Chillin' With an iPhone - Part 1

I've recently moved from Android to iOS, again. I wanted to share my current experiences.

Over the years I've posted several times about managing photos from a smartphone. The last time I was using iOS, I used Air Transfer to move photos from the iPhone. I fully expected to use it again this time but I haven't.

First I'm going to share my workflow and then speak to the nuances.

At the end of each day, I launch Google Photos and wait until the icon at the top right has a green check-mark.

That means all of my photos are backed up to Google Photos. I can easily triage them there.

Then I visit my iOS Camera Roll. I select and delete all the photos that I don't want to archive, e.g. screenshots, receipts, etc. Remember that they really aren't deleted, just moved to the Trash folder for 30 days.

Then I launch the OneDrive app and wait until it says "Up to date". Here (archive.is) is Microsoft's instructions on how to setup OneDrive for Camera Roll. Make sure to turn on "Include Videos".

This puts the photos my OneDrive Camera Roll in full resolution. This is where OneDrive is smoother than Air Transfer. I don't have to open a web page on a browser to make this happen. Even better, the files created have the timestamp of when the photo was saved in the filename. The downside is that this timestamp is relative to UTC. Still that is better than using a timestamp of when the file was transferred.

Two side issues: 1) You may want to turn off auto-replication of OneDrive's Camera Roll folder. Otherwise all the pictures will get copied to all of your instances of OneDrive. 2) You also may want to turn off HEIF so you get only JPG. You can do this on the iPhone by going to Settings / Camera / Formats / Most Compatible. Or you could add HEIF support to Windows.

From the OneDrive Camera Roll, I move the photos to my archive location.

Then I go back to the iOS Camera Roll and select and delete all the photos. You may not want to do this.

The non-Apple apps tend to not run passively in the background even if you enable Background App Refresh.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I've got a couple of more topics to cover: MapMyWalk, Maps, and battery usage.

Broadband Data Usage

I've been tracking my broadband data usage for years. Here's my chart.

While there are several stories/posts in this chart, the last entry (March 2020) is today's focus.

The blue stack represents the difference between my router's reported WAN data and Comcast's reported WAN data. When the blue stack is below the y-axis that indicates that Comcast didn't report as much WAN data as my router did. The long period with significant differences was a problem in my router's firmware (now fixed). Since then my router and Comcast have tracked pretty well.

Until last month (March 2020).

When I went to check my data usage on my Comcast account page, this is what I saw.

Not only was March 2020 significantly low, the first couple of days in April 2020 were zero.

And it stayed that way for several days. Then I figured it out.

With so many people working from home due to the COVID-19 situation, several ISPs have suspended their broadband data caps.

Here's Comcast's statement (archive.is) on March 13, 2020:

Pausing Our Data Plan: With so many people working and educating from home, we want our customers to access the internet without thinking about data plans. While the vast majority of our customers do not come close to using 1TB of data in a month, we are pausing our data plans for 60 days giving all customers Unlimited data for no additional charge.

It looks like what Comcast has done is to simply stop collecting broadband data usage.

This lets Comcast "pause" their data caps day by day without having to play with the billing system on the back end. Maybe they'll leave the cap off.

Clientless Skype Conference Call

In this time of "Shelter in Place" video conferencing has become a hot commodity. FaceTime is always an easy solution but for PC users that's not always available.

I came across this article that covers clientless Skype and have exercised it successfully.

Here's how it works.

Go to https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/ and click on "Create a free meeting".

Keep clicking until you get a response.

Then click on the little "copy" icon at the end of the URL.

Save that URL. It can be used over and over.

Share it with the people you want to participate.

It works on Windows 10 with Chrome and Edge (not Firefox) and on a smartphone with an installed Skype app.

The following is for Windows 10 with Chrome.

Click on the link you just created.

Click on "Cancel" and then "Join as guest".

Enter your name and click on "Join".

If you're the first in the meeting you may have to click on "Start call".

And then click on "Start call" to start the call.

This supports up to 50 concurrent users.

You shouldn't have to install anything or create an account.

You may get some prompts requesting permission to use the camera and microphone. Respond appropriately.

However, if you want to run your Windows Skype app, on the first screen click on "Open Skype". and login to your Windows Skype app.

Alternatively, if don't click on "Open Skype", you can click on "Sign in" and log into Skype with your Microsoft account using the web interface without an installed Skype app.

If you do this on a smartphone, it will try to launch a Skype app.

And it's free!

iPhone X - Essential PH-1 Comparison

Here's how the iPhone X compares to my Essential PH-1.

