular options. He’s been using Zelle thru Wells Fargo. A typical example is paying back a dinner companion at a restaurant where you want to split the bill — you pay your portion after the companion pays the entire bill. There is no fee for using Zelle. To send someone money you just need their email address or cell phone number.

Glenn also has an online bank where he wanted to use Zelle. He couldn’t use his email address at both banks so he tried using his cell phone number, but it came back saying it’s not a cell number. So he reversed things, using the cell number at Wells Fargo and the email at the online bank. That worked.

Paul said that in the US, there is no way to know for sure if a number is cellular if you’re using a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) as your cellular service. A MVNO is a company that resells a service that comes from one of the major carriers (Version, AT&t, etc.). Glenn uses Pure Talk.

Glenn went on to say that Zelle transactions are nearly instantaneous. The recipient gets an email or text message when the transfer occurs. The transaction is irrevocable. Both parties have to have to subscribe to Zelle. Glenn said he doesn’t know of any bank that doesn’t use it.

This type of service is nothing new to Europeans. They’ve had Postbank and Gyro, interbank transfer systems, for a long time, Paul said. In Japan they don’t use checks, only interbank transfers.

Glenn reminded listeners that they can send email to the show hosts at zen at kvmr dot org.

Turning to the homework links at the top, Paul talked about the Raspberry Pi. The pi comes from the programming language Python developed approx. 15 or 18 years ago. It was named, in part, for Monty Python.

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer on a board that’s no more than a couple of inches square. It uses a 5 volt power supply and a micro USB connector. It has some LED lights to indicate what’s going on and an HDMI output to hook it up to your TV set. The USB port lets you hook up a mouse & keyboard. One of the models of the Pi (the 3B Paul thought) has wi-fi and Bluetooth.

Don’t buy this as a home computer, Paul cautioned. It’s primarily for the hobbyist. Nevertheless, it is the 3rd highest selling platform, behind the PC and all things by Apple.

The Pi is used in all sort of applications. Paul is using it to make a security camera and also a weather station. Weather sensors for humidity, temperature and air pressure are about $2 each, Paul said. The 3b is the model that has all the bells and whistles and costs about $32. <See the links at the top for more info.>

It has a short but sharp leaning curve. And once you develop something with the 3B you can take the micro SD card and put it into the Pi Zero, the low budget model. The Pi Zero will then do what the 3B did but with “less space”, smaller dimensions and fewer interfaces. The latest Pi Zero, which is about the size of a chewing gum stick, comes with wi-fi. Paul plans to use his Pi Zero to augment his Roomba vacuum cleaner.. The Roomba doesn’t have very much suction but it does have patience and is good for the dust bunnies under the bed, he said.

You can get a Pi starter kit on Amazon, Banggood or Aliexpress. You can choose which operating system to run on it. Most people use Linux in a form called Raspbian, a free version of Debian Linux. It’s a real learning experience and you do have to follow the instructions.

Talk turned to DJ’ing. Glenn said that music is not a big part of his life. He finds iTunes confusing and would have trouble with software that a DJ would use. Paul thought he could get comfortable with a free piece of software called Mixxx <see the link at the top> for the PC and Mac, but had no clue on how to proceed. <Mixxx was mentioned on the 8-26-15 show>.

The idea is to use 2 turntables, on the screen as I understand it. You cue up on one and play on the other. Mixxx reads your playlist from iTunes.

PCs and Macs have just one audio output (the speaker) but you “can get a cheap audio device and connect it to a headphone” so you’ll have 2 audio outputs — the headphone and the speaker. This is the very basic setup. You can buy a USB adapter that gives you a headphone jack. The computer will identify it as a second audio channel with a name something like “USB audio”.

So now you play from your playlist out of one side, to your speaker, and something else to the headphone. Mixxx can detect the beat of the music and you can change the pitch and the speed. If one song is 60 beats per minute and the other is 90, the software can alter one to coincide with the other. It was at this point that Paul got bogged down with all of the options and buttons in Mixxx. It’s a learning experience, he said. If you know how to mix with 2 physical turntables, you should have little trouble proceeding.

