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By Stephen, on November 20th, 2020%
After not upgrading my mobile phone for a couple years, I splurged and got the new iPhone 12 Pro Max (because I wanted the new camera features). The phone is enormous, as you would expect, but you may not believe exactly how enormous it is. If anyone needs to land an aircraft, this thing is about the size of an aircraft carrier deck. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but it is big, though my hands are big too, so it feels natural and is a beautiful phone. By the way, the camera does seem to be spectacular, and the low light mode with the “normal” camera blew me away!
But that’s not why I’m writing this. We’ve come to rely on our phones for so many things that upgrading to a new phone is more complicated than it was in the past. Previously when switching to a new iPhone, I would restore the backup of the old phone and most things would work right away. A couple apps would detect they’re on new hardware and require that I log in again, but otherwise there was not transition other than newer, fancier hardware.
These days, however, our phones are not just our lifelines and our entertainment – they identify and authenticate us, and therein lies the problem when upgrading to a new phone. We are all using 2-factor authentication apps (if you’re not, do so. Now. I’ll wait) that are tied to the hardware identity of our phone. Some of us also use our phones for car keys or house keys, again tied to specific IDs in the phone that don’t transfer to a new one automatically.
With this new phone, most things transferred perfectly, as expected, so I could easily log into my iCloud stuff or Dropbox or Instagram, either automatically or just by entering my credentials. The problems were with the “authenticator” apps and with my Tesla Model 3. Rightfully so, they didn’t transfer over.
The Microsoft Authenticator is pretty excellent in that it has a recovery mode that allows restoring its functionality via information stored on iCloud. Luckily my old phone was still working so I could authenticate via the old one to allow the new one to restore the settings. If the old phone were lost or broken, things would have been a lot uglier, requiring the use of backup codes or other methods of proving identity.
The Google Authenticator was much worse. It had no recovery mode, so the answer is just disable the old one in your Google Security settings and enable the new one. Fine for Google, but other services, like Hubspot, also use the Google Authenticator, so for those I had to log in, disable the Google Authenticator, then re-enable it on the new phone. Again, because I had the old phone there, I could log in easily, but if I hadn’t had it accessible, things would have been tough.
The process for switching phones for the Tesla should have been easy, but didn’t work well. Adding the new phone via Bluetooth was trivial and worked well, as did logging into the Tesla app (using Microsoft Authenticator for 2FA), but adding the phone as a key for the car didn’t work. I put the keycard on the console and told the app to make the phone a key, but it claimed it couldn’t connect to the car. Playing with WiFi and Bluetooth didn’t work. In the end, I rebooted the car computer (yes, I know that sounds crazy) and that fixed it.
So now my new phone has replaced the old one in all capacities and I’m happy. But this should serve as a warning to us all that switching phones is more challenging than ever, and if we lose or break a phone, the trouble will be huge! Since many of the backup 2FA mechanisms use a text message to your phone if the authenticator app doesn’t work, that doesn’t help if you can’t receive the text message. My advice is to get the backup codes for your essential services and securely store them somewhere you can get to if your phone is gone. Easier said than done…
By Stephen, on August 24th, 2020%
Last week I bought the Logitech MX Vertical mouse to see if it will be better at preventing repetitive strain injury to my wrist and hand. Somehow working from home because of the pandemic means fewer breaks and more intense work, so I could feel it in my hand and wrist (particularly my thumb has been bothering me).
The MX Vertical is a vertical mouse with a “handshake” grip. This means your hold on the mouse is almost like when you’re giving a handshake. (Remember handshakes? Those aren’t going to be a thing anymore.) This means your wrist is in a more natural position than the twisted angle needed for a regular mouse.
I really wanted to like the MX Vertical because I thought it could help me and because it is crazy expensive, so I wanted to be able to rationalize my decision to buy it. But when it arrived, I hated it. There were stupidly terrible software problems with it that I’ll cover later, but more importantly, it didn’t feel good.
