By Rick Rouse
Rick's Daily Tips

​Now that most everyone carries a mobile phone, first responders are being trained to use them to quickly identify and notify the people that you have designated as your emergency contacts.
And if you think about it it really makes a lot of sense. After all, you already have the people you care about the most on your Contacts List, right? 

Why not make it easy for emergency personnel to use that info to track down your next of kin or someone else you designate if you’re ever in a serious accident or in need of immediate medical attention?

It’s really easy to do. All you have to do is append the abbreviation ICE to the end of your emergency contacts’ names like this:

Jane Doe ICE

ICE stands for In Case of Emergency, and adding it to the end of the names of your emergency contacts makes it easy for anyone who urgently needs to contact them to do it very quickly, even if you have dozens of contacts stored in your phone.

But there’s an even better way if you have a recent model smartphone. You can make this important emergency contact info available right from your phone’s “Lock Screen”. That way first responders will be able to access it even if your phone is locked.

Follow these steps if you have an iPhone:
Note: The steps for entering emergency info can vary slightly from one iPhone top another. Just use the info below as a general guide.
1 – Tap the “gear” shaped Settings icon.
2 – Scroll down and tap Health.
3 – Tap Medical ID.
4 – Tap Edit and fill in any information you’d want first responders to have access to (medications, allergies, etc.)
5 – Choose the names and phone numbers of the people on your Contacts List that you want to add as your emergency contacts. Note: Your emergency contacts MUST be on your Contacts List.
6 – Under “Emergency Access”, toggle both “Show When Locked” and “Share During Emergency Call” to On (their sliders should turn green).
7 – Choose a recent photo of your face for the app’s profile photo to let first responders know the phone belongs to you and not someone else.
8 – Tap Done to save the info and photo you just entered.

Follow these steps if you have an Android phone:
Note: The steps for entering emergency info can vary from phone to phone in the Android world. Just use the info below as a general guide.
1 – Tap the “gear” shaped Settings icon).
2 – Type the word emergency into the search box, then select Emergency information from the list of search results.
3 – Tap Add information again and enter the medical information that you’d like to share with first responders.
4 – Tap the Back button (it looks like a left-pointing arrow) and tap Add contact to add someone from your Contacts List as an emergency contact.

Note: Your emergency contacts MUST be on your Contacts List.

That’s all there is to it. From now on your emergency contact info (and if you entered it, your medical info) will be available to first responders even if your phone happens to be locked when they find it.

By BD Bondy (I know it's not a Mac in that photo)

Every once in a while I write about this, that Mac’s get malware too. It used to be an advertising point of Apple, not a very honest one, that Mac’s don’t get malware. It was never true. As a statistically small percentage of the market, Mac’s were not targeted as much as PC’s, but these days, bad actors are targeting anything they can.
Most attacks start fairly quietly, as an email perhaps. In the business world especially, employees may receive some innocuous email asking for confirmation info, or personal data, enough to get an ‘in’. Once that is breached, the attack accelerates. It’s the same with home computers.

You might get an email, or a pop-up, saying you have a virus and to call a number for help. That’s fake, but it can seem real at the time, especially if it’s accompanied by loud noise and a blinking red screen that won’t go away. The email may ask you to confirm your login or your bank account will be frozen, or your email will be frozen, or whatever. Or maybe it says your Amazon order of $399 is about to ship and if you didn’t place this order, click on the link and sign in to cancel it.

All fake.

And all those ploys will work on a Mac as well as any other device, because it’s not really targeting the device, it’s targeting you. And as they get better at faking things, we have to get better at recognizing them. Be suspicious. That’s the best advice I can give.

What got me started on this particular rant was an email I got from Malwarebytes. You can read it HERE.
​
I do like Malwarebytes, and I pay for several licenses of their product. Over the years I have found their software to be extremely helpful in cleaning up mine and many other people’s computer. This particular email was a bit cliched and inflammatory, but substantially accurate. Mac’s do indeed get attacked.
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Malwarebytes is free to download and use, though they can be annoying in their relentless attempts to get you to buy their product. I still think it’s worthwhile. No software is 100 percent, but being vigil and using some sort of additional protection is a good idea.

By Rick Rouse

If you ever get an email that appears to be from your bank or some other online service saying you need to click a link in the email to log in to your account and update your personal information, don’t do it.

These types of emails are almost always fakes. And even the rare few that are legitimate should never be trusted.

ALL such emails should be assumed to be malicious, regardless of how authentic-looking they are.

Of course there are indeed times when you’ll be asked to verify or update your information for a given account, but that request will almost always be made after you have logged into your account with your current username and password, not before.

Don’t be fooled by “official” looking emails and websites. Hackers and thieves are quite good at making their fake emails and websites look legit.

If you are ever tempted to click a link in an email and enter your username and password, DON’T DO IT!