Mixxx supports Midi devices. And for $40 to $60 you can get a USB device that has “2 tiny rubber turntables” and “a couple of actual real physical sliders”. “So you’re interfacing with the software on the screen in such a way that it looks like the hardware the formal DJ would use”. Despite making all sorts of mistakes, Paul said he’s having a blast.

Glenn invited listeners to call in with their questions and comment at 530-265-9555. You’ll be put on hold and then attended to in the order of your call.

He then 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 talked about WMA office. <See the link at the top>. This is, apparently, an office suite that, to a degree, mimics Microsoft Office. But it doesn’t come with Arial, Verdana and a couple of other fonts. They are under Microsoft license but can be downloaded for free. <See the link at the top>.

Bitstream & Adobe are companies that digitize fonts and they collaborated, with other companies to standardize the TrueType fonts specification. There are a huge number of free fonts.

If you type something in one font and send the document to someone, they may not have that font. The TrueType font file has information in it that allows automatic substitution of another similar font for the missing font. But it still may look a little different. That’s why people started using the .pdf document format. The .pdf would render the fonts as dots <essentially a picture>.

The Microsoft Word program has a way of embedding the definition of a font within the document. So if the recipient doesn’t have the correct font, the one in the document will be used.

All major platforms now use TrueType fonts, including Linux. But you’ll have to download Arial and Verdana separately.

Paul mentioned an interesting documentary about the Helvetica font and the influence a font can have on society in general.

Neil called. He had bought some rechargeable nicad batteries but they don’t work in his cordless phone. But they do work in a flashlight. If he replaces just one battery in the phone, it works
– Maybe the contact points are the problem. Use an emery board on the contacts.
– It’s not a good idea to mix batteries as Neil did. The stronger battery might dump the current into the weaker one and cause corrosion or make it over heat.
– Look closely at the contact points to be sure they’re connecting. There may be a physical difference between the original & replacement battery.
– Get a cheap battery tester. The tester should put small load on the battery. A multimeter is designed not to load the battery.

Steve called. He uses a popular CAD program (Computer Aided Design). He’s seen older versions for sale on the internet from dealers who aren’t authorized to sell them. They buy the software from a abroad and sell it in the US. He wants to know if it’s legal software.

If you buy software that comes with a key and you can successfully activate it using the key, the odds are high that it’s legitimate software. If it doesn’t activate, ask for your money back. Some software may get hacked so it doesn’t need activation. Some may have had the key stolen from a school or college that was using what’s called a VLK (volume licensing). Some software may be so old that it isn’t rigorous about how it activates (it may not connect with the company over the internet to confirm).

If you really want to know if the software is legit, communicate the company and ask if the key is legitimate.

If someone bought software and later decided to sell it or move it from one machine to another, the key should be deactivated. The license can then be transferred. If a reseller is involved, you’re in a gray area.

You don’t actually own the software, just the license to use it. And there’s the question of whether it’s the person who owns the license or the machine.

Glenn opined that there isn’t much in open source CAD software. As soon as he said that, Paul found Freecad. But it seemed that wasn’t an option for Steve, he needs compatibility with the software he’s now using.

Another option might be to buy an older version of software legitimately, and then use it as an upgrade path to get a newer version. Of course, first check that the upgrade is available.

Doug called about Neil’s battery problem. He suggested that the cordless phone may not have been designed for nicad batteries. Be sure the replacement batteries are of same type. Some devices may have a switch to select for the type of battery you’re about to put in.

Paul called. He wants to get a simple phone, not a smartphone, for his disabled son. Are there free phones for those on SSI, he wondered.
– Do a Google search but beware of scams.
– Call the social service you use or a county social worker to find out what’s available.
– Tracfones are cheap.