The biggest problem I had with the MX Vertical is because of my big hands. The side of my hand rests on the desk when I grip the mouse in its handshake position. This makes movement terrible. My normal Logitech MX Master mouse is large enough that my hand stays clear of the desk so movement is very smooth. Not so with the MX Vertical. I think if it had an attachable extension to support the hand, it could be improved.
So I gave up on the MX Vertical. I tried to convince my wife to try it, but after my experience with it, she had little interest. But then I had the thought that a wrist rest might keep my wrist high enough that my hand wasn’t dragging on the desk, so I ordered a foam wrist rest (yes, I’m buying accessories for my accessories).
The wrist rest helped, so I used the MX Vertical all day yesterday and found it to be pretty good. I quickly got used to the vertical hand position, and I think it plus the wrist rest will help with my hand and wrist issues.
So does that mean I’m happy with it and it is the perfect mouse? No. Not at all.
It is a fairly light mouse, particularly for its size, so clicking a button requires that I hold the opposite side with my thumb to prevent the mouse from moving off where I wanted to click. I never had to do that with a normal mouse. The button positions are OK, but not great, though again my big hands have an influence on that. The biggest ergonomic mistake is the position of the scroll wheel. It is between the buttons pretty much where it would be on a normal mouse, but that makes it fairly far behind my fingertips, so to use the mouse wheel requires significant finger movement and isn’t as natural as on a normal mouse.
The MX Vertical has lots of fancy features, but that means it requires software to use them. The problem is that because I had an older Logitech mouse, I already had the Logitech Options software loaded. Well, the older software completely fails when this mouse is plugged it and it even disables the scroll wheel. Of course, installing the new version of the software over the old one means things are still broken (I installed on 2 different PCs, so it wasn’t a fluke). The only was I could get it to work is to uninstall the Logitech software, uninstall the device, then install the latest Logitech Options software, then it worked OK.
Because clicking requires holding the mouse firmly, I wouldn’t think the MX Vertical would be good for gaming, but it seems ok for normal usage. For the moment, I will use it on my main work PC. With a wrist rest, it seems comfortable, so if you feel like your old mouse is causing trouble, the MX Vertical could be a good option.
By Stephen, on November 14th, 2019%
If you’re planning to order a Tesla, each Tesla owner (or orderer, in my case) is given a referral link that others can use to get some goodies. At the moment, when someone uses a referral link, both parties get 1000 supercharger miles, so win-win!
My link is below in case anyone would like to use it when you order a Tesla:
https://ts.la/stephen95215
By Stephen, on January 24th, 2018% Our smart devices have lots of problems, including security and privacy, but I ran into an annoying one today, and a similar one has been in the news: functionality can be removed from these devices by the manufacturer and there’s nothing we can do about it. The case that’s been in the news is Apple slowing down older iPhones without telling anyone. Personally, I’d prefer to have a slightly slower, reliable iPhone than a speedy one that resets itself if a particularly taxing game is playing (and, let’s face it, it’s really only games that would do that, I’d guess).
The issue I ran into today is with my Withings (now Nokia) Smart Body Analyzer (essentially a smart scale with lots of nice features). They’re removing one of the features with the excuse that it may require additional regulation, because it is a health-related feature. Of course, that feature is one of the reasons I bought the scale, because I thought it would be neat to know. Well, it’ll be gone in the next day or so.
As compensation, Nokia has offered $30 towards their store. Well, that’s pretty useless to me, because I’m not buying anything more from them in the foreseeable future. I wonder if there will be a class action suit against them like there was for Sony when they took away the Other OS option from the Playstation 3? That did affect me, because I used Linux on the PS3 for Cell programming, but I felt I got my money’s worth, so I didn’t participate in the compensation for that. I don’t feel the same way about my scale – they took away functionality that I was using and enjoying, so I don’t think $30 towards more of their stuff is adequate compensation.
So this is a problem – what can we do about it? Since the manufacturers already have our money, we can’t do much. If we bought such a device at Costco, which has unlimited warranty for most things, perhaps taking it back would be the right answer, as that would directly hurt the manufacturer.
