Tag: BBT

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

775-241-3571

Click for More Info

 

 

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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

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

Google Search Source

 

775-241-3571 or [email protected]

 

It’s My Party But No One’s Talking!

Battle Born Tech
Battle Born Tech
It's My Party But No One's Talking!
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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 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]

Why Can’t I Just Find What I’m Looking For?

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Battle Born Tech
Why Can't I Just Find What I'm Looking 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
 

Why Can’t I Just Find What I’m Looking For?

This week on Battle Born Tech we welcome Steven and Lee. Steve is looking for his storage drive on a Linux machine and Lee can’t find his printer after the WiFi changes. . Christy has an extended explainer (okay, rant) about what surveillance pricing is and how to find the best prices by evading it.

Want to update your programs on your schedule? Use the Terminal (Admin) command line by right clicking on the Windows icon:

winget update –all –include-unknown

with a space between winget and update and before the double dashes.

Information About Your System

Windows Click Start, then Settings, then System, then About. Your drive size shows up under Device Specifications, alongside your processor and memory.

Mac Click the Apple menu in the top left corner, then About This Mac, then Storage. You’ll see your total drive capacity right there, along with a breakdown of what’s using it.

Linux Open your Settings app and look for an About panel, most desktop versions of Linux have one, similar to Windows

Quick recommendation Linux Disks

  • Just want to check free space fast → df -h in terminal, or open the Disks app
  • Want a visual, no-typing option → Disks app from the menu
  • Troubleshooting or scripting → lsblk and df -h are the most commonly used

Lee added a question about PDF. We should have said that Print and Export (or Save As) PDF create different types of PDF files. The Print option is a picture of the document, it doesn’t preserve the text as text, so the text is not searchable and you can’t select it to copy and paste as text. OCR is needed to get the text out of such PDFs. 

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!
 

“ABCs of USB” 

“Always yelling at me to update!”

“Windows 10 got another breath of life”

“Let’s see how fast I can type into Google.”

“Already on your way to Linux Land” 

“I’m waiting for Anthony to text me a correction.”

“Definitely over simplified, but not wrong” – (Text from Anthony)

“Kinda of something NOT to know anymore.” 

“Sure, keep it secret.” 

“Should have looked for that sticker”

“Don’t know which place to bang on.” 

“You change one part and other parts don’t work. That’s what a system is all about.”

“Wait until it tells you: Okay plug in the cable.” 

“Tell them Battle Born Tech is your favorite music.”

Some items of this page and show notes were created with the assistance of AI to make Christy understandable to humans.

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

TRIM 

Not an acronym, just a command name written in capitals. It’s how your computer tells a solid-state drive which deleted files’ space is safe to actually erase, which keeps the drive running fast instead of slowing down as it fills up.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)

A way of combining multiple hard drives so they work together, either to speed up your computer or to protect your data if one drive fails. Think of it as a safety net built from spare parts. (Yes, the “I” used to be INEXPENSIVE disks.)

GNU (GNU’s Not Unix)

A collection of free, open-source software tools that anyone can use, share, and modify. It’s the foundation many Linux systems are built on top of, which is why you’ll often see it written as “GNU/Linux.”

Gnome (GNU Network Object Model Environment)

One of the most common desktop environments for Linux, meaning the visual layout you see and click on, your icons, menus, and windows. The name started as a real acronym but has outlived its original technical meaning, much like RAID.

Package Manager 

It’s a tool that finds, installs, and updates software for you automatically, similar to an app store, saving you from hunting down programs one at a time and manually keeping each one current. On Windows, this comes built in as WinGet, Microsoft’s own command line package manager, available on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

SSID (Service Set Identifier)

The name your Wi-Fi network shows up as when you search for available networks on your phone or computer. It’s simply the label, not the password.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

Technology that looks at a scanned image or photo of text and converts it into real, selectable words a computer can search and copy.

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I Wanted My Photos and All I Got Was Ads

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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
 

I Wanted My Photos and All I Got Was Ads

This week on Battle Born Tech: Peggy has grandkids to show off, Bryan’s phone will not give up eight months of photos, and Tom’s friend has a browser nobody installed.. 

