Category: Technology

Cookies are what advertisers use to track your browser history and try to get you to buy stuff on the Internet but sometimes they don’t know when to say when.

A guy dies in a car wreck so of course I need to go to the Cars movie.

This kind of inadvertent social insensitivity is where artificial intelligence could help advertisers. The keyword “die” should trump any other word in the headline. If only Google had the money to prevent such stupidity…but they get paid for views and clicks.

Our family dumped DirecTV almost 18 months ago in favor of TiVo and over-the-air (OTA) television. We continued our Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions and added Hulu. After the first year, TiVo charges $149.99 annually ($12.50 per month). Thus we are saving about $90 per month from what we were spending previously.

Last month we set our sights on a new target, Frontier Communications (formerly known as Citizens Communications). For the last ten years, we have been paying Frontier about $85 monthly for a landline telephone and Internet service. (By the way, $15 of that amount was taxes.) Our phone number once belonged to my wife’s grandparents and we figure that they’ve had that number since the 1960’s.

Our attachment to the phone number was both sentimental and contractual. Sentimental since it had been in the wife’s family for her entire life and contractual because many years ago Frontier offered us a ten dollar a month discount on our Internet if we agreed to a two year contract. Once the two years was up, Frontier raised their rates back up and as an added bonus, they had us locked into a contract that automatically renewed annually.

Yeah, in case you didn’t know that, auto renewing contracts are legal in California. Without any affirmation on your part, once you enter into a contract, the contract continues to renew unless you take extraordinary steps to terminate it. Frontier threatened early termination fees of up to $400. I have been meaning to stop the auto renewal for several years but they moved the renewal date on me once and then last year, I didn’t attempt it until I was within the 30 day termination window. This clause said that you can’t terminate the contract within 30 days of the renewal date. Talk about insuring corporate cash flow!

However, this year, I called in January to stop the auto renewal. I recorded the date and time of the call and even got a confirmation number for the request. Then if they gave me grief later on, I would take the “this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes” and ram it down their bureaucratic throats if said that I never called.

Just to make sure, in early May, I called Frontier and asked that my service—both telephone and Internet—be terminated on June 12th (the auto renewal date). I called more than 30 days before the renewal just so I wouldn’t have to refer to the January call. I figured that that gave me over a month to switch to another provider and get all the kinks worked out before my Internet was cut off.

I know at this point that some might be wondering why I was with an obscure company like Frontier in the first place? A fair question and one that I will shed light on now before continuing.

You see back in the heyday of Ma Bell, when there was only one phone company, there were certain areas of the country where it was not cost effective for Ma Bell to service. These orphaned areas of the country—and by country I mean rural areas of the United States—were eventually pooled into Citizens Communications. (If you are thinking Roosevelt, Great Depression, and Rural Electrification Administration, then you are on the right track. I’m sure Wikipedia could give you the whole story if you were curious.)

Anyway, flash forward the better part of a century and some of these rural areas are now developed areas with lots of people. Elk Grove—where I live—is such a place. West of highway 99 you have many choices for Internet and telephone including fiber optic cable because this area was once serviced by Pacific Bell; however, east of highway 99 you will find a different dynamic. Your options where I live are Frontier or Comcast, period. There is nothing else and by law there never will be. Two choices and both with a coper cable as its backbone.

With Frontier, they were happy to provide us a blazing (insert sarcasm here) 5.5 Mb per second. I have 11 to 20 devices in my home competing for bandwidth. Frontier’s Internet went down daily—especially the Wi-Fi. We were incapable of doing anything simultaneously on the Internet; even reading books on the Kindle app was a problem. Only when I called to terminate their service did they ever try to offer me more bandwidth.

Note to Frontier: give me your best offer because I’m a good customer; don’t wait until I’m so fed up with you that I decided to leave. If you had voluntarily raised my speed, I probably would still be with you. ‘Service” and “Customer” should be used together not opposite columns in the balance sheet. I talked with several neighbors about your company and found no one willing to praise you. If your Soviet era monopoly ever ends then so will you.

