Digital heroin addiction worsening

I have used, though did not invent, the term "digital heroin" to refer to people's addiction the glowing-screen devices, especially smart phone and tablets, and especially by children. A mostly-complete page of my posts is here.

Comes now further, abject confirmation. From the Daily Mail, "Generation of child web addicts: Youngsters are becoming so obsessed with the internet they spend more time on YouTube than with friends as parents struggle to keep control of their online usage."

Children have become such screen addicts they are abandoning their friends and hobbies, a major report warns today.

Researchers found under-fives spend an hour and 16 minutes a day online. Their screen time rises to four hours and 16 minutes when gaming and television are included.

Youngsters aged 12 to 15 average nearly three hours a day on the web – plus two more hours watching TV. The study said YouTube was ‘a near permanent feature’ of many young lives, and seven in ten of those aged 12 to 15 took smartphones to bed.

It concluded: ‘Children were watching people on YouTube pursuing hobbies that they did not do themselves or had recently given up offline.’

A growing number of parents admitted to researchers that they had lost control of their children’s online habits.

Next is a report on Nashville's local Fox affiliate, "Study: Increased screen time in young children associated with developmental delays."

A new study from psychologists and doctors in Canada found increased screen time in young children can cause issues with children reaching developmental milestones.

Researchers studied 2,441 mothers and children with higher levels of screen time for children aged 24 and 36-months-old. Researchers then examined developmental milestone test results in the same children at 36 and 60-months-old.

The study found on average, 24-month-old children were watching 17 hours of television per week, 36-month-olds watched 25 hours per week, and 36-month-olds watched 11 hours per week. The totals reflect findings children on average in the U.S. watch to 2 hours and 19 minutes of screen time each day.

For each age group, children with increased screen times showed poorer performances on developmental testing when they reached the next age group. Developmental evaluations included communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal-social skills.

The totals are well above the recommended 1 hour per day of screen time watching high-quality programs. Researchers say about one quarter of children are not developmentally ready for school entry and the trend parallels an increase in screen time use by children.

Parents are using glowing screens as a sedative to pacify their children I have seen this in public too many times to count. But people, these thing are literally addictive, and when children (a) learn they will be given a screen to stop pitching a fit, and (b) they cannot help pitching the fit anyway because they literally are suffering from withdrawal symptoms, then the parent-child-screen interface becomes a self-reinforcing do loop.

My kids escaped this, fortunately. Our youngest was 14 when the first smart phone came out and none of them got a smart phone until they were in college (if then). But I have, no kidding, seen infants who cannot even walk yet with their very own smart phones - and now you can buy those phones especially built for small kids (more accurately, for parents of small kids who visually identify those phones with toys, as the makers intend them to do).

Yes, this is sadly real - just click here.

What is the tie-in to these kids' futures? Well, consider that researchers both in the US and Europe have discovered that IQ scores are getting lower, and the younger one is, the greater likelihood his/her IQ is lower than a generation before. And while glowing screens do not seem to explain all the fall, they are absolutely part of it.

Falling IQ scores may explain why politics has turned so nasty

Western IQ scores are falling. Is it computers or something else?

Parents, take this seriously!

Your printer is spying on you

Thinking of printing out a ransom note? An anonymous threat to commit a crime? An unsigned note to your boss explaining why you hate his guts?

Yes, and you're even going to use latex gloves to handle the paper - no fingerprints! Think no one could ever track you down from that anonymous, fingerprint-free paper that you handled so carefully you didn't even breathe in its direction?

Well, think again. The FBI will be waiting for you when you get home because printers add secret tracking dots.

Hat tip: American Digest

The Internet is autonomous. You are not.

The much-heralded Internet of Things is shaping up badly. IOT refers to devices other than computers connected to the Internet, such as smart-home controls or connected refrigerators and televisions.

And automobiles:

Your car knows more about you than you think. Newer cars that connect to the internet can collect vast amounts of data about drivers, such as where you went to dinner, if you broke the speed limit or if your seat belt was buckled.  

When you buy a car, you cede data control to your car company. Most automakers say they won't sell information without an owner's consent. But they're not legally required to inform you if they do.

As they say, read the whole thing. But wait! There's more! "Lawyers reaching for in-car data -- Legal system begins seeking information flowing through vehicle telematics." Because if your car is keeping a database of how you drive, where you drive, when you drive, your speed and on and on, of course lawyers are going to go after that information. 

Information gathered by vehicle telematics systems such as General Motors' OnStar, Ford's Sync, BMW ConnectedDrive and others is garnering increased attention from lawyers who see the data as a puzzle piece in building court cases.  

