Prolonging the life of lithium-based batteries

I came upon this very good article and recommend it.

BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries

TWC disconnect

Time Warner Cable (TWC) cable went out today. I took a couple of hours to diagnose the problem to ensure the problem was with the service and not my equipment. I know how to do this, as I’m a professional at doing that.

The people at TWC customer service offered an upgrade to my service so that I could enjoy higher speeds.

It was, of course, a terribly inappropriate time to talk to me about upgrading my service when I’m calling to say I’m not even getting what I’m paying for.

This point was entirely lost on them, until the first one abruptly hung up on me. I asked him they deliberately interrupted my service in order to get me to call and ask for the upgrade? Then, click.

The second one was willing to help, and I had to tell him how inappropriate it was, and it didn’t really sink in.

I think these customer service agents have some kind of incentive to sell instead of repair. And it’s even conceivable that they are using software tools to send signals to customers’ modems to wedge them. The service goes down, people complain, some of them go for the upgrade which, gee, just so happens to take a non-working connection and make it a working connection.

Maybe this isn’t policy at TWC, but I think it’s going on anyway, and upper management may be blissfully ignorant of it.

Has anyone else seen a pattern like this with their internet service providers?

As I was complaining to the second person, my connection came back up. I do know that it is possible to send a modem a signal or reconfiguration, so this agent just might have “done the needful” as some of my colleagues so eloquently say.

So it’s entirely conceivable that they act like this, earning bonuses by disserving us. If the tools are there to make such a scheme, it’s a safe bet that some people would eventually build it, for the same reason a dog licks his testicles, because he can.

Change your eBay password, even if you are not active on eBay

The password problem will continue to be a problem for a while, until companies and individuals change their practices. In the meantime, if you have an eBay account, even if you haven't bought or sold anything recently, change your password today. Don't use a password you have used before. In fact, you can set it to something you know you will forget if you don't use your eBay account currently. You can change it later when you need to.

Here is the news story.

Keeping your accounts safe

With the Heartbleed bug in the news, people are concerned about their login accounts being compromised. Some have called Heartbleed the worst security bug in internet history. Unfortunately, this is true. Fortunately, it does not mean a lot of heartache for you or me. Companies who have to modify their systems have a daunting amount of work to do, but we don't.

Here is an article about Heartbleed that most people will be able to follow. It covers the topic well.

Should you change your passwords now or later or never? I'm sorry, but that's hard to say. It's better to change your passwords after a site's system is brought up to date, but we can't keep track of when that happens. Honestly, just take a guess and change your passwords when you want to. I suggest doing it some time between now (mid April 2014) and early May.

Remember, your bank has an interest in protecting your account and your assets. If your account is compromised and you can attest to this, they will restore things. Other companies may not be as willing to help, but they also matter less than your bank account.

One thing that really does matter is your email account. You might say that your email doesn't contain valuable information, but it probably holds more than you remember. Also, the bad guys can glean a lot by piecing together information. So do protect your email account.

One important and useful feature that Google Mail (aka gmail) offers is 2-step authentication. Please read this article about it. There are sections on why you need it, how it works, and how it protects you. You might find it cumbersome to use at first, but I promise, you will get used to it. The benefit is very big. If you have a smartphone, an app will tell you your password of the minute. If you use a dumb cell phone, google will text you with a password of the minute.

One person heard about this and said, "They are the last people I want to hand my cell number to." Well, OK, the impulse to distrust big companies is well founded, but this is exactly where more trust of this sort is better than less trust. It is an authentication system. They want to make sure it's you, and you have a way of proving it's you that's better than just a password. You want the authentication to be strong, which is to say, you want it to be hard for the wrong people to get into your account. You have a mutual interest in this.

They take our data and use it for aggregate statistics, not for individual prying. They could conceivably draw conclusions about the number of people who have 973 area codes, but I doubt it. There is nothing to be lost and plenty to gain from using your cell phone to help with authentication. But you only have to do this if you have a dumbphone. If you have a smartphone, you'll install the app, and you won't use texts. The app will provide the password of the minute magically, and you will type it into gmail.

One reason 2-step authentication is better than 1-step is that it relies on two types of things. Your password is something you know, whereas your cell phone is something you have. Using either as a key to open a lock is secure to a degree, but needing both is more secure than using either one alone.

I highly recommend this. I've been using it for years, and I feel pretty confident that no one has broken into my account, and I feel confident it won't happen soon.

The relative safety of public wifi networks

Many people wonder whether using public wifi networks is a good idea. I'm talking about many types of networks, one of them being cafes that are open to the public.

If you know if your web site uses https, then good. See if you can figure it out, because it is one step that increases your safety. With gmail, there is an option to insist on https, so that if your connection finds that only http (without the 's') is available, it will refuse to work for you. This is a good thing.

In addition to using https, you may want to avoid wireless networks that use WEP instead of WPA. Knowing which form varies a lot by operating system, so I won't offer help with that.

If you can, send your password before you connect to the unknown network and let the website save the password. Do not let the browser save the password, because it might send the password when you don't know it. If you don't know the difference between the browser and the web site saving, you are not tall enough to go on this ride. Saving the password on the web site creates a cookie which might be valid for a few hours or days.

If you use google's optional two-step authentication, you will be asked your regular password and your one-time while you're in the coffee shop, but if someone sniffs them, they are useless, because your one-time password expires in less than a minute.

Different web sites have different levels of quality of security. It's impossible to rate all of them, but in general, it's safer to trust the big ones if there haven't been any breach stories about them lately. For example, I would trust gmail today but not linkedin, since linkedin had an inexcusable breach a few months ago. Linkedin may have cleaned up their act, but time will tell. If gmail has a breach, I would begin to distrust them, but so far, what I know about their security is that it is very good.

There is no absolute danger, and there is no absolute safety. Make a conscious choice about what's important. If using a cafe with wifi has some utility value, then use it, but don't use it for unnecessary things such as facebook. Facebook is essential for some people, and I'm not singling them out as useless or unsafe. It's an example of something I don't need when I'm out and about. It's a luxury to me. Decide what's necessary, what's useful, and what's a luxury. By limiting the number of things you do, you reduce your risk.

goal

My goal is to reflect on the tools that help me or amuse me in hopes of introducing you to things and ideas that also help or amuse you.

I know many of you are decidedly not expert computer users. I like to think I can see through your point of view. You don't want the most advanced things. You don't want to remember a hundred arcane things. Yet I think I can bring you useful tips and help.