LOST DOG NOTICE:
Amy called about losing her dog Wally last night. He’s a chocolate brown bulldog wearing a light blue collar. She lives near Brooks Road and Tiger Lily off of Rattlesnake. Call 510-606-0445 if you have any info.

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 won’t be on the next show, on 5-30-18 and Glenn might be serving jury duty. So there’s a chance Zen Tech will not broadcast next week.

Both Paul and Glenn were in the studio today.

Glenn thanked subscribing members of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a member, you can call the station at 530-265-9073 or go to kvmr.org>

Paul talked about the GDPR <he said GDPA> — aka General Data Protection Regulation. It’s a European law to give users more control over how their personal information is gathered and shared by internet companies.
<U.K. vs. U.S.: How Much of Your Personal Data Can You Get?
How Facebook and Google Could Benefit From the G.D.P.R., Europe’s New Privacy Law>

Scheduled to go into effect in Europe on 5-25-18, it has some teeth and should be adopted in the U.S., Paul said, In particular, it requires a company to have a data protection officer and 2% of the company’s revenue will be levied as a fine for a violation.

Paul noted that some browsers have a setting to notify the site you’re visiting that you don’t want to be tracked, but it’s pretty ineffective and may even draw attention to you.

Glenn has seen notifications coming from some services that have changed their privacy policies. He wondered if they will now allow the users to see what data has been collected about them and to change it. In his answer, Paul wasn’t clear if he was talking about European users, but said that users will be able to see but not necessarily modify the data. <Google does let you delete the data. Facebook lets you see your data but not all can be deleted.>
<Google’s File on Me Was Huge. Here’s Why It Wasn’t as Creepy as My Facebook Data.
It’s worth reading those policy notifications. Getting a Flood of G.D.P.R.-Related Privacy Policy Updates? Read Them>

Paul told us about someone in Europe who looked at what data was collected abut him and found that his phone number was included. He’d never given out his phone number. Apparently, the number came from the data aggregated from the people who knew him.

Also, Paul warned us that there will be scams that take advantage of the GDPR. You may receive emails saying something like “in order to remain in compliance with the GDPR” you have to do this or that. Just ignore them, he said. If it was a reputable site trying to contact you, you’ll find out soon enough.

Glenn invited listeners to call in with comments or questions: 530-265-9555. Or you can email the guys: zen at kvmr dot org

One other requirement of the GDPR is that businesses must report any data breaches within 72 hours, if there’s an adverse effect on user privacy. And Glenn noted that when you request your data, don’t expect an instant response. The website is allowed some time to gather all of your information. Paul said Google used to have your info scattered among its various service, now everything about you is in a centralized location.

Security of companies like Google and Apple is becoming stricter for things like recovering passwords or even establishing an account.

Paul explained what happens when you fail with repeated attempts to login to an account, normally the account gets locked. It used to be that you’re notified that you’ve exceeded the allotted tries for username/password, that’s not true with many websites now. This to discourage anyone trying to break into an account. A lockout can last anywhere from 30 min to 3 days.

Glenn said if you tried to log in but failed a couple of times while using a password that you’re sure is correct, instead of taking a chance of being locked out, use the “forgot my password” link. Another tip is to use fake replies to the security questions like “who was your 1st girlfriend”, “your dogs name”, etc. That way they’ll know less about you. Just be sure to remember the answers you have on record so you can give the correct answers when challenged.

There are 2 things you should have for services like Google, a backup phone number where a text message can be sent, and a secondary email address (use a friends email if you don’t have another of your own).

As Glenn warned many times, be aware of phone calls <or emails> offering help with your tech issues, they’re often scams. If you need help with something, you should be the one to initiate the help request. <And in doing so, use a known good email address or phone number.>

Paul said both he and Glenn have had problems with the Apple ID. Sometimes they would enter the ID & password and it would just sit there with the spinning icon for a long time. Paul suspects it’s a security feature to deter those trying to break into the account. The hackers depend on quickly guessing the ID & password over and over. He said there is a number you can call if you have problems logging in with your Apple ID, but do it only as a last resort.

There’s someone at KVMR who had the firmware password changed on their Mac. In a case like this, one would have to authenticate that they were the original purchaser of the Mac. It was the first time Paul has seen this problem.