Last Updated 12:45 AM 1-31-2019

1) Out-Of-Date Google Searches?? IE: Google’s own “oAuth” system supersedes
old Username/Password system which remains Documented but worthless…
2) the MICRO:BIT Embedded System
3) aaa = “authentication authorization accounting” and the Recovery Process…
4) Prime and Punishment and the 2nd A “Authorization”
5) Real World Music from its Own Countries– HOW?!
6) QR Full Business Card Generator
7) “White” LED Light?
8) Twinning App & 10 year challenge- DON’T. It helps Facial Recognition.

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 and outro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Glenn & Paul were in the studio today.

Before getting to the Community Calendar, Paul mentioned that he was on the Other Side show yesterday to present some music. The show is produced by Mikail Graham and can be found in the archives, along with other KVMR shows. Paul also mentioned that KVMR has another archive that goes back 12 to 15 years and has mostly talk shows here.

Glenn did 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 started the main part of the show talking about how websites like Google or Facebook do authentication, authorization and accounting when a user logs in. Authentication is to make sure you are who you claim to be. Authorization determines what you’re allowed to do once you’re logged in. Accounting is about keeping a record of your activity on the site.

A number of years ago Google started using the improved authenticating system Oauth. <Also see the link above> It comes from a consortium of companies: Microsoft, Google and a few others. If you try to create an new account, as in the Thunderbird email program for instance, to read/write to your Gmail, Oauth will popup a box to fill in the user name & password and will take you to Google for verification. When Google verifies you, it will create a token (like a long serial number), which Thunderbird will use to access your Gmail content. The actual password is not stored in Thunderbird, only the token.

Paul quickly noted that you might have trouble finding info about how Google uses Oauth. If you do a search about authenticating with Google (or anything for that matter), the top search results tend to be old because they’ve been around the longest.

Older equipment may not know how to do Oauth authentication, which Google insists on using. There is a workaround that Paul was reluctant to mention. He said there’s a setting in Google to make it use less secure authentication, the way things were before it started using Oauth. But if you do, you may have some problems. Paul did just that for one of his clients and they started getting inundated with security warnings in their email. The other workaround is to use your browser to go to Gmail and access your email.

For years, email programs have used SSL to secure the transmission of username and password to the servers. But now that’s not good enough. Google and others don’t want the username & password stored on your machine by programs they don’t trust. Paul thinks Oauth should be adopted industry wide.

A few years ago there was a transition to using HTTPS. <It secures data going to and from a website>. It used to be only banks and other critical sites that used it, but almost all websites use HTTPS now, Paul said.. Secure web certificates are now free from Letsencrypt. <Mentioned in the 1-31-18 show>. Google will downgrade sites that don’t use certificates, in their search results.

Moving on to item 4 (in the list above), Paul talked about how Amazon authenticates and authorizes you as a member of Amazon. You get authorization by doing reviews of the products you buy. But the process can be subverted. Read the Prime and Punishment article that’s linked to at the top of this page.

Glenn asked if Ebay has a similar problem. Paul said it’s quite different from Amazon. But it has it’s own problems. He once paid for a Mac Book from a fraudulent Ebay seller and the computer never arrived. Eventually, Ebay figured out it was scam, and when Paul complained, he was told to click the link “go to resolution”.

Paul related an experience of his friend who bought a bunch of Apple devices. He accidentally typed in the wrong Apple ID password 3 or 4 times and got locked out. Apple uses reciprocal backoff where every time you enter the wrong password, it takes longer to respond. After 3 errors, it waits 24 hours and if you try again before the 24 hours have gone by, you’re locked out for 3 days. It gets hard to know what’s going on because they don’t tell you that you’re being punished for your errors.

Item 5 from the top of this page refers to internet radio stations that stream content from all over the world. Paul said that you can listen to these stations with a “wifi hardware radio”. He said you can find stations with the kind of music you like by doing a Google search.

Item 6 is about QR codes, which are 2 dimensional barcodes that can contain an address tag, web tag, Twitter tag, Facebook link, etc. Paul has one on his business card. If you point your phone at a QR code it will tell you the information it contains. In Paul’s case, it will display his contact information. An app called Scannable can read these codes. The link at the top for Full Business Card Generator will take you to a site that will generate for free a .pdf file that has several business cards, using the information you provide <with the QR code I guess>. You can then take the .pdf file to a place like Staples to have it printed.