It's a sign that privacy concerns raised about telematics data won't go away soon. At the least, the industry's quest to be closer to consumers through telematics has created new responsibilities involving data management.  

Those responsibilities include complying with court orders to turn over telematics data, which automakers say they have done. The privacy terms for ConnectedDrive's BMW Assist component says it may "collect and retain an electronic or other record" of a person's location or direction of travel at a given time -- providing another potential legal tool for lawyers to go along with cellphone records, vehicle black boxes and even airbag modules.  

That may irk consumers who worry about an all-seeing eye keeping tabs on their travels.

I'd say that "irk" is much too mild a term. It does  not stop there. Remember Progressive Insurance's plug-in driving-data collector, Snapshot? 

The Snapshot device collects information about how you drive, how much you drive and when you drive. It also collects your vehicle identification number and triggers an email to you if it comes unplugged. Some devices collect location data: this is only for research and development purposes—we don't use it to calculate your rate.

Uh, huh. As my Swedish friend Lars said, "Yah, shoor." The data from Snapshot go off to Progressive all on their own, autonomously. The day is coming - in fact, has arrived - when we will not be able to opt out or avoid such data snooping. 

Subaru announced that it has added eight cloud-based apps to the STARLINK multimedia system in the 2017 Impreza. Some are familiar, like Yelp. ... And one ought to give a bit of pause: RightTrack. According to Subaru, "RightTrack Test Drive from Liberty Mutual Insurance monitors driving habits and provides customers with tips on driving safer to help lower their insurance rates and improve their safe driving skills."

The more we use - and are used by - autonomous smart devices, the less autonomous we will be ourselves. Skynet is indeed shaping up, only not as James Cameron imagined it.

A Soviet spy on how to meet a dating-site match in person

Dating sites are being used more and more as "come so we can rob you" scams.

Sacramento police warn of social networking robbery trend

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. -- Sacramento police say at least 10 men have been robbed in recent weeks after arranging to meet women through online social networking sites.

The police department is warning people to beware of the criminal trend. In a news release Friday, officials say people have been robbed in at least 10 separate incidents in the capital city in recent weeks.

In each case the male victim reached out to a woman through a networking site to set up a date. The victim arrived only to be confronted by male suspects, usually armed.

I have no use for dating sites myself, being very happily married for barely under 37 years, but I have known men and women who used them, including persons older than me, and a couple of couples who married.

But, thanks to my training at the Army's counter-terrorism school and former Soviet spy Victor Suvorov's explanation of "fieldcraft," the steps that espionage agents take to avoid capture while spying on and in hostile countries, here are the rules for meeting anyone whom you have not met in person before:

1. Try to get a photo sent to you beforehand. The sticky wicket is providing one back. In a word, no. But if you are meeting someone from a dating site, this can be difficult. Judgment call to ask. But it is also likely that the other person's social media, perhaps even the dating site itself, will have one. But be prepared for it to be, um, inaccurate or out of date.

2. Do insist on being fully told how you will recognize the other person - what s/he is wearing, color of hair, does s/he wear eyeglasses, height, weight (yeah, good luck with that, guys), etc. Of course, your date will ask the same of you, so give a description back. Then when you go to meet, wear something else. If robbers are using these sites to lure you there, you do not want to show up looking like you.

3. Arrive very early. Suvorov wrote that he always arrived a few hours before the set time, found a spot away from the meeting place and keenly observed who came and went, especially those who came and didn't went. Of course, he was stealing military secrets so you don't need to arrive hours, plural, early, but one hour. And then watch. I am guessing that thugs will get there 15-20 minutes beforehand, so be alert, as Suvorov was, for men who arrive and seem to have no purpose being there. In other words, they look like they are waiting.

4. That means you should always insist on a very public place as a meeting place, such as a cafe with a lot of customers. Do not go forward with the meeting, period, if the other person will not agree. That's it, you're done with him or her.

5. If your meetup has not arrived by 10 minutes after the meeting time, say sayonara. Leave. True, s/he may be legitimately delayed but that's the risk s/he takes. If the meeting time comes or is close you may get a cell phone call from him/her. Do not answer it, do not even take it out of your purse or pocket; it may be bad guys scanning to see who answers a phone exactly when they call (your phone is on silent, right?) Once the 10 minutes has passed and you've departed the area, you can check to see who the call was from.

6. Ask a reliable friend (or 12!) to accompany you or arrive about 15 minutes early. When you are across the street from the meeting place, drinking coffee with a friend, it makes it less likely that bad guys will ID you as their target. But in fact s/he is helping you reconnoiter.