	Apple iPhone X	Essential PH-1
DESIGN
Device type	Smart phone	Smart phone
OS	iOS (13.x, 12.x, 11.x)	Android (10, 9.0 Pie, 8.1 Oreo, 7.1 Nougat)
Dimensions	5.65 x 2.79 x 0.30 inches (143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7 mm)	5.57 x 2.80 x 0.31 inches (141.5 x 71.1 x 7.8 mm)
Weight	6.14 oz (174 g)	6.53 oz (185 g)
Materials	Back: Glass; Frame: Stainless steel	Back: Ceramic; Frame: Titanium
Biometrics	3D Face unlock	Fingerprint (touch)
DISPLAY
Physical size	5.8 inches	5.7 inches
Resolution	2436 x 1125 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio	1312 x 2560 pixels
Pixel density	459 ppi	504 ppi
Technology	OLED	IPS LCD
Screen-to-body ratio	82.35 %	84.85 %
Colors	16 777 216	16 777 216
Touchscreen	Multi-touch	Multi-touch
Features	HDR video support, Pressure-sensitive, Oleophobic coating, Scratch-resistant glass, Ambient light sensor, Proximity sensor	Scratch-resistant glass (Corning Gorilla Glass 5), Ambient light sensor, Proximity sensor
CAMERA
Rear	Dual camera	Dual camera
Main camera	12 MP	13 MP
Features	Sapphire crystal lens cover, OIS, PDAF, CMOS image sensor, BSI sensor	Black and White, Laser and PDAF
Second camera	12 MP	13 MP
Features	Telephoto, Sapphire crystal lens cover, OIS, PDAF, CMOS image sensor, BSI sensor	Black and White, Laser and PDAF
Video recording	3840x2160 (4K UHD) (60 fps), 1920x1080 (Full HD) (240 fps), 1280x720 (HD) (30 fps)	3840x2160 (4K UHD) (30 fps), 1920x1080 (Full HD) (60 fps), 1280x720 (HD) (120 fps)
Features	OIS, Time-lapse video, Continuous autofocus, Video light, Video calling, Video sharing	Video calling, Video sharing
Front-facing camera	7 MP	8 MP
Features	HDR
HARDWARE
System chip	Apple A11 Bionic APL1W72	Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 MSM8998
Processor	Hexa-core, 2390 MHz, Monsoon and Mistral, 64-bit, 10 nm	Octa-core, 2450 MHz, Kryo 280, 64-bit, 10 nm
GPU	Apple 3-core GPU	Adreno 540
RAM	3GB	4GB
Built-in storage	64 GB	128 GB
BATTERY
Capacity	2716 mAh	3040 mAh
Type	Li - Ion, Not user replaceable	Li - Ion, Not user replaceable
Charging	USB Power Delivery, Qi wireless charging	USB Power Delivery
CELLULAR
LTE (FDD)	Bands 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(AWS-1), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700 a), 13(700 c), 17(700 b), 18(800 Lower), 19(800 Upper), 20(800 DD), 25(1900+), 26(850+), 28(700 APT), 29(700 d), 30(2300 WCS), 66(AWS-3)	Bands 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(AWS-1), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700 a), 13(700 c), 17(700 b), 20(800 DD), 21(1500 Upper), 25(1900+), 26(850+), 28(700 APT), 29(700 d), 30(2300 WCS)
LTE (TDD)	Bands 38(2600), 39(1900+), 40(2300), 41(2600+)	Bands 38(2600), 39(1900+), 40(2300), 41(2600+)
UMTS	850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz	850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz
Data Speed	LTE-A Cat 12/13 (600/150 Mbit/s), HSDPA+ (4G) 42.2 Mbit/s, HSUPA 5.76 Mbit/s, UMTS	LTE-A Pro Cat 16 (1000/150 Mbit/s)
SIM type	nano-SIM	nano-SIM
CONNECTIVITY
Bluetooth	5.0	5.0
Wi-Fi	802.11 a, b, g, n, ac, dual-band; MIMO, Wi-Fi Direct, Hotspot	802.11 a, b, g, n, ac, dual-band; MIMO, Wi-Fi Direct, Hotspot
USB	Lightning	USB Type-C (reversible)
Features	Charging, Headphones port	Mass storage device, Video out, Charging, Headphones port
HDMI
Other	NFC, Tethering, Computer sync, OTA sync	NFC, Tethering, Computer sync, OTA sync
OTHER FEATURES
Sensors	Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass, Barometer	Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass, Barometer

Source: phoneArena.com

Kr00k

Every now and then my propeller beanie comes out.

Here I go again.

Recently ESET was researching KRACK (archive.is) vulnerabilities in Amazon's Echo. This has been fixed by Amazon (archive.is).

But ESET's research turned up another broader vulnerability they call Kr00k.

The deep dive presentation by ESET is on YouTube. Watch it when you're not sleepy.

An explanation for mere mortals is here (archive.is). Steve Gibson covers it here. Some of the coverage has lists of vulnerable devices. Your Wi-Fi device not being on this list does NOT mean you're safe. It just means that they didn't test your device.

The short explanation is to update your devices if/when you can. Phones and tablets that are being updated will probably be updated automatically. The device you need to look into is your home router.

Login into the administrator page and see if it offers you a firmware update. If not, go to the manufacturer's support page and look for firmware updates.

This isn't a "The sky is falling" problem as the hacker has to be within Wi-Fi range of your router. And using https defeats the exploit. But updating your firmware is always a good idea.

The Wired article concludes with:

Despite the limited threat posed, readers should ensure their devices have received updates issued by the manufacturers. This advice is most important for users of vulnerable Wi-Fi routers, since routers are often hard to patch and because vulnerable routers leave communications open to interception even when client devices are unaffected or are already patched.

