Nougat Explorer

I always wondered why Android didn't have a native file manager. Finally Android 7 Nougat has one. It's hidden deep in the Settings menu.

Thanks to gifmaker.me

Android Backups in Google Drive

Update: This nice feature is now gone. Thanks Google.

Android has been taking device backups and sending them to the cloud for a while but it wasn't apparent where they were stored nor how long they were kept.

Google has updated Google Drive both on Android and the web to expose this information.

Here's how it looks on Android.

Tap on "Backups" and you'll see the list of devices backed up and when those backups will expire.

Keep on drilling down and you'll see which apps were included and when they last changed their data.

Google Maps Traffic

How does Google Maps know about traffic? Here's what Business Insider reported.

Here's how it works: All iPhones that have Google Maps open and Android phones that have location services turned on send anonymous bits of data back to Google. This allows the company to analyze the total number of cars, and how fast they're going, on a road at any given time.

Even Google has blogged about it.

If you use Google Maps for mobile with GPS enabled on your phone, that's exactly what you can do. When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions.

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

Google also uses traffic sensors.

Contracting with these transportation agencies to share the data generated by the sensors proved to be a mutually rewarding endeavor for both parties; Google was able to expand its traffic services while the transportation agencies were able to defray part of the sensors’ costs. 

But here's the creepy thing. At a lunch over the holidays, an executive in a Memphis-based logistics company told me how a Google executive had told him how Google gets location feeds from the cell carriers.

A little Google searching turned up more information.

So how does Google know what traffic is like on the roads, nearly all the time? From our smartphones, of course. Whether you like it or not, “telephone companies have always known where your phone is,” Dobson says, because cell phone companies need to use location to appropriately charge customers for calls. That means the companies are constantly monitoring location based on the strength of signal to a cell tower, which allows the phone to switch towers as it travels.

GpsPasSion reported in 2011.

Google now combines AirSage cell phone triangulations with their own gps probes. AirSage monitors both Sprint and Verizon phones totaling 150 million phones 

More recently Fossbytes reported.

Google also crowdsources location data from telecom companies. These telcos monitor user location data by a method called Trilateration, in which the distance of a user measured between two or three surrounding telecom towers is used to analyse the speed and location of the user.

Look at this detail from Google Maps. There's no way that they could get this much detail from a handful of users running Google Maps.

It takes a little reading between the lines to discern that the cell carriers are selling location data to Google but my source is impeccable.

Cloudy Day

To some I'm sure that March 1st felt like April 1st. Really, that couldn't be happening? Amazon's S3 (Simple Storage Service) went down in their Eastern Region (Ok, it just had "high error rates").

But there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this.

First, it seems nobody is listening to me.

Cloud services aren't magical (even Apple's). They rumble. They go bump.

Don't abdicate your responsibilities to the cloud provider. If you need high availability make sure that that is what your contract guarantees.

In the March 1st S3 outage either lots of customers didn't feel they needed high availability or they misunderstood what they contracted for.

Make sure you are not surprised like "Docker's Registry Hub, Trello, Travis CI, GitHub and GitLab, Quora, Medium, Signal, Slack, Imgur, Twitch.tv, Razer, heaps of publications that stored images and other media in S3, Adobe's cloud, Zendesk, Heroku, Coursera, Bitbucket, Autodesk's cloud, Twilio, Mailchimp, Citrix, Expedia, Flipboard, and Yahoo! Mail (which you probably shouldn't be using anyway)." (source)

At the same time don't over buy. One of my customers was considering migrating their on-premise servers to Azure. As part of their on-premise setup they had a specific backup system and service. When I investigated Azure's service commitments I found that Azure's committed backup and availability met my customers needs and the customer could discontinue their backup system and service.

By the way Amazon did a thorough post mortem on the outage.

Second (and more concerning since they should know better), even Amazon had highly visible services down.

Reminiscent of one of Microsoft's outages Amazon's own online public dashboard was down along with many of Amazon's customer facing services, e.g. Amazon Fire tablets.

From Amazon's post mortem "we have changed the SHD administration console to run across multiple AWS regions."

Amazon, hadn't you thought of this before? What else have you overlooked?

You Can’t Cut Your Way to Success

One of my former co-workers used to say "You Can’t Cut Your Way to Success."

A recent article in CIO.com called out challenges that keep CIOs up at night.

Several of the points were pertinent to my former co-worker's advice.

5. Aging IT infrastructures and IT spending cuts

"Many [financial services] organizations continue to rely on IT infrastructures that are built on outdated components and are running with vulnerabilities," says Joseph Pagano, practice advisor, Financial Services, Cisco Digital Transformation Group.

