Meltdown! FAQ

Intel CPU Defects

______

Button Cells like the CR2016: 3.6v

Type Numbers for Bulbs Batteries…

Oil Filters

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 Glenn and Paul were in the studio today

Glenn took his first Lyft ride this past weekend. It was from the Golden One Center where he saw a basketball game. He said watching the megatron display was almost better than watching the game directly, because of all the camera angles.

He said the Golden One Center has an area where you can plug in your mobile device to get it charged. And they have an app that you can use order pizza <as well as do other things>.

Glenn wasn’t sure of the range for the ticket prices for a basketball game. He guessed they’re from about $40 to $300. For the seats he was in, a pair of season tickets cost “only” $17,000 and the cheapest are $6700 a pair.

The Lyft driver who served Glenn had a hearing impairment and the guys speculated about how the drivers were covered by insurance. Apparently, Uber does cover its drivers.

A couple of weeks ago Glenn started using the app called Waze, an alternative to Google Maps. Though it’s considered a superior mapping system to others, he didn’t like how it had control of his car’s stereo, via Bluetooth, even when it wasn’t issuing directions — nothing else would play thru the stereo. There is a setting to keep it from using the car’s stereo at all, but that’s how Glenn wanted it to work. For a workaround, he noticed that the Lyft drivers who use Waze will have their phones play music thru the car using Bluethooth which will relinquish control to Waze only when Waze has something to say. He likes, and apparently uses, Google Maps instead.

Paul explained that, as with other map/traffic apps, Waze automatically submits speed <and location> of its users to its central servers, which then aggregates the data to warn drivers of congestion, for instance. Unlike the other apps, Waze lets the users report things like a crash or stop & go traffic on an on ramp.

Paul noted the law that came into effect about a year ago regarding using a device while driving. Though discouraged, a concession was made to allow you to activate a function if it only requires one button press and you’re not actually holding the digital device. Glenn thought there were further restrictions — it’s only for a phone call or to use a map.

Paul thought using Siri by voice would be ok while driving. Glenn said he finds Siri confusing to use in the car. He tried to use it recently to find a gas station and asked Siri for an Arco AM/PM, but Siri couldn’t determine what he was asking for. He switched over to Google Maps, which not only showed nearby stations but also gave the gas prices. Paul said Google seems to be adding more details to their maps every time they update the app.

Gordon called to ask about the best way to backup his PC computer. If you have a network at home you can add network access storage like the Western Digital My Book Live, Paul’s favorite. 2 or 3 terabytes of storage is about $149, The backup software that comes with it is not great, but not bad. The drive works with Macs too, and looks like a Time Capsule to a Mac. Check Youtube for instructional videos to help you set it up or at least give you an idea of difficulties you might encounter.

Gordon expressed concern that the data will be vulnerable to a catastrophe like a fire or flood at his home. Paul said these threats exist but, on the other hand, the data transfer speeds are thousands of times faster than backing up to the internet. A hundred gigabytes will take forever to backup to the internet. The solution is to make a 2nd backup to a portable device, like a USB drive, and physically store it at a remote location.

Backups to the cloud tend to lag behind because they tend to be slow. so you may encounter the problem of not getting them done in a timely manner, Paul said. And keep in mind that uploading can be 10 times slower than downloading, due to the asymmetric nature of the protocol. However, you may be able to get by ok if you have a small number/size of files.

Glenn chimed in suggesting Carbonite for backing up to the internet. He said they have plans for business as well as individuals. He uses Google Drive for document storage and noted that you can synch your files if you install Backup & Synch.
<Google releases Backup and Sync for Mac and Windows>

Gordon said he doesn’t have a lot of data to backup. To find out how much you have, go to the C: drive & right-click on the folder ‘Users’ -> properties to find out how much data there is for all of the users on your machine…that is what you really need to back up. First, you might want to run Ccleaner, which removes all of the extraneous garbage files that you don’t want to backup. <More about Ccleaner in the 12-27-17 show notes.>

Another program the guys have used in the past for backups is Free File Sync. But this one requires more tweaking, Paul said.

