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 < >

The intro music was by Pentatonix.

Paul was in the studio. Glenn called in from the Bay Area. There were other KVMR personnel in the studio who remained pretty quiet during the show.

March 14 from noon (maybe 11am) to 4pm will be the official celebration of the new KVMR facility at 120 Bridge Steet. The public is invited

The Zentech show is made possible in part by Quietech Associates. They've been providing local tech support since 1985.
They're at 465 South Auburn Street Grass Valley

Glenn is still using IOS 7.1 on both his iPhone & iPad and has not upgraded to version 8.1 yet. His iPad is continuing to do updates but the iPhone has stopped updating because it's not using IOS 8.1.

Paul got a PCI diagnostic board (link above) from China for $13. PCI is a hardware standard specifying the way in which cards (circuit boards) are inserted into a slot in a computer's motherboard.

The diagnostic board, when put into one of the PCI slots, will display error codes generated by the computer when there is a problem. You can then look up the meaning of the codes online. It can report errors even if the computer is largely dead — as long as there are signals on the PCI lines. It also indicates the state of the power supply voltages.

The ATX power supply, that's widely used in today's computers, has a special line along which it sends a signal to the motherboard telling it that the power is good. Only then does the motherboard "fire up".

Lyle called. He accidentally lost the contacts on his iPhone. He also has an iPad where a copy of the contacts is still intact. And he's using the cloud <presumably iCloud>.
– On the iPad go to the settings (cog-shaped icon) and check to see if you have only one account on iCloud. Both iPhone & iPad have to be using the same account <as I understand it>.
– The iPhone may have "disconnected" from the iCloud account.
– Be careful. If you synchronize the iPhone without its contacts, it may clear the contacts off the cloud. Paul didn't explain further.
– Glenn suggested he call Apple for help to be sure he doesn't lose his contacts altogether.

Glenn said he was surprised to find out that Bluetooth speakers are not stereo. Paul said he's read up on Bluetooth recently and it "doesn't have a lot of facilities to make high quality audio". That's mainly because it's subject to "interference and fade". But he has indeed seen Bluetooth stereo speakers.
<The transmitting device & speakers must both have the A2DP profile for stereo to work>

Paul mentioned KVMR's podcast. Go to kvmr.org and click the 'Listen' button. You'll find podcasts of various shows, some going back about 5 years. <They are mostly talk shows. There are copyright issues with music shows, so you won't find many podcasts for them>

Paul talked a little more about the diagnostic board he bought. Unlike his old PCI board, this one displays the actual voltages coming from the power supply. The ATX power supply of the computer does a self-check after the voltage has some time to stabilize. "The on/off switch of the computer is not actually a power switch at all. It's a signal to the power supply: "we're good to go"". When you plug the power supply into the diagnostic board, the board itself gives the go ahead signal for the power supply to power up.

Paul then talked about smart meters — the kind used for domestic gas & electricity monitoring. He saw a $99 offer by PG&E for an in-home device to show electricity usage. That set him on learning adventure about the wireless technology used by smart meters.
– They use a protocol called Zigbee. The word comes from the dance honey bees use to tell the other bees where the nectar is. The bees learn the information and pass it on from one bee to the next.
– The Zigbee is a mesh network where each power meter relays information to a nearby meter, and that one to the next one. Somewhere in your neighborhood is a master router.
– The Zigbee protocol use encryption to keep the info secure.
– The protocol consumes little power, transmits intermittently (not continuously) and very little data is transmitted. So there should be no concern about the effects of radio frequency radiation from the meters.
– The information gleaned from the data allows power companies to monitor for voltage spikes, brownouts, outages, etc.
– There are units using Zigbee for other types of in-home monitoring — e.g. monitoring the temperature of the butter in your refrigerator. One such proprietary device is called Nova sold by Home Depot.
<A Zigbee tutorial here.>

Ross called to ask Paul if he actually got the $99 unit from PG&E. Paul said he didn't and that he's been trying to find a cheaper way to do it.