8. New technology (business disrupters)

The need to unearth and deploy new technologies and systems that will better serve and streamline their customers’ experiences is now of paramount concern for maintaining long-term business viability.

Likewise CFO.com had the same message.

...treating IT as an investment that builds rather than destroys IT capability and value. Contrary to conventional wisdom, if your CIO isn’t asking you for more money, she probably isn’t doing her job. You see, when it comes to IT, it takes money to make money and it takes money to save money.

My director once said to me "I've never seen a dollar you can't spend." To which I replied "If you don't like the results find someone else." I kept my job.

Invest in IT. If your IT isn't yielding value look at IT management, including yourself.

Windows Fast Startup

Maybe I missed this since I skipped Windows 8. Windows 8 called it "Fast Boot." Windows 10 extends this facility as default to laptops as well as desktops.

In summary, with Fast Startup the current user is logged off but then instead of shutting down the operating system as expected the current state of Windows is written to the hibernation file. Then when the system is restarted the state is resumed and the user logged back in.

The result is that Windows doesn't really get restarted, just the user is logged off and back on.

To force a complete Windows shutdown and restart, hold SHIFT while you select Shutdown or Restart.

I encountered this recently when I encountered the DHCP problems Windows 10 introduced. A Windows restart using Fast Startup wouldn't clear this.

Winaero Tweaker

A recent post in AskWoody reminded me of a utility I came across a while back.

The AskWoody article refers to the Winaero utility Winaero Tweaker. You can download it here.

While Winaero Tweaker can do a number of things the AskWoody reference was to disabling Windows 10 telemetry.

Winaero Tweaker makes that literally a one-click operation. Here's their write-up on it.

If that's not geeky enough for you, just scroll down and read the comments. Follow them at your own risk.

Windows vs macOS

You always hear that macOS is more secure than Windows. In reality that perception is because macOS has been a smaller target (less devices) than Windows.

I recently came across an example that puts money behind the assertion that Windows is more secure than macOS.

Pwn2Own is a computer hacking contest held annually at the CanSecWest security conference. Contestants are challenged to exploit widely used software. Cash prizes are awarded to those contestants that successfully demonstrate the vulnerability of various software. The value of the prizes are set by the level of difficulty expected in each software.

Here is the announcement of prizes for local escalation of privilege:

Local Escalation of Privilege 

Although we’ve had some Escalation of Privilege (EoP) bugs as add-ons in past Pwn2Owns, this is the first year it has a category of its own. This is also the first time we included Linux as a target. In this category, the entry must leverage a kernel vulnerability to escalate privileges. If they do, contestants will earn $30,000 for Microsoft Windows 10, $20,000 for macOS, and $15,000 for Ubuntu Desktop. They will also get 4 Master of Pwn points for Windows and 3 for the other OSes. Considering the various types of malware that use local EoPs, this could prove to be an impactful category. As always, the latest, fully-patched version of each OS will be used – even if we have to stay up late to install the patches.
http://blog.trendmicro.com/pwn2own-returns-for-2017-to-celebrate-10-years-of-exploits/

$30,000 for Microsoft Windows 10 and $20,000 for macOS.

So when Pwn2Own put their money on the security of operating systems, they bet on Windows.

Good job Microsoft.

I'm A Luddite

A former co-worked once called me a Luddite. I think he was joking but...

My recent efforts at trading cars reminded me of that accusation. {This will turn into a tech story shortly.)

We have had a 2013 Nissan Pathfinder for over 3 1/2 years. While we always enjoyed the ride and comfort of the Pathfinder it was fraught with recurring problems.

Normal wear and tear and indicated us to replace the tires at just over 60,000 miles. Simultaneously the sun visors began drooping (like every 2013 Pathfinder does after the warranty lapses), the tailgate resumed its former issue of not power raising or lowering, the driver's window started to go up way more slowly than the passenger's and the brakes started screeching.

My wife refused to put any more money in it so we were off to look for a replacement.

We surfed around and came up with a short list: Honda Pilot and Toyota Highlander. We have had lots of both brands but most recently I've been driving Hondas so off we went to AutoNation Honda 385.

Our first drive was a 2017 Pilot Touring. We stopped at a red light and when I released the brakes the engine gave a noticeable shudder. I asked the saleperson in the back seat what that was. He said it was the "Idle-Stop" feature.

The idle-stop feature-standard on Pilot Touring and Elite trims helps maximize fuel efficiency in stop-and-go traffic. When the vehicle is at a stop for at least 2 seconds-such as at a traffic light-the engine automatically shuts off to save fuel. When you release the brake pedal even slightly, the engine starts back up by itself.

Remember that the Pilot Touring is not a hybrid. When the Pilot Touring is sitting with the engine shut off the air conditioning stops cooling. The fan continues to run but that's going to get uncomfortable in Memphis really quickly.

