Around noon today 12-9-15 KVMR was notified of 2 lost dogs.
– 2 Doberman male & female
– Lost near Tylerfoot(?) Road and North Columbia School House
– These are service dogs. Please don’t touch them
– If found call 265-4356

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.

Paul was in the studio. We didn’t hear from Glenn.

Paul reminded listeners that this show is about technology in general, calls and comments don’t have to be about just computers.

Paul asked the listeners what they use as a home page and also what browsers they use. The home page is the first page your browser goes to when you start it up. <Reply to zen@kvmr.org, I suppose>

Paul used to use news.google.com for his home page. This site aggregates news from various sources and presents it in one place. It can be customized to focus on the subjects you’re interested in — e.g. more technology news, less business news.

Paul likes the android app that streams KVMR radio shows.
<This looks like the app>

Paul noted that websites like Facebook know a lot about their users. When he first joined Facebook, he used a fake name so he wouldn’t be associated with the content posted there.

One of Paul’s favorite podcasts is by Radiolab, where a social media expert was interviewed about the techniques used by Facebook to gather information about their users. One of the experiments run by Facebook was to measure the likelihood users would click on news items with happy words vs. sad ones. Later, the participants were asked their feelings about being unwitting subjects. Paul wasn’t surprised that some objected, but Facebook is free and you don’t have to use it. The usefulness of a site like Facebook has to be weighed against giving up some information about yourself.

Your internet activity reveals more than you might think. Algorithms used to gather info about you are surprisingly good. You might innocently post a picture of a kitten somewhere but an algorithm can tell something about you from the context around the picture. For instance, the picture might be on a pet rescue site or a site devoted to animal smuggling. Or if you reshare a picture already on Facebook, that can put you in a particular demographic of people who Facebook already knows have shared the picture — you’re likely to be of certain age, live in urban areas etc.

Paul took some time to disparage Donald Trump and noted that his favorite homepage site at the moment, theregister.co.uk, reported that enraged British people have demanded that Donald Trump be forbidden from physically entering the UK on the basis of hate speech. There is an associated site in the US called theregister.com.

Paul’s technical roots go back some 20 years when he worked with an operating system called Linux, an open source version of Unix. These 2 systems run on servers that underpin much of the internet.

Under the hood of Mac computers is Unix-like operating system known as Darwin. It ‘evolved’ from BSD Unix (Berkeley Software Distribution). Unlike the past, when Apple tended to keep things secret, they published the source to the El Capitan/Darwin, the operating system. <Source is the more or less ‘english’ readable code before it gets put into 1s & 0s that the computer needs>.

You can see some of what’s going on under the hood of the Mac if you go to the upper right corner where the searchlight is and search for the word ‘terminal’ and then hit GO. You’ll then get a black screen with a prompt where you can type in commands like ‘date’, ‘time’ and ‘ls’. The risk of doing any damage with the commands exists but is quite low. If try to do something serious like delete some system files, it will ask you for a password.

Recently Paul went from using the Firefox browser to using Chrome. He’s noticed Firefox slowing down from continually added features and frequent updating.

Raymond called. He had contacted Paul before about upgrading a old Sony Vio. <I think he was talking about the upgrade to Lubuntu mentioned on the 9-23-15 show>. Paul said he’d like to have access to the computer to personally do the upgrade and asked Raymond to come to KVMR tomorrow. However, he’ll send the CD to Raymond so he can do the install himself if need be.

Joey called. He upgraded to El Capitan (version 10.11) and then started having problem getting emails into the Apple email program (that’s running on the Mac) from the email server (on the internet) (he uses Westhost). He’s noticed that the “incoming line” (account name) of the account settings is grayed out and can’t be changed.
– You can switch to another mail program like Thunderbird.
– Paul asked if he’s using IMAP or POP. Joey said it’s POP.
– You can try to reestablish the account. But if you use POP and delete and recreate the account, it may delete all of the locally stored mail, which may not exist on the server and will then be lost. Use the Timemachine facility to do a backup.
– In the last few years, most mail providers have allowed the use of IMAP, the preferred method. The providers don’t especially like doing it because they end up storing more mail on the servers.
– Use the web version of their service (using a web browser) and enable IMAP on the server. This is true of Gmail too. You have to go to your Google account, turn off POP & turn on IMAP.
– Do a Google search with the words: westhost imap. Paul did this and found instructions for setting up an IMAP account.
– Paul has noticed that with each incarnation of the Mac operating system there tends to be a problem with the Apple email program. He’s tempted to recommend just going to Thunderbird.