7. If your date arrives as scheduled, don't go there. Observe what s/he does, especially making eye contact a few times with the same people nearby. Look to see who around him/her seems interested in what s/he is doing, too, especially if they seem to examine persons of your sex who approach her or him.

8. If warning signs are absent, go to the meeting site with your friend walking with you, but s/he peels off about 30 feet before getting there and departs. If the meeting is legit, there is nothing else for him/her to do and if it is a robbery setup, s/he needs to get out anyway.

I know this sounds paranoid, but it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. Hopefully you'll will only have to do it once. I would say that men are more likely to be victimized because in addition legitimate dating sites there are infamous sites like Ashley Madison that promise sex. (Remember the huge scandal when that site's database was hacked and made public? Practically none of the 30 million-plus users were women. As a young lady told me last week, when someone says online that she is a girl, be prepared for "girl" to mean, "Guy In Real Life.")

I want this bot

A programmer got sick of scam recorded calls and emails, so he invaded them. Basically, he developed a program with a completely-human sounding voice to call them back and carry on totally credible, but entirely pointless, conversations with the live scammer on the other end.

And he jammed every number the scam company had, up to hundreds of calls. Typically, the telemarketer folded within 20 minutes.

"I called 100 times on 20 simultaneous channels," he said. "They answered, talked to my bots. Then they started to put my bots on hold. Then they started swearing, shouting to each other about what is going on — I could hear in the background. Then I made 500 calls on 20 simultaneous channels to the number. After 300 phone calls, they disconnected the number."

It took about 15-20 minutes to put them out of business, he said. "I completely annihilated them," he said.

You may only get cleaned out once

These Were the Most Common Digital Passwords of 2016. If you use an online password on this list, you may as well print your SSN and banking and personal information in the newspaper.

A recent study of 10 million leaked passwords by computer security firm Keeper identified the most common passwords of 2016. Surprisingly, the top 25 passwords on the list accounted for 50 percent of all 10 million that were analyzed.

Unsurprisingly, the list is a stunning display of laziness. Here they are:

1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. qwerty
4. 12345678
5. 111111
6. 1234567890
7. 1234567
8. password
9. 123123
10. qwertyuiop
11. 987654321
12. mynoob
13. 123321
14. 666666
15. 18atcskd2w
16. 777777
17. 1q2w3e4r
18. 654321
19. 555555
20. 3rjs1la7qe
21. google
22. 1q2w3e4r5t
23. 123qwe
24. zxcvbnm
25. 1q2w3e

What do they all have in common? They are easy to type on a keyboard. Take number 10 - "qwertyuiop" is simply every lower-case letter on the top row. Likewise the bottom row for #24.

I use a different PW and logon for every place I log into. I never duplicate and I use a generator to form each one with 128-bit security. For example, it just gave me this password that it says would take centuries to crack: r>8(nUk&5j'v.

Too short? Try =9h2A!%^2^49V#/4.D)Hi=Kw5&HLr4L.

Trust me, neither of them will ever be active for me. I never re-use a PW, either. When it is retired from its site it is canned permanently.

If you use your name or some variant of it as your logon, stop. Change it to a logon that is wholly unrelated to anything about you. If you name is James K. Johnson, say, stop using jkjohnson as a logon and use 1850andrew or something else far afield. Don't give hackers half a key to your bank's web site!

What about security questions? Many sites feature these as a way for you to confirm your identity if you can't remember your PW. Some sites periodically just require them as an extra layer of safety.

A common one is, "What is your mother's maiden name?" Never enter the truth when you set these questions up! One site I use wants the name of the street I grew up on as a kid. Well, that was Saratoga, but you better believe that what I entered isn't that. It isn't even a word (see the PW examples, above).

In your entire life, you may be the intended victim of only one break-in attempt. But just once can be devastating. You may only get cleaned out once, but that once will be far too many.

The politics of Facebook

No, I don't mean the politics of Mark Zuckerberg and Company, but of FB users. I dropped off FB last August - apparently just in time.

OneDrive cloud backup - good to know stuff

If you use Microsoft's OneDrive cloud services (as I do), then you probably need to know this information.

I do not use O.D. actually for backup, but for syncing my docs across multiple locations and computers. I use a different, online true backup service for backup.

US Army tortures Taliban prisoners most cruelly

The US Army Criminal Investigation Command is investigating torture of Taliban and other jihadist prisoners in the Army's custody, according to sources in the command.

