I have generally enjoyed Kim Komando’s tech advice. It turns out she’s a real person. I figured it was a bit of a front, like Ann Landers or Miss Manners. Anyway, I was reading about her take on smart phone power usage. Her basic point is that your phone may be slowing down, not because of the internet or the age of the phone, but because of the clutter.

Like Windows PCs, the smartphone accumulates a lot of junk. Like PCs, the phones often come brand new with a bunch of stuff that you don’t want or need. Eventually, it accumulates even more of this junk and that stuff will slow down the phone, use up battery life, and eventually annoy you. You can do something about that.

The first thing to do would be to start deleting apps you don’t want or need. That’s straightforward enough. Don’t worry, I’ll have a link to her article that will explain the how to’s in detail. But some other things to check are what apps are running in the background. When you close your app on the screen, really what’s happening is that it minimizes the app and you return to the home screen. On an iPhone, if you slowly swipe up from there, it will show all the apps running. You can swipe them up to actually close them. On an Android, you touch the 3 bars on the lower left to show all the apps running.

Similarly, you can have a lot of tabs open in whatever browser you use. In Chrome, it lists how many are open in the lower right and you can tap on it. Having a lot of tabs open will slow down the browser and use more battery. Keep open all the tabs you want, but be aware of the cost.
Likewise, things like Bluetooth and WiFi and cellular are all taking up battery life. If you aren’t using them, turn them off. Obviously, you have to use something, but turn off the Bluetooth if you don’t use it. Put your phone in airplane mode if you aren’t using the WiFi. And you might want to try turning off cellular if you tend to use WiFi calling and are always in a place with WiFi.

Something to note, Facetime uses a ton of battery. While I was in Phoenix for a couple of weeks without Carol, I Facetimed with her about 10 times a day​, at least. My phone battery, which usually lasts all day easily, was dead by the afternoon. 

A link to Kim Komando’s article is HERE.  I offer it as some helpful tools to save your battery and keep your phone going a little longer. Good luck.

And it's not Pretty
​By BD Bondy

I’m currently out of town, no longer working in computer repair, and not a Windstream user, however, I’ve gotten some calls about a problem with Windstream involving email, and their password?
 
What I can gather from speaking to a few people is that it appears that Windstream is doing something with their email servers, and eventually switching to their Kinetic name. I’m a bit fuzzy about this, but if you go back 20 years or so, you may remember when Quest was replaced by Valornet, and then Valornet was replaced by Windstream. There were some issues back then with emails and particularly, keeping the Valornet.com email.
 
It sounds like Windstream is requesting customers to change their passwords. There seems to also be a new portal to access Windstream on the Internet, called GoKinetic.com. I usually access my Windstream account at Windstream.NET. The GoKinetic.com portal URL is Windstream.COM, so I’m guessing that Windstream is moving towards dropping the Windstream name and going to more Kinetic nomenclature.
 
I have no idea why they need you to change your password, but so be it. If you use web mail for Windstream, then you change your password there, and you’re done. If you have a mail client, as in on your phone, tablet, or you use Windows Mail, Outlook, Apple’s mail program on a computer, etc., then you need to change those as well.
 
First though, you would need to change your Windstream email password. So, go to Windstream.NET, and sign into it. From this screen, you can click on the email option, or the GoKinetic option. Either case will get you to a sign-in screen which will offer a way to reset your password, but you really need to know your current password.
 
Another thing to keep in mind is that you also have a Windstream userid and password that go to your account with them, and it is not to your email. You may not remember any of that since you would almost never need it, but still, you have one. You don’t need it now though.
 
When I tried to reset it on Windstream.net, it didn’t work and required my account number which I provided, but it still didn’t like it. When I did the reset on GoKinetic, it was simpler and worked fine.
 
Ultimately, I found this all to be very user unfriendly and clunky, in addition to looking very out of date. I do give Kinetic credit for updating their pitiful security that hasn’t changed much in 15 or so years?
 
AFTER you update your Windstream/Kinetic password, you will need to update that password wherever you used it. So in your phone, your tablet, your email program, it must be updated as well.
 
I don’t know why in the support tab in email that the help for resetting a PW is so far down the list, but here is what they provide:
 
How do I recover or reset my email password?
Accounts that are inactive (without any Webmail, POP or IMAP activity for 180 days) will move to inactive status after 180 days and not be accessible to the end user. To resolve this, chat with us in the Go Kinetic Portal
Note: To recover your password, you must have first completed the security questions associated with your account.

1. Login to GoKinetic
2. Click on View and Manage Email
3. Select Forgot Your Password or Need to Reset It? Or Email Identity Dashboard
4. Follow the prompts on the screen to create a new password

OR
Go directly to windstream.net click email on the top right of the menu bar and follow the prompts on the screen to reset your password.

Hopefully you will find this as interesting as I did. Several years ago, I read a news article about a woman whose husband contracted a bacterial infection that was antibiotic resistant.  In the article, he was near death, like, VERY near. He had been sick for months, barely alive, and doctors had no more treatments, The wife was an infectious disease epidemiologist, a researcher, not a doctor. She had one idea left.
​
Their story has come out in book form, called The Perfect Predator. As we travel a great deal by car, we listen to a lot of books, and that was the last one we listened to. I was fairly riveted by the story, though mostly by the actual science of it, less the more personal stuff. Still, it was an amazing story.