As much as I hate to suggest a government fix for it, perhaps laws and regulations need to be put into place to prevent or compensate for functionality removal from devices, particularly when there’s no choice (the smart scale will update itself and there’s nothing I can do about it). The problem could become more and more widespread, and I’m particularly concerned about connected automobiles. What happens when they pull your favorite feature from the infotainment system? Or reduce the top speed and acceleration to save gas? Since they already have our money, we have little leverage. I don’t claim to have the answers, but we have a problem that will continue to get worse.
By Stephen, on August 10th, 2016% Almost every software product has a click-through End User License Agreement (EULA) that we typically just click OK on so we can actually use the software. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to click, because we’re often giving up our privacy or agreeing to other restrictions, but the software companies have us over a barrel, so we dutifully agree and move on. This is a real problem. EULAs were originally intended to protect the software company from liability and to prevent us from ripping them off. More recently, however, they’re throwing in binding arbitration clauses (which can be argued are legitimate protection for the company, but it does restrict our rights) and privacy clauses, which is the subject of this article. I believe these EULA problems can only be fixed through legislation, because competition and free enterprise don’t apply after we’ve already bought the product.
I have a Sleep Number bed and bought the SleepIQ add-on. SleepIQ is a $300 system in the pump (the mattress is filled with air) that measures your breathing, heart rate, and sleep. While it probably isn’t really worth $300, it is pretty cool, so when you buy a Sleep Number bed (and you should – they’re good), buy SleepIQ too. The sensor in the pump talks to an app on my iPhone, and the app was recently updated, which required me to click through a EULA. Well, I read this one, and it stinks. They threw in that they can do nearly anything they want with my private personal information that they’ve collected, including using it for marketing (not a surprise) or selling it to their business partners (bad). If I didn’t agree with the EULA, I needed to disable the SleepIQ system, thus throwing out the $300 I paid. It did say I could continue to use the bed – how generous of them!
This sort of thing isn’t any different than if you bought a car, and when you got it home, the entertainment/navigation system popped up a EULA that required you agree to all sorts of abusive terms or they’d disable all the features. That likely wouldn’t fly in cars, because consumer protection for cars is pretty good (lemon laws) and the consumer outrage would torpedo sales from that manufacturer. Sadly, with most other products, we’re stuck with whatever they want to give us.
What should be done?
I think EULAs should be restricted to EULA things, like defining the protections for the software company and restricting copying and other things. Agreeing to such a EULA could still be required before the user can use the software. Privacy statements have no place in the EULA, and I think protection of our personal data should be a legislated default. In no way should we be forced to give up protection of our private data in order to use the service. Of course, the company can offer us incentives that make the service more effective if we opt in to sharing our information, but it should not be mandatory. There are some services whose whole purpose is to share our data with someone – well they should get our permission explicitly, as well.
The problem is, companies aren’t going to do this voluntarily. There’s profit in our names and email addresses and personal preferences. Selling that information is essentially free money for a company that makes software or other products. Since consumers don’t often know what we’re signing away and realize that we have no choice in doing so, there’s little market pressure to stop this practice. That’s why (I hate to admit it) government should get involved and protect the rights and privacy of its citizens. We need to stop companies forcing customers to agree bad things in order to use services we pay for. This sort of behavior should not be accepted or allowed.
By Stephen, on July 8th, 2016% For those of us that have used Windows 7 for a long time, the Windows 10 login mechanism is annoying, and that’s doubly so when your machine is locked. So I’ve made a handy guide that describes the login process for a locked Windows 10 system.
- Type your password and press Enter. This obviously doesn’t work, because the first few characters are absorbed by the pretty picture screen before it goes away to show the password prompt box.
- Notice that it says you typed the wrong password, so type it again and press Enter. This has the effect of selecting the OK button on the screen that told you about the earlier mistake, so this didn’t work either.
- Finally the password box is selected, empty, and ready for your input. So type your password again. This one should work.