The Japanese company that developed the QR code did take out a patent but made its use free of royalty.

Item 8, the 10 year challenge, is about people posting pictures of themselves on Facebook. One is a current picture the other is from 10 years ago. Paul said this makes it easier for facial recognition programs to identify you. He also spoke of another picture that shows a cassette tape and a pen and you’re asked if you know what these items are. If you answer yes, you’ve just revealed that you’re likely over 50 year old. The takeaway being that it’s easy to unknowingly reveal things about ourselves.

Item 7 is about the relatively new technology of LED lights. The white ones come in different color temperatures: daylight, tru white, warm white. They have the same kind of spectrum as tungsten filament bulbs (incandescent). The LED light starts as blue and when it hits the phosphorus coating in the bulb a white glow is generated. On the other hand, the colored LED light you get from other products is propagated directly, is much brighter and comes from a narrow spectrum that is a much purer color.

A caller corrected Paul when he attributed a quote to Jefferson when it actually came from Ben Franklin. It was a quote about giving up a little bit of liberty for safety and deserving neither.

The caller also said that he upgraded his Mac OS from Snow Leopard to El Capitan. Now he gets frequent popups from the Java Developer Kit (JDK). Paul was perplexed about how it got on his machine in the first place. He suggested deleting it. Do a Google search on how to remove the Java Runtime. Time was running short so Glenn asked him to email the show so they’ll be reminded to follow up.

Last Updated 1:06 AM 1-24-2019

On Air Shortly– 1 pm Pacific Time
Battery University!

PDF: Process in WPS, OR, Save to Google Drive & Open with Word Processor

Download video straight from YouTube etc..
https://www.youtubnow.com/ and a little about webm

Zen Tech is not Zantac (Text Dictation!)
– although we hope you turn to us if you are sick of technology!

Refurbish Old PCs && MACs with Windows? Linux Mint is Ideal, But….!

DVDStyler DVD movie authoring software for PC & Linux..!
A good example of simplicity competing with comprehensiveness and usability..
“If computers are so smart how come they do not know what we want?”

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 and outro music was by Pentatonix.

Paul was in the studio and Glenn called in.

Paul started off talking about how KVMR’s Community Calendar is displayed on his screen as he reads it. He said the way a screen appears is determined by markup not layout. Layout is more concrete and deals with things like how many inches and pixels and point size of text. Markup is a more general and determines how the elements of the page relate to each other — for example, H1 text is bigger than H2 text with out saying the exact size. He then introduced what’s called ‘responsive web design’, which makes a webpage readable on a small phone screen or a huge monitor.

Glenn saw the movie Aquaman the other night, He thought it was a pretty good movie and was impressed with some of the technology used in making it.

Paul found the Battery University website extremely interesting. <See the link above>. Going on he said that Lead-acid batteries (as in a car) leak current between the plates and will eventually become discharged, if they are left to stand unused. They also supply a tiny amount of current to the car’s radio so it can remember the preset stations. The car battery will not “do well” if the charge peak drops below 85% or 90%.

Paul bought a small solar panel of about 15 watts from Harbor Freight. He hooked it up to a battery to provide a trickle charge to make up any loss in charge from standing around for a long time. It’s perfect for his RV that doesn’t get much use. However, he cautioned listeners not to connect solar cells directly to a battery. It should first go thru a regulator.