Lisa called with a tip for Joey’s problem. She said Godaddy has a discussion about this problem but didn’t give a web address.
– The fix was to go into the mail -> preferences -> advanced settings. Unselect “automatically enable this mail and account settings”, then quit the mail program and restart it. Then go back and reselect the item you had just unselected. This works for some people, but didn’t work for Lisa. What eventually did work for her was to go into the Apple tools settings (the gray cogwheel) and go to mail settings and reenter her password to the errant POP mail account. Do not recreate the account, just reenter the password.
– Paul added, if POP isn’t configured right, mail will be deleted on the server as it’s transferred to your computer. If you then try to read the mail from the server using another computer, you won’t see it. There should be a setting in your computer’s email program to tell POP to not delete mail as it’s being read (leave the email on the server).
– Lisa asked if it’s possible to use IMAP and POP with the same mail server. Paul implied that you can if you choose to ‘leave the email on the server’.
– If you want to use IMAP with a dialup connection and you have a lot of mail on the server, take your computer where you can get a high-speed connection. Then choose the ‘synchronize folder from server’ in your local setting. The first synchronization will be done high speed. When you’re back on dialup it will only have to synch any new mail, which should be manageable at the slower speeds.

Marilyn called. She’s been using MalwareBytes for a long time but recently has been annoyed by windows that keep popping up and scans that start by themselves, slowing things down. She thinks that it’s because she’s using the free version that she can’t get to setting that will change the behavior.
– The company might have just started doing things differently and it’s behavior may have changed with the last update. Paul suspected the company had been sold and the new owners decided to make some changes.
– Ditch this program and go with something else.
– Avast is both an anti-virus and anti-malware (malware as in foistware)
– Each brand of anti-virus can catch about 95% of the viruses (each usually a different 95%). Microsoft Security Essentials catches only about 70% <as suggested before, avoid Security Essentials>.

Last Updated 12:12 AM 12-10-2015

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.

The Flea Market, hosted by Glenn, will not be on tomorrow.

Glenn was in the studio with Buzz (Dave Barnett) KVMR’s studio engineer.
Paul called in from Slab City near Niland in Southern California.

Alan called. He has Mac Book Pro with a collection of music in iTunes. His stereo system has a network player that can receive UPnP He thought he needs software for the Mac that uses UPnP that can send the music out to the player.
– Paul said he could use iTunes to do the job. He just needs to turn on “library share”.
– He’ll have to be sure the Mac & the player are using exactly the same network.
– iTunes will then send plug ‘n play messages, also known as DLNA messages
– Check the documentation of the player to be sure it is DLNA capable or iTunes capable. If so, one of the settings on the player should say “play from network music server”. Network music players have been DLNA capable for several years.

Glenn asked Paul how far he had to go to be able to use his cell phone. That led to talk about radio transmission — cell towers & low power FM radio. I’ll just note the highlights.
– Paul was in a pretty remote, flat area. The nearest town, Niland, has 2 cell towers. He was under the impression that if you can see a cellular tower, you should be able to connect to it. He thought a reasonable range would extend to the horizon — 8 to 10 miles. Buzz said it could be farther, depending on the gain of the system. The signal drops off at the rate of 1/radius^2
– Paul wondered how many calls a cell tower can handle at one time. Buzz said it’s not a matter of how many calls but the bandwidth of tower. The number of calls is unlimited if a tower is connected using fiber optic cables. And it also depends on how many antennas a tower has and how they reuse frequencies in different directions.

Paul said there’s a low power FM station at Slab City. Buzz said such stations, called LP100, broadcast at 100 watts if they’re below 30 meters <antenna height, I guess>. If they go higher, they have to reduce the wattage. They’re able to transmit for a few miles or up to about 20 miles if there’s no interference. They cost about $10,000 to set up, including certification and an emergency alert system.

The reasons people start a low power station…
– They think the commercial stations just “don’t cut it”.
– They want to provide a community service.
– Many are associated with churches, religious organizations and people with a social goal.