Ross also said that a SIM card maker in Holland was hacked by the NSA and a similar agency in England. The codes that allow the SIM cards to generate a cipher were stolen. He didn't hear anything more about it since the initial report and wondered of Paul knew anything about it. Apparently this is the first Paul's heard of it.
<NSA helped British steal cell phone codes from Gemalto, the world’s biggest manufacturer of SIM cards, a couple of articles here, here and here >

Ross said that someone in <our> government said there had been a ten-year effort to create an X code <OSX I guess> to mimic the Mac computer code <operating system>. Supposedly they were successful and now they are able to insert bogus apps that spy on people. Paul thought he might have been talking about the MAC address.

Ross also mentioned a "shark device" that can spoof a cell phone tower. Using it, the police can make a cell phone think it's connected to a legitimate tower while spying on people by recording the data being transmitted. <Sounds like he was talking about the Stingray aka IMSI catcher >
– Ross heard that the Stingray collects data even if the phone is off.
– Paul said that in standby mode a cell phone still communicates with the tower. If you turn the phone off completely they won't be able to intercept your data, Paul said.
<Some articles about the stingray devices here.>
<An app to detect a Stingray device
The download link for the app>

Last update 10:37 PM 3/11/2015

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 < >

The intro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Glenn & Paul were in the studio today.

This afternoon, between 3 & 4pm, KVMR will move into their new studios across the street..
– The email addresses will remain the same.
– The fax number will be the same. The station uses the Myfax service, which for a small fee, up to 100 incoming faxes per month are distributed to a maximum of 5 email addresses as .pdf files.
– The phone numbers will also stay the same but the extension numbers have changed. The new system has 4 digit numbers, though the last 2 digits will still be the same, for most extensions.
– The new phone system is largely voice over IP (VOIP).

Paul mentioned a curious thing about phone numbers. "A long time ago, if you were dialing an area code somewhere else, you'd put a 1 in front of it. In the days of manual exchanges, 1 would attempt to make an automated call. If you put a 0 in front of it, the operator at the other end would receive the phone number you made and route it for you".

The guys reminisced about the days of rotary dial telephones. In Britain they have STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialing). And their emergency number is 999 (the equivalent of our 911). The higher digits were to prevent misdialing on rotary phones (with pulse dialing), if you had a sporadic line or interference.

Marilyn called. She bought an anti-virus program and it came with a bonus tune-up disk. She had some reservations about running it and wanted an opinion first.
– Just because it came with the anti-virus program doesn't mean the company endorses it. The disk could be from another company partnering with the 1st one.

Marilyn said her computer is starting to slow down and wondered if a cleanup is what's needed.
– A proper tune-up will make it go faster, in Paul's opinion. Whether it's worth the cost & effort is not always clear.
– The longer it's been without a tune-up, the bigger difference it will make.
– Glenn agreed but said proceed with caution if you're going to use an online service.
– The Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus is no longer recommended for protection.
– A suite of programs that Paul likes for a tune-up includes Ccleaner, Eusing, and Ntregopt.
– Ccleaner is donation driven and donations have been dismal. "So they're strongly motivated to do something I really don't like, which is they sometimes deliver a newer version with a payload, which will be a toolbar that you don't want", Paul said. Then, when you install it, there'll be a tiny button <or check box> to skip the installation. But it may not be clear if it's to skip the installation of the toolbar or the program itself. <Paul didn't explain the advantage to the company in doing this and the only thing I can think of is that someone is paying them for including the toolbar>
– Paul, as well as KVMR, is using Avast as an anti-virus. "It's quite good at spotting these silly toolbars".
– Ccleaner is used widely and has a reputation to maintain.
<Not as important as the other two, Ntregopt does registry optimization for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP. Here's one place you can get it