You can read an actual news article about them HERE. 

You can read a bit more about the book HERE. 
​
Basically, there has been a lack of new classes of antibiotics in 60 years, and the existing ones are becoming less useful as bacteria adapts and becomes resistant to them. As such, our health care system faces some dire problems in the future, in a way, regressing our ability to fight infections to pre world war 2, and penicillin days.

A hundred years ago though, there was a science going on trying to fight infections with viruses. It seems weird to think, but some viruses live to ‘eat’ some bacteria. And that science has continued throughout the century, though with the advent of antibiotics, it has been studied far less in western medicine. Particularly, it has been continued to be studied in the former Soviet Union, and specifically, in Russia, Georgia, and Poland.

These viruses, called Phages by the author of the book, are collected from all kinds of places, as viruses thrive in all kinds of places, particularly waste. Okay, so all this preface to a story and book that I enjoyed is really to get to this, AI was used reccently to invent a new class of antibiotics. Read about it HERE. New Class of Antibiotics Discovered Using AI | Scientific American

It is a fascinating article, not only about the use of AI, but using the AI to also EXPLAIN how the AI came to its conclusion. Instead of using the AI to solve a problem, the scientist asked the AI to show how it came up with the solution, thereby teaching the scientists its method, and also proving its theory.

While antibiotics appear to have a lifespan of usefulness, being able to invent new ones will be critical to the health of humans. Having something else in the arsenal of fighting infections, whether it’s a new antibiotic, or a new format completely, as in phages, will be critical to the continued survival of our world as we know it. That sounds overdramatic, but I don’t think it is.
Fighting infections has arguably been the single most important medical advancement in human history. Surgery, dentistry, cuts and abrasions, food borne illness, eating, drinking, human interaction, they are all able to spread infections. Fighting off those infections is a human requirement.

By Rick Rouse

Note: Rick's Tech Tips provides helpful tech tips for all levels of Tech.   Sign up for this newsletter.

You probably know how important it is to wipe all of your personal information from your computer’s hard drive before selling it or giving it away.
But did you know it’s just as important to wipe away every trace of your digital life from your smart phone before selling it as well?
Lets face it, there’s really no way to know whether the person who answered your Craigslist ad is honest or not.
And what if the buyer is simply curious by nature and decides to take a gander at the photos you’ve taken and the text messages you’ve sent and received over the years?
Believe me when I tell you that whatever information is on your phone when you hand it over to a new owner will almost certainly be viewed and read.
That’s why it’s extremely important to digitally wipe your phone clean of any and all personal files and information before handing it over to the buyer after you sell it. Here’s what you need to do:
1 – Back up your contacts and photos so you’ll be able to restore them onto your new phone.
If you have an Android phone you’ll find instructions for backing it up right here.
If you have an iPhone, click here.
2 – If your phone has a SIM card, remove it and keep it. The new owner can (and should) procure one of his/her own.
3 – If the phone has an SD card installed in it, remove it and keep it.
Note: Be sure to let the buyer know you’re selling the phone without SIM card or SD card.
That should prevent them from being upset later if they bought the phone expecting it to have those items.
4 – Reset the phone back to its factory settings.
You’ll find instructions for resetting the phone in its user manual.
If you no longer have the manual you should be able to download or access a digital copy from the “Support” section of the manufacturer’s website.
Now that you have removed all of your personal information and photos, you can safely hand over the phone to its new owner with no worries.

My brother reminded me that I forgot the most important tech tip EVER, in last week’s News. So here goes, hang on tight.

Try rebooting! What that actually means is to do a power cycle, or, power it off, then power it on. Yes, that is likely the single most critical and worthwhile tech tip I can offer. And it’s not just me, a lot of tech folks will tell you, ‘Rebooting’ cures a whole lotta what ails you.

From TVs to cars, to phones and computers, a power cycle can often be just the thing to resolve problems. Too bad you can’t do that with our government, but I digress.

So Bruce, thanks for the reminder.

Now, on to the next thing. Tech can be tricky, and super frustrating, so be patient, and if you are getting angry, then call for help. Call your kid, or your grandkid. Call a neighbor or a friend, but don’t get mad. Sometimes you need to take a break. Feel free to write me at bdbondy@gmail.com if you need to, and I’ll try and help.

Don’t fall for any scams. I talked about this last week and, over that time, I received several, including one from ‘UPS’ about a package unable to be delivered to me.  What’s the thing about getting a text message that says ‘Hi’, or the one saying they haven’t seen me in a while and let’s get together and blah blah blah. I delete those and report them as junk, which is an option when selecting Delete.
​
Final tech tip of the day, ease up on the tech. Go take a hike, or at least a walk, and look around where we live. It’s stunning here. Northern New Mexico has to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Don’t want to walk, then drive. One of the most stunning drives I’ve ever done is up Hwy 84 to 64 and across to Taos, and then down to Espanola through the Rio Grande Gorge. So much to see.