Fones, Computers and Other Technical Junk

[keith]

I have held off the android 11 update.
Online chatter was not good.

I have no complaints with a11 on my galaxy note 20 5g lte

[RTH10260]

I had to reboot my longest running device, the router, after 575 days in operation

Since beginning of December I have experienced various outages, multiple times a day, from short sub-minutes off the internet to longer like 45 minutes, all recovering themselves.

► Show Spoiler

Then some that never recovered. To begin and based on long experience with former cable modems I would restart the cable modem. Sometimes just reattaching the router to a different port on the cable modem was a solution.

I have a second router in experimental status, not yet fully configured to my wishes, this one would continue to work. Before blaming the cable company for a lemon I rebooted my long trusted router, it has been serving now for 5+ years. Now waiting to see if the blackouts still happen

I never got to call the cable company over the holidays, then about middle of January suddenly things settled and I have rarely seen any interruptions over the last weeks. I went to the provider community forums and did see a row of similar complaints, but never a distinct solution offered.

[RTH10260]

► Show Spoiler

The cable abo includes all those things here too, internet, tv, landline phone, and local wifi. The company provides their cable modem as part of the abo. But it is somewhat basic and has limited customization options. I wanted much more flexibility to access my LAN and the file servers from outside when in a farawy land of smiles. So I bought a Zyxel entry level device, then touted small business and home use. The cable modem is set to bridge mode and my router does all the heavy lifting.

The Zyxel router entered end-of-life status a couple of years back and I was contemplating a replacement. Then mid-year the cable company offered their next round in speed improvments (they did this every two years in the past at same price) and I got their new GiganetBox cablemodem/router. Turns out my current router maxes out it's bandwidth at 100Mbps, not near the giga bits expected from the cable side. Connecting the laptop directly to a Giganexbox port gives real life sustained bandwidth of 430+Mbps on download and the promised 100Mbps on upload. So I went to purchase one model number higher of the Zyxel product series, cause compatible with configuring the earlier model. As good luck had it, I found by chance a cheap buy on a local Swiss action platform a second hand unit, hardly used, out of a bancruptcy proceedings.

Now it's still sitting next to me awaiting to be finally configured. While nearly identical to the current model uploading the new configuration was not straight forward, neads some extra tweaking and somehow I am not finding free time for that activity....

Well - 'it' - the "new" 2nd hand router has finally been configured on a separate subnet and I hope I made all the correct choices. I even got to learn the CLI (command line interface), tweaked a couple of settings that way, but the main use was to write a number of scripts to mass insert further definitions. My NAS (three boxes) have always been sitting on the LAN zone, never in the preconfigurated DMZ intended for external access. So the mass of definitions is to define a safe access from the web. Also too all three devices are from the same company, they define the same device ports for the local applications running on them. The bulk of definitions is a mapping of router ports open to the web and matching them to each of the repsective NAS ports. Least but not last to allow admin access to a row of local devices like VoiP adapter and the printer on the LAN. Nifty new feature is the Geo-IP blocking done at router level. Just define the trusted countries and all other will be locked out, all the nasties from Russia, China, Brazil etc. On the old device I had to build my own limited IP whitelist and blacklist.

So I will now go offline for a few hours to physically replace the cabling and see you later at the other and of the wormhole...

[neonzx]

Crap, my Moto G Powerphone got tired of me asserting my ownership rights and "upgraded" itself to Android11 last night.

Battery life is now sucky. I used to go a day before it got down to 91%, now it takes less than an hour.

f'k f'k f'k

Welcome to my hell. (but battery still is good)

[RTH10260]

Anyone at home ?

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

https://www.amightygirl.com/blog

Dr. Gladys West: The "Hidden Figure" Who Pioneered GPS Technology

West was born in 1930 in a rural Virginia community of sharecroppers, but from an early age she had ambition to go beyond farm or factory work. "I thought at first I needed to go to the city. I thought that would get me out of the country and out of the fields," she remembers. "But then as I got more educated, went into the higher grades, I learned that education was the thing to get me out." West was valedictorian in her high school, which won her a scholarship to attend Virginia State College. There, she became one of only a handful of women studying mathematics. "You felt a little bit different," she later reflected. "You didn't quite fit in as you did in home economics." West taught for several years after graduation and then accepted a position at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1956 — only the second black woman they had ever hired — analyzing data from satellites.

At first, that meant math on paper: "We would come in and sit at our desks and we would logic away, go through all the steps anyone would have to do to solve the mathematical problem." But when computers entered the scene, it meant learning how to program — and being ready to catch the computers' mistakes. "Nine times out of 10 they weren't completely right," she recalls, "so you had to analyze them and find out what was different to what you expected." West was involved in an award-winning astronomical study in the early 1960s that showed how Pluto moved relative to Neptune, and her department head recommended her for a new role as project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, involving the first Earth-orbiting satellite that could remotely sense oceans.