Paul talked about the recently reported Meltdown & Spectre faults. They are not viruses but are defects in the CPUs. Modern CPUs process sets of instruction out of order to optimize speed. Some processes are supposed to be hidden from others but there may be a small time frame when they’re not and the data can be exposed. What to do…
– Don’t panic. There haven’t been any exploits seen out “in the wild”, yet.
– Watch out for claims purporting to fix the problem — all you need to do is click this & download that. Be very suspicious of emails with links or attachments unless you’re sure of their origin. Be careful of popups in webpages saying a problem with your computer has been detected.
– Anti-virus programs won’t be especially effective. Only some attempts to exploit these vulnerabilities might be done with a virus.
– Firefox, Chrome and to a lesser extent Internet Explorer browsers have killbits in place where they recognize certain types of things you get thru webpages. <I think the point is to keep your browsers updated.>
– All of the companies are issuing updates. Stay updated. Be sure your updates come from Microsoft itself thru Windows Updates or Apple thru Software Updates.
– Paul thought the problem affects iPhones and those phones with the ARM CPU, too.<Arm CPU, ARM & Spectre>
– The patches are expected to slow down your computer. They will negate the speedup you get with “preemptive look ahead”. In some cases there may be a 25% slowdown, but webpages won’t be affected so much.
– Microsoft didn’t wait until patch Tuesday to issue a patch. Paul speculated that it caused some Windows machines to crash and go into an “infinite boot loop”.

<Spectre and Meltdown Exploits – What You Need to Know:
A followup: Can Malware (Spectre, Meltdown) Spy After Reboot
What You Need to Do Because of Flaws in Computer Chips |
The CPU catastrophe will hit hardest in the cloud— The Verge:
Researchers Discover Two Major Flaws in the World’s Computers>

Glenn thanked those who have become supporting members of KVMR and invited listeners to write with their questions and comments to zen at kvmr dot org.

<The fallout from Apple deliberately slowing down older iPhones as new operating systems come out, has led Apple to offer discounts on battery replacements.> Affecting iPhone SE, iPhone 6 up to the iPhone 10, the battery will be replaced for $29. It’s not expected to begin until later this month & will go to Dec 31 2018. Glenn said he’ll wait until the last minute to get his done.
<Apple iPhone battery replacement program>

Last Updated 2:14 AM 1-11-2018

Strange Minimalist Music from the 1980’s– Electronics.
“O Superman” by Laurie Anderson

Nostalgic? try telehack.com 

and see old BBS style Text Files 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 music was by Pentatonix.
The outro music was a “random track” by Brian Eno.

Paul was in the studio. Glenn called in.

Paul played an excerpt of some music from the English musician Lori Anderson. It’s from 1982, which is when he left England permanently. She used an octave divider to process her voice. Her album is being republished, but an analog version was put on Youtube (see the link above) with a link to the digitally cleaned up version that you can buy.
<Lori’s website>

Glenn called in from a location he didn’t expose and started off by telling us about a problem Marilyn has recently encountered. She’s using Windows 10 and when she upgraded the Firefox browser to the latest version (ver 57.0.2), her computer started to run slow.

Paul said Mozilla did a rewrite of Firefox recently and it’s now called Firefox Quantum. Whichever version you’re using, you can do a cleanup by going to Firefox Health Report (or maybe it’s Trouble Shooting Information) in the ‘Help’ menu. From the page that opens, Paul suggested Marilyn choose ‘Refresh Firefox’ in the upper right-hand corner. It saves your bookmarks and some of your settings, dumps everything else and then reloads the bookmarks & settings. In the process, it dumps the addons, which can cause mischief, and you’ll have to reinstall them as needed. It also dumps caches as well as any bits and pieces left over from any previous upgrades. Paul said when you migrate to Firefox Quantum, it automatically triggers a refresh. <More about Quantum in the 11-29-17 show notes.>

If you had been using a 32bit version of Firefox but you have a 64bit computer you’ll be switched to the 64bit version of Firefox when you update to the new version. It appears Mozilla is no longer making the 32bit version but all of the addons work just the same, Paul said.

We should all have more than one browser on our machines, Paul continued. But he hates the Microsoft Edge browser, “it’s horrible”. It’s what comes with Windows 10. However, you can still get the earlier Internet Explorer browser from the Microsoft site. Right-click the button in the lower left of your screen <I think he meant the Start button> and then and use the word ‘Run’ and type in “iexplore” <w/o quotes>. You’ll get version 11 of Internet Explorer.

So, 1) refresh Firefox as explained above, although upgrading to Quantum should have done the refresh. 2) Get Internet Explorer and see if your speed improves using it <indicating Firefox is the problem>.

The other thing you can do is isolate the problem. Is it the machine or is it the traffic from the internet that’s slowing you down. Test your internet speed by using speedof.me. Speedof will wait until a webpage is fully loaded before it gives you the result. If the page doesn’t load, something else is wrong. Speedof is designed to isolate speed problems due to the machine from speed problems with the internet.

