Here is quite an article discussing a computer processor that thwarts hackers by randomly changing its microarchitecture every few milliseconds. Read about the testing it went through against potential hackers, and successfully. The one downside, it appears, is this process slows the processing down about 10%, which seems to be a small price to pay. Let’s see what develops out of this.
Jim Hamm
https://newatlas.com/computers/morpheus-processor-secure-darpa-hackers/
Should there possibly be a new 2021 iPad Pro in your future, here is a review you might take a look at. Impressive hardware, the article infers, but apparently software needs to catch up to the increased speed.
Jim Hamm
If you use Google Photos to store your photos, their free, unlimited storage ends at the end of May. This article discusses some alternatives you might consider. If you're already an Amazon Prime subscriber, it looks like this is a great alternative, but other options are available.
Jim Hamm
If anyone on this forum might be considering getting a new Mac with the M1 chip, the following article discusses some of the pros and cons of doing so. Spoiler alert: for most of us, this move would be beneficial, but with a few items to be aware of.
Jim Hamm
MeWe is a secure alternative to Facebook. No ads - no spyware - your life isn’t 4-sale.
So they say.
One review compares FaceBook with the older MySpace - for the older generation only. And further suggests that MeWe is the younger generation replacement for FaceBook, with the hopes that the older generation won’t take it over, while ignoring the fact that the younger generation always becomes the next older generation.
Another review simply declares MeWe as the clear winner over FaceBook for being secure and having no ads and not stomping on your posts. Something like what Parler is touted to be as a replacement for Twitter.
So if you want to be part of the “don’t tread on me” group, then MeWe might be what you are looking for. And be prepared for flame wars.
John Carter Sr.
A security researcher is recommending against LastPass password manager after detailing seven trackers found in the Android app, The Register reports. Although there is no suggestion that the trackers, which were analyzed by researcher Mike Kuketz, are transferring a user’s actual passwords or usernames, Kuketz says their presence is bad practice for a security-critical app handling such sensitive information.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/26/22302709/lastpass-android-app-trackers-security-research-privacy
Responding to the report, a spokesperson from LastPass says the company gathers limited data “about how LastPass is used” to help it “improve and optimize the product.” Importantly, LastPass tells The Register that “no sensitive personally identifiable user data or vault activity could be passed through these trackers.” They added that users can opt out of the analytics. On the LastPass web interface the option is located in the LastPass Privacy settings, accessible via “Account Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Privacy,” the spokesperson said.
LastPass was acquired by LogMeIn in October 2015. LogMeIn was sold in August 2020 to Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp., which is a private equity affiliate of Elliot Management Corp, one of the largest activist funds in the world.
John Carter Sr.
Here is an interesting article discussing why one should turn off their
computer at night.
Jim Hamm
<https://sustainability.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/Computer_brochures.pdf>
If you play the same video in both browsers, Firefox lets you play the video as Picture in Picture, and then you can resize the window and place it anywhere in the display. Safari has Picture in Picture, but I can only place it in one of the four corners and resize it in that location.
John R Carter, Sr.
Although apparently rare, there have been some reports of Apple's new M1 chip getting excessive usage, with the potential of perhaps failing early. The following article discusses how to check the status of an Apple SSD on your Mac.
Jim Hamm
If you have been scammed, you need to report the incident to the local police. Hopefully you kept details on the incident, otherwise it makes no sense to report it to anyone.
Here is a list of government offices to contact:
AARP Fraud Watch Network: 877-908-3360 www.aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork
Internal Revenue Service: 800-829-1040 www.irs.gov
Medicare: 800-633-4227 www.medicare.gov/fraud
Social Securit Administration: 800-772-1213 www.ssa.gov
Federal Trade Commission: 202-326-2222 www.ftc.gov www.identifytheft.gov
In addition, your financial institution that was involved needs to be notified.
If your computer has been compromised, notify all of your financial institutions to have your accounts frozen and new credit cards issued.
If someone claimed to be representing a company, then that company needs to be notified as well.
When including any email content, it is best if you set the mail content to expose the raw content of the header information as this shows the path that the email went through to get to you. It might not reveal the sender’s actual location, but enough information like this could help the authorities to narrow down the location.
On the Mac with Apple Mail, to reveal the full header information, click on View in the Menu Bar of Mail, then click Message, then click “All Headers.” Clicking on “Raw Source” reveals every detail of even the content of the message, and that might not be necessary.
Copying the full header information revealed like this to include in a report can be tricky, but it is better than forwarding an email or copying just the content of an email for a report. In fact, forwarding an email actually loses all traceable information about the sender of the email being forwarded.