Neil called. Last week he got a phone call that was supposedly from Microsoft saying that he needed to renew his license. He ignored it, thinking it was bogus. Paul said it’s true that you don’t need to renew a license and, furthermore, Microsoft doesn’t call people. For private users, the computer manufacturer is your support — if you have a Dell computer, you deal with Dell not Microsoft.

Paul read a question from a listener. Verizon sent me a notice to pay for extra storage and to make a copy of the my stuff because it will be deleted on May 31. How do I find out what is being stored at Verizon?
– Don’t click any links in the notification.
– Verizon offered a bunch of free perks for a year when you signed up. Now that the year is up, they want to switch you to a pay service.
– If you don’t have a Verizon phone, ignore it.
– If you do have a Verizon phone, you have an online login where you pay your bills. That’s where you can look at your storage
– It’s possible that what’s stored at Verizon exists nowhere else (not on the phone itself). So it’s important to check, if you don’t want to lose something that might be important.
– Glenn said you can dial 611 to take you the tech support of your carrier. You can then ask how to get the data back onto your phone or computer.
– Paul said he likes having 15gig of free storage for his pictures at Google Photos, <As an alternative to storing your stuff with Verizon.>
– Glenn said he pays $.99/mo for extra storage on iCloud but is planning on moving everything to his home devices and dumping iCloud.

Bob called from southern Brazil using Skype. In 2 weeks he’ll be coming to the US. He’ll be using a smartphone for Uber or Lyft service because he doesn’t drive anymore. He wondered what’s a good choice for a mobile carrier. He thought T-mobile had a pretty good plan but wanted to know how to find the best carrier.
– You’re not limited to the 4 major carriers. There are mobile virtual network operators who lease access from the major carriers and resell to the public. <There’s more about these MVNO’s in the 8-24-16 show notes.>
– As an example, Paul uses the MVNO called Total Wireless, For about $25/mo you get a SIM card for your phone giving you unlimited voice and text. 5 gig of data is and extra $10. That’s about the lowest he’s found.
– Newer phones made in the last year or two “don’t care about CDMA or GSM“, Paul said. However, Bob’s phone is GSM so he won’t be able to use Verizon, which uses CDMA.

Bob then asked for a recommendation of an Android phone for under $200. Paul suggested looking on Amazon for unbranded Chinese Android phones in that price range. You can spend more for something like a Samsung Galaxy phone and you’ll get value for the extra money. But Bob said he doesn’t need a fancier phone. If you buy thru Amazon and you don’t like it, you can always send it back. And check out the user reviews on Amazon, not always spot on but they give you the general idea about a product. Also check out Kmart or Walmart where you can get a prepaid SIM card.

There’s also the used and refurbished market. But Bob doesn’t want to buy used due to a bad experience he had when he bought an iPad in the US and brought it back to Brazil. When he had problems with it, they wanted him to return it to the store. Paul said he could have gotten better service if he also bought Apple Care.

There has been resistance from the major carriers to the FCC effort for a portable SIM. It’s a SIM card that lets you switch carriers easily without removing the card. An example of it is called the eSIM. Paul said it’s not available yet but it will be. <I recall seeing and ad for a phone with an eSIM but don’t remember who it was.>

Paul talked about losing a password to a Windows 10 machine. Make absolutely sure a local account is used, he said. When you first boot a Win10 machine it tries to lure you to create an account at Microsoft, but in the far lower left you can choose “Local account”. There’s something similar with an Apple computer, but depending on the version of the operating system, there are “various incantations” to do it.

The Mac has an increased level of security now. There’s an “online repository of your keychain and your password”. You can use Command + R to get the recovery console on any version of the Mac OS going back to about 10.9. When you do that, it boots from a separate partition with a miniaturized version of the operating system, the Safari browser and wireless access. From that point you can reinstall your operating system. The other thing it lets you do is reset your password.

The last time Paul tried to reset the Mac password it was for his friend and it asked him to sign in with his Apple ID. He said that anyone with a Mac should be absolutely sure which Apple ID you’re using. Your Apple ID is an email address. His friend couldn’t recall which of his many email addresses had been used before. The solution was to use a different machine to go to appleid.apple.com and try to sign in. Paul suggested using the same Apple ID for all of your Apple products. “You should put in a recovery and you should answer the security questions,” he added emphatically.

