Tech Dictionary: THE URL

Technical discussion of the URL seems to have little value to the everyday google user and grasping around the concepts which brought about this monolith of computer science are not much better than a black box. So, the quest.ion is – how can a better understanding of URLs improve the serviceability of KTS.

For me, beginning to understand the URL starts abstractly in the application layer of both the OSI Model and Instruction Set Architecture, but most clearly in the empty search bar – and a domain name.

What appears much like the command prompt, waits for an input (in the most common form as an IPV4 address, or as a fully qualified domain name) and execution command. Seen by me, as MOSTLY human readable text, but then a separation starts to occur, as defined by the creators of the internet, and can be understood more fully in RFC 1738. My primary interests are in scheme, host, port and path

1. The Scheme helps to define the resource being access, and to identify what sort of protocol is being used, one of most essential protocols to users would be HTTP, or HTTPS which provides a layer of security over a network.
2. The Host – Consist of the fully qualified domain name, overseen by IANA.
3. The Port – Define how information over a network is routed.
4. The Path – Further defines the location of the hosted resource.

The simplicity with which I am even now inputting characters into a readable and real-time document is supported by a complex system, though essentially, my graphics card is communicating with my devices internal memory (RAM), bus architecture, and processor.

Computer science, and attempting to understand Instruction set architectures from Application to compiler / assembler, to operating systems; data-path & control, to memory, I/0 circuits, circuit design, and transistors – it become overwhelming, and easy to get lost in the technicality of it all, but the URL helps network users find information resources on the internet.

Lions, Tigers, and Malware – Oh! My.

Windows 10 Home comes with a built in Anti-Virus software called Windows Security. It does a good job of categorizing security concerns
into 7 unique categories:
1. Virus and Threat Protection, where you can place your folder systems into a protected state. This Anti-Virus software
also have a threat scanner. It even recently picked up the installer for The NiceHash Crypto Miner. (I’ll be covering that program at a later point!)
2. Account Protection, to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your desktop through: facial recognition, fingerprinting, pins, a
physical security key, passwords, and picture passwords! Talk about defense in depth.
3. Firewall and Network Protection, allows a brief over-view of the current state of the machines built in firewalls. Where
inbound connections that are NOT allowed are blocked, and outbound connections that ARE allowed pass.
4. Application and browser control, helps to provide safe browsing, and many different exploits. (The browsing protection appears to be limited to Edge users.)
5. Device security, with – core isolation, the TPM module, and secure boot features.
6. Device performance and health, to give a brief overview of the machines – storage, battery, application, and Windows service performance.
7. Family options, in order to protect against explicit websites (see our other solution – link), establish screen time habits,
generate an activity report, and control buying.

In comparison, and perhaps unnecessarily, Avast Anti-Virus– offers….a powerful virus scanner to find malware that slips in, as well as
to check for unsafe configurations, and passwords. The Anti-virus detects and block viruses, malware, spyware, ransomware, and phishing.
A Wi-Fi inspector to detect others on your network. One additional free feature is the “online security” browser extension.
Other than the Wi-Fi inspector, the free software doesn’t appear to add any additional features – and additionally, I’m blaming an Avast update
that got pushed back in 2020 for causing my laptop to crash. After that update to the program, I lost lots of data that I had been gathering for several years…. though maybe not forever. While it is not possible at this point of my technical knowledge to prove this, but it was the last software I interfaced with PRIOR to the crash – maybe they can help me recover the data to prove otherwise?

One strong positive for is the blog and community form, that – and the “threat search” portion of the blog particularly are,
in my estimation superior to the huge and often time confusing array of documents on the Microsoft website.

Overall, without paying, both lack many live support options! We also may attempt to review some of the source code in the future to determine what’s really happening on the net!

Getting ‘Back to the drawing board’ exists as a proverbial English idiom for failure, but more than that it’s carries the idea of hope, of new ideas, new creation – in the capital world, it means taking that which is old, and making it better, faster, cheaper.

Gathering a clear picture of the order of this old board, starts with a few notes on computing history, as an answer to how our world got here. Then with a question, “Who is in the business of creating computing machines, their components, building blocks, elements, and factors?”