The inhumane techniques are said to fall under the general category of "PowerPointing." As an example, Taliban prisoners were given a full, American Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, then were told they couldn't sleep it off until after they had explained this slide to interrogators:

In a report titled “For the Greater Good,” PowerPointing is defined as “forcing a subject to view a series of PowerPoint slideshow presentations to the point of exhaustion, thereby making it possible to gain answers or information from the subject.”

According to the report, interrogators used the technique to deal with uncooperative or belligerent prisoners.

“PowerPointing is torture, plain and simple,” said lead investigator Hugh Johnson. “Even though we’re dealing with people who are often terrorists plotting against the United States and our allies, we can’t stoop to their level.”

Johnson said Army interrogators collected PowerPoint presentations from their unit’s training officers. Presentation topics included fraternization, sexual harassment, and motorcycle safety.

This is cruel beyond all humanity. Asked of the report, White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated President Trump's endorsement of torture, including waterboarding, as legitimate tools in wartime interrogations.

"But the president told me this morning that PowerPointing can never be justified," Spicer said. "Beating them on the bare soles of their feet with rubber stanchions, that's okay. Auto-battery electric shocks? Fine. But PowerPointing? Sickening, just sickening. Must be stopped."

Defense Secretary James Mattis' office released a statement that he was actively considering taking this step in response to the report.

Never go full Podesta

You may recall that a major reason that the Clinton emails got hacked so thoroughly is because campaign chairman John Podesta got an illegitimate email containing a poison link, and he clicked on it. When that fact became public, the word went out that some lesser light of the campaign would have to take the fall:

Last March, Podesta received an email purportedly from Google saying hackers had tried to infiltrate his Gmail account. When an aide emailed the campaign’s IT staff to ask if the notice was real, Clinton campaign aide Charles Delavan replied that it was “a legitimate email" and that Podesta should “change his password immediately.”

Instead of telling the aide that the email was a threat and that a good response would be to change his password directly through Google’s website, he had inadvertently told the aide to click on the fraudulent email and give the attackers access to the account.

Delavan told the Times he had intended to type "illegitimate,” a typo he still has not forgiven himself for making.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, right.

Anyway, whilst checking my email's spam folder (sometimes legit senders get sent there), I found this:

Wow, someone was sending me money!!!!! I thought it might be the $5 million Mrs. Coleman, the wife of a Kuwaiti oil minister, had promised to send me.

So I clicked on the link "Accept Payment" and . . . .

Of course I didn't click on the link. I did hover my mouse cursor over it and learned right away that this is not even a decent fraud - the link resolved to http://elegantcountry.com slash something.

And so my advice is very simple. Be like me, not like John Podesta. Never go full Podesta!

How to save the military

It won't be surprising if the first step Secretary of Defense James Mattis takes to save the US military is this.

This seems relevant, too.

I have seen the future and it stinks

At least in part - but it could be a pretty big part.

HT: Gerard.

Update: "Members of Best Buy’s Geek Squad passed incriminating evidence to the law enforcement agency and received payments from agents."

Xfinity invades Amazon Echo space

I posted earlier on the now-underway market war between the Amazon Echo family and the just-released Google Home. Both are hardware devices linked to their respective service's cloud knowledge base and user accounts.

Now it appears Comcast Xfinity is getting into the act. When they introduced the X1 system - which I use and really like - it came with a remote control that included voice control. But all you could do with it was avoid pressing buttons. I use it for changing channels and program searching, but that can be done with the buttons, though less handily.

Now Xfinity has decided that the X1 remote should do more:

Not sure of the point here, except that it's easy to envision Xfinity moving into the smart home business, which is where voice control and response, such as the Echo, really shine.

BTW, I pre-ordered the Echo Dot and received it on the release date and left my review here. But it's not long, so:

I got this on something of a lark. My son has the $179 regular Echo and when I visited him it seemed intriguing - but not enough to spend 179 bucks on. So I pre-ordered the Dot when it was announced.

Basically, this is a talking toy. I do find it convenient, though not essential, for checking my calendar or the latest news shorts or getting a quick weather forecast. It also tells really lousy jokes and is handy for a countdown timer or an alarm. But I do not really get a lot of utility out of it -- mainly because I am not willing to lay out the major coin it would take to make it the controller of a smart house. The hardware for that ain't cheap, sports fans.

So I give it four stars for doing what it's advertised to do but for my personal usefulness I'd give it only one or two. If you are willing to spend lots of money for smart devices, you'll probably like it a lot. I think.