Windows 10 Updates

This is a real quandary. On one hand you want to keep your Windows 10 system up to date for protection from exploited vulnerabilities. On the other hand, remember the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But then you have to wonder about the quality of the Microsoft updates.

Some people have made a career out of pointing out all of the foibles, I think Woody Leonhard does thorough research and has a capable staff but I never run into the problems he reports on. I guess I'm just lucky.

Clearly there are many Windows users impacted by problematic updates. And Microsoft struggles with explaining what causes them.

And here's an example of just how confusing this problem is.

Yep, 2 articles on KB4535996. The first one (archive.is) saying that it fixes "search and printing problems" and the second one (archive.is) saying that it "causes freezes, installation issues." Admittedly, for now, this is an "optional" update but it demonstrates the underlying issues with Windows updates.

What to do?

Take a system image backup. Cross your fingers. Apply them.

Steve Jobs Sent Me a Message

I change phones like most people change underwear. I've stuck with the Essential PH-1 longer than usual - 2 years.

But the good ride had to come to an end. Essential announced it was shutting down February 12, 2020.

I started considering what was going to be my next phone.

I've liked the face unlock of the Lenovo Tab M8. I started watching for iPhone Xs on Gazelle. After Valentine's Day, Gazelle had a 20% off sale on iPhone Xs and I went for it.

But even when I had it in hand, I was still reticent to switch. Then on one of my morning walks, I dropped the Essential and cracked the screen around the edge in 2 places.

I tried to convince myself that it wasn't too bad. I took my thumb and rubbed the cracked screen.

That's when I got the message from Steve.

So I moved my SIM to the iPhone X.

What is 5G?

It depends.

Briefly, there are actually 3 bands being used with 5G technology.

The 5G low band (600-700MHz) can cover hundreds of square miles with service that ranges from 30 to 250 megabits per second (Mbps) in speeds. That frequency also readily penetrates buildings; think old analog TV signals.

The 5G mid band (2.5/3.5GHz) can cover a several-mile radius that currently ranges from 100 to 900Mbps. That frequency is close to Wi-Fi so think about what Wi-Fi can penetrate, e.g. interior walls and brick but not so much concrete.

Finally the 5G high band (millimeter wave/24-39GHz) works within a one-mile or lower radius to deliver roughly 1-3 gigabits per second (Gbps) speeds. That frequency won't penetrate your hand! This is pretty much only useful in arena type scenarios, e.g. football games.

So the speeds of the low and mid band signals are Ok (250Mbps) to nice (900Mbps) but the real high speed band is very limited in penetration. Think too that to get 900Mbps to even one device will require a gigabit backhaul.

Oh, and not all "5G" phones (don't get me started on AT&T's "5Ge") have radios in all three bands.

Double oh, not all "5G" carriers use all three bands.

Don't rush into 5G mobile phones.

Lenovo Tab M8 FHD

That's one of the worst product names I've come across.

You'll remember that I wasn't thrilled with the Amazon Fire HD 8.

[It] would be tolerable if it was blazingly fast but it's not. 

It only has 1.5 GB of RAM so apps are constantly restarting. The launcher "fix" works by letting the Amazon launcher run then running the alternate launcher so you get a noticeable flash every time you press the Home button. 

I'm just not sure.

So I came across the Lenovo Tab M8 FHD for $120 and went for it. There are several variants. In addition to the FHD there's an HD model with lower resolution.

It's pretty much everything that the Amazon Fire HD 8 isn't.

LAUNCH	Announced	2019, September
	Status	Available. Released 2019, October
BODY	Dimensions	7.84 x 4.80 x 0.32 in
	Build	Glass front, aluminum back, aluminum frame
DISPLAY	Type	IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	8.0 inches (~76.5% screen-to-body ratio)
	Resolution	1080 x 2160 pixels, 16:10 ratio (~189 ppi density)
PLATFORM	OS	Android 9.0 (Pie)
	Chipset	Mediatek MT6761 Helio A22 (12 nm)
	CPU	Quad-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53
	GPU	PowerVR GE8320
MEMORY	Card slot	microSDXC (dedicated slot)
	Internal	32GB 3GB RAM
		eMMC 5.1
MAIN CAMERA	Single	13 MP, AF
	Features	LED flash
	Video	1080p
SELFIE CAMERA	Single	5 MP
	Video	1080p
SOUND	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes
COMMS	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
	Bluetooth	5.0, A2DP, LE
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
	Radio	FM radio
	USB	microUSB 2.0, USB On-The-Go
FEATURES	Sensors	Accelerometer, proximity
BATTERY		Non-removable Li-Po 5000 mAh battery
MISC	Colors	Iron Grey, Platinum Grey

I don't think it will be getting regular security updates nor Android 10.

Still good enough for a bedside table.

Windows as a Service

Oh, you didn't know that Windows was a service? Just keep reading.

Windows users have been complaining about a problem with the search box for months. There was even an out of band cumulative update (archive.is) offered for it in January 2020. I thought that this was the search box in Windows Explorer but it's not.

The search box in question is the one that shows up on the taskbar. That's one of the first things that I disable on a Windows 10 installation.

So I turned it back on and looked to see what build I had.