Read where it says "BleepingComputer Review:" before using the program>

Tim called. He has a friend with an email problem on a Mac. When she uses a free wi-fi service, the email can be sent ok. But she can't send email while using her in-home wi-fi.
– Many years ago the standard port for sending email was port 25. The problem is that the port "allows unauthenticated or unverified emails to get out", so "it was exploited and used in evil ways". If she's had this account for a long time, the odds are high it was set up to use port 25 to send the email. Some providers no longer support this port — e.g. AT&T or Comcast.
– Contact the free wi-fi provider. Explain the situation to them and they may be able to make a quick change to resolve the problem.
<Here's what Comcast has to say about no longer supporting port 25 for email. It lists other providers who don't use port 25>

Michael called. He uses a Windows XP Professional, which Microsoft no longer supports, and he wondered if there's after market support for it or should he be thinking about getting a new computer.
– You'll have to get a new computer when this one gives up the ghost or becomes unstable.
– Up until a few weeks ago, many of the computers at KVMR were running XP, even though support ended in April 2014.
– Again, don't use Microsoft Essentials on it. Avast & Avg are good anti-virus program and are still available for XP.
– Don't use the Internet Explorer browser. It's always had problems. Michael uses Chrome and Paul said it sometimes doesn't update itself. Go to settings and initiate the update manually. Paul thinks Chrome may be more secure and leaner than Firefox.
– Getting back to his question, Paul knows of no after market support for XP.
– Consider refurbished computers. You can get them with Windows 7 for well under $200 and you can use your existing keyboard, monitor and mouse. It should have a 1-year warranty and you can add a year by using a credit card.

Michael said that recently his XP has had trouble booting to Windows. It goes to the Dos like screen with the options for 'recovery', 'console' or 'Windows XP'. It does this a few times in a row even though he keeps picking 'Windows XP'.
– Paul said back up the computer right away, it may be close to dying completely.

Michael asked about using the drive from his old machine with the new one.
– Glenn said you can get an enclosure costing $15 to $40, put the drive into it and use it as an external hard drive.

Paul said you can install a version of Linux from a bootable CD on an old machine. That should overwrite and sensitive data and you'll end up with a useable machine. <First, make sure you've transferred or backed up the data>.

Evan called. He recently moved to a new location in Grass Valley and the only internet he can get is with a satellite service, which he thinks is terrible. There is a good signal in his area from AT&T wireless and he's seen people selling their own unlimited data plans <for AT&T> on Ebay. Paul was surprised that AT&T allows people to transfer these old and no longer available data plans to another individual. Evan said this is true of similar Verizon data plans, which go for about $1000 on Ebay (and then you take over the monthly contract). Evan plans to check the speed of the AT&T wireless service using his sister's phone, when she comes to visit him. Paul said there's an app called Speedtest he can use. Check the speed in the evening too, when many people use the service at the same time.

Other terrestrial wireless services near Nevada City to consider: Smarter Broadband; Spiral Internet and Digital Path. Expect there to be a cap on the data, except with Digital Path. Also check out ColfaxNet.

Anama called to say she has the Smarter Broadband service and likes it alot. "they're wonderful", she said.

Last update 11:01 PM 2/25/2015

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 < >

Podcasts of some Zentech shows are here.

Both Paul & Glenn were in the studio today

Paul talked about how the internet has made it easier to find gifts for the holidays. Some people say it's too easy. We quickly spend our money rather than spend the time shopping. "The thing of value, which is time, has been replaced by the thing of indifference, which is money", he said.

Paul went on to tell us one of the most profound things he's learned on the internet. He talked about a hospice nurse who, for 20 or 30 years, had been helping people at the end of their lives. She conveyed what she learned was of value to her patients. There were 2 things the patients considered valuable — love and relationships. And there were regrets that most shared…
– People said they wish they hadn't worked so hard.
– People wished they had told those close to them that they loved them.
– They wished they had used their time better.
– And they wished they had spent more time with those who mattered to them.

On this last point Paul opined that we've made such an effort to make our lives so efficient that our lives have gotten cluttered up with trivia <to the exclusion of spending time with loved ones>.

Glenn had an update about his Ring.to phone service <mentioned on the last show >. It doesn't transcribe incoming calls, like he had thought. However, it does send him a text message with the voice mail audio attached.

