All Shows

Show of 10-24-2015

Tech Talk

October 24, 2015

Email and Forum Questions
  • Email from Alice Lane: Dear Dr. Shurtz, I have subscribed to Verizon for decades. Was an early adaptor and had dial up, then DSL and now FiOS. But I don’t get TV from them and have OOMA for my home phone. During the course of ONE year they have twice upped my bill by $8.00 at each increase. I could have sworn I heard that GOOGLE was entering the ISP business. It can’t happen soon enough. If you know about Google’s ISP status, please educate me. What is most upsetting is Verizon has deals all over the net for first time customers for a two year plan price lock of $50.00 for the bundle, which is less than I am paying for Internet only. Thanks. Alice Lane
  • Tech Talk Responds: Unfortunately, Google Fiber is not scheduled for the DC area. You can check on availability by going to: https://fiber.google.com/about/. If you put in your address, you can get updates about availability. Google does offer the cheapest high bandwidth service. I would call Verizon and negotiate, particularly if your contract has run out. It is cheaper to give you a deal and keep you. Check out what your options to switch are. They may match or beat the competition.
  • Email from June in Burke: Dear Doc and Jim. We got an email about this today at work. Just thought it might be good for educating Stratford users. Love the show. June in Burke, a loyal listener.
  • Tech Talk Responds: June, this is good advice and may be worth revisiting for our listeners.
  • Internet access and protecting your computer
    • Avoid using publically available and non-secure Wi-Fi. If you must use it, do not go to sites where you put in your password or other personal data/information.
    • Enable encryption on your personal wireless routers; set a strong password.
    • Use firewall and antivirus programs on your home computers. Make sure they are updated, properly configured and running.
    • Install Operating System and browser upgrades when they are available. These updates often include significant security patches.
    • Do not allow anyone else to download software to your computer; they may inadvertently download malware.
    • Do not use USB thumb drives.
    • Procure and download software and other files from reputable sources only.
  • Surfing the web safely
    • Do not click on suspicious links or open attachments from unknown users.
    • Do not configure your computer to automatically open attachments.
    • Avoid questionable websites.
    • Choose security questions that have answers not discoverable on the Internet (e.g., do not choose the street you grew up on, your mother’s maiden name, etc.).
    • Choose web browsers known to provide more security (e.g., Chrome).
    • Beware of social media. Personal information allows hackers to harvest sensitive user photos, phones numbers, and email addresses for social engineering attacks.
  • Password security
    • Use 2-factor authentication every time you log into a commercial account (e.g., G-Mail will require not only a password but a code that is sent via text to a cell phone).
    • Use different passwords for every account.
    • Choose strong passwords.
    • If you must save your passwords to a file (whether in the cloud, on your device, or on your hard drive) password protect and/or encrypt the file.
    • Do not store passwords in the cookies of your browser; it may be more convenient but it puts you at increased risk.
  • Email from Leslie in Oakton: Dear Tech Talk. I know that all computers have a unique MAC address. But how traceable are they? If my laptop gets stolen, and I know my MAC address, can I get back to it if the person stole it gets connected to internet, even after formatting the machine and thinking that it’s safe to connect? Seems like this could stop laptop burglaries if that MAC address thing is traceable.  Love the show. Leslie in Oakton.
  • Tech Talk Responds: A MAC1 address, or “Media Access Control” address, is a unique 48-bit number assigned to every network interface. If your computer has multiple network interfaces – say both a wired Ethernet port and a wireless network adapter, each interface will have its own MAC address. In theory, it’s unique. In theory, every network card or network interface should have its own unique MAC address that is different from every other network card on the planet.
  • Unfortunately, manufacturers don’t always ensure they’re unique, so multiple network interfaces can in fact have the same MAC address. In many network interfaces, the MAC address can be set in software – meaning whatever the original MAC address, it can be overridden and changed. So the uniqueness on which we might want to rely is not completely reliable.
  • The biggest problem is that MAC addresses don’t travel very far. The MAC address is used by the network to identify which piece of hardware a packet of information is to be sent to. While the IP addresses involved indicate the original source and ultimate destination, a MAC address is used only on connections from one piece of networking equipment to the next.
  • That means when information leaves your computer, it has your computer’s network adapter’s MAC address. But when it arrives at your router, that MAC address is removed. When your router sends the information further upstream to your ISP’s router, it contains the MAC address of your router. When it moves from the ISP’s router to another router on the internet, it contains the MAC address of the ISP’s router. When it comes to data traveling over the network, your MAC address never makes it further than the first piece of networking equipment between you and the Internet.
  • Email from Peter in Maryland: Dear Doc and Jim. I would like to integrate my iPhone with my car navigation and entertainment system. How can that be done easily. I listen to your podcast each week. Peter in Maryland.