Changelog:
Added link to article regarding privacy policy updates you may be seeing in your emails

Last Updated 7:50 PM 5-25-2018

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.

Glenn said there will be a membership drive during the 2nd week of May. There might not be a Zen Tech show on 5-9-18

Both Glenn and Paul were in the studio with guest Jeff Cox.
Today’s show was more conversational than instructive. I tried to capture the highlights.

Besides training to be a KVMR broadcaster, Jeff, like Paul, has an interest in quadcopter drones and the hour was spent talking about them.

Jeff works for Holdrege & Kull, which was acquired by NV5 about 1 year ago.
It’s located at 792 Searls Avenue, Nevada City, CA 95959, (check their webpage for other locations.)
Phone: 530-478-1305
Learn more by going to any of the following websites.
handk.net
holdregekull.com
nv5.com
You can contact Jeff here.

Paul started off talking about bugs that have existed in the Intel CPUs since at least about 2007 and possibly as far back as 1997. <The bugs are known as Meltdown & Spectre are were covered the the 1-10-18, 1-24-18 and 1-31-18 shows> The problem affects anything that uses the Intel CPU and is thought to affect the AMD CPUs also.

Linux, Microsoft, and Apple have sent out patches to mitigate the problem but the computer can be slowed up to 15% as a result. The slowdown shouldn’t be noticeable when surfing the internet but will affect video rendering or audio production. Paul said he’ll post more info to the Zen Tech website. It’s not a substantial issue, he said. The danger is that it’s possible at all to exploit the bugs, not that it’s prevalent. Only about 1 in 100 attempts succeed. “It also relies on the fact that you must recently, before you rebooted, have done something that involved secure data”. <There has to be some sensitive data sitting in the CPU’s cache, as I understand it.>

Jeff Cox intoduced himself. He’s been working as a geologist at Holdrege & Kull for about 15 years. Holdrege & Kull has been recently acquired by NV5.

Jeff went on to say that his employer uses drones for aerial survey work. They don’t just take pictures from the drones, they also acquire thermal and multi-spectral data — useful in agriculture and forestry. They also fly LIDAR missions, which uses laser light to find distances and can determine topography in dense forests because the light can go between the tree leaves to reach the ground.

The advantage of using a drone over manned aircraft for LIDAR is that it’s able to fly close to the ground. It can get up to 400 returns per square meter, where the manned aircraft might get only 25. Using LIDAR, there have been many recent discoveries about the Mayan civilization in the jungles of Central America. Jeff’s company had deployed drones to survey sinkholes and landslides in the area, after all of the big rains this year.

But there is still a need for boots on the ground. Land surveyors are used to set markers in the ground at known coordinates, Targets are then attached to the markers that can be seen by the drones. <So they act as reference marks, as I understand it.>

Paul said the 1st drone he bought was the Syma X1 from Amazon. He wanted to get cheap drone, since he was just starting to experiment. It weighs under 1/2 a pound and therefore didn’t need to be registered with the FAA. It has no GPS and it sends no signal back to the operator. It does have a camera with a flash card. Paul discovered that it’s easier to keep track of it at dawn and dusk when the sun is below the horizon. That’s when by its red & green navigation lights are most noticeable.

Paul actually lost it once. He found out that just because the air is still at ground level doesn’t mean it’s still at higher elevations. The wind carried it off but fortunately he had his phone number attached to the it.

Paul said Amazon has the Syma X1 for $29. <This might be the one. There are others listed on that page.>

The guys mentioned a Chinese company called DJI that sells drones with more features. Jeff’s company uses one of their drones to fly the LIDAR unit. He said that drone is $5000 or $6000 for the base unit.

Jeff said that a license is required to operate a drone commercially. You’ll have to study and take A test. There are many rules and regulations to flying a drone commercially, including notifying pilots of other aircraft, e.g. those using hospital heliports that you’ll be operating in their vicinity. The acronym he used was NOTAM — Notice to Airmen.

Jeff mentioned the need to be sure the drone’s batteries are good condition — voltage, temperature and charge. Some have sensors to do that for you. Some drones carry a set of backup batteries for redundancy. If you have professional payloads costing thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, you don’t want it falling out of the sky.

