The Loop Newspaper - Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide

I've written before about the great work being done by very smart and talented people on behalf of the City of Tehachapi. It's work that has an everyday positive impact for the community, our...

Top passwords of 2018 A company called SplashData analyzed more than 5 million accounts/passwords that have leaked online and compiled a list of the most-used passwords for 2018. For the fifth year...

Fake tech support scams They're still out there, you know. Like chewing gum stuck to the bottom of your galoshes, those fake tech support scam "people" are still out there, stealing people's money. Th...

Internet speed tests Do you know how fast your internet is? Do you know how fast it should be? A quick check of the bill from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or a phone call to your ISP, will...

Useful apps for your computer Microsoft and Apple both pack lots of features and apps into their operating systems. For many people, the included apps are all they need to get things done on their...

"Ghosting" Facebook Breaking off a relationship suddenly without telling the other person and then ignoring all communications from that person is called "ghosting." If you can't quite delete your...

Browsers and banking If your computer can't connect to your bank or financial institution anymore, you need to switch your browser. Old Windows and Mac computers become "unsupported," meaning they no...

What's a Chromebook? A Chromebook is an inexpensive laptop, designed to be used while connected to the internet. Most of your applications and all of your files are stored online. Why are they inexpen...

Addiction. There, I said it. People, Americans in this case, are addicted to their smartphones. Not you and me, though; we're fine. Other people, probably someone we know, is addicted. How...

Smartphones running Android by Google, or iOS by Apple, have borrowed (or stolen, see Apple Inc. v Samsung) so many features and design elements from each other that most phones look basically the sam...

Technical stuff can be complicated, so I use analogies to help explain technical stuff in ways non-technical people can understand. CPUs, hard drive space and RAM, browsers and home pages CPUs CPU...

Email, as we know it, was invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1972 while working as a government contractor on the U. S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). He used the...

There are more crooks than ever running fake tech support scams. First it was phone calls, then poisoned pop-ups and hijacked advertising networks, and now social media. When (if) people start to...

Hey, congratulations; you've got a new phone. You (or the helpful people at the store) activated your new phone and you're all logged in and ready to go. Before you go out and use your phone to shoot...

In spite of the "ms" in the name, "mshelper" is malware that runs on a Mac "mshelper" is designed to hog all the resources (processor time, memory and hard disk) on a Mac. This can cause your Mac to...

I cringe whenever complicated technical information makes it to USA TODAY and other mainstream media outlets. Not that there's anything wrong with USA TODAY or the other guys, they're just not...

To use your computer, you need to use either the Dock (macOS) or Start (Windows.) The Dock and Start are how you interact with your operating system and your applications. By default, they both work...

Network activity The network icon we've had since Windows 7 is useless because all it does is tell if you're connected to the internet or not, which you probably figured out because you've been...

Without turning this column into a link-fest, I'll try to summarize this whole kerfuffle about Facebook for you and give you some options. In 2014, a developer created a personality quiz for...

Part of being a grown-up is facing the fact we won't be here forever. Most people are familiar with wills and family trusts as instruments of helping your loved ones know what to do when you die....

Something old #1 – Fake tech support scams I know we've talked about this before, but the fake tech support scammers are still out there. You know that Microsoft, Apple, HP, the FBI or anyone else...

How do we tell if a computer is fast or if it's faster than that computer over there? What's fast anyway? We need an objective way to measure a computer's speed overall, and it would be nice to break...

I've been a fan of Google's Chrome browser for years. When it first launched, it was fast and very configurable. The sync feature made it easy to have the same bookmarks on both my desktop and my...

It's unusual when extremely technical problems make the news, but by now you've probably heard about Meltdown and Spectre. Multiple teams of independent researchers have discovered (and named!) these...

Here are four things you can do to give your new gadget, whether it's a laptop, smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer, a long life. Keep it clean and protected Keeping dirt and grime out of your dev...