So that’s it. If we’re used to Windows 7 just having the password box on the lock screen and just being able to type our password to unlock it, it takes typing the password 3 times under Windows 10. Sometimes form does not triumph over function.
By Stephen, on May 23rd, 2016% My wife just got a new, modern car with a fancy Ford Sync 3 entertainment system, and I’m a little jealous of that. This is the first car we’ve had with Bluetooth and built-in navigation and the ability to play MP3s and such. But these systems are far from perfect. Every review of pretty much every car other than the Teslas complains about the entertainment systems and how fiddly and unintuitive they are. Somehow Tesla gets it right, while the traditional car companies are terrible at this sort of thing. Or perhaps the reviewers are so impressed by being pushed back in their seat by the Tesla’s massive acceleration and the giant iPad-looking screen is so pretty that they can’t think straight. Or they’re afraid Elon Musk will cancel their Tesla order if they say anything bad.
In any case, I don’t find the Ford Sync 3 to be hard to use, but it is much farther from being good than it should be to fit in the center of the dashboard of an automobile. This version ditches the Microsoft influence for a version built on the QNX real-time operating system bought by RIM a couple years back. QNX is a good choice to build a real-time interactive entertainment system on, but the Sync software on top of it needs a lot of help.
The very first day we got the car, I went out to learn about the Sync system and the damn thing locked up within seconds of me touching it. I had force it to reset, which wasn’t too hard, but messes things up (more below). This happened again this weekend as we were driving. I was in the passenger seat and wondering why it couldn’t find the iPod I stored a bunch of music on (more on that later too), and the touch screen locked up. Once I reset it, it behaved, but having to reset it twice in just over a week tells me it isn’t very reliable, and it needs to be. Anything that could distract or stress a driver should be eliminated as the highest priority, and having your entertainment/navigation system lose its mind is a good way to distract and stress a driver.
Speaking of navigation systems, this Sync 3 system has a proprietary nav system that is reasonably friendly and competent, but not nearly as nice as the old Garmin Nuvi my wife was using. The Sync nav system is quite out of date (Nordstrom has not been in the South Bay Galleria for quite a while now), and Ford says we can purchase map updates from the dealer. Well, it is a new car, so the map should be updated, but isn’t. And my wife’s old Garmin had lifetime map updates included. The biggest thing my wife misses about her Garmin though is the current speed display on the GPS screen. This independent speed display is quite handy if your speedometer is hard to read or not very precise, or you just don’t want to look down often. I can see why Ford wouldn’t want this, because it might show a slight difference between GPS speed and the speedometer, and they wouldn’t want anyone to think their car is reading the wrong speed. But I’ll trust GPS speed any day, and it is a shame it isn’t an option.
Now the biggest problem with resetting the system is that it loses the correct time. That’s right, it forgets the correct time! And if you ask it to set according to the GPS time, it can’t handle Daylight Savings time. Seriously. This should not be a problem in a fancy expensive computerized entertainment/nav system. The Garmin unit that I have and the one my wife had handle Daylight Savings time just fine, so the fact that a modern system can’t is just sloppy/lazy programming.
Another problem is that it keeps locking up the iPod I put a bunch of song on. It seems to me that iPods should be a pretty well known device to be able to handle well, and maybe the problem is on the iPod side, but it shouldn’t lock it up. When that happens, the iPod can’t be found in the source list and has to be re-scanned after I reset the iPod. Yet more distractions that shouldn’t ever happen.
The system has voice commands that are mostly OK, but it is so tedious to use, we just use Siri from our iPhones to make calls and read texts and such. The built-in stuff isn’t nearly as good. Luckily, holding the voice command handle for a couple seconds activates Siri through the built-in sound system.
All this leads to the problem: the car makers want to own this stuff and charge too much for it, so they make their own software and interfaces, and none of it is as good as what Apple and Google make. While CarPlay and AndroidAuto are available in some cars, they are not common yet, and they will still require some interaction with the lousy built-in systems to work. It could be that Tesla has all of this solved, but Ford sure doesn’t.
