Podcast: Battle Born Tech

Ready, Set, STOP

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
Ready, Set, STOP
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CALL US 

Saturday 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sunday 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

 

 

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

 

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

 

 

 

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

ESU 

(Extended Security Updates): Microsoft’s program that keeps sending security fixes to Windows 10 after regular support ended. Security fixes only, no new features. Now runs through October 12, 2027.

Data Center

A building full of computers that run online services. Yandex is Russia’s rough equivalent of Google.

Connection Controls

Equipment, like supermarket refrigeration, that can be adjusted over the internet. Convenient for the repair company, and for anyone else who gets in. On-prem are on premises not connected to the internet.

Ready, Set, STOP

This week on Battle Born Tech℠ we welcome Steve, Teresa, and Josh.

Steve has a 15-year-old laptop still works. Steve wasn’t going to throw it away. The question was which Linux would still talk to it, and why one installer built him a house while the other only moved the furniture.

Steve, actually USB Wifi add-on is a good solution to getting WiFi networking to an old Linux box. 

Teresa has a sound bar that lights up. It just wouldn’t make a sound. The problem wasn’t the sound bar.

Every program on Josh’s computer remembers “don’t print on both sides.” Except the one that prints his checks. The fix was not where he’d been looking.

News: Windows 10 gets another year, of Extended SECURITY updates, data centers become war targets of drones, and French supermarkets learn what happens when the freezer takes orders from the internet.

EUBANK RULE: If a competent programmer cannot find the bug, the programmer is looking in the wrong place.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!
 

“It’s a bridge, not a destination.” 

“Puppy’s installer is a mover, not a builder. It carries the files in, but expects the house already to be standing.”

“Back in the bad old days of Linux, touchpads and Wi-Fi were the first to go.”

“We salute the refurbishers, the hobbyists, and the tinkerers who keep old technology going.”

“Those USB ports on the monitor are just decorative unless you plug the monitor into the computer.” 

“It’s like plugging everything into the power strip, but you never plugged the power strip into the wall.”

“There are a lot of ways for sound NOT to come out of your computer.” 

“You’ve been fixing it in Windows. That’s a post-fix. The break is inside the program.”

“If a competent user cannot fix a problem, the user is looking in the wrong place.” 

“The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war. It heals itself by design. Unfortunately.”

“I wonder how long the internet would go on talking to itself if all the people suddenly disappeared.” 

“This call is going to cost you money, because now you have to print checks.”

“Everybody’s messing with the printer settings, not just the printer.” 

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

Battle Born Tech℠,
where the Wi-Fi is strong,
the fonts are good-looking, and the passwords are above average.

Printer Setup 

A program’s own printing preferences, which can override what you set in Windows every time it prints.

22H2 

The final version of Windows 10. Required for ESU. Type winver to check.

Data Center

A building full of computers that run online services. Yandex is Russia’s rough equivalent of Google.

VBScript

Short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition, a simple programming language Microsoft introduced in 1996 for small automation jobs: login scripts, installers, and the little .vbs files that did chores behind the scenes in Windows. Phasing out next year.

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

32 bit 

An older style of computer processor and software. Most new software is 64-bit only, so a 32-bit machine needs a system built for it.

Atom N270

A low-power Intel processor from about 2008, common in netbooks. Tops out at 2 GB of memory.

antiX 

A small Linux system built for old computers, still offered in 32-bit. Its installer prepares the drive for you.

Puppy Linux (BionicPup32) 

A tiny Linux that loads entirely into memory from a USB stick. Fast, but its installer expects the drive to be prepared first.

Frugal install 

Runs in RAM memory. The system copies its files into memory at startup instead of running from the hard drive. Turn off the system, and it’s gone.

Partition 

A labeled section of a storage drive. A drive with no partition is like a lot with no building on it.

GParted

The Linux tool for creating and resizing partitions. 

EXT4 

Fourth Extended File System, a journaling file system for Linux. The standard Linux file system format for a partition.

Publisher 

Microsoft’s desktop publishing program for flyers, newsletters, and church bulletins, part of Office since 1991. Microsoft announced the retirement in February 2024. Microsoft 365 subscribers lose access on October 1, 2026, and support for the standalone Office 2021 version ends October 13, 2026.

Magic Pointer 

The AI-powered mouse cursor on Googlebook, Google’s new line of laptops that is replacing the Chromebook. Point at or circle something on the screen (an email, a date, a picture, a block of text) and Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, offers suggestions such as explaining it, rewriting it, or searching for it.

0xDEADBEEF 

A hex value set by programmers to indicate an error.

Driver

The small piece of software that lets the operating system talk to a piece of hardware. On old Linux, Wi-Fi and touchpad drivers are the usual casualties.

Ethernet 

The wired network connection. Almost always works when Wi-Fi doesn’t.