Paul wondered of internet radio will supplant low power FM. Buzz said there are pluses and minuses to each.
– Internet radio reaches far more people.
– If you use cellular to listen to internet radio, it can be costly.
– Cellular service can be suspended during emergencies and remain reserved for emergency personnel.
– With FM radio information flows only in one direction but is more consistent.

Gordon called. He has a Droid Turbo phone and an old iPod with 2000 songs on it. He wanted to know if there’s a simple way to move the songs from the iPod to the Android phone.
– You can get the music off the iPod but not with iTunes — it won’t allow you.
– If you don’t have copies of the music anywhere else, you’ll need what’s called an ipod ripper. Paul suggested the one by Xilsoft. That will get the music from the iPod and put it on the PC.
– Then get the Google Music application for the PC. It will take the music on the PC and copy it to the internet.
– Next get the Google Music app for the droid device. It will take music on the internet (stored at Google) and either play it directly or copy it to your droid device.
– You can even play the music directly on a web page from its stored location on a strange machine by going to Google Music and signing in.
– There doesn’t appear to be a limit on how much music you can upload for free. It sounded like Paul said he has uploaded 160 gigs.

<Get Started With Google’s New Music Store
Google Music: 5 Things You Need to Know
Use Google Music to listen to your music everywhere <An overview & getting started>>

Douglas called. He has a 2010 iMac with OS 10.11. He’s not happy with Apple taking away some features.
– You can no longer color-code files and folders. There’s only a small colored dot to the side. It’s hard to line the dot up with the file.
– Paul noticed that with every new version [of the OS] things become more “subtle”.
– Also, Douglas said, the files don’t sort correctly when he renames them. He can’t “click away” from a file he just renamed.
– Try a search for the words: El Capitan old folder behavior. Use the words “old behavior” in your searches when you’re looking for similar solutions.
– Try holding down the ‘option’ ‘control’ or ‘shift’ keys while performing an operation. Sometimes that forces it to work like it did in a previous version of the OS.
– Buzz just did a quick search and found “How to Fix OS X El Capitan’s Annoyances” on lifehacker.com.

The reason Douglas called was that the new system really messed up his Mac Mail — it wasn’t even working. He had to delete and than create accounts to get it to work. Now, the email that’s identified as spam keeps getting put into the inbox even though he has his preferences set correctly.
– Paul said he didn’t like the Mac Mail program and switched to Thunderbird. But then he said it’s not a Mac program, at all. The point he was making is to use a different email program.
– All the mail program out there now work better if you choose to use the IMAP protocol rather than POP.
– With IMAP if you delete the account and then put it back, it won’t lose any of the mail because it’s synchronize off the server. With POP you may lose the mail.
– Knowing that all of Doug’s accounts are IMAP. Paul suggested he delete the accounts and then create them again. Also delete <I think he meant reset to default> all of the preferences.
– Up to this point Douglas has only be disabling and reenabling the accounts and not deleting them. He wondered if his email was in jeopardy if he actually deleted the accounts. Paul, speaking wearily, said he’d be ok if the folders actually existed on the server and Time Machine was running as a backup.
– Newer mail programs work better with IMAP

Last Updated 12:20 AM 11-26-2015

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 podcast of today’s show is here:

The intro music was by Pentatonix:

Paul was in the studio today with his guest John Paul of Spiral Internet. We didn’t hear from Glenn.

They talked mostly about a project that Spiral Internet is about to start that would bring 1gigaBit/sec fiber optical cable service to the area. No calls from listeners where answered.

Paul has lived in Nevada City for 20 years. When he first moved there, there was no internet. Dialup became available around 1994 or 1995.

Now there’s an initiative to provide funding to bring 1gigaBit/sec fiber optical cable thru the Nevada City area. That’s orders of magnitude faster than the 36kbits/sec, or so, of dialup speed when it was first available. With speeds of 1gigaBit/sec, a file coming from across the country would open instantly in your application as if the file was sitting on your local hard drive.

John said this all started when Google announced it would deploy 1gigaBit/sec service to one community in the USA back in 2010. <Talked about on the 12-26-12 show> Kansas City was the first place picked for the Google project, in part, because Google was given access to the [telephone] poles. Though Nevada City submitted a request, the local [telephone] poles were in poor shape and maintaining the cables would have been daunting. The current project will put the cables underground.

