THE PULP JUNE 2021 The P U L P Newsletter of the Hartford User Group Exchange http://www.huge.org Volume 40 Issue -- 06

JUNE 15th General Meeting:

(Belated) Gift Suggestions

Rev. Fleming Hall 2533 Main Street, Glastonbury, CT

Q&A Session: 7 PM–7:15PM Meeting starts at: 7:15PM

Contents Page

From the Editor 2

Stu’s Quiz Page 3

Standard Ebooks Makes 4 Classic Texts Beautiful

Solve Wi-Fi Coverage Prob- 6 lems

Calendar 10

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The PULP is published monthly by and for members of the Hartford User Group MEETING LOCATIONS Exchange, Inc. (HUGE). HUGE is a nonprofit organization whose aim is to pro- vide an exchange of information between users of personal computers. The PULP is Rev. Fleming Hall not in any way affiliated with any computer manufacturer or software company. Original, uncopyrighted articles appearing in the PULP may be reproduced without 2533 Main Street, prior permission by other nonprofit groups. Please give credit to the author and the Glastonbury, CT PULP, and send a copy to HUGE. The opinions and views herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of HUGE. Damages caused by use or abuse of information appearing in the PULP are the sole responsibility of the user of the in- formation. We reserve the right to edit or reject any articles submitted for publica- tion in the PULP. Trademarks used in this publication belong to the respective own- ers of those trademarks.

From The Editor by Stuart Rabinowitz This month is a set of gift suggestions. Hope to see Apple's Mac security warning shows that closed you there. BTW: if you have some wants for the beats open list — send me an email. ‘FragAttack’ flaws threaten wifi routers. It is time In the news: Verizon sold AOL, Yahoo for $5 billion to patch against FragAttacks but good luck with to a hedge fund as it offloads media assets. So be home routers and IoT devices.A set of vulnerabili- aware if you have an email account with the or ties in Wi-Fi’s basic design offers a long-standing ATT. and widespread threat vector, but the probability There is a phishing attack that uses a call center to of compromise remains low. trick people into installing malware on their Win- Aukey, Tomtop and Mpow have been kicked off dows PC. Amazon following fake reviews allegations. There is a global chip shortage, the logjam is hold- A fix is coming for iPhone battery and performance ing up more than laptops and cars and could spoil issues the holiday. Almost everything with a plug or a bat- There is a Dell security flaw from 2009 affects tery is affected. 'hundreds of millions' of PCs. Check their website Bluetooth bugs open the door for attackers to im- for possible fixes. personate devices. If you move around outside, you may want to turn it off unless you need it. Microsoft warns watch out for this new malware (dubbed RevengeRAT) that steals passwords, web- Send your comments to [email protected] cam and browser data. It looks like a PDF, but is Until next month…Happy computing!! really a VB (Visual Basic) script. Apple just fixed a security flaw that allowed mal- Here is the appropriate copyright citation for the “Tidbits” ware to take screenshots on Macs, Smile. articles. Each article has a link to the full text. Google is imposing a data cap on June 1, and auto- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ matically enrolling users in two-factor authentica- tion. An Apple exec testifies, as part of the ‘Fortnite’ suit, that the amount of malware on macOS is ‘un- acceptable’ as compared to the amount on iOS.

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A Little Computer Quiz May Quiz Answers

1 NASA has landed Perseverance on Mars, 1 What was the first non-Apple Desktop Bus the COMEX-IE38 module on the probe stores (ADB) mouse? & sends images. What is the CPU that runs A The ever popular hockey puck the module? 2 How many of you remember ‘eWorld’? 2 What else has that CPU been used for? When did it first appear? A 1994 3 What is the main CPU used by the rover? 3 What replaced it? 4 What else was it used in? A MobleMe

5 How much did NASA pay for those CPUs? 6 Before the HomePod, there was …? A iPod Hi-Fi bookshelf speakers

5 What were iPod Socks? A In December, 2004 iPod Socks were sold for $29 in a six pack in bold colors tp protect your device from dust & scratches.