Anyway, after consulting the neighborhood, I reluctantly opted to try Comcast again. We had Comcast when I was first married. Their Internet went down constantly and their television picture—especially HD—was terrible. Only when we went to DirecTV did our TV picture look like it did at Circuit City. At the time, Frontier’s Internet was better. Over the years, Comcast invested in their equipment and Frontier rested on their laurels. Now Comcast offers speeds over 100 MB per second where I live for about the same price Frontier will sell me 5.5. Same price and twenty times the speed!

Anyway, Friday, May 12th was a memorable one. You see, when we got up in the morning both our phone and Internet were shutoff. I asked multiple people at Frontier to terminate our service on June 12. I spoke with both the customer service person that took my call and the “closer” that tried to get me to change my mind and told both people June 12. Again, no customer service.

Meanwhile, I had attempted to prepare for the switch to Comcast. I went on the Internet and set up an account on the Comcast website and ordered a do-it-yourself installation kit. (Note to readers: you likely don’t need the installation kit.) I bought a modem recommended by Comcast’s website from Amazon and tried hooking it up. After re-running the cable thru my attic, and connecting the modem, I found that the cable to my house was literally unhooked at the street. Trying to connect at the street didn’t result in any signal to the modem. All this had happened prior to being cut-off by Frontier.

Meanwhile back to May 12. After getting settled in at work, I tried a live chat on the Comcast website but after 45 minutes, I never got a response. (I think the dreaded firewall blocked the port so I couldn’t connect.) Next, I tried the option for a callback. Amazingly, I was contacted by a Comcast person in less than a minute. The lady I spoke with confirmed that we were not connected at the street and set up a service call to do that. She said we did not need to be there since the cable was just being connected at the street. She also said that she would call on the following Monday to see if everything was OK.

When I got home, the Amazon purchased modem would not connect. Per diagnostic lights, it had a failure. I tried resetting but with no luck. I decided to send it back and try my luck at Fry’s. On Saturday on the way to Fry’s I dropped the modem off at the nearby Staples. Within an hour of taking the Amazon return to Staples, I had a complete refund from Amazon in my checking account. Sadly, the modem purchased at Fry’s would connect but at very slow speeds; not anywhere near those promised by Comcast.

On Monday, true to her word, the lady from Comcast called. I told her the connection was not working like it should. She sent a service tech to my home at no charge. Per our discussion, the tech called me at work and I met him at the house. He crimped new connectors on the cable at each junction point from the street to my modem and used a signal tester on the line. Inside the house, he used his own modem which test at 250 Mb per second and then attached mine. After a reboot, it connected at just over 100 MB per second.

Subsequent, to installation, I’ve had to reboot the modem once to get my Android phone to connect. I also found that the slow connection to the back of my house was due to a faulty cable from the modem to the Cat 6 cable going to my hub. (Proof that not all store bought cables are to be trusted.)

Oh, Comcast is charging me $39.99 for the first year with no extra taxes attached. So far, it’s a much better deal than Frontier. Lastly, on my final bill from Frontier, they are showing a credit even after shutting me down a month early; so much for early termination.

Recently my Microsoft Band 2 died; and for the last time since it was out of warranty. I really enjoyed the MS Band. It integrated with both my Lumia 640 and later 950 XL and had many features that other fitness bands and smartwatches still don’t offer. The warranty service from Microsoft was amazing but sadly too frequently. The flaw with the device was the Android operating system and battery. Once the battery was totally depleted, the watch would often fail to boot-up anymore.

I tried two other watches as replacements for the Band.

First was the Vector Smartwatch. When first released, this watch was praised for compatibility with the Window OS and recommended as a possible replacement for the MS Band. The company was recently purchased by Fitbit and was supposedly compatible with my Windows phone. The watch display was monochrome not full color like my Band. It would not connect to my phone under any circumstances. My phone could never see the device via the Bluetooth connection. I tried firmware updates and many other things to no avail. After several days, I finally returned it to Amazon for a refund.

Garmin also has a watch that did some things that my Band would do so I decided to try it. It too, was supposedly compatible with the Windows Phone OS with a caveat that it might loose Bluetooth connection occasionally. This too was a mixed bag of results. The watch itself was great but it would not maintain a connection with the phone. However, Garmin has a Windows program that runs on my PC and it works great. It is possible to use the watch without any smartphone connection. Lastly, the Garmin watch can go about five or six days on a single charge and is waterproof too!