USB upstream 

The cable with a flat rectangular USB-A end and a squarish USB-B end. It connects a monitor’s USB ports back to the computer. Without it, those ports give power but no data.

Duplex printing 

Printing on both sides of the sheet. Good for reports, bad for checks.

Bot Check 

Automated requests from programs rather than people. Includes search crawlers as well as the bad kind.

Claude HR complaints

On October 8, 2026 Anthropic added a prohibition on sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward Claude models.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech℠ is a
Registered Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

Another License? You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me!

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
Another License? You've Got to Be Kidding Me!
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CALL US 

Saturday 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sunday 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

 

 

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

 

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

 

 

 

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

Another License? You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me!

This week on Battle Born Tech℠ we welcome Jay and Rebecca. Jay reassures folks who are moving to Linux. 

A correction for our listeners in Carson City and, apparently, Cardiff: Our Domino’s warning came from across the pond, where some UK customers’ accounts were opened with passwords reused from other sites. That pizza was a bit farther from the oven than we let on, but the lesson delivers anywhere: one password per account.

Rebecca just wanted the hymn words on the screen to match the hymnal. Then she learned there’s a license for the words, another for Zoom, and another for movie clips. Jay, a retired engineer, tells how his company left Microsoft for Linux and watched its trouble calls fall. And Christy and Joe sort out drivers: when to leave them alone, where to get them when you can’t, and why there are two programs named Snappy.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech! 

“Hair on Fire All the Time.” 

“Hallucinations are a real thing.”

“Surviving? It sounds like its thriving!”

“Updates are always a pain”

“Touch and managed by people who had no clue.” 

“If your computer anit broke don’t fix it.”

“I’m not a lawyer.” 

“No COM for us”

“If it’s working, leave it alone.” 

AI assisted to make us sound more human.

Drivers: if it works,
leave it alone 

  1. If it’s working, leave it alone.
  2. Always make a restore point first. 
  3. Never install drivers just because they’re newer.

When you really do need a driver, such as after a fresh Windows install:

  1. Windows Update. It handles most hardware.
  2. Your computer maker’s support site.
  3. For graphics, the chip maker: Nvidia, AMD, or Intel.

Still stuck? Christy trusts one free tool: Snappy Driver Installer Origin. There are two Snappys. In 2017, after Snappy changed hands and began bundling adware, Glenn Delahoy split off a clean, open source version and called it Origin.

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

Restore Point

A snapshot of your Windows system settings you can roll back to if a change goes wrong. Type “restore point” in the Windows search box, open Create a restore point, select your C: drive, and click Create.

Drivers

A small program that teaches Windows how to talk to a piece of hardware, like a printer, sound chip, or graphics card. A wrong driver can silence your speakers or blank your screen.

Adware 

Software that sneaks ads, pop-ups, or extra programs onto your computer, often bundled with something free.

Fork 

When programmers copy an open source project and take it in a new direction under a new name. Snappy Driver Installer Origin is a fork.

Open Source 

Software whose underlying code is public, so anyone can inspect it, fix it, or build on it.

Linux 

A free, open source family of operating systems, the main program that runs a computer, used in place of Windows or macOS.

Extended Security Update (ESU) 

A free, open source family of operating systems, the main program that runs a computer, used in place of Windows or macOS.

Public Domain 

Creative work no longer protected by copyright, free for anyone to copy and use.

Bug Bounty 

A reward program that pays outside researchers for finding and reporting security flaws.

Phishing 

Fake emails, texts, or websites that pose as a company you trust to get you to click, log in, or pay.

Battle Born Tech℠,
where the Wi-Fi is strong, the fonts are good-looking, and the passwords are above average.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech℠ is a
Registered Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

It’s All Plugged In. Why Won’t It Work?

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
It's All Plugged In. Why Won't It Work?
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CALL US 

Saturday 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sunday 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

 

 

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

 

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

 

 

 

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

It’s All Plugged In. Why Won’t It Work?

This week on Battle Born Tech we welcome Stevan replacing an antique modem, Rachel with a blank projector screen, and Jay has a case of the Double-Ds.

Along the way we cover:

  • when a router is worth replacing, and why a 12-year-old modem earns a plaque
  • why a cable beats Wi-Fi for video calls
  • the Windows key + P shortcut every teacher should know
  • where Windows sends your sound
  • why File Explorer lists a removable drive twice on purpose
  • corrections from last week
  • a new phone app that alerts you when camera glasses are nearby

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!
 

“If they do 5 (years) they come out and give you an award” 

“I have no control what mischief they were getting up to on the other end.”

“If you get three years out of a router, you’re doing well”

“If you are a handy person…or you know someone you should go wired.”

“12 years is a long time in computer years” 

“Sorry kids, you have your lesson today.”

