Technology

Apple Watch Went British

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My Apple Watch is sporting UK colours for the Tokyo Olympics. Well in commemorating the Tokyo Olympics Apple came out with Country colour watchbands. I was already debating another band for my watch so I was intrigued at the options.

Out of all the national ones to choose from I thought i could only get away with the UK or US ones.Out of all the options I kind of liked the Swedish one the best. Since I don’t live there and really have no affiliation to their Olympic team I went with the Great Britain colour scheme.

To all my American friends and family that is not a political statement. I kind of just liked it better than the stars and stripes American one.

I am still torn on who I will be rooting for in the Olympics. Either no one since I doubt I’ll watch it or the US team.

For full disclosure that watch face is on my watch however i am not using it since other than for this photo and to show off how cool it is. Using it totally takes away from the added value of the shortcuts on almost all the other watch faces of the watch.

The Story of Coming Full Circle With Amazon Alexa

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I purchased my first Amazon Echo in April 2016. At the time I noted in my personal journal that the threat modelling used to justify the purchase said it was probably okay at the time. I also said and repeated for a while that I know at some point in the future I would need to likely get rid of the device for privacy reasons My friends who were big into security looked at me like I was crazy when I bought it and talked about. Most everyone else at the time had no idea what I was talking about. Those the new of the echo thought it was cool.

When we moved to the UK I purchased an Amazon Tap. The Tap is now discontinued portable speaker with Alexa. We used it around the house before we moved since the other echo was in transit. I packed it in our luggage and when we arrived in England and got our internet we had a music speaker. Even now we mostly use the smart speaker for listening to music and setting timers. Right after we moved simply having a speaker in the empty house was the goal.

Once we were settled in the wired Amazon Echo ended up in our bedroom. The Tap wound up in the kitchen so we could move it around and use it when we needed to. One of the advantages of the tap was that you could disable the always listening mode of Alexa. That way you could turn it on only when you wanted it to do something. It was less convenient but more secure. That was a selling point for me. Then we just got lazy and left it on all the time to unknowingly call out for it and have it not hear us two or three times before it reacted.

When I was debating on building out and an Internet of things network in the house I purchased another Amazon Ech Plus or whatever they called it. It was the version of the Echo that had the ability to become a home hub. That went into the guest room/my office.

Over time I kept reading stories of the privacy concerns people had with the the Echo speakers. I also experienced one or two shall we say oddities with the speakers that made me think it was listening a little more then you realise it should be. I convinced M to use a plain old “dumb” Bluetooth speaker for music in the Kitchen. I was able to get her one for £25. I also purchased myself a portable Bluetooth Speaker so I could listen to my audiobooks. With that new speaker I unplugged the bedroom echo. With M’s Bluetooth Speaker I intended to unplug the Amazon Tap in the kitchen however I didn’t feel that M was comfortable enough with just the Bluetooth speaker to do that.

Around this time Apple did a funny thing. They released the HomePod mini. Based on my current threat model that was my opinion the answer to my technical challenge. We had some gift card money so I purchased a few of the Home Pod Mini’s at John Lewis when they came out. I immediately removed all three of the Echo’s that we had.

The home pod mini is not as feature rich as an Amazon Echo. For what we use it for it has so far been good enough. That’s another story for a different day. The reason I bring it up is it was the final piece to the puzzle that enabled me to throw out the Echo’s and still have a relatively safe alternative.

Technically I did not throw anything out. I gave one of them to my nephew and another to a friend of mine. I think we still have one left to give away or may have given it away already. I cannot recall. We also still have Amazon Fire’s that the girls use. I severely limit what they can do and there is no always on listening. So it’s not like I just stopped using Amazon hardwa. It’s that we don’t use their what has always been a bit spooky audio devices. And now if you’re thinking about it I am not a hypocrite. Apple’s privacy policy and how they use the recordings on the surface seems much more palatable then what Amazon does. That means at least for now I’m happy to leave Apple devices listening in the home and not Amazons.

My MacBook Pro Repair

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Even before the lockdown in March I was working from home a lot. It was cold, i was sick on and off in the early winter, etc. That meant that my MacBook Pro was almost always plugged into my desk monitor. One day a few weeks ago I unplugged reboot it and do something on the native keyboard and not use the bluetooth one I usually do. When i did i noticed that the lid did not close all the way correctly. The bottom bulged out a bit as well and did not sit flush with the table. I had a bad feeling something was wrong with the battery.