By Stephen, on February 20th, 2016% My initial reaction to Apple fighting the court order to unlock the terrorist’s iPhone was “Good for Apple. Doing anything that could reduce my privacy is bad!” And lots of the breathless news reports continued to make me think that way with all the talk of backdoors and such.
But then I started reading articles in more technical press and I see that the issue is a lot more nuanced (and way more nuanced than Donald Trump’s absurd call for a boycott – didn’t he learn when people called for boycotts of his enterprises?).
It seems that the FBI isn’t asking Apple to unlock the phone, but to give it the tools by which the FBI can unlock the phone (and only this phone). They want Apple to make a special version of iOS tailored to that phone only that drops the policy of erasing the phone after 10 failed PIN entries and they want this new iOS to accept PIN entries quickly rather than enforcing significant delays after failed PIN entries. This would allow the FBI to unlock the iPhone quickly by trying the 10,000 possible PIN combinations several per second (via a debugging interface).
So once I learned that, I thought that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Apple complied, because this custom version of iOS would only work on that phone and, if a bad guy got ahold of it and changed it to work on another phone, the digital signature wouldn’t match, so it couldn’t be loaded on the other phone. So Apple wasn’t creating a terrible security hole that could be exploited by governments, corporations, criminals, etc.
And then what I think is the real problem hit me: If Apple shows they can (help) unlock this iPhone, then they will be inundated by court orders to unlock iPhones. Every time someone disappears, the police will ask a court to force Apple to unlock their phone to see if they’d been messaging someone suspicious. If grandma dies, her relatives will want her phone unlocked in case there were photos or other information they want. And you know there will be judges that will grant such orders. So if Apple goes along this once with this seemingly reasonable case, they (and Samsung and Google and everyone else) will have to do it every day. The floodgates will open and the court orders will never end. And that’s not the business Apple or any of them want to be in.
So how do we solve this? Maybe there are compelling reasons that a phone needs to be unlocked, and this case is as good an example as any. But I don’t think a court order is the answer. As Apple says, we need a public discussion, and we probably need new laws that define exactly when unauthorized unlocking is appropriate (and I mean “unauthorized” because the unlocking is being done without permission of the original setter of the passcode). That could avoid the stream of arbitrary court orders. If the lawful reasons for unlocking are broad enough, then Apple can just set up a side business that unlocks iPhones for $10,000 or $50,000. That would deter common street criminals from using it, but if the information on the phone is that important, then it’s totally worth it.
By Stephen, on January 17th, 2016% I registered my drone. Well, actually, I registered myself as a drone owner. Because the FAA mandated that we all register our drones, I went to the FAA UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) website to register my DJI Phantom 3 Pro (which is a really nifty drone). It turns out that only US citizens can register drones. So green card holders, visa holders, visitors, and illegal immigrants don’t have to register their drones. But since I’m a citizen, I created my account, typed in my name, address, phone number, and credit card info, which resulted in a registration ID that I am to mark on my drone. There were no questions about how many drones I have, nor what type, nor even the serial number(s). What this means is that I registered myself, putting my information into yet another government database that will become public information sometime, thus allowing advertisers and fraudsters yet another way to get my info. And, of course, if the site is ever hacked, the info will get out even quicker.
I had to put my credit card info in, because drone (owner) registration costs $5, though that fee is waved for a while. Rather than just not charging me and needing my credit card info, I will be charged, then refunded the $5, which seems to be the least efficient way to do it. Someone is losing money on those two transactions, whether it is the government or the credit card company or both, but such things aren’t free.
So now that I’m registered and when I mark my drone, what good will it do? Unless someone crashes their drone while doing some forbidden activity and the police get the ID number, there’s no way to track a rogue drone to its owner. Most of the cases we heard about on the news where drones were flying near firefighters and emergency personnel (or spying into windows) didn’t have the drone being recovered by law enforcement. Instead, the owners flew the drones away, so nobody could see the ID numbers.