“It’s almost like plumbing.” 

“Where there is no sound…windows ”

“Windows has decided for your convenience to list things twice.” 

“It’s the way it is supposed to work.”

“We may not fix things, but you feel a little more comfortable.” 

“Watch out for the Watchers” 

“Not a bug it’s a feature.” 

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

Battle Born Tech℠,
where the Wi-Fi is strong,
the fonts are good-looking, and the passwords are above average.

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

Modem (Bridge)

The box where your internet line enters the house and gets translated into the language your computers speak. The name is short for modulator-demodulator. Many provider boxes combine a modem and a router. Bridge mode turns off the router part, so the box only translates and passes the connection to a router you own.

Router

The traffic cop of your home network. It gives each device an address, delivers incoming data to the device that asked for it, and turns away traffic nobody requested.

Switch 

A power strip for network cables. It lets several wired devices share a connection and talk to each other, like a laptop and a printer. The numbered jacks on the back of most home routers are a small built-in switch.

Access Point

The radio part of your network. It turns the wired connection into Wi-Fi, both sending and receiving. Most home routers have one.

Ethernet

Wired networking, and the name of the cable that does it. The plug looks like a chunky phone jack. It’s steadier than Wi-Fi because it doesn’t share the air with the neighbors.

Device Manager

Windows’ list of every piece of hardware in your computer and whether it’s working. Right-click Start to open it. A yellow triangle means trouble. A small down arrow means the device is turned off, and right-clicking lets you enable it.

ISP

Internet Service Provider, the company you pay for internet. When the box is theirs, so is the repair call.

Win+P

Hold the Windows key and tap P to choose where your picture goes. The four choices are PC screen only, Duplicate, Extend, and Second screen only. On a Mac, open System Settings, choose Displays, or Control Center → Screen Mirroring, 

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech is a
Registered Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

We Are all Bouncers Now

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
We Are all Bouncers Now
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CALL US 

Saturday 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sunday 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

 

 

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

 

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

 

 

 

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

We Are All Bouncers Now

This week on Battle Born Tech we welcome Stevan, Pat, and Craig. 

Bitlocker refuses to approve Stevan’s computer setup and needs do some careful editing of the Boot Configuration Data or  reset windows. Just a reinstall would likely keep the same partition problems that is blocking turning ON bitlocker. The storage drive needs to be completely cleared of information so the correct drive configuration can be set. Caution! All programs are data are erased along with the non-Bitlocker friendly drive configuration settings.

Pat seeks a photo slide show that is quick to set up because it is due tomorrow and the photos are not yet taken. Update: File Explorer DOES loop the photos! (It is one of the settings.) There are TWO slide shows built into windows one in Explorer and another in the Photos app. But our solution is simple and will turn back on even after a curious browser borrows it to surf the web.

Criag has a scammer looking for the church email list for going phishing among church members. An office staff members is our bouncer of the week.

There are different ways to count patches but in September that nearly a thousand in one day, and more than eleven hundred across the month.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!
 

“It’s not a zero day…it’s a zero minute” 

“Congrats on a very complete error statement”

“BitLocker is the bouncer that checks. Let me see your ID.”

“I’m still back in MS-DOS.”

“We call it nuking from orbit.” 

“I talked to a few tech guys who have never heard of this before, so I figured I would ask you.”

“Before you change anything, you always back up.” 

“You did a good job calling us up, so we can tell you what not to do.”

“Usually we get people calling at the other end of BitLocker. They can’t get it off their computer, rather than trying to put it on.” 

“It’s nothing you did. It’s not a virus. It’s not malware. The fix-it programs aren’t going to work.”

“Are you using a Windows machine? I should have guessed. When you say frustrated, I usually go right to Windows.” 

“I’m telling you some ways you’re not going to want, but you’re going to want the last one.”

“Even if somebody bumps it or jostles it, in a minute it’ll pick up and start going.” 

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

Battle Born Tech,
where the Wi-Fi is strong,
the fonts are good-looking, and the passwords are above average.

 

BATTLE PLANS
from Claude.ai

Shift + Restart 

Hold Shift while clicking Restart to drop into the Windows recovery menu, where Troubleshoot leads to the options for resetting or reinstalling Windows, including pulling a fresh copy down from Microsoft rather than using the vendor’s factory image.

Phishing 

Someone tries to lure you with something. Usually trying to get your to call a scammer or click a link. Spelled with “ph” by convention.

Spearphising 

The same thing aimed at you specifically, using real details about your job, your colleagues, and your organization. Craig’s call is a textbook example. The attacker read the staff page first.

Patch Tuesday

Microsoft ships its security fixes on the second Tuesday of every month, all at once. September 8, 2026 was the largest one Microsoft has ever shipped. See the fact-check note below on the number quoted in the opener.