After trying two watches that both were supposedly compatible with Windows Phone and the trickle of media reports that per their financials, Microsoft was terminating support for their Widows Phones at the end of June 2017, I came to the conclusion that the smartwatch phone applications were “abandonware”.

Sensing both my frustration at the lack of support for the Windows mobile platform and knowing that her Band would be failing soon, my wife prompted me to buy an Android phone. Like many folks, I took a look at Samsung but the prices of their Galaxy phones are crazy. I will not pay over eight hundred dollars for a phone. After looking around, I decided to try the ASUS “ZenFone 3 Zoom 5.5 ”.

https://www.asus.com/Phone/ZenFone-3-Zoom-ZE553KL/

This phone has a mid-range CPU and a better than average camera. The phone comes with USB cable, wall charger, headphones, and case. It also, comes with a promise to be upgradeable—at some point in the future—to Android 7.

While I have constantly heard that Microsoft’s ecosystem suffered from an “app gap”, two of my favorite apps are not available on the Android platform. The Milton Bradley game Battleship has no app in the Android store. (It was in the Windows Phone Store but was pulled a few years ago; probably when Electronic Arts acquired the company.) I played Battleship almost daily since I bought the game. Whatever Aaron Park might say not withstanding, it was my “go to” app when camping in the boy’s room. The other app that was a constant friend was Quake Watch. While there is an app by the same name in the Google Play store, it is not the same in terms of information or versatility.

In the next few paragraphs, I plan to compare my experiences with both Operating Systems.

Windows Phone a.k.a. Windows Mobile 10
Advantages
Live Tiles
Live Tiles are the cornerstone of what makes the Microsoft mobile OS different from Android or IOS. Each icon can—if the developer allows it—scale to at least three different sizes on the phone screen. In addition, each tile can give you current information that is pushed to the phone. For example, the weather app can give you current temperature without opening the app. The money app can give you the Dow-Jones close for your favorite stock, and a news app can tell you the latest headlines without even opening the app. The newest iterations of the live tile could even take you directly to the story on the tile that you clicked on when you selected the app.

Glance Screen
Let you see time and selected alerts without logging into phone. This was a semi-sleep mode for the phone without going to log on screen. Screen was black with white text. The idea was provide the user information without using too much battery life.

Other features that I did not use were VPN and Continuum.

Disadvantages
Live Tiles, Glance Screen, and other features cause battery life to be about 1 to 1 ½ days.

Apps were not continually updated. I have already mentioned Battleship. This was removed from the Store a few years ago but I could still download it because I had purchased it. MyFitnessPal was another app that was dropped from the store. I could continue using it but if I ever logged off of the app then I would not be allowed to get back in. Then there were the apps for the fitness bands/smartwatches that are no longer supported. They are virtually worthless but still listed in the Store.

Some phone features were deprecated or removed by Microsoft.
• For example, all phones have an FM radio built into them but Microsoft dropped support for the FM radio feature from their operating system leaving this functionality to be supported by third parties.
• For many years, Microsoft has built NFC into the phone but never developed the software to support the feature. Only about five banks in the United States supported the wireless payment feature.
• Also, Microsoft used to allow me to go onto a website using my PC, purchase apps for my phone and they would magically appear on my phone a short time later. Google still allows this but MS stopped this a few years ago.
• Lastly, my phone quit supporting visual voicemail and attachments to text messages. (This last could be a carrier issue and not a phone one but I didn’t ever get to the bottom of it.)

Android 6

As I get into this, I am fully aware that the newest version of Android is 7. My ASUS phone was at a reasonable price point for a cash purchase at $330. It also will be able to upgrade to Android 7 in the future. And yes, I know that might not be a certainty in the Android world but I would trust a promise from ASUS before I would a cell provider.

Advantages
Speed
Battery life
Plays nice with Garmin Smartwatch

Disadvantages
Missing and deprecated apps. Battleship, Groove, Quake Watch
No app notification integration.
No NFC radio—specific complaint to my phone
Desktop is cluttered and clunky.
SD Card—can’t move apps to this card.
Despite assurances on the Internet that Android 6 supports it, my device is not capable of 5 GHz Wi-Fi and the OS doesn’t offer the option.