The Seasat project became the jumping off point for further satellite modeling of the globe, and from the mid 1970s through the 1980s, West worked on programming an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer with increasingly refined algorithms. She was then able to create an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, even factoring in details like gravitational and tidal forces that slightly change the Earth's shape. This model would later become the foundation for the GPS satellite system, which is widely used today for countless applications from navigation to communication. However, after West retired from her post in 1998, her contributions to GPS were largely forgotten.

West wasn't idle in retirement, although a stroke temporarily slowed her down. While she was recovering, she set a new goal: "all of a sudden, these words came into my head: 'You can’t stay in the bed, you’ve got to get up from here and get your PhD.'" She became Dr. West in 2018, thanks to a remote studies program with Virginia Tech. Then, her story resurfaced after she wrote a short biography for an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority event recognizing senior members of the group. Fellow member Gwen James, who had known West for fifteen years, was amazed to hear about her friend's career, and quickly started spreading the word: "I think her story is amazing."

[bill_g]

Thanks for that TRL. I was not aware of her contributions.

GPS is a fun topic. I am not one of the developers. I just had to make the terrestrial stuff work back when it was neither ubiquitous nor cheap. And for the brief period of the Bush 43 administration, I was the only guy in the country repairing a popular model of gps receiver board used in cellphone site equipment.

Off Topic

Psst .... If anyone needs a 12 channel Oncore UT board so you can resurrect your aging ageless timing oscillator, give me a call. I can hook you up

That meant I had to immerse myself in the theory of operation, and I became fascinated that it functioned at all. These things could receive impossibly small signals that were technically below the thermal noise floor. How they achieved that proved the value of parallel processing. The knowledge gained led to many of the innovations we have today like cellphones and Internet.

We're coming up on the FB blackout period. So, I'll come back to this later.

[keith]

SWMBO does work for a government agency working from home and out in the 'field'.

Employer supplies a laptop, printer, desk, and other supplies.

Last week her toner is getting low so she goes online to the office and orders a new cartridge. The office gets back to her and says we don't stock those anymore, we'll send you a new printer. Oh, keep the old printer (which is maybe 18 months old), we don't want it. Cartridges cost 20 to 40 dollars depending on which online or physical store you go to - they are not unobtanium by any means. She could have easily sourced her own cartridge and claimed it back just like she does for paper. Its stupid. So a good friend who has just killed her printer gets a perfectly serviceable, if rather low end, laser printer.

This week her laptop won't hold a charge for more than an hour or so. So instead of sending her a new battery or directing her to a local repair shop for one, you guessed it, she's getting a new laptop. This I understand. Its at least 3 years old, and they are ramping up to replace the entire fleet of laptops in about 6 to 8 months. The question is, will she get the last of last years models, or the first of next years models?

[RTH10260]

when she gets an "old" model just claim it is not compatible with the new printer....

[Gregg]

SWMBO does work for a government agency working from home and out in the 'field'.

Employer supplies a laptop, printer, desk, and other supplies.

Last week her toner is getting low so she goes online to the office and orders a new cartridge. The office gets back to her and says we don't stock those anymore, we'll send you a new printer. Oh, keep the old printer (which is maybe 18 months old), we don't want it. Cartridges cost 20 to 40 dollars depending on which online or physical store you go to - they are not unobtanium by any means. She could have easily sourced her own cartridge and claimed it back just like she does for paper. Its stupid. So a good friend who has just killed her printer gets a perfectly serviceable, if rather low end, laser printer.

This week her laptop won't hold a charge for more than an hour or so. So instead of sending her a new battery or directing her to a local repair shop for one, you guessed it, she's getting a new laptop. This I understand. Its at least 3 years old, and they are ramping up to replace the entire fleet of laptops in about 6 to 8 months. The question is, will she get the last of last years models, or the first of next years models?

The motorcar company keeps me incredibly over technologied. I live alone with 2 dogs, albeit in 2 1/2 places with 2 office locations.
I have 2 phones, In Cincinnati 2 laptops and a desktop, Gettysburg has a laptop in the bedroom and a desktop in the library. I have a secure laptop that is primarily for my car, and I take it inside restaurants and when I'm in a hotel or traveling. The corporate apartment in Livonia has a desktop that is hard secure wired to the company network.
I also am forced to practice much better security than high level officials in the Trump administration, and no kidding my expires every 30 days password is 15 characters, one lower case, uppercase, number that repeats, special characters and cannot have any 5 characters string common to any used In last 180 days.
All autofill stuff disabled and signing in anywhere without a finger scanner is a serious pain in my backside.