Zero Day

A flaw that attackers are already using before the maker has a fix, so defenders have had zero days to prepare. Joe’s “zero minute” is a joke, not a term, but it lands: the gap between a flaw becoming public and being attacked keeps shrinking.

BitLocker

Windows’ built-in whole-drive encryption. Scrambles everything on the disk so a stolen laptop is a brick instead of a filing cabinet. Available on Windows 11 Home as well as Pro, as Christy noted. Pro just gives you a nicer control panel for it.

XTS-AES and AES-CBC

Two ways of arranging the same encryption math. Both use AES, the standard cipher. They differ in how each chunk of the disk gets scrambled relative to its neighbors. XTS-AES has been BitLocker’s default since Windows 10 version 1511 and is the better choice; AES-CBC is the older method, kept around for compatibility.

Elephant diffuser

A real thing, and the joke in the opener. When BitLocker launched in Windows Vista, Microsoft bolted an extra scrambling step onto AES-CBC and named it the Elephant diffuser. Its job was to make tampering with an encrypted disk produce garbage rather than something usefully altered. Microsoft removed the option in Windows 8, citing performance and the fact that it was not FIPS compliant, which locked out government and some corporate buyers. So “the elephant diffuser in the room” is a pun on the elephant in the room, and the elephant really did leave the room.

BCD / BCDedit

BCD stands for Boot Configuration Data. It is the short list of instructions that tells the machine where to find Windows and how to start it. bcdedit is the command-line tool that edits that list. The “locate” explanation is the plain-words version: the factory can tell the boot list “go find Windows wherever it is,” which Windows happily accepts and BitLocker refuses. 

Nuking from orbit

Wiping a drive completely and starting over from scratch. From Aliens (1986), where it is the only way to be sure. Not a recommendation of first resort.

Chain of Thought

A real term in AI. It means having the model show its reasoning step by step instead of jumping to an answer, which makes it easier to catch where it went wrong.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech is a
Registered Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

Everything Is Fighting Me Today

Battle Born Tech Podcast for Sep 8 2026 Everything is Fighting Me Today
Battle Born Tech
Everything Is Fighting Me Today
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CALL US 

Saturday 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sunday 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

 

 

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

 

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

 

 

 

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

Everything Is Fighting Me Today

Bette has had it with Google Maps, Steve’s machine crashes the second he hits play, but George brings the rare piece of good news. 

Steve’s Windows 10 computer runs fine until he plays a recorded show through Dish Anywhere, and then it drops to a blue screen and restarts, over and over. Even without the actual blue screen text we figure it out.

George has handled a couple thousand of the M.2 format solid state drives, the ones shaped like a stick of gum, and he settled a question we have been repeating for decades: magnets no longer matter, static electricity still does, and the packaging you were about to throw away is the best protection you own.

Bette has had enough of Google Maps and wanted to know what else is out there. We talked about what happened to MapQuest’s ad free option, who owns MapQuest now, and how Organic Maps and OpenStreetMap will keep working past Fallon where the cell signal quits, as long as you download the map before you leave.

Along the way: the Chrome update everyone should install today, the smart TV settings worth turning off tonight, why it is time to freeze your credit again, and a good word for the paper map in your glove box.

Now about that medical release form: When a provider hires a vendor to handle patient information, that vendor is a business associate and is bound by HIPAA through a required contract. What the form was almost certainly asking for is separate consent, which is a different thing from the vendor being unregulated.

About the TV watching you: Security researchers at Gamers Nexus, working with Level1Techs and independent researchers, took apart several LG smart TVs this month. They found the sets cataloging every device on the home network, and they demonstrated that a TV which has been broken into can record audio through its microphone even when it looks like it is off, bank that audio while it is disconnected, and send it along once it is back online. That last part takes a compromised television, not a factory fresh one, which is exactly why the firmware updates matter. Turn off ACR and voice features, install updates, and if your router supports it, put the TV on a guest network. Video by Gamers Nexus and Reported by Malwarebytes

Update, October 2026: Our short link bbtl.ink/driverinstaller now points to Snappy Driver Installer Origin rather than the original Snappy Driver Installer. We explain why on our Oct 6 episode. 

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!
 

“SFC…take two aspirins and call me in the morning” 

“Joe goes into MRIs covered with aluminum foil”

“You’re information is out there.”

“Do we still have sticks of gum?”

“All they are is a bunch of transistors” 

“In computers, advice has expiration dates. Don’t be quoting me in five years.”

“Grab it by the edge” 

“He is so grounded that GPS satellites call him for directions”

“Break like an app in beta on a road trip.” 

“Well, there’s always tomorrow.”

“Diabolical” 

“Lithium ion fires are nothing to be messed around with.”