Additional info about the fiber cable…
– An individual optical fiber is thinner than a human hair.
– There is a protective covering over the bundle of fibers.
– The conduit (1 inch to 3/4 inch dia.) is laid first and the fiber is blown thru it with air pressure
– Paul heard that orange conduit is sometimes mistaken for tree roots and that people attempt to pull out.
– Comcast & AT&T already have optical fiber cable in the Nevada City area, which they don’t share with any other company.

In 2010 a project called something like Central Valley Independent Network was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to lay fiber cable from Bakersfield to Colusa, passing thru Nevada County. It’s an open project that independent service providers can hook into. <John implied the current funding initiative, mentioned above, is part of this ARRA project.>

2 high schools, a middle school and a library are being connected as a result of the ARRA project. Local service providers, like Spiral Internet, are expected to hook into that cable and bring the service to individual houses. This is a dedicated cable connection and is not shared with other subscribers like, for instance, Comcast cable. John also said Spiral’s fiber cable will come directly into the house. It won’t terminate outside with Ethernet providing the final link.

Fiber cable is used for more than just carrying internet traffic. Chattanooga Tenn. is using it for their smart grid electricity service.

Cloud storage services like Dropbox will be easier to use with fiber because when you collaborate on editing a document, the response times will be so short.

Current internet speeds, including [wire] cable, are not symmetrical. Download speeds are much faster than upload speeds. A Comcast cable with 100megaBits/sec download speed will have about 5 or 10megaBits/sec upload speed. With 1gigaBit/sec fiber cable is that same speed for both uploads & downloads.

John said the latency would go down to zero. Unlike raw speed, latency is the time it takes for the network to respond to your request for a page. This is important for game players who want the game to respond quickly to joystick movement. It’s also important for stock traders who want their orders to transact before other traders have a chance.

Paul again mentioned speedof.me. This site tests your internet connection speed. It uses HTML5 instead of Flash. For more info see the notes for the 9-9-15 show.

Paul asked if the internet is a utility but is not officially recognized as such. John said that though the service providers have opposed it, earlier this year the FCC declared that the internet is a utility, like water or electricity.

Paul wondered what companies benefit from fiber cable. John said that everyone benefits but especially those who use cloud services. Increasingly, software, as well as storage, is provided on the internet. Rather than use software running on their local computers, businesses are turning to the internet where software is provided as a service. Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office 365 are examples. Companies started to provide software as a service, in part, because people became reluctant to buy new version of software that offered only a few improvements.

Paul speculated that the light used in fiber optic cable is infrared. John said different laser light frequencies can be used in a fiber, each at 1gigaBit/sec.

Paul told of a guy he had spoken to who repaired fiber cables. He would use a microscope and a microscopic furnace to butt-join the ends of the fiber. The fibers are actually a bit dangerous, they can get under the skin like thorns.

Paul mentioned the Global Village software. Written to run on Berkeley System Distribution Unix for Berkeley students to use in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was a discrete system, not on the internet. It was like a blend of Facebook & Wikipedia. Arguably, this began the transition from face to face interaction to virtual interaction.

Spiral Internet applied for a grant to begin phase one of the fiber optic project in Feb of 2013. 2 weeks ago John received notice from the California Public Utilities Commission that they will likely fund 60% of the project. He already had 40% in matching funds. The PUC will vote on it on Dec. 3.

John said the project areas have been delineated and you can see where they are if you go to spiral.com/fiber. You can enter your address and see if you are in one of areas of the initial phase. This will also tell them you’re interested so they’ll know where to expand to next.

If the PUC votes to fund the project, Spiral expects to start laying cable in the spring. Notices will go out to homes in the area and local meetings will be held to promote the coming service. Go to the spiral.com/fiber page to see area where the project will start.

John wasn’t prepared to say what the price of the service will be. Fixed wireless or DSL typically costs about $10 or $11 per megbit/sec <per month, I guess>. Spiral’s service will be about $.06 megbit/sec. Google fiber is $120/month and AT&T is closely matching that price. Spiral hasn’t decided what to charge.