One of the reasons he went to Ring.to was to maintain ownership of his phone number when he terminated his NetTalk account. The services Ring.to offers are free for now. On the next show, Glenn plans to explain how they can offer the service for free.

Paul noted that viral marketing could be the reason companies give things away for free. Word-of-mouth is worth a lot in terms of advertising.

Paul mentioned that he was unhappy with Freedom Pop <mentioned on the 10-9-13 show>. The company sells you a mi-fi unit for about $20 so you can have a wireless hotspot to use with a laptop or tablet. In his case they couldn't activate it because there was no 4G cellular service in his area. They said if he wanted to use it with 3G, he'd have to pay $3.95/mo. He decided to give it a try, but 2 problems came up.
– He took the unit to San Francisco, where 4G was available, but couldn't use the 4G because the plan he was now paying for was only for 3G.
– The 2nd problem was that they started charging him $10/mo for some mysterious reason, in spite of the check mark on their website that said "do not auto-decrement my credit card". He eventually got the money back.

Betsie called to let us know about youmail.com. The service sends your phone's voice mail to you as an audio file. The service is free and their webpage has mobile apps available for Android and Apple devices. The company tries to sell you related services, which you're not obligated to buy.

Paul talked about having Coryon Redd on the show previously and he had suggestions for promoting yourself or business on social media sites. The key sites were Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.
– Facebook is like going to the pub or bar where you have your familial clan relationship with up to maybe 160 people. Facebook reflects a clan structure where you have a reasonable familiarity with up to 160 friends.
– Linkedin is your professional network, though it's lost some relevance lately.
– Twitter's structure is more like people around the water cooler where you hear about the latest news or gossip.

Paul talked about a trip to the bay area and his experience with the tolls on the various bridges. Going South on the Golden Gate there was no one collecting a toll. But about a week later he received a notice in the mail asking him to pay the toll.

That got Glenn talking about the FasTrak.
– As long as you have some money on deposit, $25 he thought, it doesn't cost anything to use.
– When you use a toll bridge, the toll is deducted from the account.
– Some places in southern California allow you to use the HOV lane with the FasTrak.
– FasTrak can be used anywhere in California.
– There are no toll takers on the Golden Gate at all. You can use FasTrak or a picture is taken of your license plate when you pass thru — as Paul found out.
– If you go thru in a rental car without a FasTrak, the rental car company will charge you about $25 — for the toll + service fee.
– The FasTrak is a transponder that you can get from Costco.
– The down side is that your location can be tracked <and used against you in court>. Some Bay Area residents have proposed using Bitcoins, instead of credit cards, for anonymity.
– You can associate 1 or more cars with a FasTrak so if, for some reason, it malfunctioned at a toll plaza, you would not be penalized for a violation.

While talking about the anonymity of Bitcoin, Paul said people have been putting "wheresgeorge.com" on $1 & $10 bills. If you go to that site, you can see where these dollar bills have been.

Neil called in. He had called a couple of months ago about getting a blank screen for some websites when using Internet Explorer. At that time, it was suggested he restore the IE settings to their factory defaults. <See the notes for the 11-26-14 show>. He said the suggestion worked.

At that time it was also suggested he use a different browser. He tried Firefox but didn't like it. He tried Chrome and it was working fine. But then he went back to using IE and it was loading pages like he was on a bad dialup connection <slow>.
– Having used Chrome would not cause such a problem.
– There are 2 ways to check additional settings in Internet explorer: using either the Control Panel -> Internet Options, or using Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Programs -> Manage Addons. There you'll find other addons that got installed. "Anything you don't understand, kill it". You can't remove the items, just click the 'disable' button.
– If you use Spybot Search and Destroy, you can kill 'browser helper objects'.
– Neil said he had done a system restore to get it to work right.

William called. He had been using Ccleaner. <They talked at the same time so I couldn't make out what his problem was>. Paul seemed to hear him ok and the problem had something to do with passwords.
– Ccleaner can remove saved passwords from websites, but there is a check box to stop it from doing that. Your main goal is to clear out the cache and you can use the check boxes to specify what else you want to clean out or keep.