The guys went on to talk about Crap Cleaner (Ccleaner). Glenn said he has someone friends with a Windows Media Center PC they use to watch TV and record cable & other media. It started to give a ‘disk is full error’. They talked previously about it being more efficient to have the operating system on a separate partition and a much larger partition (or a separate drive) for your data. In this case, after using Ccleaner, the free space on their C: drive went from about 8Kb to 305 gigabytes free on a 500gig drive. Paul said it’s a tendency with Media Center computers to store a lot of temporary data that needs to be cleaned out.

Ccleaner used to be at ccleaner.com but they are trying to sell you what was once a free version by redirecting you to cleanercloud.com. You can still get the free version by going here. Installing it will put an icon into the system tray in the lower right, but Paul prefers to turn that option off; he prefers to run it on-demand (manually). You can also set it to do the cleanup only when you reboot Windows, but that adds about 60 sec to the boot up time. There are also settings that will keep it from deleting passwords or cookies.
<A version for Android is here>

Paul noted that Ccleaner will tend to ignore files specific to an application. So in Marilyn’s case, she’ll need to do the Firefox refresh and not depend on Ccleaner to do the job.

Since Windows 10 came out, there have been 2 major “patches” or updates. Paul said he’s seen one of the updates shut down Avast Anti-virus, without warning. On another occasion, an update shut down Classicshell, which many people use for a better user interface to Win10 than the default Metro interface. Both programs can be reinstalled, but you may have to download the latest versions.

Paul offered a tip to those who want to install Avast: uncheck everything except ‘file updates’, ‘browser check’ and ‘file protect’. He thinks the other options are not needed and Glenn agreed.

The ‘web protect’ option will look at the site you’re visiting and send the data to their servers and then tell you if the site is safe. Things to remember…
– It takes more time — there’s slow down.
– They make money from the aggregated data collected about your browsing habits. It doesn’t mean more advertising popups, as you might think.
– They don’t *guaranty* a website is not a malicious.

The guys mentioned a couple of sites that are a throwback to earlier days in computing. <See the links at the top.> Telehack is not so much a webpage but looks like a “terminal into a console”, Paul said. It uses Linux to make it look like a main frame computer from the late 1970s — in particular it looks like a operating system known as Galaxy that ran on a PDP 1091 or PDP 11.

One of the things you can do on Telehack is type ‘eliza’ and it will run an old program by that name that’s an early attempt at interactive psychological analysis.

Paul briefly noted that Youtube now has a subscription service called Youtube Red to provide movies.

The other nostalgic website is Textfiles.com. It gives you the experience of old bulletin boards. It allows you to download plain, unembellished ASCII text files.

One of the files Paul ran across at Textfiles is about Phil Katz who, circa 1970s, came up with a file compression program called Pkzip, which improved on the .zip compression scheme.

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

Dan from Coloma called. He recently updated his iPhone to IOS 11 and now he notices periodic increases in the data being transferred — on the order of a third of a gigabyte. At other times it can be 2 gigs over the space of 11 minutes. All of this with out doing anything.
– Paul thought it might be updates being done over the cellular connection. You can restrict updates to only using wi-fi and avoid being charged by the phone company. Dan doesn’t have wi-fi at home.
– Paul said the Verizon site has an accounting of when the data is transferred, though it’s 4 to 8 hours after the fact.
– Paul thought it might be because he uses iCloud Photos. Dan said he turned off all of the iCloud stuff. Google Photos can also spontaneously synch up the data.
– Take your phone to a wi-fi hotspot (e.g. a coffee shop) and then do a check for updates to the IOS. The updates are usually big — on the order of 1.8gig. The automatic updates on the iPhone can happen without warning or asking for permission.
– Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Mobile’ (or ‘Cellular’) and you’ll see what items are allowed to use the cellular network. Turn off anything you don’t need. While there, you can see how much data is used by each app. And at the bottom, you can “reset statistics” — handy to use at the start of a billing period.
– Dan asked if it might be a virus. Paul said it’s possible but improbable.
– Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Personal Hotspot’ and keep it off. Dan checked and his was on. So it’s possible some other device was using the hotspot. In particular, Windows 10 may have been using up a lot of data.
– Dan asked if it’s possible to go back to Windows 7. Paul said Microsoft gives you a month to do that but they don’t really want you to. Dan is stuck with using cellular as a hotspot for his Windows computer — he has no other broadband. Paul suggested he take it to some free wi-fi location to let Windows do its updates.
– Dan has gotten some relief from Verizon. They’ve increased his data cap a couple of times — up to 16gigs/mo. That was recently and he’s waiting to see if that’ll be adequate.
– Check with local companies that can provide an internet connection for your computer using terrestrial wireless — aka wireless isp — so you won’t have to use the phone as a hotspot. Check with Smarter Broadband, for instance.
– Go into Windows 10 and turn off “metered connections” or turn off wi-fi entirely <so it won’t use the phone as a hotspot>.
– Call Adam Brodel of Smarter Broadband for any suggestions he may have, even a competitor, if he can’t provide the service. Glenn did a quick search and wondered if Blaze Wifi might be an option. <I’m not sure I heard “Blaze” correctly.>