Jeff said his company certifies the accuracy of their surveys to 1/10 of a foot. That meets the standards most professional land surveyors would like to achieve.

“The high level of accuracy possible with these quadcopters is achieved using a Russian navigation system called GLONASS“, Paul said.

Glenn thanked supporters of KVMR. If you want to become a member please call the business office at 530-265-9073.

Paul mentioned that the Falcon space missions by Spacex have something in common with the operation of drones — the autonomous robotic navigation systems that bring the booster rockets back to the ground.

The only phone call came from Ward. He commented that high school students went down to Texas for final competition in robotics and they did pretty well, though they didn’t win. There were teams from all over the world including Israel where robotics is part of the curriculum. And there was a heavy presence of defense contractors. If you want to see drones fly locally, go to the Gilmore School in the mornings. Some of the drones are able to come back to the same spot without using GPS: they process visual information and recognize the location.

Paul’s not very happy with the militarization of drones. He said there’s been talk of having treaties to prevent drones from being used as antipersonnel devices.

Last Updated 11:22 AM 4-26-2018

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.

Glenn was in the studio today. Paul was on the road and didn’t get a chance to call in. Glenn spent some time trying to contact Paul so the notes are a little light today.

Glenn thanked those who are part of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a contributing member, you can call the business office at 530-265-9073 or go to kvmr.org>

He also invited listeners to call in with their questions and comments at 530-265-9555 or email the guys at zen at kvmr dot org.

On Tue April 17 at 5:30 to 7:30 Paul will be the key speaker at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Church Street in Grass Valley. “It will be a talk on the current Facebook Cambridge Analytica Gold Country UNA USA”.

Version 11.3 of the Apple IOS operating system has been released. Glenn has already installed it on both his iPhone and iPad, but he’s encountered a problem. On many websites and apps it no longer automatically enters his username and password. He hasn’t yet found a solution and asked listeners to call in if anyone has found the answer.

Marilyn called about changing oil in her 1972 vehicle. She has always used 20-50 oil but has been told that 30 weight would work fine. She wanted to know if it’s ok to mix viscosities.

Glenn was a bit hesitant in his reply but said that if it has “always called for that” (the 20-50), it would probably be best to stick with that. And as for mixing the 2 viscosities, he didn’t think that would be a problem if you do a full oil change — drain the old oil & change the filter.

She also a 2-stroke engine in a piece of garden equipment that uses a gas & oil mixture of 50:1. She found out that the oil was bad but was told that instead of throwing it out, she could use it in her car. Glenn didn’t think that would be smart. It would likely cause a smoky exhaust and the oil might not be good for the gas lines, he said, and suggested she give it to a neighbor with similar equipment. She noted again that the oil went bad, so that would be out of the question.

Dave “Buzz” Barnett, the KVMR engineer, came into the studio to add to the conversation. He too didn’t think it was a good idea to put it in a car and suggested putting it a lawn mower, but not at “full mixture”. For a gallon of lawn mower gas “put a pint of the oil mixed in” and “it will burn up..it will get rid of what you need to get rid of”. He said the lawn mower typically has a 4-cycle engine and it’s more forgiving than putting the stuff in a car. He also concurred with Glenn that she should stick with the 20-50 oil in her car.

Scott called from Southern California. He agreed with Dave. He has kept oil around for a long time and never had it go bad.

He also thought she should stick with the 20-50 oil. The “clearances start open up a bit” as an older vehicle puts on a lot of miles and a higher viscosity oil helps keep the oil pressure up.

Glenn brought up a problem Marilyn was having in the past in trying to open .pdf documents. She had the default set to TWINUI which, he thought, has to do with scanning. He said that to handle such a problem, hover your mouse over the file you’d like to open and right-click on it -> click on ‘Open With’ and you’ll be shown various apps that can open the file. At this point choose the app you want to be the default program that will be used to open that particular file type. In the future, that will be the program that’s launched whenever you double click on the particular file type (.pdf).