He said “the peak natural voltage of a lead-acid battery that’s not being charged or discharged is somewhere around 12.7v”. So, from China you can get an LED display that will tell you if the battery needs charging, if it’s at peak charge or if it’s busy charging. He noted that if the alternator in the vehicle goes bad, it can pump too much current into the battery and damage it. <Presumably, the LED display will warn you about this.>

Recently Glenn had the battery in his iPhone replaced for $29.95, under a special program Apple created. The program covers the iPhone 6 and later. In later iPhones go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Battery’ to find out how much capacity is left. If it’s below about 80%, it’s time to think about replacing it, Paul said. If you replace the battery yourself or have it done by a third party, the battery won’t be as good as one furnished by Apple. The Apple battery will give you the best service lifetime — 80% capacity after about 3 years or 1000 charge cycles.
<The special Apple program was mentioned during the 1-10-18 and 10-24-18 shows>

Glenn has noticed that his refurbished iPhone 8 has been using up the battery at an unusual rate. Last Wednesday it went from 100% to about 16% in about 6 hours, without using it much. If it continues, he said he’ll have a chat with Apple. He thinks he may have turned on some feature that used a lot of current. Paul suggested he go to settings and find how much of the battery each app has used. In ‘Settings’ you can use the search box to find ‘battery’. He said IOS 12 and possibly IOS 11 has this search feature.

Glenn thought his mail service might been what was using up his battery. Paul suggested using ‘battery saver’ mode, which can be found the battery menu. This mode will suppress the push notifications from Skype, Facetime, email, etc.

When the guys went to the Apple Store at the Roseville Galleria to get the batteries replaced, they got the chance to examine a Tesla 3. It’s $47,000 out the door with up to $10,000 in rebates. But the federal rebate may be going away, Glenn said. The dashboard was very simple, just a 17″ touch screen display.

It has 7000 batteries similar to those in a laptop, probably NIMH Paul said. They are arranged in a big rectangle under the floorboard. And is has 4 electric motors, one in each wheel — the area under the hood and the trunk is available for storage. It comes with a charger and there are 10,000 charging stations in the US. The greatest distance between charging stations is 160 miles. The Tesla’s range is about 270 miles.

Paul chimed in to say that it takes 30 to 40 minutes to charge up at a charging station, which uses a high current that you won’t get at home. At home it will take about 10 hours using the standard 110v & 15 amps. 240v and 30 amps takes about 5 hours. Check with your utility as electricity rates can vary with the time of day.

In Asia and maybe Europe, Hyundai & Kai have a car similar to the Tesla in features with 310 mile range for $30,000. It will be available in the US some time this year, Glenn said.

The other question Paul asked the Tesla rep is what happens if you get stuck between the charging stations. He was told that Tesla has a charging truck that they will send out to juice up the battery. You should get plenty of warning before you run out and the navigation system will direct you to the closest station. Glenn vaguely remembered that Tesla offers free charging at their stations for the first 6 months.

Backtracking a bit, Glenn said having the battery replaced out of warranty is $49 for those with an iPhone 5se to the 8 Plus.

Talk turned to downloading videos from Youtube. There used to be plugins for Firefox and Chrome to download Youtube videos. But Youtube doesn’t want you to download so they tweak their service to discourage it and those plugins don’t work anymore. They’re not updated often enough to keep up with the changes at Youtube.

The site youtubnow.com lets you paste in the link to the Youtube page of the video you want to download and it gets the video for you to download.
<Though I haven’t used these for some time, keepvid.com is similar to the above. And the Dentex Youtube Downloader is an app for mobile (The apk is here)>

WebM is becoming a standard for streaming media. It comes from a consortium of companies like Youtube, Facebook, Microsoft, etc who wanted a royalty-free format that can play in HTML5. If you download a WebM video you’ll have a file that ends in .webm, which you can then play using VLC (Videolan). It’s a free program that will play many video and audio formats.
<More about Webm here>

Paul added that Youtubnow works with sites other that just Youtube. And it can extract and download just the audio.

If you have an older Mac to re-purpose with an Intel Core Duo, or Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, which are 32bit processors (later processors are 64bit), and as long as you have enough memory, you can boot and run Windows on it. You can buy a license key for Windows 7 from Microsoft. Or you can install it without a key, in which case it will nag you a lot. Or you can burn (on CD) a copy of Linux Mint, which is free.
<Linux Mint was mentioned in the 3-25-15 show>

Paul also mentioned DVD Styler for Linux and Windows (and possibly for Mac). It’s free and is used for burning DVD movies with many interesting options like making it start to play a some point other than the beginning.