Last Updated 1:49 AM 12-28-2017

/a

A Bit about the Blockchain & Bitcoin

Raspberry Pi– Arduino…

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 music was by Pentatonix.

The outro music was Fractal Zoom by Brian Eno

Paul was in the studio. Glenn called in from a Starbucks in San Jose.

Paul’s “been up all night” messing around with the Raspberry Pi & Arduino. He thinks they would be a good gift for the teenage nerd in the family.

Newer cars have the ability to display the tire pressure on the dash. Now there are valve caps for older cars that constantly monitor tire pressure and report the data via Bluetooth. One such valve cap is the FOBO System.

Paul also noted that most modern cars have a temperature sensor mounted near the road surface to warn of near freezing conditions and the possibility of road ice. But he wondered if the distraction of watching all of this info being displayed negates the margin of safety provided.

Glenn invited listeners to write with their questions and comments to zen at kvmr dot org.

The most useful in-car system he’s seen for older cars is an Android dashboard. It’s a 6″ diagonal rectangular screen. On more modern cars, you can take out the radio and put the Android dashboard in its place. “The proper size for the original car radio was called 1 Din, which is a German standard for the height of the radio. 2 Din means double height and a 6″ screen will fit in there.” With Android you can add various apps like GPS and speedometer. You can retrofit whole bunch of useful stuff, which is what Paul has done. From what I understand, the Android dashboard can read and display info from external sensors like the tire valve caps.

<I’m not sure this is what he was talking about, but it seems close…
The Complete Guide to Android Auto – Google Maps, voice commands, messaging, and more in your car:
Or this
You no longer have to buy a new car or stereo to use Android Auto>

When you shop for an Android dashboard, pay attention to the exact size, Paul said. Hopefully, the retailer will have the dimensions on their website.

Some years ago, Paul bought himself a digital caliper (LCD caliper) from Harbor Freight in Roseville for $10 to assist in accurately measuring dimensions. As he recalled, the accuracy is claimed to be about 1/3 to 1/4 of a millimeter.

Talk turned to Bitcoin, a type of virtual currency. If you want to trade in Bitcoins you’ll have to use an exchange, similar to using an exchange if you want to convert dollars to yen. One popular licensed broker is Coinbase, but there are others.

People think using Bitcoins allows you to be anonymous. But the anonymity is questionable because in some places, like California, you have to provide personal information to the broker. “Neither the buyer nor the seller nor the transaction can be associated with you, but it can be identified,” Paul said. In other words, in the entire Bitcoin network, a transaction is visible but not necessarily the person who did it. However it is possible to track it back to the broker (Coinbase, for instance).

Paul said people are mortgaging their houses to invest in Bitcoin. Be diligent. It’s a highly speculative market. Glenn chimed in to say that it’s like gambling and is a very risky bet, in his opinion. Paul said he learned from the book titled “Black Swan” that this sort speculation is based entirely on psychology and perception and not at all on statistics or reality.

Paul mentioned that Bitcoin works on a system called a blockchain, which is a ledger or inventory of transactions. He said he’ll put up a link on the Zen Tech site to an animated diagram of how blockchain works.

Paul said he goes to thrift stores occasionally. He picked up a replacement remote control at one place recently because he doesn’t like universal remotes. He said all sorts of tech stuff is showing up at thrift stores. At many stores you can get store credit if you buy a gadget and it doesn’t work. Glenn noted that some thrift stores specialize in certain categories of merchandise.

Paul found a good location for recycled auto parts and it’s in Rancho Cordova. He said to google the words: recycle road rancho cordova. About the only thing you can’t find at these auto dismantlers are air bags, for legal reasons.