Using the “Raw Source” option creates a text file containing every piece of information about the sender and the content. That information might only be useful to the FBI. So just in case, save all email that you get on possible scams that you want to report on for a couple of months - just to have it on hand if some authority wants more detailed information.
Some clues as to how people are being scammed:
You get an email or phone call asking for money.
You get an email or phone call claiming to be a friend or relative who needs some information or is in a desperate situation and needs money.
You get an email or phone call claiming that you computer has been compromised. No one can possibly know this.
You get an email or phone call claiming that you are being sued. If you are being sued, you will get a snail mail letter from a lawyer that you can turn over to your lawyer to handle. Never handle claims like this on your own.
You get an email or phone call that asks you to provide some personal information to confirm that you are the recipient of some award or legacy. Never give out any personal information to someone or some company out of the blue like this. If it is a company that you have done business with, contact them by phone to confirm that the claim is real.
You get an email or phone call claiming that you have won a prize, but you must pay something to get it.
The IRS, Medicare, and Social Security will never ask you for any information out of the blue and will never call you for anything.
Use two factor authentication on all of your accounts to prevent scammers from accessing your accounts.
When sending and receiving email to and from a group list of people, if one of the persons in the list has a compromised computer that is collecting information, then that leads to everyone in that group list getting scam phone calls and email. Be sure that your computer is protected with the best anti-virus and malware protection available. Sophos Home, Avast, and Malwarebytes are options, but my recommendation is just for Sophos Home (the free or paid version). If you have the paid version of Sophos Home, you are also protected against being locked out of your computer (ransomware).
The two most favored methods of scammers are 1) preying on your sympathies, and 2) preying on your fears. Getting messages that evoke these feelings in you are clues that you are being scammed.
Security is your personal responsibility. Never trust a phone call or an email or a letter. If you suspect that there might be something real about the call or email, do what you can to confirm who is contacting you. Never send money or give out personal information without you verifying the authenticity of the caller. And NEVER let anyone whom you don’t know have remote access to your computer, especially anyone claiming that you have a problem that they can fix. If you don’t know that your computer has a problem, how can anyone else know?
If you suspect that you are being scammed, call the local police department and let them do the research for you.
John R Carter Sr
Here is a Macworld article speculating on if the next round of chips from Apple
will be called the M2 chip, or ? Regardless, the results may be quite impressive.
Jim Hamm
Learn how to use VoiceOver, VoiceOver + Braille, the Magnifier, use Spoken Content, use the Zoom feature to enlarge the screen, Hover Text to quickly boost the size of what you’re reading, and much more.
Click this link:
https://www.apple.com/accessibility/vision/
John R Carter Sr
Ever wonder what happens to all that money you supply to Apple when you purchase one of their products? Yes, I know, a healthy chunk of it goes to China. But, Apple is also committing to investing a significant piece of change in the U.S. over the next few years. Read about it in the following article.
Jim Hamm
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-commits-430-billion-us-spending-five-years
When you get an email with a confirmation that you have registered for a Zoom meeting, you should see this in the email:
Click on that link and you should see this:
Click on “Outlook Calendar (.ics)” to add it to your Apple Calendar. What will happen is that something gets downloaded to your computer. For the Safari browser, click on the Download link in the upper right corner and you should see:
The top-most item is the calendar event to be added. Double-click on it.
You should then see this:
I have several Calendars, one for each club I am a member of and a couple more for other reasons.
You have to select which calendar you want the event added to.
When you click OK, the event is added to your Calendar, and Calendar opens to show you what was added.
John R Carter Sr
I just completed the subject update on my iPhone, then read the following blurb. Interesting. What do you think: a good or bad idea on Apple's part? I, personally, like the idea of an app asking for permission to track your activity across the internet. On the other hand, this could become a pain if the app keeps asking permission every time you open it.
Jim Hamm
This week, Apple is rolling out its iOS 14.5 software update for iPhone users, including...
The ability to unlock phones with your face while wearing a mask
217 new emoji to express emotions you didn’t even know you had
Support for the new AirTag Bluetooth device tracker
But there’s one particular iOS 14.5 update that’s less “oh neat!” and more “this could shake up the $105 billion mobile ad industry.”
With this new feature, apps will be required to ask for your permission to track your activity across the internet. That data is crucial to advertisers who want to use your internet history to show you ads you’re more likely to click on.
Problem for advertisers is, when you ask someone whether they want to be tracked or not, the majority say no.