William also asked if there are alternatives to using Ccleaner.
– Though Ccleaner cleans your registry, you can try Eusing for that.

On the 1-28-15 show William called about transferring iTunes to a new machine and wanted to clarify what folder he's supposed to transfer.
– It's not the iTunes folder in the Media Library folder. The folder you want is the iTunes folder in the Music folder.
– Just copy the folder, don't delete it on the old machine, in case something goes wrong.
– Paul said if you're going to mess with the iTunes library, it's important you go to Google and search for the words: consolidate itunes music. Some of the music may reside outside of the library.

Last Update 10:16 PM 2/11/2015

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 < >

Podcasts of some Zentech shows are here.

Both Glenn & Paul were in the studio today

Glenn's been having a problem synchronizing the contacts <address book> between his iPad and iPod. He deleted a particular contact on the iPhone that existed only there, not on the iPad. And there's a contact on the iPad that's not on the iPhone. Both were for the same person, though one was created earlier. He deleted the older one and waited a while for the synching to take place, but it didn't. He plans to go to the Apple store again for help. He had talked to them earlier and they suggested he delete the duplicate contacts in his iCloud backups.

Paul tried feeding a podcast of one Zentech show into Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech to text converter. It did a fairly good job, he said. Naturally Speaking is available for some mobile devices (Android & iOS), he thought. It works with an internet connection by sending the audio to a server that then converts to text and sends it back.

Also, Android tablets have their own speech to text app. Paul said it works the same way — sends the voice audio to Google, which then sends the text back. <I just tried it on my newly acquired droid tablet, and the speech was converted without being online. So cool!>

Glenn said he's seen email where the first & last character of each word is preserved and the middle characters are blank, and people can still comprehend the content.

Paul mentioned that Jim Baird of Parc Xerox was on the show and he claimed that using a keyboard is the worst way of getting data into the computer. Paul said that words are the least efficient way to communicate because they can have so many different meanings. We have to determine what's meant by the context.

Years ago, the Tech Museum in San Jose had an exhibition of a research project showing a method that helped people read faster. Words were flashed onto a screen in a way that didn't require your eyes to move. You kept your eyes looking at the center, which would be the center of the word, as the words went by. You could control the size of the word and their speed. Because your eyes didn't have to scan thru the sentence your reading speed improved by about 2 times.

Paul talked about cyclic redundancy check and error correction, which is found in hard drives and other storage technology. These are techniques used to insure data is written correctly to the drive. A trivial way to do this is to count the number of bytes in the data before sending and again after it's written to the drive. If the counts matched, it would be a necessary but not sufficient condition for not having an error.

There are 2 techniques for error correction. One is to keep resending the data and doing the error check. The other way is to use a "mathematical algorithm where you only send across a small piece of information that pinpoints that the error was in the last word somewhere", for example — so you don't have to resend all of the data again.

Hard drives an flash memory have chips onboard that address defects in manufacturing as well as defects that appear thru wear and tear. Satellites have chips that can be damaged by cosmic rays and they too need to use error checking and correcting.

Glenn finally got rid of NetTalk and he no longer has a paid VIOP service. He still has Google Voice, which is free. He also uses the Obihai device, And he ported his phone number to ring.to. Paul noted that Glenn achieved the ultimate objective "you've actually got it for completely free". <Of course, he had to pay for the Obihai device>. Ring.to will forward calls and text (txt) messages, transcribe calls, etc. <Check their site for features>. Glenn asked ring.to to be sure their service was free and was assured it was, though they reserve the right to start charging at a future date. Right now they don't charge to port your number to them or away from them. Paul noted that you can't get a (new) phone number from them; you need to have an existing number and then port the number to them.
<Obihai was mentioned on the last show and the 7-30-14 show >
<Android's ring.to app>
<Obihai with ring.to>

During the show, Glenn tested ring.to by successfully calling themselves in the KVMR studio and they played the audio of the incoming call. Paul noted that there was no feedback noise because there was a delay between the sound of Glenn speaking into his phone and the sound eventually coming in to the studio's switchboard.