Brian called. He just bought an ASUS laptop with Windows 10. It came with a 1 terabyte mechanical hard drive and an empty slot for a second drive. So he bought a 275 gig solid state drive (SSD) to put in it. Now he’s not sure how to get the operating system to run off the SSD and use the original 1 terabyte drive for data.
– The problem is copying a bigger drive to the smaller one.
– It’s possible the software you need transfer the operating system came with the new SSD drive.
– Before you install the 2nd drive, unplug the power and take out the laptops battery.
– Glenn wondered if he could use the ‘restore function’ in Win10 and point it toward the new drive. Paul said it might work but he wasn’t sure. He said to call the computer company.

Buzz, the KVMR engineer, was listening to the show and came into the studio with a suggestion. It’s a method he’s used before. This may not be the only way, but it works. He suggested Clonezilla, which is a low level of Linux that uses a function called ‘dd’ to copy a drive. To copy from a larger to a smaller drive there is an option in Win10 to change the partition size of the drive. You can shrink the partition of the 1 terabyte drive to the same size of the smaller drive. You can even do this with the 2nd drive connected via the USB port, if you don’t have space for a 2nd drive inside the laptop. Google the words: shrink partiton windows 10.
<More about Clonezilla here>

Also, there is software called Easeus Free Partition Magic, Paul said. It’s a bit tricky and he didn’t go into it, but said there are some pitfalls.

Glenn said the Win10 operating system might already be in its own, smaller partition on the 1 terabyte drive. Look under “My Computer” to see what drives you have. You might have a C: drive and a much larger D: drive. And the C: drive will have the operating system. From his experience, Glenn said ASUS has an excellent tech support and suggested calling them. Brian had a look and found there was only 1 partition.

Paul said something he meant to say a few shows ago. If you lose Win10 on your laptop and you have a sticker on the machine or you know Win10 is already registered, you can download Win10 from the internet and burn a CD with it. So if you want to experiment with methods of transferring the OS, there would still be a way of recovering Win10.

The same thing is true for Winows 7 users. Be sure you use the Microsoft site to download it. Microsoft will want you to type in the number (key) on the sticker a.k.a. the COA (certificate of authenticity).

Brian also asked for a local technician that can help him. Paul said there’s Quiet Tech and Roy’s Computers. He asked Brian to send an email and he’ll reply with a list of local techs.

Dan called. <His audio was terrible.> He has a Dell laptop from 1998 that he upgraded to Windows 7. He wondered what using an iPad 2 is like. The audio was so bad Paul had to end the conversation. Glenn asked Dan to write in with his question — zen at kvmr dot org.

Next show will have an interview of someone who knows more about Bitcoin.

Last Updated 12:16 AM 12-14-2017

Arduino

3rd. Wednesday in the Month!
Raspberry PI & KODI– oh and a Teeny Keyboard, Too!
Failed High Sierra Update?
Wordpress– How?!
SonOff WIFI Controlled Devices!
Symptoms of a Dead SMC/BIOS battery
Prime Tests

Recycle Road, SAC

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.

Glenn started out by telling us about the cataract surgery he had about a year ago, which was followed by corrective surgery. He now has mono vision and doesn’t need reading glasses. One of his eyes is set for close-up vision, the other for further out. He can read well out to about 12″. Recently, he went to see the Thor movie in 3D but realized he’ll need glasses to get both eyes to focus at a distance.

Paul told us that the call letters ‘KVMR’ stand for Victoria Museum Radio. The ‘K’ means that it’s a West Coast station. After mentioning that KVMR has audio podcasts, he went on to talk more about podcasts, including videos.

Years ago he used to listen to Science Friday audio podcasts. Science Friday originated from The Canadian Broadcast Corp. They now produce video podcasts and Paul thinks they’re great. To find them, he said to search for the words: cbc science friday videocast.
< I’m not sure these are what Paul found, but they’re pretty good too — here and here>

He implied it was one of these videos that talked about cochlear implants. Earlier implants would regain about 30% of the hearing. The newer ones containing a microprocessor that increases the understanding of normal speech by 80%.

Paul mentioned that colorblind people have difficulty discerning the correct balance of red & green colors. Capuchin monkeys have been used in experiments where a virus is used to insert a gene into the eyes that restores the color receptors needed for the proper detection of color. Apparently it works in monkeys but hasn’t been tried in humans yet. He learned this from another Science Friday videocast, if I heard him correctly.

Paul said Youtube has a channel explaining how things are made. For example, use their search facility to find out how donuts holes are made using the search term: donuts how it’s made. I think the catch phrase is “how it’s made”.

Glenn said he likes the new operating system IOS 11 on his iPhone but isn’t thrilled with the keyboard on his iPad. He didn’t specifically say he upgraded the iPad to IOS 11, but I guess that’s implied.