So why is Apple doing it? It’s part of CEO Tim Cook’s push to add more privacy features to Apple’s ecosystem. Here’s Cook at a privacy conference in January:
“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed.”
“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.”
Facebook took to App Tracking Transparency like a foot to a stray Lego piece. In a PR blitz following Apple’s announcement, it argued that small businesses would be hurt without the ability to send users targeted FB ads. Whether Facebook’s ad biz will be dinged as much as it says it will is unclear, but other apps like Snap and Bumble have warned that Apple’s moves could be harmful.
Bottom line: Apple’s aggressive privacy measures are putting competitors on the back foot, but they could also invite even more antitrust scrutiny to its dominance of the app economy. This week, Apple is rolling out its iOS 14.5 software update for iPhone users, including...
The ability to unlock phones with your face while wearing a mask
217 new emoji to express emotions you didn’t even know you had
Support for the new AirTag Bluetooth device tracker
But there’s one particular iOS 14.5 update that’s less “oh neat!” and more “this could shake up the $105 billion mobile ad industry.”
With this new feature, apps will be required to ask for your permission to track your activity across the internet. That data is crucial to advertisers who want to use your internet history to show you ads you’re more likely to click on.
Problem for advertisers is, when you ask someone whether they want to be tracked or not, the majority say no.
So why is Apple doing it? It’s part of CEO Tim Cook’s push to add more privacy features to Apple’s ecosystem. Here’s Cook at a privacy conference in January:
“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed.”
“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.”
Facebook took to App Tracking Transparency like a foot to a stray Lego piece. In a PR blitz following Apple’s announcement, it argued that small businesses would be hurt without the ability to send users targeted FB ads. Whether Facebook’s ad biz will be dinged as much as it says it will is unclear, but other apps like Snap and Bumble have warned that Apple’s moves could be harmful.
Bottom line: Apple’s aggressive privacy measures are putting competitors on the back foot, but they could also invite even more antitrust scrutiny to its dominance of the app economy.
FYI, here is an article on how to best charge your smartphone and prolong the battery life -- basically, not past 80%. Also the following statement is included in the article: "If you own an iPhone, simply turn off Optimized Battery Charging, and your battery capacity will last longer." I checked my iPhone and this function was turned on. The article recommends that I turn it off. Also, I am guilty of always charging my iPhone or iPad to 100%. I might have to rethink that approach, and turn off that 'optimize' function also.
New smartphone? Great! Now don’t charge it past 80%
Jim Hamm
By Brian Livingston
Sales of new smartphones are skyrocketing — Samsung's new S21 line sold three times as many units in the US in March 2021 as last year's S20 series did in the same period, according to SamMobile — but few people are learning from the manufacturers about these phones' dirty little secret.
That's the fact that charging these devices' lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries to a full 100% wears out a great deal of your battery's capacity within a year or two. This has been written about before. But in this story, I'll show you how to triple the usable life of your gadgets' batteries — either on your own or using a simple app.
You have a life cycle — and your batteries do, too
Many people don't realize the awful truth (though it's usually explained in the fine print). The Li-ion batteries in smartphones, tablets, laptops, and even electric vehicles lose a significant amount of capacity after a certain number of charge cycles.
Definitions vary, but as a rule of thumb, one round trip — a single charge cycle — is consumed when you boost a battery from 0% to 100% and then run it down to 0% again. Fractions of cycles add up. Let's say you charge a battery from 30% to 80% (an increase of 50 percentage points). You run the battery down and then charge it from 30% to 80% again (another 50 points). The sum is 100 points: another way to consume one cycle.
What people need to know is that all charging is not the same. According to smartphone app maker Digibites, "Charging to 81% causes 0.22 cycles of wear." Charging your device the rest of the way, from 80% to 100%, causes much more wear and permanently damages your battery capacity.
You can expect to get the following number of charge cycles from a smartphone's battery before your battery becomes irksome, having permanently lost 30% of its capacity, according to Battery University:
300 to 500 cycles if you charge your battery to 100% (approximately 4.2 volts per cell)
850 to 1,500 cycles if you charge your battery only to 80% to 85%
If you've been blasting your battery to 100% every night, after a year or so your device lasts far fewer hours on a charge. You're not imagining things! You just wonder why you need to buy a new phone every year or two.
Electric vehicles and laptops provide ways to save battery life
Electric vehicles and laptops are much more expensive than smartphones. Savvy car buyers and corporate tech managers wouldn't tolerate replacing these major investments every one or two years. So, many EVs and laptops have built-in solutions to prevent charging to 100%.