When I asked the salesperson if that feature could be disabled he showed me a button on the console to disable it. But it gets reset every time you turn the vehicle off and back on.

We drove a little more and entered an Interstate. I accelerated and felt the transmission shift several times with one being a bang-bang. Again another question to the salesperson. His response was that the Pilot Touring has a ZF 9-speed transmission. While that explained the several shifts it didn't explain the bang-bang. The salesperson had no further explanation.

I inquired as to whether all Pilots had these 2 features and the salesperson said that the models below the Pilot Touring, e.g. Pilot EX-L. didn't have either.

Frustrated we headed across the way to Principle Toyota to look at Highlanders. Guess what ALL (except the entry level model LE) of the 2017 Toyota Highlanders have? Yep, "Stop-Start". And no way to turn it off.

That's where the Luddite in me started to come out.

There's lots of discussion on the Internet about why the manufacturers are so aggressive with this idle-stop feature. The EPA mileage difference between the Honda Pilot EX-L (19/27/22) and the Touring (20/27/23) are minimal and much more likely to be related to the 9-speed transmission.

We didn't drive the Honda Pilot hybrid models. I'd hope that these models would drive off under electric power and start the conventional engine while underway. This would at least mask the shudder of the engine restarting.

Now for the 9-speed transmission.

This YouTube video does a much better job of explaining it than I can.

tl:dr There are 2 shift points that use dog clutches instead of the traditional plate clutches. These shift points are what I felt as a bang-bang.

Again there is no circumvention for this feature.

And the Internet is on fire with complaints about the ZF transmission. Motor Trend's long term test unit even had to have the transmission replaced.

So what did I do?

I gave Honda less money than I would have otherwise and bought a 2017 Honda Pilot EX-L.

Just to dissuade the Luddite accusers I chose a 2017 over a 2016 since the 2017s have Apple CarPlay/Android Auto. More on that later.

How to Stop Skype from Running in the Background on Windows 10

Here's more fun and games with Windows 10 Version 1607 (aka Anniversary Update).

This article tells you how sign out of Windows 10’s new Skype Preview app.

I'm going to tell you how to attack it with an Atomic Flyswatter.

Windows + R

Type "shell:AppsFolder" without the quotes and click "OK".

Find the Skype Preview app (any any others you don't want), right click and select "Uninstall".

This technique came from here.

Do NOT uninstall the Store app. If you do, the only easy way to get it back is to reinstall Windows 10 over itself.

Windows Installer Folder

When I ran my monthly backups recently I noticed that the X201 took way more space to backup than my other Windows 10 systems but not so much that I did anything about it. Then I ran Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool just because I hadn't run it in a long time. It took hours, most of that in c:\Windows\Installer.

When I browsed to c:\Windows and looked for Installer I didn't see it. So I typed c:\Windows\Installer in Explorer's address field and it came up. I selected all the folders, right clicked and chose "Properties."

There was almost 30GB there!

It turns out that c:\Windows\Installer is used to uninstall programs. However in an old, active system (like X201) these files tend to get orphaned.

Google it if you like but there's much confusion out there. Most of the discussions wander off into telling the poster about how to run Disk Clean-Up to delete old versions of Windows. This is NOT the problem.

I saw PatchCleaner mentioned again and again. This article describes it best. PatchCleaner's home page is here and there's a download link but SourceForge has a project that has created a portable version.

I downloaded the portable version and ran it on X201. As I suspected it found over 26GB of orphaned files. I chose the option to have PatchCleaner move these orphaned files over to my Drobo.

Problem solved. I'll let you know if this created any new problems.

Google's Internet Speed Test

I saw a post on reddit recently that referred to Google's Internet speed test.

Here's the URL to run it:

         https://www.google.com/search?q=check+internet+speed

Here's the result from my ThinkPad X201 running 802.11n.

That didn't seem as fast as I expected so I tried Google Fiber's Internet speed test.

Here's the URL to run it:

         http://speedtest.googlefiber.net/

That's more like it.

Then I tried Netflix's Internet speed test.

Here's the URL to run it:

         https://fast.com/

So I was on a roll. I tried Ookla's Internet speed test.

Here's the URL to run it:

         http://www.speedtest.net/

And Comcast's Internet speed test.

Here's the URL to run it:

         http://speedtest.xfinity.com/

Four out of five can't be wrong. Google's Internet speed test is reporting about half of the actual speed.

Rumbling Clouds

I've written several times about "cloud" availability/reliability. A recent article on Microsoft's outlook.com service brought this back to my attention. This is Microsoft's free service so there's not really a lot of room to complain. This discussion is to compare the cloud solution to a self-hosted solution.