Now for the Alexa smart phone app (I use Android). It's used for setup and once you're done with that, it's mostly a tutorial. There are a fair number of "skills" you can activate on the app for the Dot, but most won't be useful to you or any other individual user. What you cannot do with the app do is use it away from home as a voice-responsive Alexa app. So away from home I use the MS Cortana app. Or the Google app. How awkward is that? So Amazon, get Alexa on the smart phone app already. But of course, if you did that, why would you need to sell the hardware?

And that, IMO, is the conundrum: it's a software, cloud-driven piece of hardware that does not really require the hardware.

So I gave the X1 remote a try. Nope, sorry, Comcast, you're not there yet. When I asked it what the weather is, it came through fine. It did not talk back as Echo and Home do, but it did display the weather report onscreen. Fine. But when I asked it the questions of Comcast's emailed illustration, above, suggested, I got gobbeldy-gook.

"What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" yielded search results for movies that had "moon" in the title.

"How tall is the Eiffel Tower?" yielded, well, nothing except the onscreen words, "unit conversion," and the dreaded pinwheel of everlasting non-functionality.

I have a feeling we're being beta-tested for follow-on development.

The Interview to open Dec. 25 after all

Just heard on radio news that Sony will release The Interview after all, in response to theater chains that have said they will show the movie if Sony releases it.

Whether Carmike and Regal, America's largest chains, are among those referred to was not said. Previously, both chains said they had dropped the movie from its planned opening.

Update: More:

Sony Pictures is set to release the canceled Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy “The Interview” in theaters and on video on demand, TheWrap has learned.

The plan is to release the film simultaneously in participating theaters and via video on demand. The Plaza Theater in Atlanta, the MX Theaters in St. Louis and the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin have now said they will distribute the film. The MX said it would be selling tickets as of 2 p.m Tuesday.

The release will likely be in the 200-theater range; exhibitors typically cap the rollout of films that offer day-and-date VOD at around 300 sites, because it usually cuts attendance significantly.

And apparently, a fair number of cyber-security experts do not agree with the US Government that North Korea was behind the hack of Sony. "Hackers 'had extensive knowledge of Sony’s internal architecture and access to key passwords,' writes one renowned security expert who thinks an 'insider' may be to blame."

This post was deleted by the author

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Fantastic online file synchronization

I have three computers on which I need to keep a few gigs of files synchronized all the time. Rather than lug them around on a thumb drive (and you know what a pain that is), I use a free service called SugarSync.

Once installed, SugarSync automatically uploads your specified files to your password-protected sub-site of sugarsync.com (syntax is www.your-logon-name.sugarsync.com) and also downloads the files to your other computers where you set up the software. All your computers are sync'd at all times.

You can also install the software on your smartphone or tablet. This app lets you access a directory of your sync'ed files and download files to the device if you wish. You can email files from every device you have installed the software without regard to file-size limits; what you send in the email is a permalink to the file which the receiver uses to download it. You can do this directly from the web site, too. Here's an example - in Windows Explorer I right-clicked on a file and selected the SugarSync menu, then clicked on "Get Public Link." That yielded this permalink, which you can click on and download yourself (the file is PM's used car checklist): https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D6661692_8692402_649070

You can also designate a whole folder to be shared.

And that's my tech tip for today. If you want to give it a try, just click here.

Here comes the $35 tablet PC

But it won't be sold here. It's coming to India.

NEW DELHI — India introduced a cheap tablet computer Wednesday, saying it would deliver modern technology to the countryside to help lift villagers out of poverty.

The computer, called Aakash, or “sky” in i, is the latest in a series of “world’s cheapestt” innovations in India that include a $2,040 compact Nano car, a $15 water purifier and $2,000 open-heart surgery.

Developer Datawind is selling the tablets to the government for about $45 each, and subsidies will reduce that to $35 for students and teachers. In comparison, the cheapest Apple iPad tablet costs $499, while the recently announced Kindle Fire will sell for $199. ...

... the Aakash has a color screen and provides word processing, Web browsing and video conferencing. The Android 2.2-based device has two USB ports and 256 megabytes of RAM. Despite hopes for a solar-powered version — important for India’s energy-starved hinterlands — no such option is currently available.

Looks good to me.

Steve Jobs dies

Steve Jobs was one of the most influential figures of the last century. Even people like me who have owned only one Apple product ever (and I never use it now) offer a moment of silence in respect and admiration for this man.

AP's report:

How the iPad is better than a rock

From Michael Silence:

At least kiss her first!

So - man and woman go to altar, get married. At the "kiss the bride moment" - he doesn't. Instead, he whips out his smartphone and . . .



If for some reason the video does not display, here's the link.

"I see Trouble
right here in River City!
And it starts with T
and it stands for Twitter!"

I hope she will enjoy being a Facebook widow.