As more TV content is being provided over the internet, John expects people to drop services like Direct TV and Dish. He also thinks that people will be able to fine-tune the content so they only pay for what they really want.

Telemedicine is another area poised to expand on the internet, facilitated by higher speeds. Various health monitors communicating over the internet will help in diagnosing physical conditions.

Cellular phone service can be improved because cell towers can be installed in more places when there’s high-speed fiber nearby to carry the signal.

Listeners can help in getting the PUC to vote for the funding by sending emails to the commissioners. Go to nevadacountyconnected.com and you’ll find an on-going blog about the project. There you’ll find instruction on how to send supporting emails. And you’ll be able to keep track of the construction as it progresses.

Paul said he’ll put up the podcast of today’s show. Go to kvmr.org and then click on the items that “indicate streaming and past shows”. <I couldn’t find what he was talking about. I did find where KVMR’s has podcasts of past shows stored for a limited time. Today’s Zen Tech show is already there. You can find podcasts of various KVMR shows by going to kvmr.org and following the link called ‘Archive‘ located toward the bottom of the page

Contact info for Spiral Internet:
support@spriralinternet.com
530-478-9822

Last Updated 12:54 AM 11-12-2015

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:

Glenn & Paul were both in the studio today.

A few weeks ago, Paul got an Apple TV 4. He’s amazed by the quality. Youtube is increasingly making available feature-length documentaries and other content for free, and Paul sees no reason to subscribe to any video provider. It takes as little as 1.5 megabits/sec to stream Youtube video, he said.
<A few more details about Apple TV are in the notes for the 9-23-15 show>

Glenn recently installed a router at home, but when he tried to access it with his iPad, he got the message the “router is not connected to the internet”.

Glenn has AT&T DSL upstairs but the wireless signal wasn’t making it downstairs. He ran an Ethernet cable from the upstairs router to the router downstairs that he installed. Paul helped configure the downstairs router by turning off DHCP and assigning an appropriate range of addresses, thus turning it into a switch. He’ll need to look at it again, apparently.

Many residents in Nevada County have DSL and a beige-colored modem made by 2Wire. Some parts of the county have switched to DSL 2 Plus — called Uverse by AT&T. It “hands out the same kind of address range as the original” DSL, Paul assumed, so it shouldn’t look that different.

When routers are configured, they sometimes have 2 buttons, “save” and “activate”, and you need to do both for your changes to be stored in the non-volatile memory. Paul typically reboots the router and then checks to be sure the changes took effect.

Not all routers are the same. They vary in the power of the radio transmitter, the sensitivity to low power and the rejection of stray signals.
– Some routers perform channel hopping over the 11 channels assigned to the 2.4 gigaHertz band. <To find unused channels, I guess>.
– Ideally, you want to set your router to use a channel not used by other nearby wi-fi networks. Diagnostic software can tell you which channels are in use.
– 5.4 gigaHertz routers have a stronger signal and a shorter range. <Higher frequencies have less penetration, as I recall>
– You can use the less common 5.4 gigaHertz band to avoid interference from nearby routers, but the router has to be installed and configured to do that.
– Newer tablets and phones can use the 5.4 gigaHertz band but some older equipment can’t.
– The order of preference in connecting to a router: use a wired connection (not possible with most mobile devices), use 5.4 gigaHertz wireless if your device can use it or use 2.4 gigaHertz (typically used by most mobile units).
– Paul likes the app called Wi-Fi Analyzer, which tells you the channels nearby networks are using so you can configure your router for an unused channel.
<I found 2 called Wi-Fi Analyzer. The more popular one is here.
the other one is here:>

Raymond called about the offer Paul made to people with older computers running Windows XP who’d like to change to Lubuntu — a version of the Linux operating system. Paul was hoping to provide a way for people to bring their old computers and have Lubuntu installed. He said he’ll figure out something before the next show
– It takes about .5 hr to install.
– Make sure you’ve backed up what you want to keep as the hard drive will be wiped clean.
– Go to lubuntu.net to see an animation of what to expect from Lubuntu.
– There’s a version called Edubuntu for people who like science & math and leans toward educating your kids.
– <He talked about this in the 9-23-15 show. See those notes for more details>

You can order a CD with Lubuntu <or other flavors of Linux> for about $10. You can then boot from the CD each time you want to use it, or permanently install it from the CD.