Microsoft has a status page which was getting updated regularly which is good but the details were a little light, e.g. "focused on remediation" and "users may be able to access the service by logging in to their Outlook.com accounts with a web browser as an alternative method". The problem existed almost a week.

Again this is a free service but these are situations you need to consider as you explore moving a service to the cloud.

Go read some of the comments:

When you go cloud hosted you are subcontracting your responsibility to a third party.

That third party may be much more capable than your IT budget will allow

I've got better reliability and almost the same service and functions as my company OWA account, free of charge as well.

Cloud is a way to free up the expense of operating your own IT services.

But putting your eggs into the hands of Microsoft, Google, Amazon or any other single entity to which you represent 0.00000000001% of their annual income is a stupid idea.

Realize that you are less than a rounding error to the cloud provider.

I don't hear many people talk about ... the time it takes to repair a massive amount of infrastructure even when know how and have a fix available. I expect this to only get worse as the cloud continues to grow.

Clouds by nature are BIG. Big things take a long time to fix. Be prepared for that.

HD Voice

After I got my BlackBerry PRIV I started noticing that some phone calls sounded crystal clear. It took a while to recognize that it was just calls with certain people and hence certain phones.

I most often noticed it when I was speaking with my daughter and her iPhone 6. I Googled around trying to figure out why those calls were different.

What I came across was the HD Voice feature that AT&T has enabled using their Voice over LTE (VoLTE).

Here's a brief explanation of what HD Voice is:

HD Voice is essentially wideband audio technology, something that long has been used for conference calling and VoIP apps. Instead of limiting a call frequency to between 300 Hz and 3.4 kHz, a wideband audio call transmits at a range of 50 Hz to 7 kHz, or higher. That’s much more in line with the human voice, which transmits audio between 75 Hz and 14 kHz. 

HD Voice also takes in more audio samples per second than a standard call. Instead of 8,000 audio samples per second, HD Voice calls double that to 16,000. That way, you’re able to hear more details in a person’s voice during a call.
Source: Wired

But you have to hold your mouth right to get HD Voice. For example the iPhone 5 has the technology but AT&T has elected to only support HD Voice over their VoLTE which the iPhone 5 doesn't support. AT&T could support HD Voice over GSM (which the iPhone 5 does support) but AT&T has elected not to.

Here's AT&T's page on their HD Voice. Notice that it requires specific SIM cards. Don't sweat checking your SIM card. Just walk into an AT&T store and ask for a new SIM. They're free and it'll only take a couple of minutes.

Here are AT&T's phones that support HD Voice.

My daughter's iPhone 6 does support VoLTE as does the BlackBerry PRIV so if the planets are aligned I get HD Voice calls with my daughter.

Windows Defender Offline

I've been a fan of Windows Defender, formerly Windows Security Essentials, for a while mostly because it is free but it's also quiet. Recently I heard a discussion that recommended Windows Defender over third party alternatives since Windows Defender didn't add any new attack surfaces to Windows, e.g. Symantec.

Anyway this discussion is about a new capability added in Windows 10 version 1607 Anniversary Update. I stumbled on this when checking for new updates.

Go to Windows key + Check for updates

In the left-hand column, click on "Windows Defender."

Scroll down until you see "Windows Defender Offline". Click on "Scan Offline".

After you click this button, your computer will automatically reboot and begin scanning your PC for malware. The scan may take up to fifteen minutes. If any malware is found, you’ll be prompted to clean it up from within the Windows Defender Offline interface. If no malware is found, your computer will automatically boot back into Windows once the scan is complete.
Source: How-To-Geek

For me it ran a "Quick scan" and took just under 4 minutes. 

Windows 10 Notification Tweaks

This article got me to looking around in Windows 10's notification settings.

When you've got time on your hands go to these pages in Windows 10 settings and judiciously turn things off.

Windows key + Notifications & Actions

You can also click on the icons in the list "Get notifications from these senders" and fine tune each app's notifications.

Here's what Dropbox's looks like.

Windows key + suggestions

Look around. You'll find lots to tweak.

Red, Green, Blue and Purple

No, I'm not talking about video signals.

I listen to a lot of security podcasts. I'd been hearing them talk about "red teams" and "blue teams." I didn't know what they were talking about.

So off to Google and I came up with this.

These terms refer to teams that participate in penetration tests.

Red Teams are external entities brought in to test the effectiveness of a security program. This is accomplished by emulating the behaviors and techniques of likely attackers in the most realistic way possible.

Blue Teams refer to the internal security team that defends against both real attackers and Red Teams. Blue Teams should be distinguished from standard security teams in most organizations, as most security operations teams do not have a mentality of constant vigilance against attack, which is the mission and perspective of a true Blue Team.