Gary called. He has old iPhone 5C and has never upgraded the operating system because he’s heard people complaining about problems they’ve had after upgrading. He wondered if he too would have such problems. Glenn replied…
– Yes, it will make a significant change in how you use the phone”. “Every major update has caused something new or different and in some cases actually caused older things not to work”
– He’ll probably have to upgrade by stepping upward thru the version numbers.
– Looking it up, Glenn read an article from last June saying that IOS 11 update ends support for the iPhone 5 and 5C. They will no longer receive software or security updates.
– Not updating a phone means it could be subject to security issues.
– The most recent update you can get for the 5C is IOS 10.
– If you haven’t had security issues, it might be best just to leave it the way it is.

Gary wanted to know how find what version of the OS he has. Glenn said to go to Setting -> General -> About -> Version. Gary found he has version 9.2.1.

Gary said he’s considering just getting the model SE. It has the same smaller size as the 5C and has all the bell & whistles. It’s still being sold new with technical support and the price is not too bad. Glenn thought that it may be a good way to go. He said to back it <the 5C, I guess> up on your computer using iTunes. Then you “can synch the new phone from iTunes, once you get it started and set up”.

A listener Paul called. He has an old iPod he’d like to donate, maybe to some senior citizen. He first wants to save the music from it to his computer.
– Connect the iPod to the computer. If iTunes doesn’t automatically start, then open it manually. You should then see what’s on the iPod and be able to tell it to “back up the music into iTunes”.
– Glenn thought he should then be able to move the music to other devices by using iTunes, but he wasn’t sure.
– On second thought, Glenn said to hold off and check the show notes in the next couple of days, Paul might have some suggestions. <Check some Apple forums or discussion groups for advice.> Or check back in 2 weeks for a more definitive answer.

Paul wanted to make his donation before some program expires. <Supposedly Glenn mentioned some program earlier in the hour that I didn’t hear — probably in when he read the calendar of events.> Glenn replied that “the collection continues thru Sat April 14” and suggested Paul email the guys (zen at kvmr dot org) to get a quicker answer. More info about the donation program can be found at tuneswork.org. It’s Music And Memory, an organization for people with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Donation sites are KVMR, Center For The Arts, Clock Tower Records, The Wooden Spoon and in Auburn it’s Cherry Records.

Steve called. He wanted to know the difference between an image and a backup. Trying to keep it simple, Glenn said and ‘image’ “takes a picture of the hard drive and duplicates it”. Typically that will involve another hard drive of the same size. In the past it’s been used to clone a drive so you can put a new drive into your computer, which generally doesn’t work if your operating system is on it.

With a backup you can choose what you want to back up and where. It’s recommended having target drive that’s twice (or more) the size of the drive you’re backing up.

Steve wants to back up a program he’s been using. But Glenn said backing up doesn’t work for programs, they need to be reinstalled. Steve doesn’t have the original disks for the program. So Glenn told him to call the company that created the program and ask how to install it on a new computer. Also, you can do a web search for an older program. You might be able to get it cheaply.

Last Updated 10:53 PM 4-11-2018

Busted Technology– where to start?!?
I love HIREN BOOT CD Described Here and
what’s on it
download it here and More Info about Fake Download Links etc.

Cambridge Analytica and you- FB Data Breakout!
Happy Birthday Viagra!

PodCasts, Flash and Old KVMR Radio Shows 

BitCoin, BlockChain Should I Shouldn’t I?!

is it a Currency or a security What is it so we can regulate it!

Car Battery Charging.. what’s the dealy?! (PDF)

Learning JQUERY for Web Pages Clever Demo Here

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.

Both Paul and Glenn were in the studio today.

Glenn reminded listeners that backups are critical to mitigate failure of hard drives. Paul added that it’s important to test your backups by trying to restore the data.

Paul mentioned things from the past that assisted the visually impaired. He noted that webpages are much more readable than they used to be by complying with the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act). He recalled the software “Jaws”, which is a screen reader. But it had a bug that made it repeatedly read any flashing text that it encountered.

There also was a device that was basically a camera on a tripod. It would read whatever you put under it, like a book. Then it would perform optical character recognition and read it to you.

Glenn told us about an app, whose name he couldn’t recall, for the visually impaired that will read the ingredients on food labels. And that reminded Paul of the time he used Google Translate to read the instructions for a front door security alarm he got from China. It was all in Chinese, not a word of English, and though the translation was a bit funky, it was surprisingly successful.