Check your WordPress version. A pair of flaws in WordPress Core, chained together and nicknamed “wp2shell,” lets an attacker run commands on your site without logging in first. Public exploits are already circulating and sites are being hit. Update to WordPress 7.0.2 or 6.9.5 immediately. WordPress has turned on forced automatic updates for affected sites, but do not assume yours took. You can check any site’s version without logging in at WPVersion.

Some malware are sneaky and has startup entries or even process that reload the unwanted notifications. Use Start up apps in Windows or Startup tab in the Task Manager or a Startup Manager program

Before deleting a browser, check to see if you have saved bookmarks/favorites and passwords. However, be suspect of browsers that are sketchy that you didn’t purposely install, they may be malicious sites or the passwords could be compromised

Wave, Pulse, Blaze, OpenSea, Aeon are “surprise” browsers you probably don’t want.

Some handy utilities come from countries under U.S. sanctions. Using free tools may be fine, but paying or sending crypto can raise legal issues. We’re not lawyers—please seek qualified legal advice before you send money. 

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!
 

“Bingo-Bango” 

“I’m laughing at your pain-Sorry.”

“November is longer than 7 days”

“Big No on that.”

“Redundancy; You can say that again.” 

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“Sites that have permission to annoy you.” 

“You could be a living pop-up!”

“Serious people in black suits knocking at your door.” 

“You’ve never heard his best work.”

Battle Born Tech — where the Wi-Fi is strong, the fonts are good looking, and all the passwords are above average. The Lake Wobegon Effect

Click for NSFW Video
Iran from IT Crowd

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

PUP Browsers

PUP stands for “potentially unwanted program,” software that installs itself alongside something else you actually wanted. A PUP browser is a web browser that arrives this way, often bundled with a free download, and then sets itself as your default and shows you ads.

Notifications

The pop-up messages that websites and apps ask permission to send you. Clicking “Allow” on a shady site lets it push ads and fake virus warnings to your desktop, even when your browser is closed.

Iranian Software 

Programs written or distributed by developers based in Iran. Because Iran is under U.S. sanctions, this software often cannot be reviewed, updated, or supported through normal channels, and installing it may put you on the wrong side of federal trade rules.

TLD 

Short for “top-level domain,” the last part of a web address, like .com, .org, or .ir for Iran. It is one clue about where a site is registered, though not a guarantee of who actually runs it.

RCE

Short for “remote code execution,” a type of security flaw that lets an attacker run programs on your computer from somewhere else on the internet. It is among the most serious kinds of vulnerability because it hands over control of the machine.

Task Manager

A built-in Windows tool that shows everything currently running on your computer. Press Ctrl, Shift, and Escape together to open it, and you can see what is hogging memory and shut down a program that has stopped responding, and check a complete list of startup apps

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

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Pretending Privacy

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Make Work

This week on Battle Born Tech A laptop that only pretends to work, a Mint install that works better plugged in, and the Windows ID that tracks you for real.

Bette wants to make a pretend laptop for a laptop. We resist suggesting a Chromebook as a pretend laptop candidate but go a more crafty way. Lee wants his USB to turn his tired Windows laptop into mighty Mint marvel, and Brian discover Microsoft is surfing with us all on the Internet and sharing postcards of our travels using the GDID stamp.

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!
 

“Making pretend laptops for grandkids with too much screen time.” 

“Calling in to make things NOT work.”

“It works better when you plug it in”

“Yeah skip all that.”

“Turn it 3 times to see which of the 2 ways it fits.” 

“Now that should be a felony.”

“GDID are light up sneakers as you run around the Internet” 

“Don’t recommend any of that.”

“Now that is the kind of surveillance we support” 

All em-dashes — were made by the common number of human fingers on the keypad—ALT+0151—no A.I. was involved in their creation.
 

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
 

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

Co-pilot

Microsoft’s built-in AI assistant, a chat helper woven into Windows, Edge, and Office that answers questions and drafts text. If your keyboard has a new key you didn’t ask for, it’s probably this.