Last Updated 12:55 AM 1-10-2019

20 Year Public Domain Copyright Lapse at last!

Apple IOS 12.1.2 now has FRONT FLASH!

Baiting Competing Amazon

Non-Office Suite? Free?! WPS Office!
Compare To: OPENOFFICE and LIBREOFFICE

Keeping a crapload of Tabs open so you are Scared To Re Start?
Some Hints to Save Pages On Exit

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 and outro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Paul and Glenn were in the studio today.

Paul started by talking about copyrights. On Jan 1 2019 for the first time in more than 20 years, copyrighted works will enter the public domain, which means the their copyrights expire. This is because 20 years ago the length of copyright protection was extended from 55 years to 75 years.

Public domain is different from Creative Commons and open source. Open source software can be amended by someone who isn’t the original author to create what’s called a fork of the original program.

A fork resulted when Open Office, a suite of programs similar to Microsoft Office, became Libre Office — “a more dynamic system, which had more updates and more features”, Paul said. He uses Libre Office because it’s “evolving somewhat faster”. The latest software suite that Paul found is WPS Office. <All are free. See the links at the top>.

Glenn reminded listeners that they can call in with their questions or comments during the show. The number in the studio is 530-265-9555. Or they can send email to zen at kvmr dot org.

Also, Glenn noted that for every donation to KVMR thru 12-31-18, Incredible Pets will donate 5 LBS of pet food to Nevada County Pets In Need. Go to kvmr.org to donate.

Paul said that registered non-profit organizations can go to techsoup.org to download legitimate versions of operating systems, like Windows 7, for very low cost. They will also be able to get the 2016 version of Microsoft Office. This is for 501C non-profit organizations.

Coming back to WPS Office, Paul said that it will automatically recognize .doc & .docx files and save in those formats too. It can dynamically produce .pdf files as well as open .pdf files to be read. WPS Office comes out of China, he added.

Paul went on to say that he’s been using Google Docs for a long time. With it you’ll can open .doc files and save them in the native Google documents format. So you don’t need to install software to handle .doc files that you get elsewhere.

You can upload .pdf files to the Google Docs directory <you’re given storage space for your documents.> And if the .pdf contains a graphic of some text, Google can perform OCR (optical character recognition) to extract and create plain text. He said he’s only been told this and hasn’t tried it yet.

Glenn said he’s been using pdfescape.com, which is free, to edit .pdf documents while online. He also noted that there’s free software called PDF Creator. Paul said “it becomes a print driver so you can print to a printer called PDF Creator”. Glenn said if you want to make a .pdf out of a webpage, for instance, it will “print” the page out to a file instead of an actual printer. You can then treat it like any other .pdf file.

With PDF Escape, Paul cautioned about uploading sensitive information you don’t want to be generally known. <That’s true for most situations where you’re working online.>

Paul said that in Apple’s IOS 12.1.2 the screen can light up and act like a flash when taking a picture with the front camera (the one pointing at the user, as in a selfie).

Paul talked about the situation where you have many tab open in your browser and you need to shut it down or restart your machine. How do you get those tabs back? If you are using Firefox, go to the 3-stripe icon in the upper right, go down to the cogwheel, find “restore previous sessions” and check the checkbox. There’s a similar option in Chrome in the settings menu.

Marilyn called. She has migrated to a machine with Windows 7 from Window XP machine. XP converted her 2002 Microsoft Office .docx files just fine but “it will not convert on my Windows 7”, she said. She has “to take it over to the XP computer, convert it and then bring it back”. <She installed Microsoft Office on the Win7 machine from the original CDs.>
– Paul said that there is an addon that allows an older version of Office to read newer versions of Word documents (.docx). The addon has to be downloaded separately, and he’s not sure it’s available anymore. It might be at oldsoftware.com. <I think he may have meant oldversion.com> Paul did a quick search and found what’s called Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 file format.
– Be sure you end up on the Microsoft site when you search for this kind of stuff or you may end up downloading something malicious.
– Paul thought she can try a converter — try the WPS word processor.
– Glenn suggested she save in the older .doc format rather than .docx. That also makes it easier to share the document with others who might have trouble with .docx.