Paul talked a bit about trouble shooting computers. His first step is to be sure the hardware is ok before diagnosing the software. So, how does one test the hardware?

The underlying hardware of PCs & Macs is now more similar than it ever was. They both use Intel CPUs and the PCs can also use the AMD CPUs. They have the same kind of memory and same peripheral ports: PCI & PCI Express.

The free Linux based Hiren Boot CD is a piece of software that comes on a bootable CD for diagnosing both a PC and Mac. <see link above> It bypasses the operating system and doesn’t touch the software on your computer. It tests such things as memory, hard drive, temperature sensors, the bus, camera, internet connections, wi-fi interface, etc.

It has 300 to 400 utilities among which is one to recover your password. If you forgot the password to your Windows machine, it can look at the hard drive that contains Windows and reset the password. Paul’s favorite test is the hard drive SMART test, which performs a detailed diagnostic of your hard drive. Paul advised googling the test results from Hiren to get more details on what it found.

It’s such a sought after program that you should be wary of websites that you might find in searching for it. There are many pretenders that are up to no good. Use the link above.

Paul has been trying to change the way files as big as 50 or 60 megs are uploaded to <downloaded from> KVMR’s website called Podhawk. When Podhawk was installed in 2010, “Flash was the way to go”. But the tech industry is trending away from using Flash and many people have disabled it on their machines. So Paul has begun educating himself in using Jquery, <see link above> which is a library <of helpful code> that makes using Javascipt easier. The goal is to use a different method of file transfer.

In talking about transferring audio files, Paul mentioned audio.kvmr.org where, under the item called ‘archive’, there are KVMR shows that go back more than 10 years. You can play them directly or download. Assembling this archive is what led Paul to study Jquery. Right after the Jquery link above is a demo site that shows how it works.

The guys talked about Cambridge Analytica and how it acquired information on millions of Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica offered money to Facebook users if they allowed the Analytica app access to their profiles. It then went further and gathered info about all of the ‘friends’ of the initial user. Paul said he keeps changing the info in his profile to something that’s bogus — “just because a site asks you questions, doesn’t mean you need to tell them the truth”.
<How Calls for Privacy May Upend Business for Facebook and Google>

Glenn said he recently used the new iteration of Whatsapp on the iPhone. When he tries to ‘call’ using the handset & + icon in the upper right, where you put in the phone number, it says “New call. Whatsapp doesn’t have access to your contacts. Whatsapp needs access to your iPhone’s contacts to connect to other people on Whatsapp. To enable access, tap settings and turn on contacts”. Glenn has never given Whatsapp access to the contacts, but this latest version won’t work unless he does. <He didn’t say if he’ll continue using it>.

For over 10 years European law has entitled users to get all of the information a site has about them. Facebook has feature that lets you download all the data they have about you. It’s useful if you’ve lost photos that you put up on Facebook. And as a side effect, you get to find out all they know about you, not just what you’ve told them, Paul said. Someone found that by giving their phone number, the app had been able to access all their call records. Paul said that though he uses Facebook he doesn’t trust it.

Don called with a caution for Facebook users. He said just by using Facebook you implicitly trust them even though you think you don’t. You don’t know what their code does. Even if they ask permission for access to your phone number, you don’t know if they scrape all your information anyway, no matter whether you granted permission. Don thought it’s a good idea to move to a different platform that has better morals.

Marilyn called. She wanted to know that if you use your laptop at a public wi-fi, can your internet usage be associated with your laptop or only the wi-fi provider? Paul said that the IP address can be “traced to wherever it came from. If you’re at a Starbucks in Roseville, it’s traceable if somebody plugged in a computer there and the odds are very high, because of the use of cookies and so forth, that the next time you take that laptop and plunk it down somewhere else, they know where you are for a second time. And because of the use of cookies and so forth, they can then link together where the computer was with who the user was. So the answer is yes”.

Additionally, the Firefox and Chrome browsers have the incognito mode, which won’t send or receive cookies, supposedly. It’s not the same as being anonymous — you become “largely unknown, not completely unknown”.

She also asked if there’s a way to block incoming junk phone calls. Paul said, “if you have every contact that you know in there and the number comes up and it’s not somebody you know, it’s probably junk”. When you get a call from someone in your contact list, their name will be displayed. If no name shows up, it likely junk.