Stuart Rabinowitz

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Standard Ebooks Makes Classic Texts Beautiful Standard Ebooks titles in Apple Books on JOSH CENTERS 10 May 2021 iPad The volunteers at Project Gutenberg are some of the great unsung heroes of the Inter- net Since 1971 (!), they have digitized over 60,000 out-of-copyright books for preserva- tion and convenience. While Project Guten- berg texts are better than they used to be, they are often plagued by typos and don’t al- ways have the nicest or most consistent ty- pography.

A new project has risen to build on Project Gutenberg’s great work: Standard Ebooks. Their mission is as follows:

Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg Add Standard Ebooks Titles to Apple’s transcribe ebooks and make them available Books for the widest number of reading devices. The Standard Ebooks library is large and Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources constantly expanding. You can browse by like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets subject or search for a title. As you can see them using a carefully designed and profes- from the screenshot below, there’s a great sional-grade style manual, fully proofreads deal of diversity in the offerings, and there’s and corrects them, and then builds them to something for everyone. create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technol- ogy.

In other words, the volunteers at Standard Ebooks take selected books from Project Gutenberg, carefully proofread them, and put them in a prettier package to read on your fa- vorite device. Standard Ebooks titles provide:

Modern and consistent typography follow- ing a rigorous modern style manual Careful proofreading Rich metadata Upgrades to The Standard Ebooks library make them play nicely with e-readers, includ- ing hyphenation, popup footnotes, high-reso- lution and scalable graphics, and working ta- bles of contents High-quality covers Clean code and semantic markup for easymainte- nance Needless to say, every title offered by Standard Ebooks is free and libre, with no DRM.

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Here’s how to download a title in Safari and load it into Apple’s Books app on an iPhone or iPad. Once you tap a title you’re interested in, scroll down to the “Download for ereaders” heading and tap “Compatible epub.” (It is a little troubling that the Standard Ebooks site lowercases EPUB, in flagrant contradiction to the style set by the stan- dard’s creators.) There is also an “Advanced epub” option, but I haven’t found any advan- tages to that file format, and it tends to strip away the nice cover art.

Tap Download when prompted. Once the download is complete, tap the download icon vides specially formatted .azw3 files for Kin- in the upper-right corner and then tap the dle devices and apps, and .kepub files for EPUB file in the downloads popover. The Kobo devices and apps. book should open in Books

Apple platform. Standard Ebooks also pro- vides specially formatted .azw3 files for Kin- dle devices and apps, and .kepub files for Kobo devices and apps.

How You Can Help

If you have some spare time and love books, Standard Ebooks is always looking for volunteers. You can join their mailing list to get involved, make suggestions, and submit typos. They’re also looking for proofreaders Downloading from Standard Ebooks on and those with the technical skills to compile iPhone ebooks. And, of course, they always need money to pay for their tools and keep the It’s even easier on the Mac. Click “Com- servers running. patible epub” just as above, and if Books is your default EPUB app, double-click the downloaded file to load it into your library and open the book. If you have your Books library set to sync via iCloud, it doesn’t matter which device you add the EPUB files to because they will sync between each other.

Paradise Lost in Apple Books on iPad Standard Ebooks titles look beautiful on any Apple platform. Standard Ebooks also pro-