In my time, computers have made an indelible impact in the halls of my mind. From the early virus infections of Windows 2000 to the terminally slow connection to DSL modems – fighting digitally for bandwidth. The red, yellow, and white inputs of some system generating tremendous playable audio and video; the brightest blue LED controller! All an enigmas black box created so delicately, working so perfectly that often the mind would be lost in the experience. Yet, there were points when this machine or that component would show flaws: a non-working disc, the loss of innocence in shadowy world, and a puzzle too hard for a novel mind to solve.

The first computer, if we might call it that, is as remote to a modern machine as it is distant in time, but it is there – in the abacus, a counting machine from 300 BC that we might find the root, the link of all future computers. That is all to say – that a computer counts and provides humans a means – to quantify. Until I get another breakthrough… check out this online abacus.

Using Excel: How to Convert Data into Tables and Back!

Microsoft Excel, as part of the larger Microsoft Office suit is an excel business tool. In my work, I have found it effective for developing budgets, time, and labor estimations, and even some script-kiddie programming!  But today the topic is a simple how-to?

1. Open Excel.

// If you’re using a Windows 10 OS Press [ Windows + R], this will open the Windows Run feature as possibly say you time! Once open type excel.exe to create a new instance.

2. Press [Ctrl + S] to Title and Save the document, and then select a location on your laptop.

// Titling the document can be as simple or as complex as you’d like to make it but ensure that it reflects the data types included. For example, ‘1 Month Financial Budget’.

3. Next, we title our headers. The documents will always open to field A1 and have a green box around it is indicating the ACTIVE field. Here we’re going to name this Budget Categories.
4. Our next header will be place in B1 named Estimated Monthly Cost.
5. With our headers completed we need to flesh out the footers with more strings, what sort of things do you spend money on broadly speaking? Food, Rent or Mortgage, Transportation, Utilities? It’s important to get the biggest expenses down first, for most people this is going to be just what I mentioned.

// Remember, if this is your first-time budgeting, estimations are a big part of the process – and that to make them accurate attention to detail, and even some external data sources, are necessary. With that let look at some statistics to get an idea for one volatile price-points, Food. Well Kept Wallet was my source document for the food estimate, of $405.30. I placed that in category B2.    Next, we need some data on Rent OR Mortgage, for someone with a Mortgage this value should be easily gotten. In my circumstance, Louisville Rent Café’ has generated an estimate of $1,034 per month, this is in B3!  That’s a lot of labor! Social studies aside, let’s enter the data.  Transportation, once locked in, is another large and static expense for most people – and if only I could have stopped myself in my mid 20s! This value varies from household to household, but AAA’s data suggest the price to be roughly $713 per month, that’s in B4! For a labor perspective, no wonder people are protesting about the cost-of-living! The last category we’re going to look at is Utilities, which in my mind are a combination of Electric, and Internet – some rental agreements will cover others such as garbage and water. Numbeo estimates this value to be $199.00, finally that’s in B5.

Once we have placed this semi-unformatted data down, we are going to add units of measurement as a nice table. For a table of this size, the sorting features of the table won’t be much help, but this is a beginner-level article!

6. To place the data and its headers into a nice grouping, left click and select all the relevant cells.
7. View the Styles Ribbon at the top of the document, and Select ‘Format as Tables’, select any design and then select OK.

// The last thing is to format the data in the ‘Estimated Monthly Cost’ column into currency.

8. Again, select all relevant data with left click. This will be B2:B5.
9. Right-click and select format cells. This will bring up a window titled ‘Format Cells’
10. Select Currency and Select OK. The default is to show a two-point decimal for cents.

That’s it, you’ve successfully estimated and formatted the type and cost for a month of some bills! You may find that Tiller Money  is a good alternative, if you prefer to use pre-formatted masks – but there are some pros and cons with that system that I will discuss later.

The final quick thing to discuss is how to unformat this simple data.

1. Right click any cell in the range
2. Select Table in the drop-down
3. Select Convert to Range
4. Done!

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to discuss further technologist concepts shoot me an email!

Dealing with data, and visualizing that information is an important business skills. Today, I’m going to run you through the steps to turn an 2×8 range of data into a pie-chart.

