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Show of 11-27-2021

 

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email from Bob in Maryland: Dear Doc and Andrew. I guess money has a way to somehow lead to revision of previous plans. I do not think Satoshi Nakamoto had quite expected Bitcoin to be worth so much, but now that it is, there is a court case about it. What do you think of this article: A Florida Trial Might Unmask the BTC’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Once and For All? Could Satoshi actually be more than a single person? And in the course of the trial, the real identity might actually get revealed. What do you think, Doc? All the best, your faithful listener, Bob in Maryland
  • Tech Talk Responds: This is a great suggestion. We will discuss the trail in detail in as part of this show. Spoiler: I probably will not reveal the real Satashi Nakamoto.
  • Email from Lilly in Fairfax: Dear Doc and Jim. Why am I getting a delay notification on an email I sent? I am trying to send an e-mail to a co-worker and I keep getting the following message:
    • Delivery Status Notification (Delay). This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY. YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.
  • The strange thing is that it is only happening with that specific e-mail address. What does it mean, and why it is happening? Enjoy the show. Lilly in Fairfax
  • Tech Talk Responds: Email uses a transfer method called store and forward. When you send an email, it is received by a mail server, stored for some period of time, and then forwarded to the next server in the path on its way to your recipient. Eventually it is received by the recipient’s mail server, where it is stored until the recipient downloads it, or reads it online. The time that a server holds your message before forwarding it is typically very short, which is why email often appears to be nearly instant. There could be any number of delays along the email’s path to your recipient. The most likely delay is that recipient’s mail server is temporarily offline. Rather than fail to deliver the email, your mail server keeps trying to pass the message along and send you a delayed delivery message. It keeps trying for around five days, then is stops and sends you a Failed Delivery message. If your message is urgent, you might try calling them.
  • Email from Lee in North Carolina: Dear Doc and Jim. I am having trouble connecting my new Bluetooth speaker to my laptop. Sometimes it works. Other times, it just sill not link. What can I do go get a reliable connection? Love the show Lee in North Carolina. Lee in North Carolina
  • Tech Talk Responds: Bluetooth depends on both hardware and software to work properly. What you can do about pairing failures.
    • Make sure Bluetooth is turned on.
    • Determine which pairing process your device employs. The process for pairing devices can vary. Sometimes, for example, it involves tapping a code into your phone. Other times, you can just physically touch your phone to the device you want to pair it with. Or in the case of the Bose SoundLink, you only have to hold down a button on the speaker to pair it with a phone.
    • Turn on discoverable mode.
    • Once it finds your phone, the car may ask for a numeric code you need to confirm or input on your phone.
    • Make sure the two devices are in close enough proximity to one another.
    • Power the devices off and back on.
    • Power down likely interferers. You may be connecting to your spouse’s device by mistake.
    • Delete a device from a phone and rediscover it.
    • Get away from the Wi-Fi router.
    • Make sure the devices you want to pair are designed to connect with each other.
    • Download a driver. If you are having problems pairing something with your PC, you might be lacking the correct driver.
  • Hope one of these fixes will work for you.
  • Email from Nhan in Atlanta: Dear Doc and Jim. I have to buy a laptop and am trying to decide between a Chromebook and a Windows 11 laptop. I need it for school and will be using primarily Microsoft Office for my project. The Chromebook is quite a bit cheaper, but my friends say that it is not a laptop and that I cannot install applications. What do you recommend? Love the show. Nhan in Atlanta
  • Tech Talk Responds: A Chromebook is an operating system based on the Chrome browser. It must be connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi to be useful. The only offline applications that can be installed are Google docs. Everything else must be accessed via the Web. One the other hand, a Windows 10 laptop allows you to install applications, like MS Office. These applications can be used even when not connected to the Internet. So a laptop is more versatile. Laptops are more expensive that Chromebooks because they need more processing power, more RAM, and larger hard drives. With the limited applications that you mentioned, you could easily use Office365, a web-based office suite from Microsoft, with Chrome. That would meet all of your needs. You could also use the fully integrated Google docs. In your case, I would recommend a Chromebook.
  • Email from Margaret in Fairfax: Dear Tech Talk. I recently travelled to Europe and logged into my Facebook account at several hotel business centers. I am afraid that I failed to log out of my account. It there a way to check what devices are currently logged into my Facebook account. I need some peace of mind. Love the show. Margaret in Fairfax
  • Tech Talk Responds: Fortunately, Facebook tracks where you are logged in, so you can see every device logged into your account, and end any sessions you do not want active. Facebook provides data on the location, the device or browser used, and the last accessed date or time for every active login session. If you see any unfamiliar devices or locations, you can end those sessions from your current one.
    • To find out where your account is currently logged in, open a web browser, log into Facebook, and go to the Facebook account settings page. Then, click Security on the left side of the browser window.
    • On the Security Settings page, click on the Where You’re Logged In section. There is an Edit link, but you can click on any part of the section to view and edit it.
    • The Where You’re Logged In section expands. All your logged in sessions are listed under headings for each platform or device, showing the number of active sessions on that device.
    • Click on a heading that has at least one active session to expand it and see the details of each session.
    • Pay close attention to the access time, location, and device of the session. If it matches one you know you initiated, then it’s okay, but if you see a session from an iPad and you do not own an iPad, you know something is fishy (and you may want to change your password.)
    • If there was only one active session under that heading, the section closes automatically. Open each of the headings and see if there are any other active sessions you want to end. If you want to end all the sessions, click End All Activity at the top of the Where You’re Logged In section.
    • When you’re finished ending active Facebook sessions, click Close at the bottom of the section to close it.
  • Now that you see how easy it is to check on your active Facebook sessions, you can keep a close eye on your account, making sure you’re not logged in where you don’t want to be.