Purple Teams exist to ensure and maximize the effectiveness of the Red and Blue teams. They do this by integrating the defensive tactics and controls from the Blue Team with the threats and vulnerabilities found by the Red Team into a single narrative that ensures the efforts of each are utilized to their maximum. When done properly, 1 + 1 will equal 3.

So what are Green Teams?

Green Teams behave as common users of the services provided by the Blue Team.

Reminds me of the old joke.

End users are there to create a test workload.

Decrapification of the PRIV

From the Urban Dictionary:

decrapification - The act of removing all the pre-installed crap from your Dell or HP computer PRIV smartphone. 

Other than the one time problem I had with Carrier IQ I really never had a problem with the AT&T bloatware on the BlackBerry PRIV.

In late summer 2016 many PRIVs started experiencing "No Service" when using LTE. There was some speculation that the problem was related to changes AT&T made in their LTE network to support the iPhone 7 running a new radio chip. In early November BlackBerry released an apk that corrected the "No Service" situation.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

It seems that AT&T has pretty much walked away from the PRIV. Obviously they dumped a large portion of their PRIV inventory onto liquidators as I bought mine for $300 with a carrier unlock code taped to the unsealed AT&T box.

A couple of days after BlackBerry released the "No Service" apk they rolled out a 1.8GB (not a typo) Over the Air (OTA) update to remove all the AT&T software from the now orphaned AT&T BlackBerry PRIVs.

Just for icing on the cake, this OTA included the Android November security updates.

The AT&T boot animation (including music) is gone and the software updates now come from BlackBerry, not AT&T.

Maybe it should be called the Nexus PRIV.

You really have to give some props to BlackBerry for this.

Windows 10 is the Last Version of Windows - NOT

Do you remember Microsoft's statement about Windows 10?

"Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10." Jerry Nixon, Microsoft
Source: The Verge

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

As of the end of 2016 there have been 3 "versions" of Windows 10. Here are 2 pages from Microsoft that call out the "versions."

Windows 10 Update History

Windows Release Info

But here's the issue with this relatively rapid push of Windows "versions."

Each of these "versions" (1507, 1511, 1607) are the process equivalent of a Windows upgrade. Each time you get one of these pushed via Windows Update your system goes through a Windows upgrade process similar to going from Windows 7 to Windows 8.

While the process is greatly streamlined from the Windows 7 to Windows 8 upgrade, the system still suffers all the trauma of a Windows upgrade.

I have been pleased up until the Anniversary Update (1607). Early on with 1607 I heard rumblings of problems with the upgrade. One of the problems had to do with systems booting from SSDs so since I am running Windows 10 Professional I was able to defer the upgrade.

After things quieted down I decided to let Trump upgrade. The process took about an hour and had every appearance of going perfectly.

Until...

After the upgrade I played around for a few minutes and everything seemed to be working so I turned in for the night. In the morning I went back in to check it and the screen wouldn't come back on. The system unit's power light was on but it wouldn't wake up for a tap of the power button. It took a hard reboot to get it back working.

Again everything seemed to be working so I walked away. When I came back in a little while it was locked up again. I started problem determination and finally associated the lockup with the power plan turning off the display. I set the time to "never" and it stayed up all night.

Then I remembered that a day or two before the upgrade AMD updated the video drivers for the Radeon V7 240. I went to the Start menu and typed "AMD". There was an entry there for AMD's utility but when I clicked on it it was missing.

The Anniversary Update had SILENTLY REMOVED the necessary drivers and the utility that I had installed to maintain them. I went back to the AMD site and download and reinstalled the proper drivers.

Fixed.

Why did Anniversary Update do that and break my system? What if I had been a "normal" user and didn't have the problem determination/resolution skills that I have?

That was the first problem.

Then I went back to my day to day laptop. I had a file that I needed to save on the D: drive of Trump. I was prompted for a userid/password.

I hadn't had to do that before the Anniversary Update. So off I went to do problem determination on this problem.

It turns out that you now have to turn off password protected sharing.

Neither of these are real show stoppers but if Microsoft is going to churn Windows versions twice a year they have GOT to overcome these types of problems.

Network Sharing

I always share the data drive of my "server" with the house. My goal is to make it painless, i.e. no passwords.

Every time I rebuild the server (or upgrade Windows, e.g. Anniversary Update) I have to remember what to do.

Here's how I do it.

Sharing a folder in a network

1. Right-click on the folder/drive that you wish the share and select "Properties".
2. Select the tab "Sharing" and click on "Advanced Sharing..."
3. Tick the box "Share this folder" and enter a share name for it.
4. Click on permissions, mark the group entry "Everyone" and configure the network permissions for this folder in the lower field according to your requirements. If you just want to release your files for copying, allowing "Read" is usually enough.