He uses the feature that turns off notifications while he’s driving. The phone senses movement from driving to implement the feature. Glenn said use ‘Settings’ -> scroll down just a bit to “notifications control center do not disturb” to turn it on. Paul said version 8 of Android (named Oreo) also has this feature.

The guys talked about the new Firefox browser. Glenn said he doesn’t like the black tabs, with the only white tab representing the windows you’re looking at. That’s the only thing he’s noticed that’s new.

Paul said that around version 6 Firefox started putting out updates rapidly and versions jumped by whole numbers. It’s now up to about version 60 and has taken on a version name that he couldn’t remember. <I think it’s version 57 and is called Quantum.> It’s been completely rewritten under the hood but you don’t have to learn a lot of new stuff, he said.

Nobody makes 32bit CPUs anymore, they’re all 64bit now. Firefox used to be available in both versions but is now only for the 64bit machines. “32bit Firefox is still out there. It won’t work in XP. It won’t work in older Macs, which are 32bit. But if you have a new machine, which is 32bit, you can still get Firefox. It tends to rely on the underlying operating system. So if you got Windows 7, you’re going to get the latest Firefox even if it’s the older 32bit. Don’t worry about it,” Paul said.

<If you go to mozilla.org with your browser’s style sheets (CSS) turned off, you should see the links to the older Windows OS versions of Firefox, including XP. I’ve downloaded (but not yet installed v52.5 for XP). The actual 43.4meg .exe file is here.>

There are a couple of ways to upgrade, it will either do it automatically or you can go to the ‘Help’ menu -> ‘About Firefox’. “If it is not up in the 60 region and there is no button that says ‘update’ a couple of things could have happened. One is you are the unfortunate that has a machine that is too old to upgrade any further, especially if it says el1 or ec1, it means end of life or end or cycle. It means that you’re looking at version 40 something and it won’t go any higher. If you try and download it manually, it will not allow you to install it,” Paul said in his sometimes inscrutable manner. <He didn’t say what the second thing is.> <As I said, I haven’t tried to install v52.5, but suspect it will.>

When you go to install version 60 something, it will perform a clean install while saving your bookmarks and history, Paul said. It throws away the cache. To find out more about what’s going on, go to ‘Help’ -> ‘Trouble Shooting Information’. He said the new Firefox gained about 50% in speed and it works a lot better and it works with his plugins. <I heard some old plugins don’t work.>
<New Firefox Quantum Twice as Fast, 30% Less Memory:
Firefox 57 to Kill Many Addons: Tab Groups Alternative>

Glenn invited listeners to write with their questions and comments to zen at kvmr dot org.

Glenn said the old X10 and DSR home control units don’t work properly to dim LED light bulbs. There are control units called Sonoff that do work and the guys ordered some from Ebay. Soon after, the company disappeared and the guys have to apply for a refund. If you get into a similar situation with Ebay, go look at your order and on that page you can apply for a refund.

Paul found another source for the Sonoff switches. They plug into the wall outlet. Then you plug what you want to control into the switch. They have wi-fi and can be controlled directly by your mobile device. If you create an account, you can control them from anywhere you have an internet connection using a proxy server in China.
<Sonoff Wi-Fi Smart Light Switch,Works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home ,No Hub Required, Remote Control your Devices from Anywhere:>

For added security, Paul suggested creating a guest account on your in-house network that the switches will use. That will keep the switches separate from your normal network that you use for computers, mobiles, printers, etc.

A Sonoff unit has a programmable timer so you can set it to turn lights on an off according to a schedule. Paul uses one to switch his patio lights in this way. Glenn said they are about $23 on Ebay.

The Raspbery Pi and Arduino can talk to a Sonoff, too. Paul said they are great for kids to learn programming and build projects. There are knock-offs from China that are around $10, but you may have to download some software to get them to talk your computer.