Figure 1. Electric vehicles — such as Teslas, Chevy Volts, and others — use Li-ion batteries similar to the ones in laptops and smartphones, which permanently lose capacity when the batteries are frequently charged past 80%. Photo copyright by Paul Gipe/Wind-Works.org
For example, the 2017 Chevy Volt has a feature that limits most charging to 89%. Newer Volts allow you to set the limit to whatever number you like.
Makers of some laptops — Lenovo, Sony, and others — provide software that can prevent the devices from charging past 80% or some other level you prefer.
Figure 2 shows the options available with Lenovo Vantage, a proprietary configuration app. Setting the maximum threshold at 80% makes Lenovo-, Think-, and Idea-brand computers automatically stop charging when the battery reaches that level. You can configure charging to restart at 70%, or at 5% below the maximum threshold (in this case, 75%), or at any other two numbers you wish. Don't let your battery run down to 0%.
If Vantage is not already installed on a Lenovo laptop, you can obtain it free from a Microsoft Store download page. The app requires Windows 10 Build 17134 and higher (March 2018), although later builds are recommended. Vantage replaces earlier configuration tools, including Lenovo Companion and Lenovo Settings, which didn't have battery protection. (To avoid conflicts, you may need to uninstall the Companion and/or Settings app before installing Vantage, according to a Lenovo forum post.)
Figure 2. The Lenovo Vantage app — for laptops running Windows 10 Build 17134 and higher — allows you to keep a machine 70% to 80% charged, or within 5 percentage points of 80%, or any settings you prefer. Source: Lenovo
Personally, I've cajoled an old Sony Vaio laptop to run various tasks for me for more than 10 years. During that entire time, I configured the thing's built-in Battery Care function to stay below 80% charged. After surviving world travels, rain, sleet, and dark of night, the battery capacity of the old hunk of metal still rates as "good," just one step below "excellent." Its battery capacity is more than three-quarters of what it originally was. That's admirable for a spare machine.
You’re intended to repeatedly buy new phones, not make them last
Smartphones' battery-survival situation is more problematic than that of laptops. Phone makers supersize their revenue by selling new models to you every year or two. The name of the game isn't making a phone that will serve you well for a decade (as you might expect of, say, an electric car).
Since Apple introduced iOS 13 in 2019, iPhones have included a feature called Optimized Battery Charging. This app is intended to charge an iPhone up to 80% at night, while the user keeps the device plugged into a charger. Theoretically, the feature "learns" when the user gets up each morning and starts poking at the phone. Long before the user is predicted to wake up, the app automatically charges the battery to 100%.
Figure 3 shows an iPhone's battery level across a typical 24-hour day. The user charges the phone for an hour in the middle of the day (indicated by a lightning bolt in the left half of the graph). That evening, when the phone has worn itself down to around 20%, the user plugs it into a charger and goes to sleep. The dark blue horizontal bar shows when the device is maintained at 80% by the software, in theory. In the wee hours, the light blue bar shows the battery being charged all the way full.
Figure 3. Beginning with iOS 13, iPhones include a feature that pushes the battery capacity to 100% while you sleep. Source: Apple Computer
I don't wish to offend the Apple gods — who will surely smite me — but this "feature" is ludicrous. We want our devices to stop charging at 80% and never get pushed to 100%. What we don't want is our phones to get charged to 100%, especially not every night.
What works in theory doesn't always work in practice. How "battery optimizing" runs and doesn't run has generated numerous complaints on official Apple forums. Perhaps this is why Apple's official webpage titled "Maximizing Battery Life and Lifespan" doesn't even mention Optimized Battery Charging.
Isidor Buchmann, CEO of the battery-analyzer company Cadex Electronics, studied various charging methods. Citing IEEE technical papers, he reports that repeatedly charging a Li-ion battery from 65% to 75% was the best strategy to avoid permanent capacity reduction. (This is similar to Lenovo's 70% to 80% setting.) The worst strategy was repeatedly charging from 25% to 100% (like the iPhone feature). See Figure 6 of Buchmann's article.
Lithium-ion myths come from confusion with older batteries
There are many misconceptions about lithium-ion batteries. A lot of this comes from adages that were drummed into people's heads years ago. Back then, nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd) and nickle-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries ruled the roost before Li-ion became dominant.
FACT: Li-ion batteries don't suffer from a "memory effect." Ni-Cd and NiMH batteries were sometimes unable to boost themselves past the level of a previous charge. Li-ion batteries largely don't have this problem. See Wikipedia's memory-effect article.