Ubuntu <and Linux in general> allow you to create accounts that have lower privileges than the top level administrator. These accounts, which you can assign to your child, make it difficult for malware to get installed. Viruses generally need administrator access to install and your child won’t have the administrator’s password.

To run Lubuntu your machine has to be able to boot from a CD, some older machines can’t. On Ebay you can find people selling Ubuntu on a flash drive. But, again, not all older computers can boot from a flash drive. You can test if your computer can boot from flash. You have to first insert the flash drive and then boot. While booting, keep pressing the F2, F10 or F12 key (depending on your computer) to get to the menu where you select the device to boot from. <For some computers, you’ll have to go in to the BIOS settings to pick the boot device>. Just remember to have the flash drive plugged in before booting or you won’t be offered the option to boot from it.

For those without an CD drive, there are external units available in the $25 to $35 range. That should get you a CD reader/writer & DVD reader/writer.

Around the time that manufacturers stopped providing CDs, containing the operating system, with new computers, they started providing a recovery partition on the hard drive, From that partition you can create bootable CDs in case you need to restore your operating system.

This is true for the Mac operating system, too. There are command line tools that let you create a bootable flash drive.

Paul talked a bit about monitors.
– You can buy a 24″ LED screen for about $139.
– LED monitors give off very little EMF.
– Negative features of CRTs (tube type monitors): they produce alternating magnetic & electrical fields, soft x-rays, ozone, they warm the air and produce static electricity that makes dust stick.

Ralph called. He has an XP machine that’s been having problems with some websites. He wondered if running Lubuntu will let him access the internet. And he wanted to know if his only choice is to overwrite everything on his hard drive.
– Lunbuntu comes with Firefox. It’s the same version that comes with Windows so there’s nothing new to learn.
– When you boot Lubuntu from a CD or flash drive, you’ll be given a choice of installing it on your hard drive or just run it for a single session while preserving the hard drive content.
– If you choose to only run from the CD, it will be slow (because it’s accessing the CD). And you can’t save things like browser bookmarks because the CD is not writeable. But you’ll have a chance to try Ubuntu before committing to it.
– Ubuntu gives you a third option when you boot it called memtest. This will run a diagnostic program to check the memory chips in your machine.
– Try speedof.me to test the speed of your internet connection. It can test multiple connections at once. It uses HTML5 instead of Flash. <Mentioned in the 9-9-15 show notes>
– There are times a website is accessed by a lot of people at once and it becomes slow for everyone.
– <You might try restarting the browser. If it’s been running for a long time, it can bog down>

Last Updated 10:59 PM 10/14/2015

/p

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 Paul & Glenn were in the studio today.

Paul kind of rambled a lot today. No callers got on the air.

When Paul switched the Zen Tech website from running on Joomla to WordPress, he wanted to preserve all of the content including hundreds of show notes. He found a plugin for WordPress that was made to import from an old version of Joomla that the site had been running on for some 10 years.

Plugins for WordPress, as with many programs, are generally written by third parties who may not update the plugins in a timely manner, thus leading to security problems.

Some time back, LinkedIn had a security breech due, in part, to the users’ passwords not being properly encrypted. If a person who logs into LinkedIn uses a password that they also use at other sites, that makes it easier for the password thief to impersonate the user on those other sites. <don’t reuse your passwords — especially on critical sites like banks & brokerage companies.>

Captchas (text made so only a human can read) are often used during a login to make it difficult for robotic software to continually entering user name & password combinations until they gain entry. People from third world countries, who are paid paltry wages, are sometimes used in place of robotic software to decipher captchas.

Paul recently updated the version of WordPress at the Zen Tech site. After doing so, he found that the theme (the part that controls the appearance — the lettering, background, etc.) also needed updating because, apparently, of a security issue.

WordPress has become pretty mainstream now. If you go to a hosting company like 1and1.com, they already have WordPress websites ready to go, all you need to do is pay them their fee. Paul said, the easy way to find out how WordPress works is to go to wordpress.com, where you can quickly set up a website. He said, just start creating the site and things will become self-evident as you go along. You don’t have to give an personal information, you can even use a fake name and a throw-away email address.

