Tag Archive for: Lifestyles

NPCC to offer internet safety class | Lifestyles

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North Platte Community College will offer an internet safety and security class beginning next month.

Delivered via Zoom, the class will provide information about modern technology and its impact and offer security tips for a digital age. Topics will include hacking, firewalls, phishing, encryption and biometrics.

“Technology is overwhelmingly confusing, and so incredibly hard to keep up with,” said Shane Gerhartz, instructor. “In this class, we take a giant step back and look at what technology is, how it’s being used and how we can not only function in a fully technological world, but also be safe and secure at the same time.”

Gerhartz has been immersed in technology since he was a child — whether that was through building computers or hosting neighborhood LAN parties.

He has been designing, building, installing and troubleshooting networks for nearly 14 years and, for three of those years, has also served as a technology integrationist for a local school. When not working, Gerhartz can be found dabbling in photography, videography, live streaming, video production, freelance information technology services, public speaking and IT training.

“I’m a guru of many things technology and spend every day learning more,” Gerhartz said. “My goal moving forward is to transfer this wealth of knowledge to those around me, and more so, to change the paradigm of thinking toward technology and life. I’m a proponent of creating a better world and helping others find physical and mental joy and happiness in life. I feel that understanding technology is the first step to changing our mindsets and understanding the influence of the world and how technology is involved.”

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Convention lets kids learn about ‘white hat hacking’ | Lifestyles

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BLOOMSBURG — Kids ages 7 to 17 are invited to learn about “white hat hacking” at a special conference hosted by the Bloomsburg Children’s Museum this Saturday.

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Arts & Crafts Building on the Bloomsburg Fairgrounds, and will feature guest speakers, workshops, and STEM work stations. Doors will open at 9 a.m.

Participants will learn from ethical hackers, information security professionals, and educators, and will have a chance to win prizes.

According to museum director Ginny Weibel, “Students will learn how to code, program, work with robotics, make electrical circuits, break codes and ciphers, engineer rockets, and learn about internet safety.

“We also take the term ‘hack’ loosely at our conference,” she added, “so kids will learn things like financial hacks and healthy eating hacks.”

Hak4Kidz began in 2017 and was created to complement BloomCON, Bloomsburg University’s annual digital forensics, cybersecurity, and hacking conference, which each year hosts a variety of speakers and features unique workshops and cybersecurity challenges. BloomCON will be held virtually this year. The BloomCON Hak4Kidz event was canceled last year due to COVID shutdowns.

Webel said attendance at the conference grew from 40 people in 2017 to more than 400 in 2019.

Dubbed as “Pennsylvania’s only kid-friendly hacking conference,” Weibel said “you’d have to go to Washington D.C. or Chicago to get to a similar conference.”

The museum, along with BloomCON leader Dr. Phil Polstra, worked with Dave Schwartzberg, founder of Hak4Kidz in Chicago to bring the program to Bloomsburg.

“The need to get kids interested in STEM-type jobs is undeniable,” Weibel said. “The Pennsylvania Department of Education reports that there will be a 9 percent growth in STEM-related jobs in the state by 2026 – that’s over a half million jobs.” The department also reports, she said, that in 10 years, 71 percent of all new jobs in the state will require computer science skills.

“Having a conference of this type in our region adds so much…

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Tech Q&A: Why your Android phone may stop connecting to your car | Lifestyles

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Q: I used to wirelessly print the newspaper’s crossword puzzles from my iPad using my Google account to connect to “Cloud Print.” But it stopped working, so I had to start printing via the Apple Safari browser. (A third option, HP Smart, won’t print, either, because it says the connection is “not secure.”) Why is this happening?

—Barb Miller, Chaska, Minn.

A: You can’t use the Google Cloud Print service because it was discontinued on Dec. 31.

Cloud Print relied on the internet. It used your Google account to upload the crossword puzzles to an online server, which then sent them back to your printer.

The Safari browser doesn’t depend on an internet server. It uses the iPad’s AirPrint software to send the crossword puzzles to your printer over your home Wi-Fi network.The HP Smart software should function the same way as AirPrint. The most likely reason it doesn’t work is that you have enabled HP Smart’s optional security settings, which are designed to protect your printer’s memory and data from outside tampering. Those settings may be blocking you from printing the crosswords directly from an internet website on the grounds that it’s too risky (you might be downloading malware.) If you find that too restrictive, you can turn off the security settings for your printer by using the controls in the HP Smart app.

Q: My phone, a Google Pixel 3 XL, used to be able to play the directions from Google Maps through its wireless connection to my 2016 Toyota RAV4. But a couple of years ago that quit working, and now I can’t even get Google Maps directions on my phone unless I turn the car off first. However, I can use the phone to play Google Maps audio in a rental car. What can I do?

—Jonathan Griebel, Maple Grove, Minn.

A: Your phone and car may no longer be using compatible versions of Android Auto, the software that normally links them.

Toyota was behind other car manufacturers in adding Android Auto compatibility, and didn’t begin putting the software in the RAV4 until the 2020 model year. As a result, someone other than Toyota added the electronics and software for Android Auto — called a “stereo head unit” — to your…

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Tech Q&A: Trying to stop the invasion of the web trackers | Lifestyles

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Q: I try to keep my Windows 10 PC free of unwanted software by running PC security (Malwarebytes) and cleaning (CCleaner) programs on my Windows 10 PC. I also use the DuckDuckGo search engine that doesn’t create profiles of its users.

Yet when I log into my Gmail account, my PC acquires about 200 to 300 web trackers (a type of software that monitors your online activity) that I have to remove using CCleaner. If I log into Facebook, I get another 300 to 400 trackers. If I spend a couple of hours online, I can accumulate 20,000 or more trackers, which is far more than my old Windows 7 PC gets.

Why does Windows 10 attract more tracking software, and what can I do to maintain my privacy?

— Cliff Grulke, Minneapolis

A: There are several reasons that your Windows 10 PC is overrun by web trackers, bits of software code that follow you online to help marketers learn more about you. Here are a few:

• Web trackers make money. Nearly all commercial websites use them to create an elaborate profile of your tastes and habits, a profile that the websites can use themselves or sell to others.

Your online movements are tracked by cookies (bits of code left in your web browser), Google and Facebook tracker software (that follows you even when you aren’t on their websites), session recorders (that record everything you do on a website), key-loggers (that record what you type into text boxes on a website, even if you don’t submit anything), beacons (invisible objects in a web page that record how many times you viewed that page) and “fingerprinting” (a record of the technical details of your computer that can be used to identify you.)

• While privacy advocates are aware of web trackers, most people aren’t. As a result, web tracking keeps expanding. A recent study showed that 87% of the most popular websites now track your movements, whether you sign in to the website or not (see tinyurl.com/yyy5qyas). (View the web trackers on any website at tinyurl.com/y2em59e6).

• Windows 10 may indeed attract more web tracker software, because it collects more personal information about you than earlier versions of Windows did. Microsoft shares some of that information…

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