Paul explained what’s special about the x in .docx. Microsoft decided to use the xml markup specification. Inside the .docx document is a template that that reports where all of the resources are (where the pictures, graphics, fonts, formatting are). You can experiment with a .docx file you’re willing to lose. Change the file name with .docx to .zip and unzip it. You can then pull out the contents, like fonts, he said.

One of the things Marilyn tried was to save her documents in an older format (2003). It was an .xlsx doc and it saved to an .xls file, but she still couldn’t get the Win7 machine, with Office reloaded from a CD, to open the file. Paul thought she needed to install the Office service packs on the Win7 machine. Google the words: latest service pack for office 2002. If it comes up saying it’s service pack 3, you may need to install the previous service packs (1 & 2) first. Installing Office from the CD onto her Win7 machine means its no longer able to update itself from Microsoft Updates, so she has to do it manually. In Word on the Win7 machine, go to Help -> About and it will say Microsoft Word 2002. If it says nothing else, no service packs are installed. If it says SP1 or SP2 or SP3, then those service packs are installed.

Glenn did the disclaimer:
The opinions expressed on KVMR are those of the speaker only and not necessarily those of KVMR management, staff or underwriters.

Paul had a tip for those needing to find the key for the software installed on their machine, like Microsoft Office. This might occur if you’ve lost the CDs. Go to belarc.com to get the free Belarc Adviser. It will tell you all sorts of info about your machine, including the keys use to install various software.

The guys raised the point that WPS Office comes from China and there may be fear of being spied on. Paul noted that everybody, including the US, spies on everyone else, and that it’s good to be suspicious of software no matter where it comes from. But he doesn’t mean to imply that WPS is malicious. You can get it at wps.com.

Glenn talked about how he saves passwords. He uses keywords like the word ‘home’. He gave an example where the word ‘home’ would refer to the street number of his first home, and he wants to use the number as the password. He then creates a contact for, say, KVMR, and he’ll enter ‘home’ in one of the fields. Now, if he needs to remember his password to log into KVMR, he’ll pull up the contact for KVMR. see the word ‘home’ and be reminded that the password is the number for the address.

Glenn said the new Apple IOS creates very a secure password. It asks you if you want to store it on your keychain. With the keychain all you need is your Apple ID.

Paul said Apple no longer sends you email to reset your Apple ID, they use security questions now. Be very careful how you answer those questions, he said. When Paul sets up answers for the security questions he doesn’t use capital letters or even use spaces between words. He doesn’t use punctuation and tries to keep it short. This makes it easier to remember — he doesn’t have to remember if he capitalized his father’s name, for instance.

Paul doesn’t seem to like third part utilities to handle passwords like One Password. He doesn’t know how trustworthy or secure they are. The company can be hacked and your password compromised.

Dana called. His screen died and someone gave him an ASUS monitor as a replacement. But it says “splendid demo” on the screen and it doesn’t go away.
– Disconnect it from the computer. If it persists, then you won’t be able to get rid of it.
– It won’t go away until a valid signal comes across.
– Unplug the monitor, shut down your computer, then reconnect the monitor, and start the computer. Then the operating system can determine the resolution of the screen.
– Windows 7 (what he’s using) and the monitor talk to each other thru a protocol called One Wire.
– Start Win7 while holding down the F8 key. <Paul didn’t seem to finish the thought>.
– If there is no wording on the screen when booting up the computer, then they aren’t talking to each other. Pull the connector out of the VGA socket and check the pins. Some may be bent.

Dana said it’s annoying to have “splendid demo” on the screen along with the game he’s playing. Paul apologized for assuming that nothing else was being displayed. That means another round of trouble shooting, but they’ve reached the end of the broadcast. Paul is going to look into it some more. And at the very end he found a Youtube video on how to deal with it. <Maybe he searched for the words: ASUS splendid demo>.

Last Updated 1:18 AM 12-27-2018