Glenn noted that the only Sonoff units on Ebay at this time are the type that you have to put in-line in a wire (like an extension cord), not the type you plug into a wall socket. Be careful of the polarity (proper grounding) when you do the wiring. <See below.>

Arnie called. He had bad experience when he had a Mac Mini and did an upgrade only to find out that the software he’d been using no longer worked. So he recently bought a Dell PC and is looking for video editing software that’s easy to use but has a good compliment of features.
– Microsoft Movie Creator is free. It’s pretty simple to use and Paul’s had success with it. It supports .mov and .wmv files. BE SURE you download it from the Microsoft site.
– You might also consider getting VLC. It’s free and plays and converts many formats of audio and video.
– There’s also Adobe Premiere and a cut down version called Adobe Premiere Elements. But they might be more than you need.
– Use Youtube for videos of how to use these programs. Search for something like “how to slow a movie down” or “how to create subtitles”.
– Paul looked up Adobe Premiere Elements and found a cyber Monday deal for $60. Be sure you’re not buying the subscription version where you pay yearly to use the software online — get the downloadable version (or CD).
– Glenn said the cyber Monday deal expires today. The regular price is $99. The combo of Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements package is $150.
<I CAN’T VOUCH FOR THIS SITE. If you have an older Windows OS check this out.>

Alan Stahler called with some info about the polarity of wires/plugs (mentioned above). The broad blade of a plug is neutral and it’s connected to the white wire. Short (narrow) blade goes with the black wire. The green wire goes to the ground. He also said that disabling (cutting off) the third prong off a plug is a bad idea, especially for outdoor use. It’s there to keep you from being electrocuted.

Bob called with a tip for people with Windows 10. He’s encountered a problem right after a Windows 10 upgrade. The problem is “the display resolution goes to 640 X 480 and the 1920 X 1080 is not available for you.” So the display was crappy. The fix was to do a restore to a restore point just before the upgrade. Apparently, when the upgrade installed the next time, his problem didn’t return. He suspected Microsoft had a bad upgrade package and replaced it, so his second try was fine.

Paul said some people have experienced failure during the upgrade to the latest version of the Apple operating system called High Sierra v11.13. Their machines “blacked out and went squitty”, he said. The solution he offered is that when starting, up hold down the Command key & R keys. That makes it use a recovery partition and you’ll have enough function to go online and use Safari and perform a disk check and reload the operating system.

Glenn said the Flea Market is back to it’s regular schedule and will be on tomorrow.

Last Updated 12:10 AM 11-30-2017

) turned off, you should see the links to the older Windows OS versions of Firefox, including XP. I’ve downloaded (but not yet installed v52.5 for XP). The actual 43.4meg .exe file is

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: there will be another Zen Tech show next Wednesday (11-29-17)

Both Glenn and Paul were in the studio today.

Glenn talked about upgrading his iPhone 6S to IOS 11 after doing a backup. For 2 weeks he kept putting off giving the final ok for the upgrade, but woke up this morning to find the upgrade had completed. He didn’t know why that happened without his permission. Paul thought that was “naughty” and added that to this day there are lawsuits pending by people who were upgraded from Win7 or Win8 to Win10 unwillingly.

Glenn said he likes IOS 11 so far. “When you push phone, everything is a little different and a little larger. The same thing on messages”. He said the fonts are bigger. And the copy, cut and paste is simpler than the previous IOS, which had different levels of how hard you ‘push’ for each function. Paul, who upgraded to IOS 11 previously, said the performance seems better and Glenn agreed.

Glenn wasn’t so happy with the upgrade to the High Sierra operating system on his Mac Mini. He said that yesterday it was running slowly. He thought it might be because he didn’t do a restart after the upgrade finished. Paul said he’s noticed something similar with other operating systems after they upgrade. The new system needs to do some maintenance before it starts running normally. Somewhere around version 10.12, the filing system was changed and there was a delay before the performance recovered, but then it improved over the previous OS.

Both Windows and the Mac do what’s called indexing, where a database of the files on the machine is built for quicker access in the future, Paul said. When you plug in another hard drive or a flash drive, an index is also built and is stored in a hidden file called .spotlight on the Mac and .index (so he thought) on Windows. The user can set whether a drive is indexed.

Paul talked about online or cloud backups. He said he doesn’t “trust” them. The internet connection speed is a fraction of the network speed that you have at home, which is a fraction of the speed of a local USB or hard drive. 16 gigs of data can take a very long time to backup online. Some people just manually backup the most critical files, not the entire drive. But then you don’t have the convenience of an automated backup system. <He didn’t explain what he meant by ‘trust’. Maybe it was a poorly chosen word.>

Paul said he uses Rsync to synchronize and do incremental backups. It has a graphical user interface. It’s available on all major platforms (PC, Linux, Android, Mac and others). He said it’s important to practice restoring your data. A backup is no good to you if you can’t restore it.

Years ago there was a backup program called Norton Ghost that would take a snapshot of your entire hard drive, which you could recreate later on another drive. The down side is that you could recreate the drive only on the machine from which the snapshot was taken. “That’s almost completely useless”, he said.