Since I'm not using it I wasn't familiar with the various build numbers.

The point here is that Microsoft is capable and is, in fact, updating the build of Windows Search over the Internet WITHOUT notification nor interaction. Read this Computerworld article (archive.is) about the details. And there's more here (archive.is) with examples of dynamic changes.

Folks, that's called "Windows as a Service."

What else is Microsoft updating silently?

That's not what I signed up for.

Acer Spin 1

I'm a sucker for bargains.

I've got several laptops and several tablets but I haven't really ever had a TOUCH laptop.

When this Acer Spin 1 came up for $149, I just couldn't resist it.

It has:

• Processor: Intel® Pentium® Silver N5000 Quad-Core (Up to 2.7GHz)
• Display: 11.6" HD (1366 x 768) Widescreen LED-backlit Multi-Touch
• 4GB LPDDR4 Onboard Memory
• Hard Drive: 64GB eMMC
• Audio: Two Built-in Stereo Speakers
• Built-In Digital Microphone
• Ports: 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI® 2.0 port with HDCP support, 1 x 3.5mm combo jack (headphone/speaker), 1 x DC-in jack for AC adapter
• Webcam: Webcam (640 x 480)
• Wireless: Intel Wireless-AC 9560 802.11ac Gigabit WiFi which can deliver up to 1.73Gbps throughput when using 160Mhz channels (Dual-Band 2.4GHz and 5GHz)
• Up to 10 Hours Battery Life
• Bluetooth 5.0
• Dimensions: 11.46" (W) x 7.95" (D) x 0.67" (H)
• Weight: 2.76 lbs
• Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 605 supporting Microsoft® DirectX® 12

I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro and installed Microsoft Office 2016 Pro.

I wish it had a fingerprint reader. I wish it used USB C charging.

But for $149!

Office Deployment Tool

Recently I bought a new laptop. It didn't come with Microsoft Office.

I used to have a TechNet subscription that gave me a number of Office licenses but those have all been used up.

I found one of those gray market key vendors and bought a Office 2016 Professional key for less than $30. It came promptly and even included a link to a Microsoft download site.

I downloaded the bits and ran it expecting to get the old fashioned dialog that would let me choose which application and features would be installed.

I usually use that dialog to omit all the Office apps except Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

But that's not what happened.

The download installed installed all the Office apps without give me any options. As the new laptop only has a 64GB SSD, I wanted to minimize the space used.

I searched for a while and came across several articles on Microsoft's Office Deployment Tool. The instructions were primarily aimed at enterprise installs. After a couple of failed attempts, I came across MS Guides.

The article (archive.org) is written mainly to describe how to use the Office Deployment Tool to add/change languages within Office. But a few obvious changes tailored it to just what I wanted to do.

The process even automatically downloaded the Office bits.

Startpage

Are you worried about what Google knows about you? Here's a way to reduce that AND what the web sites you visit know about you.

It's startpage.com.

Their tagline is:.

The world's most private search engine.

While that's not a very high bar, every little bit helps.

Startpage is headquartered in the Netherlands so it operates under the European Union's privacy regulations.

If you've tried alternative search engines, you've probably been disappointed with the results. However Startpage has an arrangement with Google  This is done without saving the users' IP addresses or giving any personal user information to Google's servers.

But the part I really like of Startpage is the anonymous surfing feature. Here's an example.

Here's where the Anonymous View took me.

Notice that the page is framed so that you know you are anonymous. You can break out by clicking on the "door" in the bottom right corner.

I was interested in why there was this big blank space so I loaded the page normally.

The nytimes.com site was trying to get the user to give them credentials.

Good job Startpage!

Happy New Year

The start of a new year is a good time to review a few things and make sure everything is right. Here's my list of things I think you should check once a year.

Some of the steps may be a little out of date but I think you can find your way around. If not, leave me a comment and I'll help.

PayPal Preapproved Payments
Offline Backup
Certificate Store
Router Configuration
Windows Defender and Windows Defender Offline
Controlled Folder Access
System Restore

Mobile Data History

I track my mobile data monthly and have been doing this since early 2010.

Pretty interesting.

You can certainly see where the smartphone data picked up in April 2011 when I got a Samsung Galaxy S. My wife's data picked up later that year when she got an iPhone.

The spikes generally correlate to travel where either I'm using my smartphone for tethering or where we use mobile data rather than Wi-Fi.

The bright green bars are from Android Auto or Car Play. The spikes there are when we are traveling and using both the mapping capabilities and streaming Memphis radio.

AT&T's plans have been outstripping my mobile data usage. For the last 12 months, my average was less than 2GB. The highest month was less than 4GB when we were traveling. My AT&T plan is 35GB with one month rollover.

I regularly review AT&T's plans but lowering the data plan doesn't significantly reduce the monthly cost. Their incentives are to drive customers to unlimited data plans. This is often at the loss of tethering.

My WWW is Missing

Do you use Google Chrome? If you do, this post is for you.

In recent versions of Chrome, Google has removed "trivial" subdomains like "www". They had already removed the "http://".

If you are using Chrome right now, look up at the address bar. You don't see the "http://" or the "www".

Now single left click in the address bar. The URL turns blue.