Once lockdown was lifted enough i wanted to bring the laptop into the Apple store. problem was all appointments seemed to be booked up. After days of trying i saw an appointment open up for mid week on the week i was on holiday. Turns out i was right and the battery likely had an issue. Luckily work had apple care on it with support left for over a year. I hopefully get it back within a week. To Apple’s credit I got a call/email 6 days later saying the computer was ready. I wasn’t able to get out of work early so I picked it up the next morning. Exactly a week after I dropped it off.

I am thankful that I setup a Windows 10 machine at home that I was playing around with. I was able to use it for the 2 work days that the MacBook was out at repair.

Sad Fishing

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I know fishing is a big problem. I got this text today. It is like they are not even trying. The URL isn’t even a true paypal URL. They did not eve spell multiple correctly.

All kidding aside I assume people still fall victim of this. Simple rule, do not click on links in email unless are epxecting it. Even then never let your guard down.

Monitor Arms Makes My Desk Better

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When I lived in New York and was single I had a rather large L-shaped desk. On one part of the desk I had a heavy duty monitor arm that held a 30 inch HP display. On the smaller part of the L I had another monitor arm with a 23 or 24 inch display that I used when I work from home. When I moved into M’s apartment I had to get rid of the smaller part of the desk and the L bracket that joined the two pieces together. There just wasn’t enough room for it all. I had bought of modular desk and added to it over time. When it came time to move all I took was the main base of the desk. It is what I’ve had ever since. I love that desk. By the time I had moved I switched to an Apple Cinnema display instead of the 30″ monitor so the big arm went away. The other one did too when I got rid of the smaller part of the desk.

For years my setup remained an Apple Cinema Display plugged into either a desktop or laptop. Since I’ve been in London I bought a second Dell 27 inch monitor. That way I can have my work laptop on one screen and my home computer on and other at the same time. It made for an extremely cluttered desk. It did not leave me a lot of surface area to do anything. With all this extra working from home this season and now the indefinite working from home due to the virus it finally dawned on me to take some sort of action.

I did some research and found a relatively inexpensive well reviewed dual monitor on arm. The review said it would hold the weight of my Apple Cinema Display even though the specs in the product description were unclear. The arm arrived early this week. It was trivial enough to mount my Dell monitor to it. Mounting an Apple Display is another story. It needed a special mounting bracket to do so. Since Amazon and Apple no longer carried the Apple VESA mount adapter kit I picked up one new on eBay. It arrived a few days later and after a little bit of fussing I got the adapter on the monitor. Mounting on the alarm was again pretty easy after that. I learned immediately after I put the monitor on the arm that this setup was not going to work. This particular monitor arm really would not hold the weight of an Apple Cinema Display.

My Apple Cinema display is easily 10 years old. It still works pretty well however it showing its age. I almost had to replace it a few months ago when the power cable was starting to fray and all the wires were exposed. A bunch of electrical tape later it’s still working. The only way use my work computer with it is with a special thunderbolt to USB C adapter. I’ve been pondering buying a new one for a while. With my monitor arm plans foiled I started researching other monitors. I settled for the newer version of a Dell 27 inch display I already had. The weight is about the same or lighter then what I already have so mounting wasn’t an issue. What I bought also looks pretty similar to what I have so there’s some symmetry there. Yes that actually matters a little to me.

When the new Dell monitor arrived it was pretty trivial to get it mounted on the arm like the first Dell I had. Once that was done I wrapped the cables coming from the monitor in the innerduct I had lying around. Yes I have innerduck I bought and had lying around for the exact purpose of wrapping cables in. The innerduct made it look nicer. Once it was all put together I was pretty pleased with the end result. The only thing I forgot was I needed to plug in a WebCam on the monitor that replaced the Apple Cinema Display. I do video calls with work and it slipped my mind that the new monitor did not have a camera. Luckily I had one to use.

Now that I’ve finished the new setup and the desk is reconfigured I don’t know what took me so long to do it in the first place. It looks much better and is more functional than the old setup. The extra space i can get by easily moving the monitors up and out of the way is nice!

Using a From Email Address as Validation is Not a Security Measure

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I have been on a mission as of late to migrate all of my login details for account’s I use email from one domain name I have to another. I decided to stop using the main domain name I have been using for years. One of the main drivers was cost. It’s pretty expensive each year to own it. It is a country specific one and not cheap like a .com. It is also no longer as relevant for me.  I  loved its simplicity. It just didn’t make sense to keep having it long term.  It is paid for through 2021 or something. I have time to confirm I’ve captured every account and moved it.