On the PC, the data that’s important is located under ‘Documents and Settings’ for the XP, and under ‘Users’ on later Windows systems. On the Mac go to ‘Mac Hard Drive’ -> ‘Users’ where you’ll find folders with names of those who have a login account on the machine. The data you’ll find in these places is what needs backing up. It will contain things like Word documents and photos but not the applications themselves, so keep track of where you keep your software programs. Paul mentioned another sync program called Free File Sync.
<I can’t vouch for this: Free Norton Ghost Alternatives to Create a Full Windows Image …:>

Increasingly, people are getting their applications from the internet. Paul mentioned that Turbo Tax is a 56meg download from intuit.com. If you lose a hard drive, you can just to Intuit and download it again.

Paul cautioned listeners that when they throw their laptops into a bag, be sure to first disconnect the peripherals (hard drives, USB sticks, etc.). Otherwise, the force of the bag on the connectors can damage them. The Mac has a magnetic connector that just slides off if there’s an unusual force put on it. Glenn said he had found an adapter that plugs into the lightning port of the iPhone that provides a similar magnetic connection. He’s been very happy with it.

Next, Paul talked about inductive charging (wireless charging). The standard that was developed a number of years ago is called Qi. <Discussed on the 11-16-14 show.> Of the iPhones, Glenn thought only the iPhone 10 has inductive charging.

The way it works is that there’s a coil in the phone an one on the your table that’s plugged in to the wall socket, and you place the phone on the coil to get the charge. Paul’s Nexus tablet <circa 2013> has the ability to charge inductively. It charges at low frequency (less than 60Hz, he thought) and the field doesn’t go very far. He has to position the tablet directly on the coil.

Alan Stahler, who hosts Soundings, came into the studio and raised some philosophical issues about how much we need computers. He facetiously questioned Glenn and Paul, what will you do when the bubble bursts and people throw away their computers. Paul noted that those of us from the pre-computer generation were more likely to have been educated in critical thinking. He thought it wasn’t being cultivated in this digital age, and without computers, the younger generations would be in trouble.

Paul said the 1st use of word ‘computer’ applied to women who computed trajectories of NASA missions. He’s seen a competition between someone using an abacus and someone using a calculator. The abacus user won.

Talk turned to multitasking and parallel processing. Paul described most modern processors as having at least 2 cores and at least 2 sets of hyper threads, giving you 4 jobs going on at once. There’s also a hardware arbitrator that decides who should be given what to do, and the jobs run in parallel.

The guys rambled on about how some people are tactile, others are visual and how we learn. On a previous occasion, the 3 guys discussed how dogs learn and how it’s possible to breed dogs not just for their appearance but also for their attributes (hunting skills or digging skills). Paul once asked a dog trainer how dogs are trained and got the reply that you don’t train the dog, you cultivate what it already has.

Glenn said Elon Musk <of Tesla> announced some new products. There are 2 different tractor trailers with a 500 mile range, recharge to 85% in 35 minutes or 100% in an hour and have a low drag coefficient. There’s also a roadster with a 600 mile range, accelerates 0 to 60 in 1.2 seconds and possibly an accessory to make it fly.

KVMR’s news director Paul Emery came into the studio. He was motivated by the question about our computers going away. He noted that neutron bombs can destroy silicon chips by inducing high currents in them. He’s heard that the highest levels of the US government have vacuum tube communication systems that don’t contain silicon chips. A neutron bomb may temporarily knock out a tube but it will return to a functional state. Alan said that a couple of decades ago a Soviet pilot defected with a fighter aircraft and it was discovered to have tube-based circuits.

Alan mentioned the Hyperloop, which is a container carrying passengers that rides in an evacuated tube to cut air resistance. Supposedly, it could travel as fast as a 747. It’s being tested now.

On that note, it’s been calculated that a 747 with a full load of passengers while flying at a high altitude has mileage as good (miles per gallon) as a compact car with 1 person. Paul noted that if you double the speed at which a car goes, the air resistance quadruples.

Paul mentioned that energy of motion can be conserved and then used again. Years ago in Britain, trams (streetcars) going downhill would have their kinetic energy harvested and converted to electricity, which helps to slow it down. The electricity would then be used to power a tram going uphill. The conversion is not 100% efficient. Hybrid vehicles, like Glenn’s car, do something similar. When slowing down, they convert the energy of the braking process to charge the battery, giving it great mileage

Glenn invited listeners to write with their questions and comments to zen at kvmr dot org.

He also said that there will be no Flea Market tomorrow.

Last Updated 12:07 AM 11-23-2017