Now press "Home".

That changed didn't it? That is what Google calls trivial.

Generally that removal isn't a problem but recently I ran into a situation where it was.

I was on the phone with a Delta Vacations representative looking for hotels. She told me to go to "hotels-delta.com". That gave me a 404 error. She and I were both confused.

Here's what the full URL should have been:

https://www.hotels-delta.com/

I had to type the "www." in front of hotels-delta.com.

Here's how Ghacks describes this problem:

Another issue that users may run into is when a site uses www exclusively. Chrome displays the domain without www only and some users may try to load the domain without www as a consequence in the future. If there is no redirect, Chrome will display a 404 not found error instead.

Think about the problems this is creating for the Delta Vacations Customer Service department.

And you.

Wyze Camera Update

I've posted a couple of articles about my Wyze camera.

I'm still extraordinarily pleased with it, so much that I've expanded my usage.

I wanted to put one on each front corner of my house and keep the first one on my back porch.

While the Wyze cameras are sold as indoor, there are several vendors offering enclosures that seem to have pretty good reviews. I bought a 3-pack of these.

Then I bought 2 additional Wyze cameras and Wyze 32GB microSD cards.

In each location, I had an electrician put a receptacle for the USB power adapter inside my crawl space. Then I ran the USB cable through a hole in the soffit into the crawl space. I notched the base of the outdoor case to allow the USB cable to go underneath the base. Then I put the base of the outdoor case over the hole in the soffit. Works like a charm.

Running the cameras in SD mode gives 5-7 days of continuous video recording. SD mode is still 1920x1080. Here's a sample of the video.

Stop/Start Killer

Different manufacturers have different terms for this technology. In summary what it does is kill the engine when you stop while still in gear, e.g. at a stoplight. Then when you release the brake the engine will restart. Let's just say that this is not a very popular feature in newer vehicles.

I had wrestled with this new-fangled technology when I was shopping for an SUV in late 2017. I actually bought a lower model SUV to avoid this technology.

3 years later my daughter bought a 2019 Chevrolet Traverse. Needless to say it had this Stop/Start feature. While it irritated her she tolerated it.

Until...

She had an aftermarket DVD system installed. When the engine restarted as she released the brake the DVD system sensed the voltage drop and powered down. This didn't sit well with her 3-year old.

The organization that had installed the DVD system performed all the tricks that they had with no resolution.

I acquired SmartStopStart from smartstopstart.com. The method of installation was to install the device inline with the sensor for the hood. It worked by tricking the ECU into thinking that the hood was open when the engine started. This succeeded in defeating the Stop/Start and the engine keep running. However, the remote start capability no longer worked. The vendor worked closely with me but couldn't overcome the loss of remote start. I returned the device.

Then I came across the Start/Stop Disabler from Range Technologies. The method of installation was even easier that SmartStopStart. It simply plugs into the OBD2 port under the dash.

And it works perfectly.

32,766, 32,767, 32,768, BANG

That's the sound of your data becoming permanently unreadable.

Calm down. Unless you have a RAID system populated with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Serial-Attached SCSI solid-state drives.

HP Enterprise (HPE) recently confirmed that some SAS interface SSD has a serious BUG, will be the total power-up time accumulated to 32768 hours (3 years, 270 days 8 hours) after hanging up directly, the result is that the disk storage content is all disappeared, and can not be recovered. - from small tech news

While this almost certainly doesn't affect consumer systems, the risk for enterprise customers is very real.

And think through this. If an enterprise had populated a RAID system with these drives and turned them on at the same time (as would be normal), ALL of the drives in the RAID system would fail simultaneously. There goes your data.

Bad news.

Worse, these drives were made by an unnamed supplier. The same problem could manifest in other brands of drives.

A Fool and His Data Are Soon Parted

Azure just keeps having problems. And a recent incident happened while their CEO was speaking at a conference in Sydney "focused on showing off how Microsoft's cloud technology can have a transformative impact on businesses."

While it's easy to pile on with Azure, the situation is endemic to the cloud environment. Not withstanding my recent post, cloud implementations still carry significant risks. The news.com.au article states:

While cloud technology can have a massive impact on the way businesses run, as we are currently witnessing, it can also create new headaches when things don’t work how they’re supposed to.

And this was the second Microsoft cloud outage in 24 hours.

Really worrisome to me is that the Microsoft Office portal wasn't responsive.

As usual the comments are the most interesting. Clearly some are trolls but some are really to the point.

captain goodvibes
Anyone who trusts cloud technology to store data risks it disappearing into thin air. The only way to safely store data is on a hard drive. To paraphrase an old adage, a fool and his data are soon parted.

Anthony
The problem is for a lot of organisations is that they are too small to safely and economically run their ICT. Large vendors can provide resilience, security, and responsive services easier. And no, I don’t work for Microsoft, but I have worked in outsourcing :-) so I know the numbers

HG
If your business model is a monopoly, make sure your cr*p works.

Gordon
I spent most of my career in IT, I just do not understand why anyone would trust another company to manage all of their business critical data off site....

Yeah, worry about your business critical data.

But Can You Do Better Than This

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I worry about cloud availability.