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Solve Wi-Fi Coverage Problems with WiFi Explorer and ------by Glenn Fleishman: , @glennf You can mark just a handful of sampling points, but I article link: like to use many for greater insight. Once you’ve finished 4 comments sampling, you have an interactive map. One of the abso- lute neatest features of NetSpot, and one reason I was As someone who has written about Wi-Fi for many years immediately impressed with it originally, is that it can and tested hundreds of pieces of gear, I’m always looking accurately calculate where your access points are located. for affordable, useful tools that let me analyze my home network. In the past, companies have loaned me spec- ranges of frequencies. But while IT professionals may find those useful, they’re overkill for home users and In my case, I have an 802.11ac AirPort Extreme on our small business: they’re just too expensive. main floor, and then a single-band-at-a-time 802.11n Air- Port Extreme in the basement near my desk. At the oth- er end of the house, in a guest room, I have an 802.11n AirPort Express. The upstairs base station was placed That’s why I was excited to stumble across the $15 WiFi within several inches. The downstairs units, Explorer. It was first released in 2012, but didn’t appear sampled through the floor, were only a few inches further on my radar until the 2.0 release in May 2015. With a off. combination of graphic visualizations, lists of informa- tion, and the capability to drill down into super-technical The interactive map lets you select and deselect base details, WiFi Explorer has become my top recommenda- stations in a list, so you can see in isolation and together tion for anyone trying to sort out a local Wi-Fi environ- what your best coverage is. As noted in my 2011 review, ment. the spectrum of colors ranges from blue (terrible) through cyan to green (good) through yellow to red just remember green, yellow, and red are good, better, best. You can also use a pop-up menu to toggle WiFi Explorer pairs beautifully with NetSpot, an OS X what’s overlaid on the map as a whole. Wi-Fi signal-mapping program I reviewed way back in 2011 for Macworld. NetSpot has matured since then, and ous (and expensive) professional options above the free, non-commercial level. The free version lets you visualize only up to five access points at a time, which includes each radio on a multi- band router. I have three routers, two of which are simul- whole network within the five-unit limit. In addition, the free version is intended for non-commercial use with Let’s start with Netspot, even though we’ll only use a personal computers. fraction of its power. It’s a great way to get a two-dimen- sional lay of the land. For offices, Netspot Pro costs $149 for a single-user li- cense, and the 10-user Netspot Enterprise license is **Paint a Wi-Fi Picture** -- Netspot starts with a map. You $499. These prices are reasonable if you’re maintaining can import a house or office plan, sketch one, use a sam- multiple large networks, and you get a lot more features ple map, or start with an empty page. You measure the to boot. distance between two points you mark on the map and it uses that to scale the rest of the map. Then you wander around your premises with a laptop, clicking to measure at various points. Once you have a completed map, print it out to use as a guide, so you can consider improvements while you use WiFi Explorer to measure and analyze both the signals in

Page 6 THE PULP JUNE 2021 the air and the radio choices you and your neighbors individual base station name. Click any bar, whether have made. in the middle or right displays, and the base station is selected in the list at top. These collections of networks **Sniff the Air Around You** -- WiFi Explorer helps are shown under Service Set in the Results bar at left, tremendously with understanding interference from ad- too. jacent networks by providing both comprehensive details and graphical insight. It also lets you see at a glance pre- fer that in AirPort Utility, which shows connections and base station names, but requires you to hover over each You can see an overlay of all networks’ signal strengths base station to see channel assignments and other de- by clicking the Signal Strength button. Selecting one or tails. more items in the list fills in the color below the line in the graph to make them more visible. WiFi Explorer has just one window with four views at the bottom, three of them visualizations. When dates, make sure the top display says “scanning.” The scan is updated every five seconds. A left navigation bar Note that this view doesn’t show network throughput, lets you filter networks discovered in the vicinity by Wi- which would require software installed in different de- Fi mode, network name, and other parameters. vices to check the link between them; this is just the ca- pability of a Wi-Fi network to work within the parame- the access point list shows you the current data rate at which a device is operating. Access points drop through a The list at top is typical of Wi-Fi scanners, including the large combination of modulations and channel uses be- one built into OS X. (Hold down the Option key, click tween the lowest and highest data rates; the higher the the Wi-Fi menu, choose Open Wireless Diagnostics, and data rate, the closer your computer running WiFi Ex- choose Scan from the Window menu.) plorer is to the base station while being unimpeded by other networks spreading signal over the same space. The Channels view is remarkable. It shows how differ- ent base stations are occupying swaths of frequencies. In WiFi Explorer packs a lot of information into a well- 2.4 GHz, you can see where networks overlap. Channels designed space. But click any entry, and the area below 1, 6, and 11 are considered non-overlapping — the central the list lights up. The app assigns a color to each base frequency for each channel is offset by 25 MHz, or more station in the list, which is useful in the visualizations. than a full channel.