Android apps do not natively integrate into the operating system the way that Microsoft’s OS does. When I load an email app on a Windows device, the app will notify me and any devices that I sync with—including my PC—that I have a text or email.  With a few clicks, I could fully integrate Google mail, calendar, and address book but the reverse is not the case. On Android, the app installs and that’s it. Even after enabling permissions the app does very little. You need to drill down into the app to allow notifications and any app that you want to provide a notification then must also be linked to the other app.

For example, I installed Outlook on my Android phone. I had to drill down into the app until I found the notification settings, then I had to enable the feature. This then allows the phone to be notified that I received an email. Once that was done, I had to go into the Garmin app and enable Outlook notifications as a third party app in order to get notifications to my smartwatch. The process is convoluted and poorly documented—if at all.

Microsoft Groove does not work on Android the way it does on a Windows phone. The app has no ability to find music stored on an SD card. It can do this on my old phone. I can stream music via Groove or Amazon but prefer to have it stored on the SD card so as not to waste my data. When streaming, most of my stuff is on Amazon not One Drive. The bottom line is that Groove is no longer on the Droid phone.

The SD card was not what I expected either. Even though it is physically located inside the phone, the Android OS will only treat it as a removable drive and not as internal storage. Thus no apps can be moved from the internal memory of the phone to the SD card. My old Android phone had this feature four years ago. My son has an Android phone that we bought new for $5 two years ago that can do this so why can’t my $300 phone? Stupid design!

Android seems to use fewer resources on the phone hardware and thus appears more nimble but many of the apps on the Windows phone could scale to both mobile and desktop environments. My opinion is that apps are more limited in their abilities and generally I will take a full-blown program over an app any day—be it on a phone or PC. Moving to Android is like going from Windows 10 to Windows 98. Windows 98 had better screensavers (After Dark, Johnny Castaway, etc.) but Windows 10 is more productive and secure.

To illustrate the difference between computers and common sense, I respectfully submit the following:

Just ‘cause it passes spell check don’t make it right.

Labor Security—when you can never be fired. This only applies to career politicians and Swedish workers.

Here’s another I found today when buying tickets for the Scottish Games. After completing the page above with number of tickets, credit card number and my address, I scroll to the bottom of the page and encounter this.
OK computer guys, why is there two buttons and which is correct?

Do I Submit my order or Buy Tickets?

I have this mental picture of David Letterman asking, “What the hell is the difference?”

Just remember that people charge big bucks to connect web pages to online payment portals.

Oh, in case you were wondering, I clicked on Submit.

There is a silent war being waged all around the world and you are up to your neck in it if you own a computer, smart phone, tablet device, smart television, or recent model car. Both multinational companies and nation-states are doing their best to collect information on you.

Tracking cookies and the like are so nineteen nineties. Today, any device that you own can be accessed without your knowledge or permission.  Laptop and cell phone cameras and microphones can be turned on by remote means; your television can see into your livingroom; your movement anywhere on the planet is tracked by your car, smart phone, or wrist device.

Stuxnet was just the beginning of what a carefully planned hack can accomplish. If you are not familiar with Stuxnet I recommend that you read up on it. Here are a few links:

Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm believed to be a jointly built American-Israeli cyberweapon, although no organization or state has officially admitted responsibility. However, anonymous US officials speaking to The Washington Post claimed the worm was developed during the Bush administration to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program with what would seem like a long series of unfortunate accidents.

Stuxnet specifically targets programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Exploiting four zero-day flaws, Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networks, then seeking out Siemens Step7 software.

Wikipedia Link: Stuxnet

Link: Wired Magazine—An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet, the World’s First Digital Weapon

Link: Business Insider—The Stuxnet Attack On Iran’s Nuclear Plant Was ‘Far More Dangerous’ Than Previously Thought

Apple, Sony, and Lenovo are famous for putting rootkits on computers without user permission to spy on you. Visio televisions are also known to spy on users and report data back to somewhere.