However, most of the time the big cloud providers have more availability and redundancy capability than almost any enterprise can provide.

For an example, Microsoft recently had an outage of its Multifactor Authentication (MFA) for Azure and Office 365 users in North America,

There's a report on it here. And here's Microsoft's Root Cause Analysis.

Go read the Next Steps. Here's #1:

1. Fine-grained fault domain isolation work has been accelerated. This work builds on the previous fault domain isolation work which limited this incident to North American tenants. This includes:

• Additional physical partitioning within each Azure region.
• Logical partitioning between authentication types.
• Improved partitioning between service tiers.

Do you think your enterprise could add "Additional physical partitioning," "Logical partitioning between authentication types," and "Improved partitioning between service tiers?"

If you could, you must be in the Fortune 100. And that's just the first bullet of actions.

These outages from the cloud providers get a lot of publicity but unless you're a mega-scale enterprise any of them are way more capable than you'll ever hope to be.

The Cloud is Full

Recently ZDNet's  All About Microsoft reported that Microsoft Azure customers had reported hitting virtual machine limits in U.S. East regions.

This is scary.

There were a small number of comments (7) that related that they had had the same experience. Here is a typical comment.

GetNrDone
Happened to me. I tried to deploy a new SQL database in eastus2 2 weeks ago only to be greeted by an error. Opened a tickets and was basically told there was nothing they could do. Escalated the issue with our TAM which also could not get approval for 1 database to deploy. I was asking for the smallest database they offer (s0) and was told we couldn't have it. No communication before, no warning emails, no blog posts, nothing in the service dashboards, even our account team didn't know anything about it. Completely blindsided me and delayed development on an app for a week while i could move resources to another region. Unacceptable and definitely does not live up to promises made!

There's a reddit thread on this here.

dops0
We've faced this issue in North Europe, East US and West US 2. This has just started happening over the last couple of weeks and what's even more frustrating is, we already have sufficient quota allocated to us, but, our users haven't been able to deploy their machines even when within this quota.

This issue hasn't blown up so either it has been resolved or customers were able to work around it as GetNrDone did.

Regardless this is another consideration for using anyone's cloud services. I'd even suggest trying to putting a clause in your contract that guaranteed x% of available capacity on the vendor's part. I'd bet that none of the vendors would accept that but that would at least make the vendor play their cards.

Cloud Management Skills

Recently McAfee published a report on cloud adoption and risk. The Register did a review of the McAfee study.

The Register concluded:

The ongoing rash of data leaks caused by misconfigured clouds is the result of companies having virtually no visibility into how their cloud instances are configured, and very little ability to audit and manage them.

That's really scary. But it supports my concerns that moving workload to the cloud doesn't eliminate work/effort, i.e. manpower, but rather changes the skills required.

An organization should thoroughly understand the skills change that moving to the cloud brings.

These changes may be addressed with training but may require changing personnel to acquire the appropriate skills. These changes and the change management time and effort should be incorporated in the project timeline and budget for cloud implementation.

McAfee observed:

It’s possible the speed of cloud adoption is putting some practitioners behind.

The number 1 cause of cloud security issues noted by McAfee was "Lack of staff with the skills to secure cloud infrastructure."

That entire list is a good reference when considering moving workload to the cloud.

Nebo Professional Note-Taking

I had promised more about my new iPad so here it is.

One of my primary objectives for any tablet is to be able to take handwritten notes on it. I even tried that on my Asus Transformer Mini. I used MyScript's Nebo on it but it's a Windows tablet and you know how that is.

So the new iPad supports the Apple pencil technology. Of course I wouldn't buy an Apple pencil. That'd be too easy and expensive.

I ended up with a Adonit Note stylus for half the price of the Apple pencil..

Then I needed a handwriting app. My search kept coming back to MyScript's Nebo. While I wasn't wild about the $10 price I knew from my own experience that it would work well.

And it does.

The following slide show walks through a couple of the help screens. Then you can see my handwriting and the real-time conversion to text. Then I exported it to OneDrive in .docx format.

Slide show

It all works really well. There are a lot of formatting tricks that you can do but I just want to capture the text.

iPad Bluetooth Keyboard

When I posted recently about my new iPad, I said that there would be more posts. This is the first of several.

One of my primary uses of an iPad is typing. Even though I use Google's Gboard keyboard, typing on a touch screen is not to my liking.

On my previous iPad Air I had used a Zagg Bluetooth keyboard. I used it so long and hard that the hinge finally broke.

I couldn't find that Zagg had a similar keyboard for the 6th generation iPad.

After some searching I found a Bluetooth keyboard for this iPad.

Slide Show

It's not a ThinkPad keyboard but it works pretty well. And when closed it protects the iPad's screen.

Checkm8 - Now Is A Good Time To Start Worrying

Have you heard about the new exploit of many iPhone models' boot ROM?

It works on iPhones from the 4S to the X.

There are articles here, here, and here.