er-channels.png>

In the Network Details view, selecting any base station However, I’ve been told by IT professionals that one of shows a rundown of technical details specific to that base the nastiest problems with Wi-Fi interference in 2.4 station, and at the left a continuously updated scan of GHz networking comes from devices that are preset to network quality, which can be viewed as signal, signal use other channels, which includes some portable and noise, or signal-to-noise ratio. At the right, WiFi Ex- hotspots. Two networks on overlapping channels can try plorer shows a color-coded bar based on signal strength to avoid each other without losing too much throughput. of all other base stations using the same Wi-Fi channel. But networks on adjacent channels (like channels 1 and 2) have to employ different, less-efficient mechanisms to If multiple base stations use the same network name (or overcome interference, which can dramatically reduce SSID, Service Set Identifier), selecting any one of them the amount of data that gets through or cause inconsis- adds a display between signal strength and channel occu- tent performance. pancy that shows each base station’s power on the same signal axis, split by frequency band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). In the 5 GHz range, things are more civilized: base sta- You can hover over any bar and WiFi Explorer shows its tions can only occupy channels exactly 20 MHz apart.

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With 802.11n, a Wi-Fi access point can span two chan- disappear. And of course, you have no control over what nels (40 MHz), if there’s no detectable use on the ex- your neighbors may do with their base stations.) tended portion; 802.11ac can grab a whopping 80 MHz. Each doubling of channel width doubles the effective Once you have a longer analysis of each point, you can top throughput rate, too. (WiFi Explorer shows all 5 try one or more of the following and then re-test in Net- GHz bands, which includes the little-used UNII-2 and Spot and drill down in WiFi Explorer to see what hap- UNII-2 Extended bands. For obscure reasons, few con- pens: sumer base stations allow their selection; read “Improve Wi-Fi Performance in the 5 GHz Band,” 14 December * Make sure your 5 GHz network is using channel 149 or 2009, if you’re interested. WiFi Explorer lets you sup- higher (called UNII-3, to be technical); you can use WiFi press them in this view via Preferences > Hide DFS Explorer to determine that, as well as any overlaps. If it’s Channels If No Networks Are Using Them.) using a lower-band channel (UNII-1), the base station may be using as little as _five percent_ of the power al- lowed for an upper-band channel! This is a common problem, although Apple’s automatic channel selection Finally, an Advanced Details view gives access to an in- will almost always pick channel 149 or above. (802.11n credible amount of minutiae that a wireless guru might can manage its fastest 5 GHz rates with 149 or 157; love, or a home network installer might be delighted to 802.11ac winds up using 149 so it can span 80 MHz when have when troubleshooting a problem. it can clearly do so.)

