Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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I moved to Tehachapi in 2006 after retiring from the fast-paced, travel-heavy corporate IT world. It turned out I wasn't ready to retire, so in 2007, I started Tech-Hachapi and began helping people in the greater Tehachapi area with their technical challenges. My first client was from my ad on Craigslist, of all places. In the last 16-plus years, I've had the distinct pleasure of working with families young and old, horse rescues, ranchers, wineries, machine shop owners, aircraft engine shops,...
You're all set: you've updated your Wi-Fi router's firmware, changed your router's default password, and added all your computers, printers, phones, and tablets to your new, secure Wi-Fi. Here's how to make it easy for your friends and family to connect to and use your home Wi-Fi network when they visit for the holidays: Wi-Fi If you haven't already, make your Wi-Fi network name easy to pick out from your neighbors' Wi-Fi networks and make the password long but easy to remember. Something 11-15...
With Black Friday, Cyber Monday (who names these things), and all the traditional non-holiday related reasons for shopping, many people will fire up their computers, tablets and phones and head online and engage in some e-commerce. Here's how to be safe while filling your online shopping cart. HTTPS The #1 tip for safe online shopping is to only shop on sites using HTTPS encryption. You know, that little lock symbol in the address bar next to the address of the site you're on? HTTPS encryption e...
Renewable energy isn't always available; think no wind or at night. And sometimes renewable energy sources produce more electricity than there is a demand for. The solution is storing energy until it's needed. Batteries are an energy storage system that stores energy until it's needed. Whether it's for a cell phone, to start your car, or to power a house or a neighborhood, batteries are how we store energy until we need it. Well, except for neighborhoods. Many companies will sell you a large...
When your password suddenly won't work with a website or email address, there is usually a "Forgot password" link. The site may want to send a code to your phone or your recovery email address, or you'll get asked for answers to your security questions. Sending you a text with a reset code is a great way to reset passwords. It 'proves' you're you because you have your phone, plus it's fast and easy. Some sites call the number on file and 'read' you the code if you gave them a landline instead...
No, we're not talking about brushing your teeth. How could that be a scam? A brushing scam is probably happening when you receive a random package you didn't order. By most estimates, millions of people around the globe receive packages they haven't ordered. You might find things like beard care items, duck head earrings, a nose flute, a big foot air freshener, or ping-pong balls in the boxes. Most of these things are small and light, making shipping cheap. But why do that? And why is it called...
Despite what we see on TV and in the movies, computer hacking doesn't involve crouching over a laptop on the floor of a dark server room. Or sitting at a desk with multiple monitors with lines of code running on the screens. Followed by someone saying, "I'm in." Does it happen? Probably, but not very often. The most common way to go where you aren't allowed, computer security-wise, is by using social engineering. Social engineering doesn't rely on technical hacking methods to access buildings,...
You can get a gigabit internet service package from Spectrum or Race to provide internet service at home or work. But do you need internet service that fast? We measure internet speeds in Mbps (megabits per second). 1 Mbps can transfer one million bits of data in a second, but that's not fast these days. So, a gigabit internet connection can deliver up to 1,000 megabits of data per second. Another way of looking at it is delivering a billion bits per second of internet goodness to your home or...
You probably know what a Roku is. A streaming device that lets you use Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and more, even if you don't have a smart TV. And Roku often does a better job of streaming than a smart TV. Why Roku? Because roku is number six in the Japanese language, this was the sixth company Roku founder Anthony Wood started. Anyway, right out of the box, Roku devices are simple to use, but like most electronics, there are some tweaks you can do to make it yours. Change the theme Th...
What happens when you put your computer to sleep? What's the difference between restarting your computer, shutting it down, and turning it back on? Sleep When you put your computer to sleep, it goes into low-power mode. In this mode, the display turns off, your computer saves its current state (open files or browser tabs, etc.) to memory, and it stops sending power to most hardware. As long as your computer is getting power, when you turn it back on, it will start up instantly, and look just...
The first generation of cell phone batteries were Nickel-Cadmium (NiCad) batteries. NiCad batteries were toxic (the Cadmium part,) heavy, had overheating issues and developed a memory effect from charging cycles. This memory effect was the source of the old advice to drain your phone down to 0% battery before charging it again. Along came Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries. NiMH batteries got rid of the toxic cadmium, developed less of a memory effect and got more power into a smaller space....
First off, let's talk about all those initials in the headline. EV stands for an electric vehicle. And ICE stands for internal combustion engine, at least in this case. An EV has no gasoline engine and gets its power from a large battery needing external power. Technically, that leaves out all the hybrid vehicles with a battery and a gas engine, but I'll lump hybrids and EVs together for this column. We see news stories of EVs that catch fire, usually with the word "mysteriously" tossed in...