  • Tech Talk Responds: Peter, you must own a car that supports Apple CarPlay. CarPlay, will finally start appearing in new cars in 2015. The in-dash software is designed to not only make calling simpler but also to work with specific car-oriented iPhone apps via a consistent, easy-to-follow interface with larger graphics and buttons. The promise is that it will allow iPhone owners to use the features they want in the car without creating dangerous distractions. CarPlay will work with the iPhone 5 and later Apple phones. So that means the iPhone 5 and 5c, as well as the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. CarPlay also works with the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.
  • There’s no wireless Bluetooth option. To pair an iPhone with a vehicle you have to plug it into the dashboard with a Lightning cable. When your car detects that your iPhone has been connected, it will automatically pop up the CarPlay icon and update compatible apps. One important note: Once your phone is connected, its screen will be locked to eliminate any temptation to use it while driving.
  • A wide variety of luxury and budget vehicles will eventually have the CarPlay app. The first will be Ferrari, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo. Ford is also demonstrating models with the software, such as the current Mustang. Starting with 2016 models, Buick’s Regal and LaCrosse will ship with CarPlay, eventually rolling out to the rest of Buick’s fleet over the following 36 months. GM also announced that the 2016 Canyon, Sierra and Yukon will feature CarPlay via its 8-inch IntelliLink infotainment system.
Profiles in IT: Pehong Chen
  • Pehong Chen is CEO and founder of Broadvision, who is best for creating the first ecommerce website on the Internet.
  • Chen was born in Taiwan in 1957. He had a simple, but happy childhood.
  • At age 7 he started playing the violin. He later switched to guitar and started playing in a rock and roll band while attending college at National Taiwan University.
  • Despite some success with his band, Chen majored in computer science and studied hard.
  • At NTU, he ran into a classmate from third grade during a choral competition between her school of humanities and his school of sciences. They married in 1979 after graduation.
  • By 1981 Chen had served the compulsory two-years in the military and moved to the U.S. 
  • Both Chen and his wife received fellowships to Indiana University at Bloomington. Both earned master’s degrees in computer science before moving to Northern California.
  • In 1985 Chen attended UC Berkeley for his Ph.D., and his wife went to work for a database company called Ingres. 
  • In 1988 after graduation, Chen was recruited by Olivetti for leading-edge multimedia research with top researchers Olivetti had recruited from Xerox PARC.
  • Chen was developing computer teleconferencing systems, which Intel now sells as ProShare. 
  • Chen finished out a full year and left in 1989 to found Gain Technology which was funded with $4000, half from Chen and half from a partner. It was enough to get a proposal together. 
  • Chen and his partner got a $15M contract with Matsushita. Gain developed a software package called Gain Momentum, a tie-in multimedia authoring system that allows the creation of complex multimedia applications. 
  • In 1992 Sybase offered to buy Gain for $100 million. Chen sold and signed a three-year contract to be vice president of multimedia.
  • In 1993, he asked to be released from is contract and left to start another venture. Chen saw the need to create a completely personalized home shopping. 
  • On May 13, 1993, he founded Broadvision and, after 100-man-years of development, released One-To-One, the world’s first e-commerce software. 
  • In 1996, Broadvision went public. By 2000, Broadvision was worth $29B. Chen’s personal share was $6B. He had been first to market with an ecommerce portal.
  • In 2002, the tech bubble burst. The NASDAQ meltdown forced Chen to take his company through a 9-for-1 reverse stock split on July 24, 2002 just to keep share prices above the $1. 
  • At its high point, it had been the equivalent of $20,000 per share (adjusted for splits).
  • By that October Broadvision’s valuation had dropped to only $37.7M.
  • At the age of 45 Chen had been reduced to a mere millionaire. Chen did not give up. He stayed and continued the brutal cost-cutting begun in 2001. 
  • By the end of 2002 Broadvision had been reduced to 449 full-time employees and reported a $1.3 million profit on $24.5 million in revenues. Its client list had grown to 1,200.
  • By May Broadvision shares had climbed to $5.60. In 2015, it is still around $6 per share.
  • Broadcom currently offers business agility suite, ecommerce agility suite for online shopping, a social media platform, an HR management system, a document publishing system, and sales management system. Chen is still CEO.
Hackers Social Engineer CIA director’s email account
  • The hackers who found their way into CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account didn’t use sophisticated coding skills.
  • They just talked their way past his service providers’ customer service agents to take command of all his accounts.
  • Brennan’s personal AOL account was breached after hackers duped customer service agents at Verizon AOL. The hackers told Wired they obtained Brennan’s cell phone number, tricked Verizon into handing over his email address and other personal information like the last four digits of his bank card. 