“I’m upset with these name changes in Google…it’s stupid.” 

“Download before you go and then you can use it on the go.”

“When the TV watches you.” 

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

Battle Born Tech,
where the Wi-Fi is strong,
the fonts are good-looking, and the passwords are above average.

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

ARP – Address Resolution Protocol

Address Resolution Protocol, the routine bit of housekeeping a device uses to ask “who has this address?” on a local network. The answer reveals the other devices on the network, which is why a smart TV can quietly build a list of everything in the house.

ARC – Automatic Content Recognition

Software built into most smart TVs that takes rapid snapshots of whatever is on the screen and matches them against a database to identify what you are watching, whether it arrived by antenna, cable, streaming app, or game console. The TV maker uses that record to target ads and often shares or sells it, and on most sets you can shut it off in the privacy settings.

Preferred Search Source

A Google Search setting that lets you name the websites you trust so their stories appear more often and more prominently in the Top Stories section. You add them with the star icon next to the Top Stories header, and it does not hide everyone else, it just gives your picks better seats.

Help | About Google Chrome 

The menu path for checking which version of Chrome you are running: click the three dots at the top right, choose Help, then About Google Chrome. Simply opening that page makes Chrome check for an update and download it, and a relaunch finishes the job.

Windows Memory Diagnostic

Windows Memory Diagnostic is a built-in Windows tool that tests your computer’s RAM for errors that can contribute to blue screens, crashes, freezes, corrupted files, or unexplained restarts. It runs outside normal Windows after a reboot and reports whether it detected memory problems.

Search for Windows Memory Diagnostic or press Win+R, and type

mdsched.exe

then press Enter.

STOP code 

The short all capitals phrase at the bottom of a blue screen It is the single most useful clue on the whole screen.

Restore Point

A saved snapshot of Windows settings and system files you can roll back to if an update or a driver install goes wrong.

Driver

The small piece of software that lets Windows talk to a specific piece of hardware, such as the graphics chip. When the driver falls out of step with Windows or with an app, the result often looks like a blue screen.

Hardware or  Graphics Acceleration

A browser setting that hands video and animation work to the graphics chip instead of the main processor. Turning it off is slower but sidesteps a bad graphics driver.

ESU October 2027 

Windows 10 stopped getting normal support on October 14, 2025, and ESU is the extra innings program that keeps critical security patches coming to eligible home PCs. Microsoft has extended consumer coverage through October 12, 2027; it delivers security fixes only, not new features or general tech support.

Blue Screen 

The full page stop error Windows shows when it hits a problem it cannot safely recover from, so it halts instead of risking your files. Long known as the Blue Screen of Death, or BSOD, though Microsoft repainted it black on current Windows 11.

Hopper 

Dish Network’s whole home satellite DVR, the box that records your shows and feeds them to smaller Joey boxes on the other TVs in the house. With the free Dish Anywhere app it also sends live channels and recordings out over your home network and over the internet to a phone, tablet, computer, or streaming stick.

SFC

A repair tool already built into Windows that scans the protected system files and replaces any that are damaged or missing from a cached copy on your own drive. You run it from an administrator Command Prompt or Terminal by typing

sfc /scannow

DISM

The heavier repair tool that fixes the underlying Windows image SFC draws its replacement files from, pulling fresh copies from Microsoft when the local ones are corrupted too. The usual order is

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

first, then SFC again.

HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the federal law whose privacy rule limits how doctors, hospitals, insurers, and the contractors working for them handle your medical information. It binds those health care organizations and their business associates, not every company that happens to learn something about your health.

Open Source Software

Software whose underlying instructions, called the source code, are published so anyone can read them, change them, and pass them along. That openness means outsiders can inspect it for flaws or bad behavior, and while most open source software is also free of charge, the openness is the defining part, not the price.

Fork

When someone takes an open source project’s code and starts their own version. CoMaps is a fork of Organic Maps.

Paper Maps

Printed road maps, the kind that folded badly and lived in the glovebox. They need no battery, no cell signal, and no account, they do not report your location to anyone, and in much of rural Nevada they still work where a phone will not.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech is a
Registered Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

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775-241-3571 or [email protected]

 

It’s My Party But No One’s Talking!

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Battle Born Tech
It's My Party But No One's Talking!
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Saturday 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sunday 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

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Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

 

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

 

 

 

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

It’s My Party
But No One’s Talking!

This week on Battle Born Tech Dave calls about his tech trek to Vietnam and the phone privacy hurdles he encountered. Joan is wondering if she should be blamed for the impersonator that is inviting her friends to a malware party. 

Update various programs like Zoom with the powershell command. It is called Terminal when you RIGHT click on the Windows menu icon.

winget upgrade --all --include-unknown

MS Store has an update screen hidden at the bottom of the left side menu labeled downloads; it is download updates for built-in or added Microsoft Applications.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!
 