That led to talk about in-ear monitor speakers that stage performers use to hear themselves performing. Monitor speakers have become so unobtrusive that they're barely noticeable or not noticeable at all from a distance of 50' or so.

Ron called. He as iMac and is using an app (Adobe Go Live) that can only be used on Snow Leopard OS or earlier. And he has apps that can only run on newer versions of the OS. He'd like to upgrade to a newer OS and he wondered of it makes sense to have different versions of the OS on different hard drive partitions.
– Paul said, "if you can possibly avoid it, I would".
– Ideally you can get a small external Firewire hard drive and put the app on that drive. <He implied that the drive should be made bootable with the alternate OS>. When you boot the Mac, hold the Option key and it will allow you to choose which drive to boot from.
– When you boot the alternate OS you'll generally be able to access the data on the other drive. But Paul said it may be a concern "operating systems can change their attitude to where thing are as far as your application libraries are".
– You might even try a 64gig flash drive instead of a hard drive.
– Glenn wondered if Ron knows for sure that Adobe Go Live won't work on an newer OS or it's just not supported, and therefore he just assumes it won't work.
– Glenn recalled that when Windows Vista and Windows 7 came out, some of the XP software wouldn't work. But if you right-click on the program -> properties, you could change the compatibility mode. There's nothing similar for the Mac.
– Paul speculated that after Snow Leopard, Apple started using a 64bit OS exclusively — no more 32bit mode. That might be the reason Adobe Go Live won't run in the newer OS. It used to be you could force the computer to start in 64bit mode by holding down the '6' & '4' keys when starting it up.
– Paul quickly looked up a message in discussions.apple.com that suggested Mavericks OS can be forced to start in 32bit mode. He said he'll explore the issues some more.

William called with 3 questions. First, he wants to uninstall a program from a new PC he just got. It wasn't installed correctly and isn't working right. When he tries to uninstall it, it says it's being used by another program. Ron heard that AVG Anti-virus might be interfering with it.
– Start machine in safe mode by repeatedly tapping on F8 while booting (don't hold F8 down or it may think there's a problem with the keyboard). Then try to uninstall the errant program.
– Try to disable AVG by right-clicking on its icon in the system tray (lower right corner).
– Paul likes Revo Uninstaller. Google the words: revo free
– iTunes has been known to install incorrectly sometimes.

William then said he used the Easy Transfer facility to transfer iTunes from one machine to a newer one, but the ratings didn't transfer. <I think that's the meta data about each song — genre of music, star ratings & other attributes>
– Easy Transfer is known to fail in transferring everything — like iTunes and the Thunderbird data folder.
– Try to manually transfer the iTunes folder that's in the Music folder on the old machine to the Music folder on the new machine (after deleting the existing iTunes folder on the new machine.) You'll be moving just the data not the iTunes program itself. It's a big folder but you can use a big flash drive — 64gig should do it.

William also asked the guys what they thought about anti-malware programs like MalwareBytes. Paul didn't seem be familiar with it, but Glenn said he's used it after using Combofix for a particular virus he encountered. Also try adwcleaner, it does pretty good job on browser addons and "extra programs that pop up nonsense on your screen and so forth".
<One place you can get adwcleaner>

Lastly, William asked about the trackpad on the Lenovo laptop. The left/right click buttons are above the pad. <It wasn't clear if he didn't know how to use them or he didn't like where they were positioned.>
– Paul said, if you don't like it don't use them.
– You can go to the Control Panel and you'll find "Lenovo trackpad". "Then just reprogram it".
– Use an external mouse.
– Just get used to it.

Glenn said he's heard one report that Windows 10 will be good.
<
– The newest hidden tricks and fixes in Windows 10
– What you'll love and hate about Windows 10
– 12 things to know about Windows 10
– It's Official: Windows 10 Free For Many Users:
– Pogue reviews Windows
>

Marilyn called. She likes the used computer she was given but can't get it to play any audio. When she goes to Sound -> Audio Devices it says "no audio device".
– You need to "have something plugged in to the correct audio socket which then gets discovered by the software." It used to be if you didn't have speakers plugged in and you tried to play something, you just wouldn't hear anything. Now, apparently, the computer detects if the speakers are plugged in.