Setting the right permissions

1. Right-click on the folder/drive in question and select "Properties" again.
2. This time, switch to the tab "Security" and click on "Edit...", followed by "Add...".
3. In this window, enter "Everyone" into the empty field at the bottom and click on "OK".
4. Take a quick look at the permissions for "Everyone" and make sure they are all set correctly. If everything is in order, close all windows with "OK".

Deactivating password-protected sharing

1. Open the control panel and go to "Network and Sharing Center".
2. Click on "Change advanced sharing settings".
3. Look for "All Networks", expand it (if it isn't already) and scroll down to the option "Password protected sharing".
4. Check the option "Turn off password protected sharing" and click on "Save changes". Be aware that this will make all shared folders readily accessible for anyone inside your home network.

Source: PC Advisor

Smart Lock for Android

Android 5.0 Lollipop introduced a new Smart Lock feature. Smart Lock allows you to declare specific situations where you want your phone to be unlocked.

I use this feature and find myself only having to enter my PIN 1-2 times per day.

Here's how to do it.

I use "Trusted devices," "Trusted places" and "On-body detection."

While "Trusted devices" and "Trusted places" are pretty obvious, "On-body detection" is more subtle.

"On-body detection" keeps the phone unlocked while it is moving such as in your pocket. When the device becomes still for a few seconds it locks and requires the PIN to access. An example is when you set the phone on a table for a few seconds it locks. Nice.

Overnight, specifically after 4 hours idle, the phone locks regardless of trusted situations.

As always there are 2 sides to this story. Here's the other.

Remember what the president of our company said "iPhone users just don't understand what they're missing."

Google Opinion Rewards

One day at lunch a former co-worked asked me if I used Google Opinion Rewards. I hadn't heard of it. I found it in the Play Store and installed it.

Surveys pop up in the notifications bar and you can ignore them by swiping them away or clicking on them and taking the survey.

Upon completion Google gives you a nominal award of Google Play credit. Most run less than 50¢ but add up quickly.

Here are a couple of the recent surveys offered to me.


Thansks to gifmaker.me for the gifs.

Not UPnP

If you don't read Krebs on Security you should. Recently his website was attacked by the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack ever seen. Investigation showed that it was powered by infected Internet of Things (IoT) devices, mostly media devices.

Subsequently he wrote a post on "Who Makes the IoT Things Under Attack?"

To me the key point in this post was:

...many IoT devices will use a technology called Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) that will automatically open specific virtual portholes or “ports,” essentially poking a hole in the router’s shield for that device that allows it to be communicated with from the wider Internet.

If you don't know what Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is go read the wikipedia article here.

But that article is long and dry. The problem with UPnP is finally described here:

NAT traversal One solution for NAT traversal, called the Internet Gateway Device Protocol (IGD Protocol), is implemented via UPnP. Many routers and firewalls expose themselves as Internet Gateway Devices, allowing any local UPnP control point to perform a variety of actions, including retrieving the external IP address of the device, enumerate existing port mappings, and add or remove port mappings. By adding a port mapping, a UPnP controller behind the IGD can enable traversal of the IGD from an external address to an internal client.

Now read that again.

Many routers and firewalls ... allowing any local UPnP control point to ... add or remove port mappings.

Do you realize how BAD that is?

But the solution is easy. In your router just disable UPnP.

Do it NOW.

Update: Listen to Security Now 583

Update 2: I told you - Connections are allowed into the device from the outside world via UPnP.

Update 3:  The Beat Goes on - Billions of smart home devices open to attack: What to do

How to Turn Off LTE

There is currently a situation involving BlackBerry PRIVs and various mobile networks. The symptom is that your phone displays "No Service" and you have to reboot to restore service.

Along the way, I came across a technique to disable LTE and leave HSPA enabled.

LTE is a notorious consumer of battery and HSPA typically yields around 10Mbps down so even without the "No Service" issue turning off LTE is probably worth considering.

First go to the Dialer. Enter *#*#4636#*#*.

As soon as you enter the final asterisk, your phone should display a "Testing" menu.

Tap on "Phone Info".

The 4G LTE Switch app in the Play Store will take you directly to this menu. Scroll down until you see "Set preferred network type:"

Just below that you'll see the current network type, probably "LTE/GSM auto (PRL)" and a little "twistie" over to the right. Remember what that value is so you can reset to that if needed.

Tap on that "twistie."

Scroll through the resulting menu.

Tap on "GSM auto (PRL)". Now tap on the back button until you exit this menu. Don't just tap the home button.

Here's the download speed I'm getting.