Creating pie-chart reports in excel

0. Understand the purpose of this data. For me time, and money management are the biggest uses of excel – and since I cannot possibly remember
everything I did last week, I can use these visualization as a summary of where my time went.
1. Get data, excel wont work without lots of variable data. This could be as simple as the 8 numbers I’m using, or as complex as one several thousand
line data-set I found at Data.gov.  In this case, we’re going to use the simple summary of how much time I spent on a task.
2. Name the data, in programming this has been described as one of the most difficult tasks, but as they always use to tell me in the military –
K.I.S.S. – keep it simple. My first row will display the header category, and all the sub-categories under it.
3. Add a second column header name weekly time total, and insert the data.
4. Insert the value into each category, I  spend 10 minutes in cat 1, 5 minutes in cat 2, etc.
5. Once you have named and put value to you data-range we simply select the 2×8 range and mouse to the insert ribbon at the top.
6. With you range selected click the Pie-chart within the charts banner. Select your favorite illustration and done.
7. Enjoy your simple data visual with a cup of DeathWish Coffe!

For parents, and family members alike – pornography has become more than a small water pipe. In fact, one report says that pornography makes up 30% of all data that is transferred across the public internet! Getting more visitors than, “Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined!” Well today I’m going to illustrate a simple and free method for blocking these sites. I’m also going to detail a work around, for the curious – and an additional layer of defense against these work arounds for security in depth.

Blocking Adult Content By Changing The DNS

In order to block this content we are going to update some DNS settings inside of the router.

1. Navigate to the routers’ GUI page using a web-browser. This information is typically 192.168.1.1, but may vary based on the router you’re using.
2. Login
3. Navigate to the DNS Settings. This is a (WAN) Wide Area network configuration, so it will be nested somewhere in that setting, but again you’ll need to look around. If you’re lucky your router will have a search bar to find it quickly!
4. Update the DNS settings with one of these IP addresses. These will typically be automatically assigned by the ISP, but in our case we have a list of 10 potential DNS Servers to choose from.

5 . Close save the setting change, and try navigating! It won’t work, but if it somehow does try a different DNS until you find one that works!

Work Around

The next thing, is how to get around this for the curious and quite possibly addicted! One way to view archived images  is by using The Way Back Machine. This is   Internet Archive’s web archive, launched in 1996. It contains over 2 petabytes of data compressed, or 150+ billion web captures, including content from every top-level domain, 200+ million web sites, and over 40 languages.

These images will continue to be content protected, and the one I visited had nothing other than static content. If you’re looking at this for a work around, you may need to implement a remote content filter. Stay tune for an update from the service provider on how to block the work around!? Perhaps blacklisting the way back engine itself is the solution?

Block The Work Around!

If you have any insights reach out at anthony@ktsmobile.net

How to import photos and videos from an iPhone to PC

It is a good storage practice to transfer the photos from your iPhone to the PC – failure to do so can really ruin a night out, and waste time trying to figure out what exactly to delete! You’ll need a lighting cable, your iPhone, and the PC you’re transferring the photos to.

1. First, grab your Lightning USB cable and plug it into your iPhone.

2. Plug the other end into the USB port on your Windows computer.

3. Make sure your iPhone is on, and unlock it. Unlocking it allows the PC to find the device so you can start the transfer. You must allow the PC to access the phones file system.

4. Once you allow the PC to connect to the iPhone, the PC should automatically open the Photo Application. If so, you can skip steps (5-7)

5. Hit the Windows Icon button on your computer’s home screen

6. Select Photos to open the Photos application.

7. Look for Import and then select From a USB device.

8. Follow the instructions on-screen and select the photos you want to import.

9. Select the delete original items after import box.

10. Choose where on your PC you would like the photos to be saved.  By default, they are generally saved to your Photos folder.