“Don’t be pressing those buttons.

“Zero days are no zero minutes.”

“All are invited to talk, not to click.”

“This is a family show.”

“The going incognito was a little bit too incongnito”

“You were a victim of your own success.”

“What are they going to find on my phone?”

“I got a weird email from you.”

“Heck, they even got dental.” 

“I will never ask your for gift card.”

“Harness for our superficial intelligence” 

“Tech TALK is your favorite music.”

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

Battle Born Tech,
where the Wi-Fi is strong,
the fonts are good-looking, and the passwords are above average.

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

Burner Phone

Not just for Burning Man, but a phone without a person or a person’s online accounts tied to it. 

Nakatomi Plaza

This is the setting of the original Die Hard movie in Las Angeles . Die Hard 2 dealt with planes at Washington Dulles International Airport 

SIM and eSIM

The SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) is the little chip that tells the cell network who your phone is: its number, its account, its carrier. A physical SIM is a tiny plastic card you slide into a slot. An eSIM does the same job electronically, downloaded into the phone with no card at all. Same identity, two delivery methods.

Powershell 

The window in Windows where you type commands instead of clicking buttons. It looks intimidating, but for our purposes it is just where you paste the winget update command from our website. Right-click the Start button and choose Terminal to find it.

Spam Likely 

Often shown on a phone’s caller ID when an advertiser calls.

BCC 

Blind Carbon Copy an address entered in this field is an email that is but others who are sent the email cannot see it in their copy of the email.

BCC deserves more credit than it gets. When you put recipients in To or CC, every one of them receives everyone else’s address, and those addresses then sit in dozens of inboxes you do not control. The day any one of those inboxes is compromised, and phished and hijacked accounts are an everyday event, the scammer inherits the whole list: real, active addresses of people who know each other, which is exactly the raw material a convincing scam is made of. BCC prevents that. Blind carbon copy addresses are stripped from the message as it is delivered, so a compromised recipient’s inbox gives up only two addresses instead of a hundred. If you are sending one announcement to a group, BCC is the courteous and safer choice, full stop.

Nothing in federal law forbids running a newsletter by BCC; the CAN-SPAM Act’s rules for commercial email: honest subject lines, a real postal address, and a working opt-out honored within ten business days, can technically be satisfied with a footer typed at the bottom. But now look at what you have signed up to do. Every unsubscribe arrives as a reply you must notice, record, and remember before the next send, forever, and that ten-business-day clock does not care that you were on vacation. Your mailbox is not on your side either, because personal accounts are built for conversation, not broadcasting. A free Gmail account tops out at 500 recipients a day, but if too many messages bounce off dead addresses, Google can block your sending entirely for up to 24 hours. For a recurring mailing, use a tool built for the job; the free ones cost nothing at small sizes. BCC is good manners for an email. It is not a mailing system.

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech is a
Registered Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

No More Dots and Dashes

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
No More Dots and Dashes
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GO AHEAD CALLER!

Saturdays 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sundays 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

 

 

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

 

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

 

 

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

No More Dots and Dashes

This week on Battle Born Tech we welcome Tom, Kirk and Ron.

Tom has been fighting YouTube ads the hard way for years. We hand him an easier trick, and one honest catch.

Kirk stops by for an interview, not a tech problem. Want to get on the air as a ham radio operator? One thing you used to need is gone, and it changes everything.

Ron asks who’s mapping his home Wi-Fi, and whether he can tell them to knock it off. The answer is yes, sort of.

On the Wi-Fi segment we braided three separate things into one. Here’s the clean version.

Two different Microsoft features, and one is long gone. Wi-Fi Sense, built into Windows 10 in 2015, let your contacts connect to your home Wi-Fi without you sharing the password. After heavy pushback, Microsoft removed it in 2016. The _optout tag people once added to a network name was aimed at Wi-Fi Sense, so today it does nothing. You can retire it.

The feature that’s still alive is Microsoft’s location database, built partly from routers’ hardware IDs (the MAC address). Microsoft still runs a web form where you submit your router’s MAC address to ask them to remove it. In fairness, many people report no visible result, so treat it as a principled request, not a lock on the door.

And Google’s _nomap, added to the end of your network name, is the tag that’s still honored as a courtesy today. Two companies, two tags, only one still doing anything.

 

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!
 

“Please don’t ask me to interrupt my programming.” 

 

“You CAN pay them”

 

“They give you the questions and the answers to the test.”

 

“Is this a Good thing or a Creepy Thing?”

 

“Anytime you ask an AI question, it boils off yet another bathtub of water.” 

 

“If Morse code was keeping you back from a ham radio license, good news: no more of that.”