You may have to repeat this after you restart your phone.

Insteon Smarthome

My daughter came up with an idea to have her outside lights turn on at sunset and turn off at bedtime. That sounded simple until I tried to actually do it.

I found switches that actually had an embedded processor that you told the latitude and longitude and the time and it calculated sunset/sunrise.

That seemed straightforward but it was not to be.

She added an additional requirement that she wanted to be able to turn them on from her bed. That complicated it tremendously. Now the switches had to be networked.

Well, this did simplify the timing. The clock/timing could be managed centrally and the switches could just be sent on and off commands.

What I found was Smarthome.com's Insteon system.

The switches would fit in a regular plate.

They could be managed by a controller.

Let's just say "Don't do that." Smarthome replaced the Controller with their Hub.

Smarthome has an app that controls the Hub.

That seemed so simple. It wasn't.

Thankfully the 3 circuits involved were all single switched circuits. 3-way circuits are much harder.

So I removed the old switches and installed the Insteon switches. After lots of reading manuals and a couple of calls to Smarthome's support (actually pretty good) I got 2 of the 3 working.

To net it out, the switch that wasn't working was on a different leg of the breaker box. I had an electrician come out and move the breaker for the non-working circuit to the "right" place.

He didn't understand it either. He just moved it around in the breaker box and it was still on a different leg.

So I started looking for alternative ways to bridge the legs.

I found a Range Extender that bridges the legs.

Smarthome said you had to use the Range Extenders in pairs but I read the documentation closely and decided that the Hub would act as the other member of the pair. I moved from receptacle to receptacle around the house until the light turned green and I was done!

Total elapsed time - 18 months!

Then she moved. I inherited the parts and pieces and moved them to my house where they worked fine the first time.

I'm so satisfied that I have expanded my system with a lamp module.

Disconnect Windows 10 From Microsoft Account

Ok, so I've done it TWICE. That is I have twice inadvertently associated my Microsoft ID with my Windows 10 instance. When (not if) you do this, here's how to unassociate your Microsoft ID.

The best instructions I have found are here. I have cleaned up the language a little. This is for Windows 10 1507 so the screens may be slightly different.

1. Firstly, setup another admin account so that you have a way in if things go wrong.
2. Next, save all your work because it may lock your mouse/screen and won't let you save your work at the end of this process.
3. Then, go to your start button
4. Go up to the top and click on your profile name/account
5. Then click "change account settings"
6. In the "your account" tab, just above your account picture there will be an option to select a button saying "log on using local account" or "change log on to local account" (something along these lines)
7. Click this and it will give you an opportunity to (from now on) log onto your computer using a new password that IS NOT linked to your Hotmail or Microsoft account.
8. Then when you use the admin as the account name, it will complain that the account is already in use. So use a different name, say tmp.
9. It will ask you to save your work and logout (but may not give you a chance to save. Proceed to finish the process/logout.
10. Now login to an admin account (either the new "tmp" account if it was administrator or the other one that you created). 
11. Go to control panel, user accounts and eventually find the setting to rename an account.
12. Rename the tmp account (now delinked from online account) back to the name it was.
13. Logout and back in.
14. You are set.

Worked for me, twice.

ARM Server Chip - For Real

You heard it here 4 years ago - ARM Server Chip.

Now it comes to reality - Fujitsu: Why we chose 64-bit ARM over SPARC for our exascale super

And it displaces my beloved SPARC chip.

A few quotes from Fujitsu...

When was the last time you heard nice things about SPARC Linux?

Fujitsu chose 64-bit ARM CPU cores for its upcoming exascale supercomputer for two reasons: Linux and the ability to customize its own processors.

[Fujitsu] chose ARM over SPARC due to ARM's larger and healthier software ecosystem.

ARM has the best software ecosystem for us.

And you thought Intel and Sun ruled the world.

Chromecast Data Usage

I love my new router.

When I was looking at the Traffic Monitor I noticed that my Chromecast was in my top 5 clients. This chart is only about 5 days into my using the Asus RT-AC68R.

I found this thread on reddit. In that thread there's a link to a earlier thread.

Bottom line is that a chromecast will use 8-20 MB per hour when turned on and idle no matter what. Disabling or changing backdrop settings does not disable the background images, it just customizes them. When backdrop is disabled, new images still appear at the same rate, just with a message about enabling backdrop in the lower right instead of information about the image. 

The workaround I found was to power the chromecast from the TV's USB port instead of using the wall adapter, so it's only on when the TV is on. This isn't perfect, because the chromecast is still on when watching regular TV. Additionally, the chromecast takes time to start up. Unfortunately, one of my TV's doesn't have a USB port so I can't do anything about that set.