Muse Image

Meta’s new AI picture generator, released July 7 inside the Meta AI app, Instagram, and WhatsApp.  On Instagram, open Profile > Menu > Sharing and reuse. Under “Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta,” turn off the Posts and Reels toggles. The feature has  been withdrawn, but the general permissions live on and enabled. Consider setting your account private!

CMOS Coin Battery

A small, watch-style battery on your computer’s main circuit board that keeps the clock and startup settings alive while the machine is unplugged. When it dies, your PC forgets what year it is.

Firefox Account 

the free sign-in that syncs your Firefox bookmarks, passwords, and open tabs across your devices. Mozilla officially renamed it a “Mozilla account” in 2023, so both names refer to the same thing.

Caveat emptor

Latin for “let the buyer beware,” the old legal shorthand meaning the burden of checking out a deal falls on the person buying, not the person selling.

GDID 

(Global Device Identifier)  a hidden serial number Windows assigns to your computer that can identify the machine across resets and reinstalls. It surfaced publicly through a federal criminal complaint, which is how investigators, and advertisers, can tie activity back to one specific PC.

 

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

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Getting Past the Bouncer

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Getting Past the Bouncer

This week on Battle Born Tech we welcome Monica, Lee, and Doug to the show.

Monica has a web app that has gone through a blender courtesy of reflow, Lee (not Larry) wonders how to change his password AND how often he is asked for it in Linux. From this we have some tips about Windows PIN and Microsoft Account passwords. Doug updates us on his journey to get access to his LibreOffice files.

In News we have Windows 10 Extended Security Update program extended a year until October 12, 2027. Our ex-post facto checker, Anthony, cautions us that banks and other websites are using compatibility checks and refuse to let you use Windows 10 on their site even though your Windows 10 is all patched up.

We also talk about the speed and reliability difference between old USB sticks and an external M.2 SSD drive.

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!
 

“2032: when our country will finally go beyond 8 bits” 

“30 dollar option…I’ve never seen it.”

“It’s all crazy nuts.”

“Now you get to go back to work, I’m sorry.”

“If you’re not ready of that…it’s weird” 

“I got all nervous and jerky.”

“He went into programs I didn’t even know were there.” 

“Always good to restart.”

“USB is dumb” 

“Then you will be sad.”

“where the Wi-Fi is strong, the fonts are good looking, and all the passwords are above average” 

All em-dashes — were made by the common number of human fingers on the keypad—ALT+0151—no A.I. was involved in their creation.

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
 

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

Extended Security Update

An enrolled program that keeps an older version of Windows receiving security patches after Microsoft’s regular support ends. It buys time; it does not add new features.

Windows Scaling 

A Windows display setting that makes text, icons, and buttons larger or smaller across the whole system. Found under Settings, then Display.

Browser Zoom 

A setting inside your web browser that enlarges or shrinks only the page you’re looking at, separate from Windows scaling. Ctrl and plus makes it bigger; Ctrl and zero resets it.

passwd command

The Linux command for changing a user account’s password. Type it at the terminal and follow the prompts.

sudo

A Linux command that runs a single task with administrator authority, short for “superuser do.” It asks for your password so casual mistakes can’t change the whole system.

sleep

A low-power mode where the computer pauses everything in place so you can pick up where you left off. The screen goes dark, but your open work stays in memory.

screen saver

A moving image or blank screen that appears after the computer sits idle. It once protected old tube monitors from burn-in, and the problem is back with OLED screens, though letting the display sleep is the better cure now.

Windows PIN

A short code that unlocks one specific computer, set up through Windows Hello. Unlike a password, it stays on that machine and never travels over the internet.

Bitlocker Encryption

A Windows feature that scrambles everything on the drive so no one (including you) who removes it can’t read your files. Unlocking requires the right sign-in or a recovery key, so keep that key somewhere safe outside the encrypted disk.

Password Manager

A program that creates and remembers strong, unique passwords for every account, locked behind one master password. You memorize one; it handles the rest.