In the process of doing this I am also closing accounts I don’t need anymore. It’s a great spring cleaning in the autumn. I originally wrote this in the fall of 2019.

When I attempted to change the email address I used with NordVPN I realized they do not have an option to do that in their online portal. I have  come across this issue a bunch of times going through this change process. Eventhough it’s annoying I typically open a case to request a change and its done pretty quickly.

For my own security reasons I use a unique email address for every account that I create online. This allows me to know when my information is being sold or if an email is authentic. It also protects me if one provider is compromised and the account details are sold or published online. There’s lots of times where I recieve a message that looks semi-legitimate. It is only when I look and see it’s going to a completely different email address than I gave them that I know it’s fake.

This setup makes things more secure from fishing or other exploits. The downside is it is not so straight forward to get a message via one of these aliases I setup and reply back easly.  That is because my email provider Protonmail charges for each alias you use.  To get around that I use their catchall feature.  I can have unlimited inbound email addresses. The catch is I can only reply back coming from only 5 of them. Most of the mail I get other than personal mail I don’t really need to reply to. The trade off is worth it for me most of the time.

In this instance with NordVPN I was asked to reply to the support case via email. Ussually in this situation what I typically do is I have an email program that allows me to send outbound mail and I can edit an alias to match the email address I’m using with that vendor. It’s slightly annoying however if I don’t have to do it often it’s not that big of a deal.

There were challenges in validating my account with the NordVPN. That required several emails back and forth. In one instance when I was away from my desk I got lazy and just replied from my generic catchall address. That exposed my default address to the vendor. I wasn’t that concerned about revealing that address to them however it was sloppy for me. What was silly was their reply. After two more rounds of back-and-forth I was told I need to send a response from the original email address since that was the one on file with them.

What seems silly to me is this company was relying on an email “from address” as some sort of security validation? Whenever I do send them mail  I’m literally cutting and pasting the contents to a new message and spoofing the address. Anyone can do that. Yet somehow they feel that if I  recieve their message it isn’t enough. In my case i am spoofing an address of my own so thats not bad.  What is bad is mail spoofing is super easy and this company somehow thinks its a securty function to get mail from a specific address.

If you are going to insist on a security measure why are they not having a secure ticket portal that my login to their service gets me into?  Or a built in chat system within their app amoung other things that are more secure than email.

I found this whole experience dealing with this VPN provider to be very frustrating. I am only writting about it because of the hypocritical things they said.  Do not tell me you are a security company and then rely on a “reply to” as a validation you are speaking to the right person.  Another thing they did was they wanted me to send old credit card details in cleartext email.  Yes the card was 2 years old however still dont say you are a security company and ask for PII in a clear text email.

The situations been sorted. I have updated my email address eventually. I’ve been using NordVPN provider for years. This extremely poor experience has left me looking for a new provider when this one runs out. It’s partly due to just the bad communication back and forth. And part of it is the hypocrisy of claiming that they are a security company and doing some of the most unsecure methods to communicate.

UPDATE: Just as I started to write this post in late 2019 it came out that NordVPN had two seperate public incidents where they were compromised. That along with this story got me to move providers 4 months before my contract term ended with NordVPN.

It’s Not You Fitbit, it’s Google, So I Guess it is You

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When I last wrote about my Apple Watch Series 3 I thought I solved the challenge around using the smart watch versus a regular watch. The solution was to use both. Since then I’ve continued to use the Apple Watch as just a data device on my right wrist. I wear the regular one on the other. Surprisingly not many people even notice I am doing it. After a while I got used to it and it second nature now.

When the Apple Watch Series 4 came out the upgrade didn’t seem compelling enough for me to upgrade. I was tempted with the bigger screen but not enouhg to buy a new one for that reason alone. When the series 5 came out I was intrigued. The always on face was the single biggest issue I had previously with Apple Watches. Now that I can look at it and the time is always visible without having to lift it to my wrist and wait for it to light up. The always on plus the bigger screen on the smaller model was enough to make a compelling case for an upgrade. I treated myself to the 40 mm version.

When I bought my Series 5, the plan was to sell my Series 3 on eBay. I always try to make some of my purchase price back. One of my friends at work suggested using the Series III as a sleep tracker. I have been using my Fitbit for that. Until then I was happy with that solution. Then right around the time I was thinking about the new watch Google announced they were buying Fitbit. That immediately got me wanting to find a replacement for my Fitbit. I want to minimize as much Google exposure as possible. The thought of them having my health data was not cool.