Profiles in IT: Liu Chuanzhi

  • Liu Chuanzhi is the founder of Lenovo, the largest computer maker in the world.
  • Liu Chuanzhi was born April 29, 1944 in Zhenjiang near Shanghai.
  • Liu grew up during a turbulent period in China’s history. His father had served as an executive with the Bank of China in Shanghai and worked secretly with the Chinese Communists before the party took control of the city in 1949.
  • After the Communist victory in 1949, Liu’s family moved to Beijing.
  • After graduating from high school in 1962, Liu applied to be a military pilot. Liu was declared unfit for military service because a relative had been denounced as a rightist.
  • Liu then entered the People’s Liberation Army Institute of Telecommunication Engineering. Liu was assigned to study radar and was introduced to computing.
  • China entered upon its Cultural Revolution during the 1960s, during which time its schools and universities were closed by order of Mao Zedong
  • In 1966, he told his classmates that the revolution was a terrible idea and was sent to a state-owned rice farm near Macau in Guangdong for two years. It was not uncommon for young adults from the cities to be sent to the countryside to work with peasants.
  • Liu returned to Beijing where he took up a post in 1970 as an engineer-administrator at the Computer Institute. He worked on magnetic data storage for mainframes.
  • In 1984 he joined the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). When CAS ran low on funds, and Liu came up with the idea of starting a computer company.
  • Liu’s superior at the academy gave him and 10 other staff members a loan of 200,000 yuan (about $24,000 in U.S. currency) to start the enterprise in 1984.
  • The company that Liu formed, which was originally named Legend Group, began in a small room in Beijing that barely covered 20 square yards.
  • Their first significant transaction, an attempt to import televisions, failed. The group rebuilt itself by conducting quality checks on computers for new buyers.
  • The Chinese language was difficult to translate on a keyboard. Legend developed a Chinese character set for computers in 1985.
  • The company began to produce PCs in 1990 under the name, Legend.
  • By the late 1990s Legend had produced a Chinese character recognizer for the PC, which allowed users to write Chinese characters on a digital pad and translate the characters onto a computer screen.
  • For more than ten years, Lenovo served as Hewlett-Packard’s distributor in China.
  • Legend tried and failed to market a digital watch. They lacked marketing experience.
  • Liu’s father, a Hong Kong banker, facilitated bank loans as the company grew. He, and five others, moved to Hong Kong in 1988. They walked to work and rented hotel rooms for meetings.
  • Legend became a publicly traded company after listing in Hong Kong in 1994, raising nearly US$30 million.
  • Proceeds from the offering were used to finance sales offices in Europe, North America, and Australia; expand production and R & D.
  • Liu learned business on the job by studying the management structure and techniques of such companies as Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
  • By 1996 Legend had surpassed IBM for China’s market share in computer sales and retained that lead even at the start of the new century.
  • Liu ensured that his company would remain on top of the market by introducing innovations. Legend was one of the first Chinese companies to offer its employees stock options.
  • Liu promoted talented young people to higher-level staff positions. By the late 1990s many of Legend’s managers were quite young and infused the company with their strong entrepreneurial spirit.
  • In 2006, Legend officially changed its English name to the Lenovo Group.
  • Lenovo’s later takeover of IBM’s personal computing business made him the first Chinese CEO to lead the takeover of a major American firm.
  • Liu says that at first he behaved “like a kind of dictator.” Over time, Liu was able to relax his authoritarian style and Lenovo became an employer of choice.
  • In June 2012, Liu stepped down as chairman of Legend Holdings, the parent company of Lenovo.
  • Liu spearheaded an initial public offering for Legend on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2015 to diversify beyond the IT sector.
  • Liu is a member of the China Entrepreneurs Club (CEC). The CEC was founded in 2006. Its purpose is to strengthen the sense of social responsibility among China’s young entrepreneurs. Liu is married and has three children.