External M.2 SSD

A small, fast solid-state storage stick, the kind normally installed inside a computer, placed in a pocket-sized enclosure that plugs in over USB. Good for backups and moving big files.

Package Manager

An app that installs, updates, and removes programs from one central catalog instead of hunting down installers from individual websites. On Windows, WinGet and Chocolatey are the common ones.

Wear Leveling

A technique built into solid-state drives that spreads writing evenly across the memory chips so no one spot wears out early. It’s automatic; you never have to manage it.

SneakerNet

Moving files by physically carrying a drive from one computer to another, an old joke that the network is your sneakers.

Petrichor

The earthy smell that rises when rain hits dry ground, from Greek words for stone and the fluid in the veins of the gods. Not a tech term, but a good one.

 

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

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Hammer Time

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

Breakmaster Cylinder composed and performs our theme music.

Hammer Time

When you can’t touch:
screen, site, and internet by WiFi

This week on Battle Born Tech we return from medical leave with 3 callers who can’t touch this: phone screen, wifi, and a website.

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!

Dee wants to clean her screen but there are many things that just can’t touch this.

Steve (and others) can use this command line (Terminal in Windows 11 or Powershell in Windows 10) to save a static website:

wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent yoursite.com

If you get an error that wget is not recognized, use wINget or Chocolatey to install it: 

winget install JernejSimoncic.Wget
choco install wget

There are other ways most likely using eternallybored build.

If you use the Wayback Machine, after creating a free account and logging in make sure you select the outlinks  option and be aware it only goes one level deep.

You might be able to get access by appealing to the Register (using WHOIS) information to find who holds the information and proving ownership. 

Bryan can’t find his wifi after moving his computer. Did he leave it in the car? WiFi is slowly becoming standard, see some of the standard definitions at the right.

“Apple EchoSystem?” 

“Dumb Questions are the best because I usually get those.”

“We don’t have foldable glass…yet”

“The better the screen; the harder to clean.”

“Download quick as a bunny” 

“Declare website bankruptcy”

“Borrowed a cup of internet.” 

“They don’t like being moved.”

“Whatever you unplugged; plug back in.” 

“They like to go for a car ride sometimes”

All em-dashes — were made by the common number of human fingers on the keypad—ALT+0151—no A.I. was involved in their creation.
 

 

 

BATTLE PLANS
with help from Claude.ai

Micofiber cloth

A cleaning cloth woven from synthetic fibers many times thinner than a human hair, which lets it trap dust, oil, and smudges rather than just pushing them around the way a regular cloth does. It’s the standard recommendation for cleaning screens, lenses, and electronics because it lifts debris without scratching delicate surfaces.

ARM

(Advanced RISC Machines)  A family of processor designs built around the idea of doing more with less power. Originally developed in Britain in the 1980s, ARM chips now run most smartphones and an increasing number of laptops because they deliver strong performance without draining the battery.

Centrino

Intel’s brand name, launched in 2003, for laptops that had Wi-Fi built directly into the machine rather than requiring a separate add-on card. It was the moment wireless internet stopped being an accessory and started being a standard feature of portable computers.

SOC 

(System on a Chip) — A single piece of silicon that combines the processor, graphics, wireless radio, and other components that used to be separate chips spread across a circuit board. Packing everything onto one chip is why modern phones and thin laptops can be so small and power-efficient.

SnapDragon

A family of processors from Qualcomm that are built as a true System on a Chip, meaning the CPU, graphics, AI engine, and Wi-Fi radio are all fused together onto a single piece of silicon rather than being separate components wired across a board. Originally designed for smartphones, Snapdragon chips are now powering a new generation of Windows laptops, bringing phone-like battery life and always-on connectivity to the PC world..

Wayback Machine 

A free online archive at web.archive.org that has been quietly photographing websites since 1996, saving billions of pages for public access. If a site goes down, moves, or changes, chances are the Wayback Machine has an older copy you can still visit.

Tuesdays 8 PM Pacific 95.1 FM Carson City, Nevada

Streaming LIVE on at KNVC.ORG

775-241-3571 or [email protected]