Ars  Technica summarized it as:

• Checkm8 requires physical access to the phone. It can't be remotely executed, even if combined with other exploits
• The exploit allows only tethered jailbreaks, meaning it lacks persistence. The exploit must be run each time an iDevice boots.
• Checkm8 doesn't bypass the protections offered by the Secure Enclave and Touch ID.
• All of the above means people will be able to use Checkm8 to install malware only under very limited circumstances. The above also means that Checkm8 is unlikely to make it easier for people who find, steal or confiscate a vulnerable iPhone, but don't have the unlock PIN, to access the data stored on it.
• Checkm8 is going to benefit researchers, hobbyists, and hackers by providing a way not seen in almost a decade to access the lowest levels of iDevices.

Physical access, only tethered jailbreaks, lacks persistence, doesn't bypass Secure Enclave and Touch ID, etc.

Doesn't seem to be a big deal to most people.

But the last bullet is the really important one. Even this minimizes the BIG point.

Checkm8 is going to benefit ... hackers by providing a way ... to access the lowest levels of iDevices.

What this means is that from now until the iPhone X is no longer supported by Apple, every security release of iOS will be immediately reverse engineered to discover what vulnerabilities have been fixed. Then malicious hackers will rapidly develop exploits that don't require physical access, tethered jailbreaks, are persistent, and bypass Secure Enclave and Touch ID, etc. Further the hackers will be able to examine Apple's security code for further vulnerabilities and then exploit them as zero days.

Steve Gibson explained this is depth on Security Now #736 (YouTube, PDF):

That means that the instant an update is released, it can now be fully reverse engineered, analyzed, and compared against the previous version, which will allow both security researchers, but also bad guys, to figure out what Apple has changed, what it is exactly that Apple fixed. And if they're able to get an exploit out into the wild before a targeted device has been updated, they could take advantage of that. 

Apple can no longer lock down their platform. It is going to be open for anyone to reverse engineer any changes Apple makes to devices which are necessarily still being supported and are receiving updates.

Now is a good time to start worrying.

Undesign

There was a recent article in Quartz about Elon Musk’s quest for “undesign.”

When Elon Musk leads engineering meetings at SpaceX, he says, “the thing I am most impressed with is, what did you undesign?”

Which is to say, what complications did engineers remove? How did they simplify the vehicle?

Without getting sidetracked on Elon Musk, I really like his concept of “undesign.”

For most of my career I have striven for 2 sometimes conflicting objectives: scale and availability.

My experience is that complexity, particularly the associated boundaries, contribute to un-availability.

At first it would seem that even with the compounding of high availability, e.g. 99.999% and 99.999% you would still get 99.998% availability. But that's not the real world. Cobbling together the interconnects (boundaries) you will be lucky to get them to 99.9%. Then do the math. 99.999% x 99.999% x 99.9% gives 99.898%. You've gone from 5 9s to less than 3 9s.

Explain that to your boss.

When I was with a large Memphis-based logistics company, I would always choose simplicity.

That caused us to struggle with scale but that was easier to buy than availability. And the struggle with scale was easier to explain to management.

Take Elon’s advice to heart.

iPadOS

When Apple announced iOS 13 they also announced iPadOS.

But iOS 13 wouldn't run on my 1st generation iPad Air. And I'd been struggling with only 16GB of storage.

That was enough of an excuse to sell it on swappa.com and buy a 6th generation iPad.

As soon as I got it I installed iPadOS 13 Beta 4. I followed this all the way through iPadOS 13.1 Beta 4.

And iPadOS promised something that I had always wanted: The ability to easily import files into the iPad without iTunes.

Boy, was I going to be disappointed.

In this Forbes article entitled "Early Thoughts: iPadOS Will Change The Way You Work" said:

#2: A full embrace of external storage devices:
By allowing the iPad's Lightning or USB-C port (depending on what model you have) to be used with adapters to connect to external USB storage devices, consumers can now easily share files utilizing the Files app in iOS and iPadOS. This is not a trivial new feature - it really brings the iPad (and iPhone by extension) significantly closer to the same type of file sharing functionality that has been available in MacOS and Windows for over 20 years.

No, not really. But back to the story.

I even went out and bought a 128GB Lightning/USB-A drive. At least I got a good price on it.

The new feature in iPadOS that is supposed to be "A full embrace of external storage devices" is the Files app.

The Apple fanboys fawned all over this new app. Unfortunately they were victims of Apple's Reality Distortion Field.

ZDNet finally slipped up and admitted what is real on slide 9 of 9:

The Wrap Up
Developers have yet to take full advantage of the new capabilities in the Files app and add-on storage. In particular, including add-on storage as a location apps can import data from. But I'm sure they're working on it.
Does iPadOS make file management as flexible as MacOS or Windows? No..

"But I'm sure they're working on it." GIVE ME A BREAK!

So what does the Files app do?

Not really very much. Basically it provides a separate file store on an iPad or iPadOS device. For the external storage devices that will connect you can move files into and out of this file store.

What you can't do is move these files into and out of native apps' file store. For example, you can't copy a video file from an external drive and have it show up in the TV app. You can't copy an audio file from an external drive and use it as a ringtone. Oh, the Files app may play the video file from the external drive but try to hand that to a 3 year old and have her play it.

While I'm on a roll, the Lightning/USB-A drive I have can't been seen by the Files app. Suggestions from a fanboy were to use an Apple camera dongle. Oh, that doesn't support Lightning input. Further suggestion was to use an external power supply to power the Apple camera dongle. And you need an USB hub for that.