Observations from the Faculty Lounge

  • Private business build modern China within a permissive environment. Now the Government wants control back.
  • Beijing’s permissiveness with private businesses has ebbed and flowed over the years, and some in China say that longstanding tension between authoritarianism and the free market has reached a critical point.
  • China grew to prosperity in part by embracing market forces. Now China may be stepping back from the free-market, pro-business policies that transformed it into the world’s No. 2 economy.
  • For 40 years, China has swung between authoritarian Communist control and a freewheeling capitalism where almost anything could happen — and some see the pendulum swinging back toward the government.
  • State-controlled companies increasingly account for growth in industrial production and profits, areas where private businesses once led.
  • China has stepped up regulation of online commerce, real estate and video games. Companies could face higher taxes and employee benefit costs.
  • Some intellectuals are calling for private enterprises to be abolished entirely.
  • This is a trend worth watching.

Chinese Tencent Must Get State Approval for Apps

  • Tencent has been told all its new apps and updates must be approved by the government, as Beijing continues its domestic tech sector crackdown.
  • The Chinese government has moved to exert more authority over the industry in the past year, citing concerns that tech giants in the country have become too big and powerful.
  • This latest move against Tencent comes after nine of the group’s apps were found to have committed “violations” since the beginning of the year, prompting the need for “transitional administrative guidance measures”.
  • The company must submit any new apps or updates for inspection by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before they can be uploaded or updated.
  • Tencent told AFP it would comply with the requirements.
  • Beijing abruptly turned on the sector late last year as concerns mounted over its aggressive expansion and allegations of monopolistic practices and data abuses.
  • The government’s crackdown has included measures to dramatically restrict children’s video game playing time and has slowed approvals for new titles in the world’s biggest gaming market.

Memory Lane: Most Ridiculous Computer Repair Instruction

  • In the early 80s, the Apple III was intended to be an enhanced successor to the Apple II series computers but, from the start, was hampered with issues.
  • The model suffered from overheating issues thanks to the closed design and lack of fan-based cooling.
  • In fact, heat issues proved extremely problematic for the Apple III, to the point that excessive heat actually caused the integrated chips to expand and unseat themselves.
  • The solution offered by Apple’s technical reps and support engineers on the matter was that customers should tilt the front of the Apple III six inches above the desk and then drop it.
  • The sudden drop would reseat the chips and business could continue as usual.
  • While the trick did work, it was a unorthodox and contributed to the public’s disdain for the Apple III.
  • By the end of 1981, Apple was selling only 500 units a month. It was discontinue April 1984,

$69B Bitcoin Court Battle

  • A civil trial pitting Ira Kleiman versus Craig Wright seeks to establish who was the real person behind the Bitcoin founder’s pseudonym.
  • Wright, an Australian computer scientist, has made his claim since 2016, but Kleiman says his late brother David, a friend of Wright’s, was the co-creator and is entitled to a share of the Bitcoin nest egg.
  • Given Bitcoin prices early Tuesday morning, the wallet’s holdings would make its possessor the 15th richest person in the world (assuming they started with no net worth), according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
  • That amount is higher than the net worth of members of the Walton family, Carlos Slim, and Charles Koch.
  • Kleiman alleges that his late brother David collaborated with Wright on the creation and early development of Bitcoin, making his heirs entitled to half of the wallet’s contents.
  • Even as Kleiman tries to make his case for a share of Wright’s funds, there is substantial skepticism from crypto experts that Wright is, in fact, Satoshi Nakamoto.
  • Wright has been making claims to be Satoshi for more than half a decade, but the bitcoin and broader crypto communities have found his evidence consistently unconvincing.
  • He has not yet publicly shown he has access to the Nakamoto wallet, which only encourages his detractors.
  • And there are older accusations that the proof he has provided was fraudulent.
  • If Kleiman wins the case, but Wright is not Satoshi (or has lost access to the wallet), will Kleiman still be unable to access the Bitcoin at the heart of the dispute?
  • The Miami case, at its heart, is not about Satoshi’s identity. It is looking instead at the business partnership between Wright and Kleiman and whether they were, in fact, partners or just friends.
  • The self-described creator of Bitcoin emphatically denied in court that his late friend and fellow computer scientist helped him launch the cryptocurrency.
  • While Craig Wright acknowledged that the two worked together, the Australian entrepreneur insisted in his testimony this week that they only mined Bitcoin together for test purposes, not for profit.
  • After closing arguments, the jury was given the case Tuesday afternoon but didn’t come to a verdict by 5:30 p.m., when they broke for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. The proceedings are slated to resume Monday.
  • Dumb move of the week. Data on David Kleiman’s hard drives may have been destroyed by his brother after his death. Nicholas Chambers, a computer forensics expert, reviewed five of Dave Kleiman’s computer hard drives and nine of his thumb drives.
  • Four out of the 14 drives were reformatted after Dave Kleiman died and that 13 of the 14 devices had been overwritten. Chambers testified that there is no way to determine what the content of the drives was before Ira, the brother, over-wrote the drives.