WikiLeaks reportedly used spyware installed purposely by Lenovo to obtain information on the Democrat National Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Recently, Russia and China have been in the news on this subject.

Russia has stated that they want to move away from any software made by a foreign countries. While the biggest target for this announcement was Microsoft, they also had others in mind. They fear that the software may be compromised by backdoors programmed into the software. It is widely believed that the FBI, CIA, and National Security Agency can access any computer at will.

Link: Microsoft, Google, Adobe Leave Russia Due to Putin’s New Laws

Link: Moscow’s government ditches Microsoft for Russian software

While Russia is trying to strengthen its defenses against spying and foreign snooping, China is again broadening its ability to keep tabs on the rest of the world. Instead of planting listening posts all over the world and circling the globe with satellites like the West, China is programming devices to report personally identifiable information to servers in their country. If you’ve been watching this subject then you know that any electronic device from their country is probably compromised or could be at a later date. Unlike us, they really have a military/industrial complex.

Here’s the latest example to be made public earlier this month. Only 700 million Android devices are affected by this one instance.

The firmware it uses receives automatic updates from the maker. The covert transmission of personal data is taking place periodically every 72 hours for text messages and call logs and every 24 hours for other personally identifiable information. The user has no ability to switch off the eavesdropping.

“The collected information was encrypted with multiple layers of encryption and then transmitted over secure web protocols to a server located in Shanghai,” Kryptowire said. “This software and behaviour bypasses the detection of mobile anti-virus tools because they assume that software that ships with the device is not malware and thus, it is white-listed.”

Link: Made in China’ smartphone spies on users, researchers found

 

Link: SHOCK REPORT: China Loaded Up to 700 Million Android Devices With Pre-Installed Spyware

For about $50, you can get a smartphone with a high-definition display, fast data service and, according to security contractors, a secret feature: a backdoor that sends all your text messages to China every 72 hours.

Link: New York Times—Secret Back Door in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say

Link: The Hacker News—Chinese Android

Kryptowire has identified several models of Android mobile devices that contained firmware that collected sensitive personal data about their users and transmitted this sensitive data to third-party servers without disclosure or the users’ consent. These devices were available through major US-based online retailers (Amazon, BestBuy, for example) and included popular smartphones such as the BLU R1 HD. These devices actively transmitted user and device information including the full-body of text messages, contact lists, call history with full telephone numbers, unique device identifiers including the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) and the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI). The firmware could target specific users and text messages matching remotely defined keywords. The firmware also collected and transmitted information about the use of applications installed on the monitored device, bypassed the Android permission model, executed remote commands with escalated (system) privileges, and was able to remotely reprogram the devices.
Link: Kryptowire finds Android firmware

So there we are. I bet many readers didn’t know that we were even in a global “Information Cold War”.

Donald Trump’s advocating the return of manufacturing back to the United States is the right thing to do—not just for economic reasons but because it’s actually a national security issue of the highest order. Most of our military infrastructure and weapons systems are dependent on parts from foreign countries—especially China. In addition, last I heard, Russian manufacturers make parts that are vital for our cruise missile weapons systems. Farming out our military to other countries might make globalists happy but in a time of national emergency it’s a suicidal foreign policy.

The HD antenna that I deployed when our family “cut the cord” was really marginal. The antenna was located in our attic but many local channels were downright unwatchable. All we were able to get on some stations was pixels that changed every four or five seconds and highly fragmented audio. To watch many shows, I had to catch them on Hulu the following day. Watching the evening news was impossible on many stations and ditto for live sports.

Just in time for the new television season—such as it is—I went to Frys and bought a new antenna. (Assembly required) I then got up the nerve to get on the roof to install it. Our ladder is too short to reach the roof and standing on the top step is a dicey proposition—especially when working by yourself. Thankfully, my eleven year old is willing to help his old dad by holding the ladder.

I removed the DirecTV dish and replaced it with the new antenna. I used the same mast but had to exclude some parts from the clamp assembly to get it to fit.

It may not reach the advertised 70 miles but we do get more channels and at a much better quality. After filtering out the Spanish language and home shopping stations, we still have a fairly good variety of over-the-air stuff to choose from.