Clearing bad autofill entries If you've ever mistyped an address in your browser's search box, like "amazpn" or "hitchingpsttheares," your browser will remember it. And you'll see it again, even when you type in the correct address. This helpfulness is called autofill. You can remove the wrong entries in your autofill by deleting your entire browser history. Then, boom, they're gone. But now you'll have to re-authenticate on the websites you go to, which is a pain. But if you're using Chrome or...
Previewing your email If you've been using email for a while, you probably remember hearing about how dangerous it was to preview your email. Maybe even being told to turn off the preview pane entirely. Today though, previewing your email before you open it is completely safe and encouraged. So, what changed? A couple of things. All the major email client developers, Microsoft, Pegasus (remember them?), Eudora (remember them, too?), Mozilla, and Apple, rewrote their email clients so they...
We all use devices (smartphones, tablets, or computers) that contain information we don't want strangers or thieves to access. We lock our devices with a username/password combination to protect our privacy. Since we'll be unlocking our device 5, 10, 15 and 20 times a day, we use our fingerprints, faces, passcode or PIN, or a lock screen pattern to unlock our device instead of our username/password. This security is excellent, but what if you've got bandages on your fingers, bees stung your face...
Maybe you've seen a setting on your phone for Wi-Fi Calling and wondered what it is. How does it work? Do you need it? And what does it cost? Wi-Fi Calling uses a Wi-Fi network instead of a cellular network for voice calls and texts. So if your home or office doesn't have good solid cell reception, your calls and texts can go out over the Wi-Fi signal. So technically, Wi-Fi calling should be called VoWiFi for Voice over Wi-Fi, which explains it better, but the marketing folks think otherwise. Ma...
I'm sure you've heard about or seen ads for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). But what are they, how do they work, and why would you need one? If you don't subscribe to a VPN service, when you use the internet, your computer connects to your service provider (AT&T, Race, Spectrum, or somebody else) and then to the site you want to visit. With a VPN, your computer connects to your service provider as usual but then gets re-routed to the VPN company's equipment, which could be anywhere. When you...
Most people have a few old smartphones or even flip phones lying around. So even if you're too smart to fall for the "you need a new phone every year" ads, phones die, the camera stops working or something else happened, and now you've got a few old phones in a drawer somewhere. How can you do it safely and responsibly if you decide to get rid of your old phones? The first thing to do is a 'factory reset' on your phone/ Factory reset completely wipes all your information from your device and...
I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, letting websites show notifications about new messages and emails, even when the browser is closed. But somehow, websites started abusing the notifications feature somewhere along the way. For example, if you visit a web page just once to read an article or check on a sale, that site can send you notification messages. Honestly, it can be, best case, annoying, and, worst case, unproductive. But we have tools to manage those pesky browser...
In most cases, when your password suddenly won't work with a website or email address, there is a "Forgot password" link. This is where it can get scary. The site may want to send you a code to your phone or your recovery email address, or you'll get asked for answers to your security questions. What if the site has an old phone number for you? Or what if your recovery email address is the same as the one you're trying to recover, or you haven't used that email address in years and don't know...
There you are, entering your information into a form on a website when suddenly you have to check a box that reads, "I am not a robot," and then there's a visual thing you need to do to continue. So, what's that all about? Computer programs are great at doing repetitive tasks quickly, even robotically. Indeed, we have specialized computer programs called bots, which is short for robots, that are great at doing repetitive tasks quickly. These bots are so good that websites need a way to be positi...
Smartphones have replaced desktop and laptop computers for many people. Checking and responding to emails, taking photos, shooting videos, playing games, watching movies, shopping, texting and making phone calls. All from a device that fits in your hand. But, when you're looking at a photo or watching a movie, how does your phone "know" to rotate the screen when you turn the phone sideways? Sensors. Smartphones have many sensors; it takes three in particular for your phone to "know" to rotate...
In its widespread non-technical use, a cache (pronounced cash) is a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place. In the technical world, a cache can be hardware or a specific software location that stores recently used data. As a result, programs can quickly access data from a cache. Clearing your caches can help troubleshoot problems with specific websites, free up disk space, remove personal data and, rarely, improve system performance. These are the main...
Have you heard of this new thing, Web 3.0, also known as Web3? It's the future of the internet, they tell us. But what is Web3, and whatever happened to Web1 and Web 2? If there were such things? We refer to the first publicly available version of the internet as Web 1.0. In this version of the internet, web pages were collections of read-only pages, and there was almost no interactivity with the page you were on. You read it, and that was it. Little efforts by major corporations and small...
Have you ever received an email that looked like it came from you, but you didn't send it? Self-spam is happening a lot now, and it's usually tied to a blackmail or shaming scheme. Forging or faking an email address is called spoofing. And it's easy. Most email systems don't have security checks to ensure the person in the email's "From" line is who they say they are-with billions of email addresses and thousands of email servers worldwide, verifying that "From" address is impossible. So all an...