There’s a trick you can use with Gmail by putting a period in your name. You can use one or more periods in the name (yo.urnam@gmail.com your.na.me@gmail.com) and you’ll still get email at yourname@gmail.com. You can use a name with periods when you sign up for some service, and later set up a filter at gmail to trash any emails with periods, thus disposing any spam that service may send you. You can also use this to find out if a service violated its promise not to give out your email to advertisers.

It once was, and may still be, true that you could use the plus sign in your email name. This was deliberately designed into Sendmail so that if you use yourname+randomletters@mail.com the +randomletters would get truncated and the email would be delivered to yourname@mail.com.

The domain naming system is not case sensitive, Paul said. You can use Kvmr.Org and it will still work like kvmr.org. In most cases you can use mixed case in the user name, too — yOuRnAme@kvmr.org for example.

The CAN-SPAM Act required that when you sign up for a mailing list, your request had to be confirmed. An email is sent to confirm your intent to join. And every email from then on has to have a link to let you unsubscribe. Some services make the unsubscribe link hard to find. And some will claim that it will take time to process the unsubscribe request, giving them time to sell your address to some other service.

There was a brief mention of the “Do Not Call List“. After Glenn first put his name on the list, the number of calls went down, but they’ve increased lately. He said he’d have to check if his name is still on the list.

A company can claim they’re calling from outside of the US and therefore not breaking the law regarding the do not call list. “There’s no way of figuring out where the call came from”, Paul said. Caller ID can be faked easily and is not trustworthy. Email addresses can be faked too.

If you get a call from someone claiming to represent your bank, it can be a scam. Hang up and call your bank at the phone number you know is good, <like the one on your monthly statement.>

Domain names that look similar to that of your bank can be created — bofamerica.com or bankofa.com or welsfargo.com etc. An unsuspecting user can mistakenly type in the wrong name and end up at a bogus website where they end up revealing their username and password.

Glenn asked the listeners if anyone has gotten the new iPhone 6 or 6+ or the new iPad. He’d like to hear from you.

Apple has issued a new operating system, iOS9. Often they’ll have a new iOS to go along with the new hardware. Paul said there some wisdom in waiting to upgrade, there may be some bugs that will be corrected with revisions. Paul thought iOS9 can be installed on an iPad as old as version 2, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Apple has a tendency to abandon older hardware as it improves the software or firmware.

Glenn’s iPhone 4S still has version 7 of iOS and he’s found some of his software won’t update unless it has version 8, and version 8 on a 4S is sluggish (as mentioned on a previous show). Paul’s iPhone 3GS running the Facebook app is so slow it’s unusable.

Paul got a new 20′ RV with a solar panel. Its interior lighting comes from tungstun filiament light bulbs that have a color temperature of 4000 to 5000 Kelvin. You can get direct plugin replacement LED lights on Ebay. Daylight (or warm white) LEDs are 5000 to 6000 Kelvin. Paul found some daylight 12 volt LEDs for $1 each.

The battery used to crank the engine doesn’t like being discharged more than about 10% so a separate, deep cycle battery is used to run the lights. It’s made to discharge as much as 80% without being damage. He found one for $99

There are other gadgets RV campers can get on Ebay like a voltmeter that tells you the house battery voltage. The discharge of a battery vs. voltage is not linear. Most of the time the battery is about 12 volts, it can be as high as 13 volts. “Anything below about 11.5 volts means it’s on the way out”. There’s also the type of indicator with just color bar graphs to indicate the state of the battery.

Paul found a 100watt solar panel that delivers about 17volts to charge a 12volt battery. A charge regulator has to be used between the solar panel and the battery to charge the battery properly. Paul paid $16 for a 20amp charge regulator. If there’s more electricity coming from the panel than is needed to run the equipment in the RV, the excess is used to charge the battery.

Glenn invited people to write to zen@kvmr.org.

Paul again offered Windows XP users whose machines are working OK, a CD with Lubuntu (a version of Linux). He talked about this in the 9-23-15 show. See those notes for more details.

Paul told us that while NASA was looking for solution for ballpoint pens not working in space, because they rely on gravity, the Russian solution was to use pencils, or so the story goes

Today’s Zen Tech show was made possible in part by Vermicrop Organic.

Last Updated 10:06 PM 9/30/2015