My old TV didn't have a powered USB port. When I migrated to the new TV I just moved the Chromecast along with the wall adapter USB power. My new TV does have a powered USB port so I moved the Chromecast's USB cable to that and the problem is solved mitigated.

Asus RT-AC68R First Look

Almost 3 years ago one of my former co-workers told me he had just upgraded to an Asus router and it really improved his throughput. He didn't remember which it was so I started shopping.

You'd know I'd come up with something cheap inexpensive. I got a refurbished Asus RT-N65R. It has performed very well for me.

Until...

We have been noticing some blips of the Internet but my EMCO Ping Monitor didn't complain. I finally realized that it was the radio in the router failing.

So my quest for a new router started.

I really liked the ASUSWRT firmware. But the firmware for the RT-N65R hadn't been updated since January 2015. Operationally it was fine but I was worried about security patches.

While Comcast has raised their bandwidth "trial" to 1 GB I still am interested in tracking my bandwidth usage. I wanted to maintain this ability and even expand it to tracking by device.

I looked at dd-wrt and Tomato. There are plugins for those firmwares to do this but it takes more command line skills than I was ready to tackle.

My son-in-law had the Asus RT-AC68R. It is dual-band 1900 Mbps so it is FAST. And its firmware is still being updated.

Not only does it have the same bandwidth reporting as the RT-N65R but it will break out bandwidth by client and application.

Incredible!

And there's so much more to play with. Like Merlin.

VHS to Digital Dubbing

The recent news that the last maker of VCRs was halting production scared me into action. I have upwards of 100 VHS tapes dating back to 1982. I still have several VCRs but my SageTV box that I could use to convert the VHS tapes to digital has long since bitten the dust.

I found the Toshiba DVR620 that has a standard function of dubbing VHS to DVDs. I'm sure that there are others out there but on Amazon this item had a 4 star rating, over 2,000 reviews and 1,000+ answered questions.

My goal was to convert the VHS videos to digital, e.g. MPEG-2, rather than just move them to DVDs. So what I did was scrounge up an old DVD+RW disk. I dubbed each VHS tape to this DVD+RW disk, copied the full video to my Drobo, cut the full video into logical segments with VideoRedo and uploaded them to Google Photos.

Here are the properties of the MPEG-2s:

I have had one problem with tracking and I couldn't adjust that out. I guess on a 30+ year old tape made using a rented camcorder that's Ok. I've had a couple of tapes that the leader separated from the reel when I rewound it. This YouTube will walk you through fixing that. Instead of rewinding it at high speed and risking this separation you could press PLAY [10] and then REV [9]. The downside of this is that it moves the oxide over the heads and if the tape is very old the oxide could flake off and the video is ruined.

Overall the process has worked very well.

The User Guide is here.

Here's the step by step.

Remote

Setup

1. Connect the DVR620 to a TV. I used an old flat screen and used HDMI just for simplicity.
2. Turn on the TV.
3. Turn on the DVR620 [17].
4. Press DVD [31]. Press INPUT SELECT [1] so that either L1 or L2 appears. You can't do DVD dubbing when L3 is chosen.
5. Press REC MODE [32] repeatedly until you see the record mode that you want to use. I use SP to get 2 hours on the DVD+RW.
   

Here's what the various recording modes mean:

Repeat for each tape

1. Press DVD [31]. Press OPEN/CLOSE [2] and place the DVD+RW in the DVD tray. Press OPEN/CLOSE [2] to close the tray.
2. Press SETUP [4].
3. Navigate to the DVD menu and format the DVD+RW.
4. Press VCR [30].
5. Insert the VHS tape in the tape slot. At this point the tape may begin playing if read/write tab has been removed. I always press STOP [10] and then REV [9]. When it finishes rewinding. I press OPEN/CLOSE [2] to eject the tape and then reinsert the tape and press STOP [10]. This will reset the time displayed to 0:00. This is significant as dubbing will stop automatically if no image is detected for more than 3 minutes. One of my tapes stopped at 39 minutes and I had to restart the dubbing.
6. If you want to be selective about what you dub to the DVD now is the time to position the VHS tape. If not, press DUBBING [13] and sit back. If you get a blinking red light on the unit you have a problem with the DVD. Remember you have to format EVERY time.
7. If you want to be selective about what you dub to the DVD press STOP [10] when you're done. I just let the tape run to the end and it stops dubbing automatically.
8. Just to make sure the tape is rewound I press REV [9]. When it finishes rewinding. I press OPEN/CLOSE [2] to eject the tape.
9. Press DVD [31] then press SETUP [4]. Navigate to the DVD menu and finalize the DVD+RW.
10. Press OPEN/CLOSE [2] to eject the DVD+RW.