Marilyn realized she didn’t ask the right question. She meant to ask about junk text (txt) messages. Paul said he didn’t know a way to block spam text messages though there is software to block text from a particular sender.

Paul went on to say there is a way to block unsolicited phone calls. Some systems, including the one he uses called Voip.ms, “will require that when the phone rings and you pick it up that you press 1 to receive the call. So what will happen is that if it rings and rings and rings and then goes dead, the automated system on the other end didn’t know to press 1. It tells the CALLER ‘you must press 1 to continue'”.

She also said that she has suddenly been getting tons of spam email, she got very little before. Paul suggested she get a Gmail address. She said she’s using an old version of Outlook (from 2000) and Paul said it can’t be used with Gmail, she’ll have to get a later version. But that won’t solve the spam problem. Gmail, on the other hand, handles spam on their servers, she won’t be able to do anything about it on her home computer.

Paul said he’d like to do a special show about cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and blockchain) and bring in “our money guy” to explain.

Last Updated 8:10 PM 3-29-2018

Steven Hawking no longer with us : (

How good is “Captcha” at stopping Rogue log-ins to any site(s)?!
V1 Captcha Shut Down…(reading road-signs and street names)
V2 Long Live That! Solve some Puzzles and Google will Remember you are NOT a Robot!
(Thanks for your patience, Alex!)

Air Gapped Security? Wazzat?
EternalBlue- the Exploit. Wazzat?!
WannaCry Ransomeware- SMB Defect & WinXP
CryptoMining Viruses and JavaScript, Etc.

Old IMac Linux– Whooppeee!
CALIBRE– Ebook Read/Convert:

WordPress: a Stable set of Plugins..
Google ReCaptha by BestWebSoft.. etc.
Yoast..

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 and Paul were in the studio today.

It was a rainy day in Nevada City and Glenn reminded those who were driving to turn on their headlights. If the windshield wipers are on, a California State law requires the headlights be on too. Daytime running lights don’t count.

Students were in the studio today. 24 of them from a combined 5th & 6th grade class were there to see how a radio station worked. Katie came to the mic to read the station ID and others were briefly interviewed. Hudson was impressed by the CD collection. Glenn said that the CDs were being digitized for easier access to the music, eliminating the need to handle the discs.

Glenn said there are KVMR apps for both Android & iPhone. You should be able to find the links to them on the front page at kvmr.org.
<The link to the Android app makes it a bit difficult to find. I found it more directly by going here>

Next it was Aden who came to the mic. He noticed the abundance of rooms at the station. Glenn said the studio doors are usually open during the Zen Tech broadcast to make it seem more inviting and to capture the ambient sounds (as long as they’re not too loud).

Lastly, it was Persephone who took a turn at the mic. Her interest in radio stations centered on listening to county music

Glenn reminded listeners that they can listen to this show again at archives.kvmr.org.

There have been changes to the Zen Tech website as well as the KVMR site. The Zen Tech website and KVMR now use secure certificates to keep the traffic between your computer and the website from being intercepted.

Also, when you login to the Zen Tech site, you have to prove you’re not a robot by completing the captcha challenge. This feature is provided by Google and has changed recently, version 1 is no longer available. You now have to use version 2, which involves identifying objects in photographs. You have to click on all photos that have cars in them, for instance. With this version of the captcha it’s hard to know if you’ve clicked the right photos and it keeps sending you more photos to identify. <I hate it, and it’s the reason I was so late in posting the last show notes. It may not be the last time that happens.>

Paul went on to say that once you pass the captcha test, a cookie is set on your computer, which is then valid on other websites that use version 2 to let you pass thru without the hassle of the captcha. He said that’s the reason they made it so hard. If you think you’re solving the captcha wrong, chances are it’s ok and that the system is just putting you thru the paces.

The captcha system Paul uses for the Zen Tech site is a plugin for WordPress, which runs the site. The plugin is called Google Recaptcha by BestWebSoft. There are several captcha systems he could have chosen and one of the things that helps him decide is how many time has it been downloaded. He’ll favor the plugin that’s been downloaded most often. Obviously, he also checks for compatibility for the version of WordPress he’s using — there were several in the last few months.