 

“Anytime you ask an AI question, it boils off yet another bathtub of water.” 

 

“It sounds like a sports league or a sports team.”

 

“Solidly both… kind of creepy and kind of lonely and sad all at the same time.” 

 

“Got to tell them who you are to tell them not record who you are.”

 

“Keep me out of your database!” 

 

“Not a privacy kind of thing but a principle kind of thing.”

 

“It’s almost always right to say no on those things.” 

 

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

Cisco Certification

A credential proving you know how to set up and run Cisco networking equipment, the industrial-grade gear that routes data through big networks.

Duck Player

A video player built into the DuckDuckGo browser app. It opens YouTube videos in a clean, full-screen view and strips out most of the ads wrapped around a video.

Side loading 

Installing a phone app directly, instead of through the official store. On Android, that means going around the Google Play Store. It gives you more freedom but skips the store’s safety checks, and Google keeps making it harder to do.

Google Play Store 

The official app store on Android phones, run by Google. It’s where most people get their apps.

Hawk Fire 

A wildfire that broke out August 2026 northwest of Reno, Nevada, and was still burning during this broadcast.

Morse Code 

A way of sending messages as short and long signals, the dots and dashes you hear as beeps. Ham radio operators once had to pass a Morse code test; the FCC dropped that rule, so no license level requires it today.

ScanTron 

The old paper answer sheet where you filled in bubbles with a pencil and a machine graded it. Ham radio exams used to work this way; now they’re taken on a computer.

Amateur Radio License 

Government permission to operate a ham radio, issued by the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. 

Heebie-Jeebies 

A case of the creeps, that nervous, skin-crawling unease you can’t quite pin down. 

SSID 

The name of a Wi-Fi network, a router constantly broadcasts this name so nearby devices can find it and join.

GPS 

The satellite system that tells a device where it is on Earth. It works poorly indoors.

WiFi Sense

A Microsoft feature that let your Skype, Facebook, and Outlook contacts connect to your Wi-Fi without you handing over the password. Removed in 2016.  The _optout tag was meant for this retired feature.

_Nomap

A suffix on an WiFi SSD name meant to signal Google and others to keep the router’s location OUT of location databases.

_Optout

Meant to stop an access point from being part of the auto log in of Microsoft’s WiFi sense. Windows 10 feature. Removed in 2016.

War Driving

Driving around with a device to record the names and locations of Wi-Fi networks. 

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech is a
Registered Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

SS

Everything’s Running and Nothing Works

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
Everything's Running and Nothing Works
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CALL US SATURDAYS

Saturday 9 am – 11 am Pacific
Sundays 7 pm – 9 pm Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

Everything’s Running and Nothing Works

This week on Battle Born Tech: audio that lags the video, ink that dries in the nozzles, and scammers running a script only you can stop.

We welcome our callers John, Linda, and Joan. John has folks being heard but not seen until later the solution involves a hand clap, Linda loves printing every week to keep her inkjet printer jetting, Joan is ready for scammers with our 5 tips so she doesn’t have to call the Fraud Hotline or report the scam at the FBI site. Joe recommends a family and friends “secret safe word” so you know who is calling.

We are often in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am and Sundays 7 pm to 9 pm Pacific. Have your smart phone or speaker remind you to call! Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!
 

“That’s the correct answer thanks!” 

“This is a real thing, you’re not imagining it”

“I was worried my brain and my eyes were not in synch.”

“I’m also looking for tips.”

“I very much love it.” 

“Ink jet printer? Make sure you print!”

“Don’t be sad.” 

“Nozzles finer than a human hair.”

“Not just buying a printer-you are buying a relationship.” 

“Microsoft never calls you.”

“Hang up and call back.” 

“Microsoft never calls you.”

“Get a cyber buddy” 

“It is so weird Christy!”

“One call you do make is to Battle Born Tech” 

“They even got dental.”

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

File Explorer File Size

For years Windows showed every file’s size in kilobytes (KB) in the Size column, so a big video looked like a string of millions of KB you had to do math on. A 2026 Windows 11 update changed that: File Explorer now picks the sensible unit automatically, showing large files in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB) and leaving small ones in kilobytes.

Take it Down Website

A free service from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that helps remove nude or explicit images of someone who was under 18 when the picture was taken. It works without the image ever leaving your device; adults who need the same help use a separate service at StopNCII.org.

Lip or A/V Sync

When the sound and the picture line up, so the mouth matches the words. When they drift apart you get the old dubbed-movie effect; the proper term is audio-to-video synchronization.

Codec 

The method software uses to shrink video or audio for sending and then unpack it on the other end. The name is short for coder-decoder.

Audio Delay 

A setting that holds the sound back by a fraction of a second so it waits for the slower-moving video to catch up. In ProPresenter it lives under the Advanced menu.