Last update 11:53 PM 1/28/2015

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 limited time, the podcast of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

Glenn, back from his hiatus, joined Paul in the studio today.

KVMR will be holding an open house this weekend.
Sat 10am to 4pm
Sun 10am to 2pm
120 Bridge Street, across from the Miners Foundry and at the back of the Nevada Theater.

Paul gave some tips for searching on Google.
– Paul thinks that using more than 4 words in a search will start to diverge the query and add a chance of getting more false positives.
– Don’t use extraneous words like “if” “and” “by” “to” “for” and “under”. Google tends to exclude them anyway.
– Google will sometimes substitute words for what you entered. If you typed “motor bike”, it will show results for those words first but will also show search results for “motorcycle”.
– Google knows to look at British websites, for example, when you enter words that tend to be used in that country. The example Paul gave: trunk latch on a Hillman Imp — a British car.

Some internet services will bias what they do based on where they think you’re located. It’s not that difficult to figure out where you are using IP addresses. The IP address is a unique address assigned to you when you browse the internet. There is an organization called ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) that doles out IP address across nations.

If you’re in the USA and you try to view or listen to broadcasts created by the BBC by going to bbc.co.uk/iplayer, you’ll be denied access. The British pay a fee to the BBC for the privilege of using it. Those in the US and elsewhere haven’t paid and are excluded. The BBC can tell if you’re in Britain by inspecting your IP address.

You can get around such restrictions that are based on the IP address by using a proxy server. On a PC or a Mac you can install a small piece of software that creates a tunnel (like a wormhole) that makes it appear you’re somewhere else.

Paul was trying tunnelbear.com. It’s available for the PC, Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad.
– PCs and Macs, in their own right, can use VPN (Virtual Private Network) to do the same thing.
– People in the Nevada City area who work for firms in the Bay Area often use VPN to connect to their company. It secures the data they exchange.
– When you install TunnelBear you’ll be asked to create an account. You can use a throwaway email account for the purpose verification, if you’re suspicious.
– You’ll get 500 megabytes of data traffic for free, from them.
– You’ll have a choice of about 15 to 20 countries to choose from as your bogus location.
– You won’t be able to fool all systems all of the time. When Paul tried to view content from the BBC it worked most of the time — a couple of times it didn’t because…
– Many content providers have a blacklist of IP address that appear to be right (in the UK) but are known to be somewhere else.
– As Paul recalled, the base subscription rate to TunnelBear is $5/mo, if the 500meg is not enough for you.
– Strictly speaking, using a tunnel is not a good way to hide who you are or what you’re doing. You can hide the data going thru the tunnel but you’re not hiding the fact that you’re using a tunnel, thus raising suspicion.

There is a similar issue with using the Tor browser. And he noted that after Microsoft bought Skype, they created nodes to handle its traffic but has allow the government access to those nodes. So the origin & destination of Skype calls can be traced and, Paul said, probably their content.

Paul briefly mentioned local weather stations run by private individuals, often using Oregon Scientific weather stations. There are about 15 in the Nevada City area.

Glenn got a rose gold iPhone 6s for the holidays. He’s still using Pure Talk as his cellular provider.

He’s had relatively few problems with the new iPhone but has a question or two that he’s going to pose to Apple tech support. Otherwise, Paul has helped him figure out the new operating system — 9.2. It’s not too horrible, Glenn said.

Glenn installed 9.2 on his previous phone, the iPhone 4S, and now he struggles using Siri (the voice assistant). <As mentioned on previous shows, older Apple hardware has trouble keeping up with newer software and operating systems.>

Paul talked about the newer CPU (Central Processing Units) with multiple cores. They can process instructions out of sequence to improve overall processing speed. They can pretty much keep up with Moore’s Law by clever processing rather than continually making smaller and more numerous chip circuits.