[RTH10260]

" 30 days password is 15 characters, "

Do they at least give you an allowance of PostIt stickers to remind yourself of the current password on each machine

[Gregg]

When it got to 13 characters is when I finally gave up and started clicking on "suggested strong password" and then copy, paste and email and text it to myself, which you'd think would defeat the whole 007 routine. My first work password was just a 4 digit PIN, my childhood phone number and I used it for years, When they demanded 6 characters and new ones every 6 months, I used schools I had gone to, rotated, when they wanted numbers and letters, the year I graduated got added on. When they made me change more often, I started using girls I dated, cars we built, and then started on the periodic table... I think half my job is coming up with a new password now.


The number that repeats is something I have never seen anyone else have to do.

[keith]

Are you at least allowed to use a password saver? I like, use, and recommend KeyPass. There are KeePass interface apps for Android and iPhone (and mobile Windows for that matter) as well as the WIndows and Apple iOS native apps.

[Mr brolin]

The guidance now from NIST is that changing passwords like this is security kabuki and multi factor authentication with a non changing, long passphrase is inherently more secure.

https://www.alvaka.net/new-password-gui ... -via-nist/

[Reality Check]

" 30 days password is 15 characters, "

Do they at least give you an allowance of PostIt stickers to remind yourself of the current password on each machine

You laugh but I knew several people who did that when I worked for a large company and they came out with cumbersome password rules. I am not sure if anyone in IT ever saw them though.

[MN-Skeptic]

So you write down your password on a scrap of paper and put it under your keyboard. That’s what some users did at the company I worked for.

[RTH10260]

To note.

In the last few years a number of password saving apps have come to the market. Apps save usernames and passwords and recall it for c&p. Most (all?) newer ones generate a random complex password for the user. Usually tailored to some website url. Some will fill in the username and password if they can correctly identify the request (not all are successful). The recent app versions have a means to store the info in the cloud (encrypted) from where it can be used with various devices at the same time. Difficult choice: which provider to trust, what if they disappesr over night and take down the only record of your web access

[RTH10260]

Attention

Older phone generation will lose access!

Comment: Seems to me rather early to terminate 3G.

[Foggy]

AT&T sent us 5G phones - free of charge, not top quality but new Samsung phones - for those in my home that weren't ready for 5G.

My Google Pickle is 5G ready, of course. But we got three new free phones, so I think they're pretty serious about leaving 3G in the rear view mirror. They're spending a lot of money just on making sure their customers are ready.

What is anyone doing with a 3G phone in 2022 anyway?

[Shizzle Popped]

" 30 days password is 15 characters, "

Do they at least give you an allowance of PostIt stickers to remind yourself of the current password on each machine

You laugh but I knew several people who did that when I worked for a large company and they came out with cumbersome password rules. I am not sure if anyone in IT ever saw them though.

Once upon a time I spent a brief period in mainframe security at a very large insurance company. We had this contract employee that was supposed to be an expert in the field suggest that we should change the password rules to a string of randomly generated numbers and letters that was reset every 30 days. I laughed and told him that's how you end up with 70,000 monitors with passwords on PostIts attached to them. End of discussion. He was incredibly smart about certain things but was kind of an asshole and didn't have a shred of common sense.

[Reality Check]

What is anyone doing with a 3G phone in 2022 anyway?

Phones are not the big issue. It is things like security systems and other devices including medical alert devices that use 3G modems for comms.

[Foggy]

Oh, I didn't realize that was a problem.

[Gregg]

Are you at least allowed to use a password saver? I like, use, and recommend KeyPass. There are KeePass interface apps for Android and iPhone (and mobile Windows for that matter) as well as the WIndows and Apple iOS native apps.

I most commonly use my fingerprint, even the laptops have built in scanners. But the desktops have to see you type it in.

[RTH10260]

AT&T sent us 5G phones - free of charge, not top quality but new Samsung phones - for those in my home that weren't ready for 5G.

My Google Pickle is 5G ready, of course. But we got three new free phones, so I think they're pretty serious about leaving 3G in the rear view mirror. They're spending a lot of money just on making sure their customers are ready.

What is anyone doing with a 3G phone in 2022 anyway?

2020 the last 2G service was shut down and I archived a phone I really liked to use. Just a small format, easy to carry around and I did not really use apps on this phone, had the tablet for that.

[MN-Skeptic]

Are you at least allowed to use a password saver? I like, use, and recommend KeyPass. There are KeePass interface apps for Android and iPhone (and mobile Windows for that matter) as well as the WIndows and Apple iOS native apps.

I most commonly use my fingerprint, even the laptops have built in scanners. But the desktops have to see you type it in.

During the summer I typically don't have a problem using my fingerprint on my iPhone, iPad, and iPad Mini, but during the winter my hands get drier and drier and eventually my fingerprint fails. I just add a new fingerprint, but that's a bother. About every three or four weeks.