roommate regularly camped out in a big stuffed chair in front of a base station on the floor? 802.11n and 802.11ac The signal strength information is gathered over time, both use reflection as one way to improve throughput, and clicking the stop button or quitting the app results but they aren’t as good as Superman at seeing through in a prompt to save the results. The data is stored in a objects. Wi-Fi isn’t purely line of sight, but anything in static snapshot that you can re-open in WiFi Explorer to the line of sight can reduce a network’s throughput review later, whether offline or to compare with current and consistency. (People absorb 2.4 GHz very efficiently.) network environment details. * Reposition your base station(s) and rescan to see if the **Acting on this Practical Information** -- Netspot and new locations better overlap where you need signal. This WiFi Explorer provide a whole lot of information. But may involve drilling holes to route Ethernet cables or how can you turn a map and scanning into something using powerline networking — high-throughput versions you can act on to sort out interference or improve with a raw rating of 1200 Mbps are now available — to placement? pass a broadband connection through brick walls or ones you can’t drill in a rental (for more on The NetSpot map should help you figure out whether powerline networking, see “Trading In-Home Wi-Fi for your problems are purely related to a signal strength or if Powerline Networking,” 9 July 2007). interference is at fault. For a signal problem, you’ll see your base stations showing cyan or blue or no coverage at all. Take WiFi Explorer to these locations and monitor what’s going on with your networks and those in * Add a base station. This is often the best scenario, and the vicinity to see what the signal strength is across net- you don’t need either an Apple model or an expensive works, including those run by other households, and the one. As long as you connect to the main base station via max rate for your networks, which can help you sort out Ethernet, not through Wi-Fi — which works reliably if your network is being drowned out by other networks only among Apple-made devices — you could purchase on the same or adjacent channels in a given band. any well-reviewed $50 base station. At $99, the AirPort Express isn’t cheap, but it’s a powerhouse. (Critical side note: all this may work for a while, but most base stations are designed to select a channel au- If your network’s base stations are coming in loud and tomatically every time they’re restarted intentionally, clear (green, yellow, or red) in NetSpot but you’re still hav- through a power outage, or by someone unplugging it ing connection problems in those areas, use WiFi Ex- and plugging it back in for whatever reason. This means plorer to sort out what’s happening on the interference that your own channel selections may suddenly and channel assignment side:

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* It might seem counterintuitive, but you might switch to a lower-band channel to reduce power usage if you have plenty of signal strength and don’t want your network to extend into adjacent homes, offices, or apartments. (You might talk to your neighbors about doing the same thing.)

* In the 2.4 GHz range, change channels to find an unoc- cupied swath. As noted, channels 1, 6, and 11 (in the United States) are considered the ideal spread, but you might have to chart out different territory if channel us- age is clumped around one part of the band.

* Does the entire frequency map fritz out from time to time for seconds or longer? Someone may be running competing 2.4 GHz devices — which can include ham radios, ham television (yes, it exists), microwave ovens, badly designed video baby monitors, and industrial sealers. In the 5 GHz band, the most likely culprit is an older cordless phone. All of these can drive you to dis- traction because they may make your Wi-Fi network function intermittently. In 5 GHz, you can pick other channels, subject to the power limits noted above; in 2.4 GHz, you may be out of luck if you’re seeing garbage across all channels.

**It’s a Wi-, Wi-, Wi-Fi World** -- Wireless networking isn’t rocket science. Well, it involves a lot of radio tech- nology and calculations — okay, maybe it’s not far off from rocket science. But if you have your feet on the ground, you’ll appreciate any set of tools that let you sur- vey the invisible world around you.

Pairing WiFi Explorer with NetSpot gives you effective insight into what’s happening with your Wi-Fi network and those legally making an incursion into the public airwaves through which you also broadcast. With their visualizations, you might be able to fix persistent prob- lems and reduce dropouts.

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Membership: Anyone may become a member. Dues are PULP Staff $12 per year and includes a one-year subscription to The Editor Stuart Rabinowitz Pulp. Meeting topics, times and places can be found on Distribution George Carbonell page 1 of this issue.

Officers & SIG Leaders Leader: ______George Carbonell 860 568–0492 [email protected] Secretary: ______Stuart Rabinowitz 860 633–9038 [email protected] Treasurer: ______Stuart Rabinowitz 860 633 9038 [email protected] Director at Large: __Phil Manaker 860 659-4584 [email protected] Director at Large: __Ted Bade 860 643-0430 [email protected] Director at Large: __Stuart Rabinowitz Web Manager: _____Bob Bonato [email protected] Membership: ______Martin Ritter [email protected]

SU M TU W TH F SA June 2021

1 2 3 4 5 1867 1st 1979 1st demo description of of VisiCalc typewriter

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1979 The 1967 1st issue Source goes Computerworld online

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 General Meeting 7PM

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 1948 1st stored Alan Turing 1974 TI patents program run B’day Datamath calculator

27 28 29 30 Tau Day 1955 Sperry- Rand founded

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