So in my opinion, the current registration scheme doesn’t do much to match drones with owners, except in cases where the drone crashes, but it has added a new bureaucracy at the FAA with user fees to help support it. There are much better alternatives to this ineffective system, and I’d bet drone makers and owners would be better served by them. I have suggestions:
Most modern fancy drones have one or more radio transceivers as well as GPS positioning in them. The drone receives commands from the controller and sends back status information. Many drones also send back camera video, which is a reasonable high data rate. So they have fairly powerful radios that can send for half a mile or more. I suggest that every few seconds, that radio could send out identifying information as well as the drone’s position and maybe even the takeoff/landing coordinates on a designated frequency. This would be sort of like IFF beacons on aircraft, and would let law enforcement know which drones are nearby, where they are, and where their operator is. That’s information that can be used if the drone enters airspace it shouldn’t or causes a nuisance. Perhaps this could be added to existing drones via a firmware update, but could certainly be mandated for all drones sold after a certain date. Of course the drone manufacturers would have to be on board, but I think it is in their best interest to make sure the hobby maintains a safe and lawful reputation.
If the drone manufacturers think making changes to the in-flight radio is dangerous and could compromise flight safety, the handheld control unit also has powerful transceivers and could do the job nearly as well. It sends commands to the drone and receives telemetry as well as the video stream, so its radio could send the ID/position beacon without interfering with flight safety.
In either case, a technical solution would provide information that is much more useful. Even better, it would do so for all drones, not just those owned by US citizens who have registered. I think the drone hobby is fun and always take care when flying my drone, but I can understand the need for regulations. I just think the regulations should make sense and be effective.
By Stephen, on November 20th, 2015% I got my new Microsoft Surface Book last night and have decidedly mixed impressions of it. The hardware seems top notch, while the operating system and software are much worse than expected. If only Microsoft were a company that primarily made operating systems and software, I’m sure this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. Oh, wait…
So the first thing I noticed is how heavy the thing is, at least in its shipping box. It turns out that the Surface Book itself is not very heavy (on the order of 3 pounds, so heavy for a tablet, but not bad for a thin laptop), but the power supply brick, while small, must be lined with lead, because it is heavy! The pen is also surprisingly substantial, and feels much more solid than the plastic pen of my Surface Pro that I’m writing on now. Even the box the unit came in weighs as much as the Surface Book, it seems.
So the Surface Book is a very well crafted piece of hardware, with its nifty hinge and detachable tablet, it is very clever and very solid. I was very impressed to get an Apple-like experience in taking it out of the box and setting it up. Then I had to find the power button. It is hidden at the top left of the screen, rather than on the keyboard like most laptops. I realize that the tablet (really the computer) is separate from the unit, but I think it would have helped to have an additional power button on the keyboard section. (Now we’re talking like Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Enterprise which had the dockable saucer section and engineering section – the Surface Book has a dockable tablet and keyboard section.)
Once I found the power button and did the simple setup for the OS, I set a PIN, since that’s what Microsoft seems to prefer rather than a password. I don’t know if I think it is a good idea, but since it is my personal machine, OK, I’ll do it. That’s when things went south. I also renamed the machine and rebooted. Well, it froze when I tried to log in. Doing a hard power off got control of the machine again, and it seemed to work OK. But logging in is really slow compared to my several year old Surface Pro. The new machine should be superior in every way, but Windows 10 on my old machine seems snappier.
Then I undocked the tablet portion and tried to use the pen. Windows knew the pen was there and where it was pointing, but completely ignored any input from the pen, including taps, presses, right clicks (there’s a button the pen for that), etc. I imagine there’s some sort of dumb setting in Windows that says “Use the pen for art only, ignore attempts to manage Windows with it” but I haven’t found it yet. Now, pen control of Windows is something that Microsoft has been doing very well for 10 years, starting with the original Tablet PCs, which I used and loved. For this simple thing not to work correctly out of the box is truly stunning.
So now the machine is sitting at home and downloading updates and firmware fixes that will hopefully address these issues. I look forward to setting it up to be a useful machine over the weekend. I am disappointed with the poor experience the software provided out of the box. Microsoft is still behind Apple in that respect.
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