The Fitbit sale development got me wanting to try my friends suggestion about using the watch as a sleep tracker. My issue was I did not want to use the same watch I used during the day, then all night. I was afraid I would forget to charge it right before bed and again in the morning. I would need to do both in order to get a full day and night sleep out of it.

I hesistated to waste potential extra money by not selling the Series III. That was until I tried to trade it in. The research I did said if I was lucky I would get hundred pounds out of it. If I wanted the dedicated sleep tracker I probably have to spend around that amount of money anyway. I wasnt sure of a good Fitbit alternative either. I opted to keep the Apple Watch Series 3 and see if it would work as a sleep watch.

I did a bunch of research on apps for tracking sleep like the Fitbit would. It turns out there were several options. I settled on Sleepmatic. Compared to the Fitbit I’m not sure how accurate it is. Its supposed to be pretty close. From what I can tell it’s good enough for my use. I was worried the bigger watch on my wrist at night wound not be comforatable. I was also worried about turning on the screen or pressing other functions while I slept. Neither in the end was a problem. I disabled the raise to turn on function. I do not recall having any issues with pressing anything by mistake after that.

By the time I wrote this post I had been using the Series III as a sleep tracker for several months. Overall I’m generally pretty happy with the switch. I’m extremely happy that I deleted my Fitbit account as well. As a side benefit I can use the watch regularly as a silent alarm. I was able to do the same thing with Fitbit however it required going onto the app on my phone to adjust anytime I needed to. User experience on that was mixed. For that reason I did not always use it. Making changes on the Apple Watch is trivial. Now I use it all the time.

Overall I’m happy with series 5 for everyday use and my new “sleep” tracker. Lastly I will note that I offered my wife the Series 3 before I used it. She declined. I would have liked that also since if we did that we would have had push to talk option!

Random Finds From America

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Last week we were in Florida before and after a cruise. While at a 7-Eleven outside Orlando Florida I saw a Redbox. My first question was do these really still exist? Then it dawned on me people may still actually use DVD’s. Even though I remember my DVD collection I thought the idea of DVD’s in 2020 to be pretty old school. Then again the term “old school” may be dating me.

The Last remnant of My Google Presence is Finally Swept Away

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As of 9-September 2019 I have deleted my last Google account. I have not actively used Google services other than ocasuonally an android phone here or there in years. Up until now I kept my original Gmail account in case I need it. That was mainly for nostalgia reasons. I barely ever log into it. I haven’t used it actively in over a decade. After my abrupt stopping use of my Motorola G7 (see my post on that) I finally decided to take the final step in purge my entire Google presence.

Since I have deleted other accounts before the entire process was pretty easy to back up and delete everything. I have absolutely no regrets. More importantly its not even a nuisance (so far) that i don’t have an account. Every so often i want to save a YouTube video for referencing later. Pocket or Trello is great for capturing that stuff so my designer to have functionality google offers is fleeting.

Now all I need to do is nudge M a little bit to finish moving off of her Gmail account. I’m proud that on her own she asked me to set up a new domain name and email address for her somewhere else. We’ve been down this road before so we’ll see if she finishes migrating.

Jacket Firmware Upgrade

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I never thought I would talk about the fact that today I updated the firmware on my jacket. Yes you read that correctly I said my jacket had a firmware upgrade. That statement and the specific jacket in particular provides my wife endless amusement in making fun of me for having it.

Years ago I found Ministry of Supply as a kickstarter for some socks. After supporting them I started looking into the company. I noticed they had dress shirts and trowsers as well as socks. The history behind the company sounded interesting and what they offered seemed perfect for me. I bought a shirt and have been buying their stuff ever since.

In 2018 when they announced a kickstarter for a smart jacket I was intrigued. The discount on backing the project was pretty good as well. I ended up supporting the project. I got the jacket last winter. I really like it. I haven’t needed it this season yet until today. Since the girls were at a birthday party I had some time so I finally followed their instructions to update the firmware on the jacket.

What makes this jacket “smart” is it has a heating element throughout the jacket. It pairs with your phone and adjusts the temperature of the jacket depending on your temperature and activity. Initially the smart part of the jacket did not really work. It would simply heat you based on manual adjusting the app. That in and of itself is pretty cool and worked on cold commute days. This firmware upgrade should fix some connectivity problems and allow for true automatic “smart” heating.

An auto adjusting heated jacket is not really a necessity. It is pretty cool. The jacket itself is actually pretty nice. I would like to even get one without the heating stuff in it so I can travel with it. Overall a great buy for me. The firmware upgrade even went off without a hitch. Even if it was probably more complex than most people would have wanted to deal with.