Paul has been trying to get a good sense of the differences between Intel I3 I5 I7 processors and has discovered there is no simple answer, each comes in different flavors. About all you can do is use benchmark tests to determine how fast each can complete various tasks — how fast can it perform a calculation, how fast can it draw a on the screen, etc. You may have to look around bit, but there is free benchmark software at cpubenchmark.net that uses 15 or 20 types of tests to see how your CPU performs.

The test results from the benchmark test are then uploaded to cpubenchmark where they keep the “real world” statistics from many users. <Presumably, the results are available to the public — Paul didn’t say.>

Benchmark tests run you computer very hard and can reveal overheating problems. Paul uses cpubenchmark in conjunction with speedfan (another piece of software) that monitors the actual temperature in your computer. If your laptop overheats, Paul said to take it out side and blow the dust out with compressed air. Be careful not to damage the laptop’s cooling fan — keep the compressed air to 60psi or lower. If you don’t have a compressor, you can buy compressed air in a can, he said. Some Mac laptops were designed with marginal cooling ability and may need more frequent blowouts.

Paul’s been having fun with gadgets from China. The latest is a USB device that measures the current and voltage going thru a USB cable. It’s about $5

There’s another similar device for your car, which additionally shows if your car’s battery is charging.
<There’s an app that displays the current, voltage and internal temperature of a phone or tablet that I like. You can find it here.>

Greg called to warn people about air compressors. They tend to accumulate water internally from condensation because compressing air wrings moisture out of it. Be careful not to blow water into your computer. There’s usually a valve on the lower part of the compressor to bleed the water out. At least blow the air gun in a safe direction a few times before using it.

Glenn said another way to clean out your computer is to use a fine brush to dislodge and a vacuum cleaner to suck up, the dust. That’s OK if the dust is held on by static charges, but if you use the computer near your kitchen the dust may be held on by grease particles, Paul said.

John called. He said he’s more interested in hearing Paul talk about how data is processed rather than the psychological and sociological aspects of computing.

The guys mentioned that Apple’s iPad has split into 2 branches: iPad Pro and iPad Air. The Air economized on some features but definitely on space and weight.

Paul suggested that people who’ve never thought about using an Apple product visit an Apple Store and be evangelized by the Apple zealots. He said that in spite of his recent visit to the Roseville store where he was told to use Photo instead of iPhoto. Taking their advice he still wasn’t able to email photos out of Photo. He was then told to use the Apple Mail Program, but it still didn’t work. The Apple techs finally admitted there is a problem. Paul didn’t say how he eventually resolved it, if at all.

Paul talked a bit about the iPad Pro.
– It can do 5-point multitouch. You can use 5 fingers at once on the screen.
– “You have a lot of gesture based stuff” that makes it look a lot like the operating system used in the computer in the movie Minority Report.
– It recognizes how fast and how hard you hit the screen with your finger. This can be useful if you’re a graphic designer or artist.
– The price for the 13″ iPad is somewhere in the $900 region.
– You can get a keyboard for it. It attaches using physical contacts along the edge rather than using Bluetooth.

Pat, a local musician, called. He currently uses 5 computers and uses an artist’s airbrush to blow out the dust. He said to be careful not to use metal tipped air guns/brushes close to the electronics, especially capacitors. Just because you turn off the computer or pull out the power plug, that doesn’t mean all of the electricity has gone away. <For good measure, ground yourself to eliminate static electricity.>

Paul explored the world of DJ-ing software for the Mac and mentioned 2 that he found: DJAY and Pacemaker. Pacemaker allows you to take your iTunes playlist and mix and match the beats and “do that stuff”.

The other thing Paul said about the iPad Pro is that it has an unbelievable sound system. It has 4 tiny speakers, one in each corner. The sound rotates with the movie you’re watching if you happen to rotate the tablet. It also has Dolby stereo.

Paul noted that the audio of many of KVMR’s shows, as well as Zentech, is now available. Follow the ‘archive’ link at kvmr.org. <See the top of this page for the link to todays show and more info>.

Last Updated 12:30 AM 1-14-16

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