Here's a picture of the recommended configuration:

They fudged by cropping out the external power supplies for the camera adapter and the USB hub.

Here's an excerpt from a RedmondPie article:

Tested & recommended USB flash drive and hubs for iPhone and Lightning-based iPads:

• Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter: $32 (required for Lightning-based iPhones and iPads for connecting USB-A flash drives to them as well as providing external power as most drives won't work on Lightning based devices until and unless external power is provided to them)
• SanDisk Ultra CZ48 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive: $34
• Samsung Duo Plus 256GB – 300MB/s USB 3.1 Flash Drive: $54
• Samsung Duo Plus 128GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive: $30
• SanDisk 128GB Ultra Dual Drive USB Type-C: $22.99
• SanDisk 256GB Ultra Dual Drive USB Type-C: $39

Notice the first item in the list: Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter!

Also, the Files app won't support my Windows 10 SMB share. It will support my Drobo if I connect to it as smb://drobo.local.

In spite of that I love my new iPad. More later.

Photo Storage/Backup

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about "automatically storing images from your smartphone." It's time to revisit this.

I'm going to focus more on the storage of images rather than copying them from your smartphone. I'm still using sweech on Android and Air Transfer on iOS. Both of these copy the images from your smartphone to a PC with no change in file names or file size.

This post isn't about absolute backups. I've covered that here and here.

This post is about storage and sharing of images.

Dropbox has pretty much removed itself from consideration.

Google Photos has tons of bells and whistles for presentation and content but sharing is still a struggle. The most direct way is to create a link per album and share it with and individual via e-mail or text. There is some controversy about privacy but I believe it is overblown. Decide for yourself.

And with Google Photos' "Upload size" set to "High quality" storage is free but the images are significantly resized, around 40%. Setting "Upload size" to "Original" eliminates that but will quickly exhaust your storage limits.

What I found was Shutterfly.

I like the price - free.

The size is unchanged and the meta data is unchanged except for the OS date stamps.

I like it.

Just Use Windows Defender

I'll get on my soap box again. Quit using third-party antivirus tools and use Windows Defender. Why? They are just too risky.

Reason #1: Kaspersky injected a unique identifier into the HTML of every website a user visited. And they had been doing this since 2015.

When called out on this they changed to a constant identifier. They might as well have been waving a red flag that this user is using Kaspersky so the hackers could hit you with a specific attack.

Reason #2: Symantec and Norton's anti-virus products BLOCKED Windows 7 updates. Microsoft has had a well publicized effort underway to move from signing their updates with SHA-1 to SHA-2. The August 2019 updates were the first signed with only SHA-2.

Symantec and Norton blocked the August 2019 updates!

Reason #3: Windows Defender continues to move up the rankings (PCMag, AV-TEST, Tom's Guide).

But you know Microsoft can't leave well enough alone. They are renaming Windows Defender to Microsoft Defender.

More Stuff to Test

You'll remember that I'm big on TESTING my data backups.

I had an opportunity recently to TEST another of my backup systems - POWER.

My electricity provider, Entergy, is migrating their customers to their "advanced meters."

Since my utility connection doesn't have a bypass switch, the installer had to disconnect power to the entire house.

I couldn't have asked for better communication from the installer. He knocked on my front door and told me what he wanted to do. He offered me the opportunity to reschedule or do it now.

I was expecting the installation so I asked him for a few minutes to shut down some of my equipment.

I have UPSs (Uninterruptible Power Supplies) on my most critical systems but I really never had tested them.

Just to be extra safe I powered down my 2 desktop systems and gave him the thumbs up.

It took him 8 seconds to swap the meter.

My UPSs worked great. I heard a couple of beeps but everything kept working. The Wi-Fi and the WAN never went down. We turned the TV off but the TiVo kept chugging along. The Ring doorbell ran off its internal battery. The Insteon network came back with the house power. The Echos reconnected automatically. I have my Netbox system BIOS set to automatically power on which it did.

Test your UPSs some time.

SD Card Testing

I heard a discussion recently about how to test SD cards. The speaker mentioned H2testw. I found a guide to using it here.

What H2testw does is write files that contain a test pattern that will fill up any unused space on a disk drive. This means that it will work on SD cards, USB drives, or even hard drives (especially SSDs.). If it writes successfully then it will read the files back and verify the data.

I tried it on an 8GB SanDisk microSD that I had. It tested successfully. The complete test took about  40 minutes.

When the application completes you'll need to delete the .h2w files.

It also reports the writing and reading speeds.

GRDE Bluetooth Earbud

I wrote about my Bluetooth earbud a while back. That was before I dropped it in the toilet.

Impressively it survived! But the volume kept diminishing on it. That could have something to do with its bath.

Since the GRDE earbud worked so well and lasted through a hard life, when I went to replace it I looked at all of GRDE's Bluetooth earbud products.

This is what I ended up with.

And instead of the proprietary charging cable of the previous model, this one has a wireless magnetic inductive charger that plugs directly into a USB charger.

I hope it is half as good as the first one. And I'll try to be more careful.