 Constant Bit Rate )CBR)

Sending the same amount of data every second at a steady pace instead of speeding up and slowing down. Keeping a stream steady this way stops the audio and video from drifting apart over time.

H.264 and H.265

Two common recipes for compressing video, the H.264 being the older and more widely supported, H.265 the newer one that packs the same picture into a smaller file. Both are codecs, which is the general term for that shrink-and-unpack method.

HP ink lock down

HP’s practice of pushing printer software updates that make the printer reject cheaper third-party or refilled ink cartridges, which HP calls Dynamic Security. HP settled one class action over this in 2024, then rolled out fresh blocking updates in early 2026, and new lawsuits are underway.

3-D printing

Building a solid object one thin layer at a time, usually from melted plastic, following a digital design, instead of putting ink on paper the way an ordinary printer does. The proper term is additive manufacturing, because the object is added up layer by layer.

 

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

Battle Born Tech is a registered
Service Mark of Christy Ramsey

 

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

Not Something I Asked For

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
Not Something I Asked For
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CALL US SATURDAYS

9 am – 11 am Pacific

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

Letters KNVC 95.1 FM Logo

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

Carson City Linux User Group – Meeting third Saturdays at ComputerCorps in Carson City – carsoncitylinux.org 

One on One Tech Help at the Carson City Library Wednesdays 3-4 pm Techbusters
 

Not Something I Asked For

This week on Battle Born Tech Encryption nobody turned on, a voice assistant nobody invited into the call, and a library wait nobody expected. Robert is seeking a library with more audiobooks and ebooks, not just good deals on online shopping like last week; Rosie has Siri turning her cell phone into a old-fashioned party line; and Brian calls about a locked M.2 SSD that isn’t the usual suspect Bitlocker but something called SED, a self-encrypting drive. Careful: Here be dragons ready to eat your data.

Is Joe telling us that Chuck E Cheese the camel nose in the tent for AI? 

Anthony adds from last week: if you lose wifi password, you can find it in a phone that is still connected.

To truly blank out PDF, print it, take a  knife and cut out the edited parts, scan it back in. No image reconstruction or layer removal will reveal what never was in the scan.

We are in the studio Saturdays 9 am to 11 am Pacific. Call direct to studio then or anytime at 775-241-3571 and set up a time to battle your tech!

 

“Kill, Marry, Upchuck relationships with AI Assistants” 

“Found a scrap of paper with a weird string of letters and numbers”

“Dragons not doing what they are supposed to”

“AI can’t tell content from command”

“Are you a robot?” 

“Not something I asked for.”

“Everything is in settings except what is in accessibility.” 

“Change my name to Spam Likely”

“All the threads hold.” 

“Be polite to AI in case they take over and they remember.”

“Lower Expectations should be my radio name” 

“Not zero day it is zero minute”

“There is always Google or Kagi search or AI” 

“Knowledge has no gate keeping.”

“Take advantage of your library.” 

“Tech Talk is your favorite music.”

AI assisted to make us sound more human.
 

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

SED

Self-Encrypting Drive: A hard drive or SSD with hardware built in that automatically scrambles everything written to it, so the data is unreadable without the right key. Steal the drive and you get a locked box, not the files inside it.

OPAL

Opal Storage Specification (not actually an acronym, just the spec’s name): A shared rulebook, published by the Trusted Computing Group, that spells out exactly how self-encrypting drives from different manufacturers must lock, unlock, and manage their encryption. A drive labeled “Opal-compliant” follows this common standard instead of doing its own proprietary thing.

Voice Assistant  

Software built into your phone, like Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa, that listens for spoken commands and answers questions, sets reminders, or opens apps for you. You talk to it instead of tapping, and it talks back.

Live Version

A version of Linux that runs entirely from a USB drive or disc without installing anything on your computer’s hard drive. It lets you try Linux out, or fix a broken computer, without touching what’s already on the machine

Skynet

Not a real product; it’s the fictional, self-aware military computer system from the Terminator movies that decides humanity is a threat and turns on it. People use the name, half-joking, as shorthand for any AI system that seems to be getting more control than feels comfortable.

Live Voicemail

An iPhone feature that transcribes a voicemail onto your screen in real time while the caller is still leaving it. You can read what they’re saying as it comes in and decide whether to pick up before they even finish talking.

Call Screening

A phone feature that answers an unknown call for you, asks the caller to say who they are or why they’re calling, and shows you a transcript before you decide whether to answer. It’s a way to filter spam and robocalls without your phone ever really ringing at you.

AI Tokens

The small chunks, roughly pieces of words, that an AI model breaks text into to read and generate language. Companies typically measure and charge for AI use by counting tokens rather than whole words or characters, since that’s the actual unit the system works in.

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

775-241-3571 or [email protected]