  • In the final step, the intruders used that personal information to talk AOL into resetting Brennan’s password, which allowed them access to the account. The hackers claim to have obtained sensitive documents relating to CIA personnel, such as their names and Social Security numbers.
  • His emails are being released on Wikileaks.
  • Security experts refer to this kind of attack as social engineering.
  • This highlights the importance of two-factor authentication. This makes it harder to remotely reset a password because it requires entering a code sent to your mobile phone.
  • You can check with your bank and other online services for two-factor authentication, or find a list of the companies that offer it for online accounts at twofactorauth.org.
  • But as long as companies like AOL are willing to trust people who call into customer service with the answers to a few security questions, accounts are vulnerable. Many times this info in available on social networks.
Amazon and Others Crack Down of Fake Reviews
  • A new lawsuit in which Amazon accuses more than 1,000 people of offering to post bogus glowing write-ups for as little as $5 apiece might give you pause.
  • Fake reviews are nothing new to online retailing, and Amazon is far from the only big company affected. Yelp’s restaurant reviews and TripAdvisor’s hotel ratings have long been a target of critics who claim that merchants can easily post positive reviews of their own businesses.
  • Its lawsuit alleges that individuals would write five-star reviews about products they never even tried, and plotted with product makers to subvert Amazon safeguards that are meant to bolster confidence in the website’s reviews.
  • For small businesses, it can be more economical to pay for positive reviews than to buy advertising.
  • So a restaurateur might be tempted to pay $250 for 50 positive reviews online in the hopes of raising that rating.
  • Online sites like Amazon, Yelp and TripAdvisor have worked hard to stop the planting of fake reviews.
  • They employ computer algorithms and teams of investigators who scour reviews and delete suspicious entries. 
  • TripAdvisor says it has a team of 300 people using fraud detection techniques to weed out fake reviews.
Asteroid Named ‘Spooky’ Will Pass Earth on Halloween
  • A space rock bigger than a skyscraper will sail past Earth on Halloween, zipping by just beyond the moon. The asteroid won’t collide with our planet, but it will come quite close.
  • Astronomers from NASA’s Near Earth Object Program first spotted the incoming asteroid on October 10, just three weeks before its closest approach. It was too small and faint to detect until it came within the range of large survey telescopes.
  • Nicknamed Spooky, the asteroid (officially called 2015 TB145) is estimated to be about 950 to 2,100 feet wide. Scientists won’t be sure of its exact size until they can do radar measurements—and the most accurate will be on Halloween, when it passes the closest. 
  • But even at the middle of that range, or 1,300 feet, Spooky will be about 32 times larger than the asteroid that burned up in spectacular fashion above, Siberia, in 2013.
  • NASA has calculated the asteroid’s trajectory and says it will safely zip by us, traveling at 78,000 miles per hour (35 kilometers per second), some 29 times faster than a speeding bullet. 
  • Spooky is not the largest nor the closest of Earth’s near misses in recent years.  Just this past January, BL86 came to within a similar distance to Earth.  
  • In total astronomers have so far cataloged some 13,000 near-Earth asteroids. Yet it’s estimated that only 30 percent of those in the same class size as Spooky have been detected.
  • But Slooh, an Internet-based space tracking service, will be keeping an eye on the asteroid with its robotic telescopes on the Canary Islands and Europe. You can watch Slooh’s broadcast of the flyby online starts at 1 p.m. ESTon October 31.
  • Website: http://live.slooh.com/
Device of the Week: Eoro 3D Scanner
  • This 3D scanner is a Kickstarter project that was started by Rahul Koduri and Asfand Khan of Sydney, Australia.
  • The project came about when they were working on concentrating solar rays. They needed to capture the specifications of a reflective parabolic dish that was used to track the sun’s trajectory to improve solar power output. 
  • They were shocked that scanners that are precise to sub-100 microns cost at least $5000. So they decided to build their own.
  • The team began working on an early prototype and realized that they had a real product on their hands.
  • The system works by scanning the surface a green laser. The laser connects via Bluetooth to your phone camera and allows you to create a point cloud of the object in alarming detail. Best of all the system scans in full color – a unique feature that I haven’t seen in a smaller scanner.
  • The eora 3D Scanner has a Green laser, as CMOS sensors in cameras are twice as sensitive to the green spectrum which allows for 3D Scanning in a variety of conditions even outdoors.
  • The models can be used in games, for 3D printing, and for prototyping. 
  • The system includes an automatic turntable to turn the object in space so you can capture all sides at sub-100 micron accuracy.
  • Early bird units cost $199 and the team is looking to raise $50,000. They are now fully funded.