11. Allow the import a few moments to finish.

12. You should see a prompt indicating that your file transfer was complete.

13. It’s now safe for you to disconnect your iPhone from your computer.

We made some slight modifications to the sequence, and optimized the instructions exclusively for iPhone! Our inspiration was found over at UBreakIFix.com

Ah – the WAP! This ubiquitous device is crawling through just about every home in America, with reports indicating an astonishing 76% of people using a wireless router as their primary connection device. This technology has some great benefits, as the name would indicate it’s well…wireless, and clean, but – there are some fundamental issues especially in bigger home that can lead people to call their I.S.P. as say “my wireless is slow”.

That’s where KTS comes in, with our skilled team we can blow those speeds out, like lights on a Christmas tree, throughout your home! Contact us to find out how.

# Services!

After the first week using this portfolio, I have a regrettable report. That the evaluation of my portfolio, has lost value in comparison to my starting investment! While all of the share are trending upwards at the close of the day, the overall position of all 3 is lower than the summary position on initial investment.

An interesting thought was that the portfolio was up .05 cent in value on August 6^th. Had I been able to see this and sell I’d have made that as a return. Can RobinHood(r) be set up to run an automated sell? While I cannot enable this programmatically, perhaps we ought to revise our 3 fundamental shares using the below “Most Anticipated Earning Releases”?

# Money Management # Investment # Automation

The One Dollar Stock Share Challenge

Today we’re going to discuss Robinhood. It’s been all over Facebook feeds, and some people have claimed to have made tremendous amounts of money, but pending another bubble – the question is how can you position the money you NOW have to bring you sustainable and honest returns?

As a technologist, my interest begins and ends – almost exclusively in that domain, and as you are exploring what’s being sold through Robinhood, the list feature will be a great way to outline any potential purchases.  Depending on your workforce – it’s going to take some discipline to avoid adding an unmanageable number of potential investments to your listing.  Because of that tendency, I am going to limit myself to 3 one-dollar shares, in a large, medium, and small sized company.  

As you begin to think these things through however, you quickly realize that difficulty in measuring this. What is to be considered a “large amount” of employees, or “medium”, or “small”?  Working from my base with Charter-Spectrum, the cut-off for a large company is going to be 95,000 employees. We will half split that and define medium to be 47,500 – and finally a small company to be 23,750.

Now, one problem I am facing is that there doesn’t seem to be a built-in feature on Robinhood to facilitate this type of research. Perhaps that will be coming? Though, continuing with this metric, is quite difficult Robinhood has curated a Technology-based Trending List – which can be filter based on market caps instead.  

It seems to stand to reason that a company with a smaller market cap would have fewer employees, so we will now add this variable to our search.  Its worth noting that the trending technology page has filters beyond the Market Cap that would prove useful, but that will not be covered today.

As I am indexing this trending list, it’s worth mentioning that my eye is drawn to companies I seen market often, and it is for this reason that in spot number 3, I’ve chosen Vizio – and after researching the company, see that it only has registered 500 employees! This company must be very I.P. focused!

Now, in this middle range – there are some creative sparks flying! I have sort of max out a min-max, but the middle range, much like a Venn Diagram, may be best understood as a “connective zone”. Where I ask the question, how are or how can these two entities be connected? Ideally, that’s where K.T.S. will come into play in coming years, but for now only public entities are even tradeable!

So then, we look at what each company offers. 1. Charter Spectrum is a national ISP delivering Television, Internet, and Voice services to it customers. 3. Vizio, specializes in “It engages in deriving the future of televisions through its integrated platform of cutting-edge Smart TVs and powerful SmartCast operating system.” What links these two domains? That is where Southern Copper comes it! While there may be many, many potential links – perhaps the most ubiquitous answer is material, and that material is copper. It’s use in every inch of cable networks, and is a fundamental component of all electronic systems.

After some reflection, it did seem that with Charter Spectrums’ wireless streaming services being limited to specific television brands, primarily and to the best of my knowledge, allowing their users to operate the Spectrum Television App exclusively on Samsung Smart TVs. The unfortunate part about this was that Robinhood does not have any listing for this company – alas, by the time these sorts of things align their policy may have already changed, and who knows when that information will be widely known! 

In summary, we didn’t meet our goal of purchasing a whole value share for $1.00 but, we ended up with 3 strategically aligned partial shares – the next question is how can we impact them with such a small portion in each company? I’m having thoughts on automation…