Paul started to talk about compiling site maps “so that Google will know where our site was”. The popular pluging for that is ‘Yoast’. It’s free and it analyzes the site to see how palatable it is for search engines like Google. It sounded like he didn’t say all that he wanted when he suddenly changed the subject to thanking supporters of KVMR.

Glenn continued by thanking the contributors and underwriters and he thanked the members who support KVMR thru their donations. <If you’d like to become a member, you can call the station at 530-265-9073 or go to kvmr.org>

The guys noted the passing of Stephen Hawking, a famous mathematical physicist.
<A brief history of Stephen Hawking’s discoveries.
Stephen Hawking: pop culture icon>

Glenn has been educating himself in using Word and Excel recently. He said there’s a lot more to Excel than just spreadsheets. One of his projects is creating name badges. He found that the border color can change depending on what is entered in certain fields. He was using the 2013 version of Excel but thought that earlier versions might be capable of the same thing.

Paul mentioned the possibility of getting malicious code when someone gives you a Word <or Excel> document. The document may have macros (mini programs), which enhance the functionality but can be made to do strange things. Your Excel application should warn you that there are macros in the document you’re about to open, and ask you if the macros are to be executed.

The macros are in English and Paul said you can look thru them to see if the words like ‘delete’ are present or a website is mentioned, which might hint at something malicious. Glenn said the main Excel file has the extension .xlsx and the macro files are .xlsm. Otherwise, just be aware where you get your document and what it’s supposed to be doing.

A long time ago there was defect in Windows that would allow code to be executed if you clicked on a .gif file — “the picture viewer could be tricked into overrunning the code.” The .gif picture file could be longer than what it was meant to be and code could be stuck on the end, which would then cause what was called “arbitrary code execution”. Adobe .pdf files have had a similar problem. And the worst of all have been .swf, Shock Wave Flash files, which exploit defects in the Flash player.

Next, Paul talked about crytocurrency viruses. A lot of computer processing is needed to manage cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. So someone came up with the idea of using the computers you or I have to help out — to distribute the processing out to the computers on the internet. The virus will use your computer’s spare time to do a small fraction of the processing that would otherwise require a huge array of computers. Paul reasoned that it shouldn’t use more then 50% of your computer’s time, otherwise you’ll suspect something’s going on.

Paul found out how such a virus can get on your computer. It appears that some Windows machines still have a flaw despite all of the recent patching. The flaw is called Eternal Blue that exists in the “networking stack”. It was first developed by the NSA and is now used by the cryptocurrency miners and also by the ransomware Wannacry virus.

Microsoft came out with a patch for Eternal Blue. If you have Windows XP and are keeping it off the internet for security reasons, you can download the patch to a flash drive and then plug the flash drive into the XP machine to update it. You should also have an updated anti-virus program to protect it from compromised flash drives.
<Further info from Microsoft.>

Glenn invited to call with their questions and comments at 530-265-9555. And they can send email to zen at kvmr dot org.

Paul has a Kindle app for his Android tablet for reading books and such. And though it can read .pdf files, it’s pretty rudimentary. So he discovered a free app called Calibre, which is an ebook reader and converter that runs on a PC or Mac. It can convert a .pdf file into a Word document, which you can then edit. In fact it can convert between 20 different formats, including..mobi, the native format for the Kindle.

Calibre has a bit of a learning curve and the interface is clunky, but it’s a far better program than he first thought. It also lets you subscribe to various free magazines, news sources, periodicals and documents. And it comes with a list of websites where you can get all of this free stuff

Caroline called. She has an iPhone 4 and keeps getting the error message “Can not get mail. The mail server ‘IMAP Gmail.com’ is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info into mail settings.”
– Paul said the email app on your old phone is out of date for what Gmail expects. Google has started imposing a a more stringent authorization scheme called OAUTH.
– Use the Safari browser to go to Gmail and get your mail. Though eventually Safari will become out of date and fail to access the mail.
– It’s not obvious, but there is a setting in Gmail to permit less secure authentication. But then you’ll get warnings saying something like ‘less secure applications are accessing your account’ <referring to your email app>.
– Get a new iPhone.
– Gmail is the least hacked mail service and this problem is the price you ‘pay’ for more security.

Last Updated 12:59 AM 3-15-2018