FACT: Li-ion batteries shouldn't be drained to 0%. To cure the so-called memory effect, people were often told to completely discharge Ni-Cd and NiMH batteries and then charge them all the way up. But total drainage can damage a Li-ion battery. (Most smartphones, fortunately, contain circuitry that stops Li-ion batteries from being discharged past a safe point.)
FACT: Li-ion batteries shouldn't be charged past 80%. If you have a choice, it's much better to charge your phone twice a day from 30% to 80% than to charge it once a night from 0% to 100%. The increase in percentage points is the same, but the wear-and-tear of the 80%-to-100% gauntlet adds up. (You won't really damage a Li-ion battery, though, by occasionally charging a phone to 100% for, say, a long flight when there will be no outlets at your seat. Don't obsess over exact percentages.) With the improved battery management in today's devices, you may get by without charging twice a day — but, in any case, don't leave a phone on a charger overnight.
FACT: Don't refrigerate a Li-ion battery or leave it in a hot car. Rechargeable NiCd and NiMH batteries self-discharge by a few percentage points every day at room temperature. In addition, alkaline batteries, such as the common AA and AAA types, self-discharge about 25% per year at 100F (38C). Refrigeration might help in those cases, according to a Green Batteries article. But cold isn't good for Li-ion batteries, and heat definitely makes them wilt. Storing a Li-ion battery for a year at 104F (40C) — a car sitting in the sun easily exceeds that — can permanently eliminate 35% of its capacity, according to Table 3 of a Battery University article.
The answer is an app that alerts you to unplug your phone
The remainder of this story will focus on fixes for Androids, since they comprise 72% of smartphones worldwide as of January 2021, according to Statista. If you own an iPhone, simply turn off Optimized Battery Charging, and your battery capacity will last longer.
On an Android phone, I suppose you could just watch your screen and unplug the thing when it hits 80%. But a much easier solution is to install a free app called AccuBattery, a product of Digibites. I use it myself. There may be a better program out there, but AccuBattery has achieved a rating of 4.6 out of 5 in the Google Play Store, which is one of the highest app scores I've seen.
An install wizard walks you through several configuration steps. By default, the app alerts you with a ringtone when your battery hits 80% charge. But you can change this to any level you prefer. A few one-star reviews complain that this alert isn't audible, the power readings seem off, etc. This is probably because you must configure the phone to protect the app from "task killers" that suspend watchful apps. You must also grant AccuBattery permission to read other apps' power usage, exempt it from "do not disturb" states, and flip other Android switches you may never have tweaked before.
Unlike laptop and EV operating systems, smartphone environments don't allow a mere app to stop charging the battery at a given level. "We cannot stop the phone from charging, as Android devices don't let us control the charging behavior," explains an AccuBattery spokesman who asked to be identified as Chad.
There are zillions of apps that claim to supercharge your battery life. Most of them don't, and a lot of them make the situation worse, as described by the Android Police.
Forget about the wild promises, and just make sure you aren't permanently wrecking your battery capacity.
Figure 4. AccuBattery plays a ringtone when your phone has reached an 80% charge — or any other level you specify. Source: Accubattery guide
Get AccuBattery from the Google Play Store download page. The app learns your phone's battery usage over a seven-day period, which you must wait out to get good results.
After the first few days, the free app includes ads, which are not obtrusive. There's a Pro version based on donations of $3.99 and up, which adds a few types of notifications and eliminates the ads.
I'm happy to have donated a few bucks for the peace of mind of knowing any new phone I buy may actually last a while. Good luck with yours!
Here is an article by ARS Technica about the announcements at the recent Apple Event.
Jim Hamm
https://link.arstechnica.com/view/5be9f71a3f92a4046933007fe1zy0.1xi/0d1269bd
Apple introduced the new AirTags today, and it appears they could be quite handy in finding a lost 'something' -- it could be about anything you've misplaced. The following article explains more about these devices.
Jim Hamm
https://www.macworld.com/article/343664/airtags-price-release-date-specs-features-privacy.html
If you missed watching the Apple Event live, you can watch the announcements in the following video:
https://www.apple.com/apple-events/april-2021/
And in the following link CNN summarizes the announcements.
Jim Hamm
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/apple-event-april-20-2021/index.html
This interesting article on PCMag tells how to take a free Apple product workshop. Some of you may like to take advantage of these classes.
Frank Croft
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-take-a-free-apple-product-workshop
Comment from John R Carter Sr.
The lessons are designed for people new to Apple products. Still, many members might get something out of them. The Macmost videos (YouTube) or the Lynda.com videos (free at the library) would also work.