The website on the other end of that link is most likely a fraudulent copy of the company’s real website.

After you enter your username and password on the fake login screen the bad guys will take the information you mistakenly gave them and log into your real account, pose as you and clean out or otherwise wreak havoc with your account!

I recommend that you follow these steps every time you receive one of these fake emails:

1 – Forward the email to the fraud division of your bank or online service. You’ll find the correct email address to use listed somewhere on their website.
2 – Delete the email without clicking any links contained within it.
A link might appear to be legit, but if you hover your mouse over it you’ll usually see that the URL of the page the link actually leads to a fraudulent copy of the real site.
3 – Manually type in the URL or use a bookmark that you already know to be legitimate for your bank or other service’s website and log in from there.
If anything truly needs to be updated you’ll be notified via a pop-up window or bolded message. If you have any questions at that point you can always call the customer service number listed on the real site’s contact page and ask the rep directly.
4 – If you happen to slip up and enter your login information on a fake login page, go to the real website or call customer service immediately and change your password.
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Bonus tip: This post offers several tips for quickly recognizing a fraudulent email.

By BD Bondy
 
I tend to think of a battery as a small cylinder, or that heavy box under the hood of my car, but a battery can be something quite different, like a lake, or a big container of sand. Basically, a battery is an energy storage container. Battery technology is all the rage right now, and how to recycle and dispose of these newer lithium batteries is also a technology, a bit behind the creation of them, but progressing forward.
 
I try and recycle the lithium batteries I’m given that come in older laptops. They are cylindrical, but housed in whatever plastic thing that fits the computer. They are 18650 batteries, fairly common these days. I buy flashlights that use them, and housings for phone rechargers so I can reuse them and give them away.
 
The bigger picture is what happens with all the car lithium batteries when they are at end of life. Those have generally been stored, waiting for something to happen. Fortunately, they are starting to be recycled, and sometimes, reused. Car lithium batteries are made of smaller batteries that can be reused into battery storage for homes with solar panels, for instance. Also, the lithium can be recovered in some factories. There are even some places that can refurbish these car lithium batteries for reuse in the car. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s happening.
 
How is a lake a battery? We start with water that is pumped up hill to a reservoir, when electricity demand is available, the water can then be drained to the lower reservoir through a turbine, in times of higher demand. It’s a low tech, fairly clean way to store power. https://youtu.be/6Jx_bJgIFhI?si=pWAbsK74PLbg-9GK
 
How about sand? Storing sand in a big container, then superheating it with wind or solar power can store that heat energy for months. Watch this:
https://youtube.com/shorts/FftChWEXe5w?si=-28xTFMRkpvdlxXR
 
Chicago has been doing something like it for years. There’s a company downtown, next to the river, that creates buildings full of ice over the winter. In the summer, it uses the ice as air conditioning for a number of buildings that are their customers. It’s been operating for decades. Exelon now has 4 plants, and produces over 90 thousand tons of ice to cool office buildings and skyscrapers, since 1995.

By BD Bondy
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I’ll start by saying that power strips and battery backups, or UPS’s should be replaced every so often. Let’s say every 5 years. The batteries in a UPS probably won’t last 5 years, but they are typically replaceable. The electronic circuitry in these things is considered somewhat temporary. Yes, it is a marketing thing, but also, it’s a real thing. A power strip is not the same as a surge protector, and I’ve said this before, lightning can go for miles without any wires, so why would a surge protector help you? I suppose the answer is, it may not. In the case of some power surges from the electric company, then perhaps it will help, but a serious strike with a lot of energy, not likely.

Carol unplugs stuff during a lightening storm.
 
A UPS is a useful power supply backup for where we live. If there’s a power blip, we generally work right through it. Our stove and microwave clocks notice it though. If you get a UPS, know that it won’t power much for very long. The typical standard UPS is meant for you to have enough time to power down your computer, and not much else. A bigger UPS will buy you more time. I have a couple of them, one for my tiny computer and one for my WiFi equipment. Carol’s laptop will run for hours on its own battery so that’s less of an issue, but if you need internet during an outage, then you will need to power that equipment.
 
When traveling, you might want a small power supply to recharge your phone, or hearing aids. They come quite petite these days, so they are convenient. Remember to charge them. Usually, you can get 3 or 4 phone recharges out of them before requiring a recharge.  Speaking of small batteries, I bought a battery that can jump start my Borrego. It’s not tiny, but it’s pretty small, smaller than a package of gluten free Oreos. An example is HERE. 
 
Carol bought a battery pack that is quite powerful, for when the power goes out. You can’t run a refrigerator on it, or even a water kettle, but it’ll run your computer or WiFi equipment for some time, and lights, especially LED lights, would probably run for days. It’s the size of a very small cooler, like for holding a 6-pack. I bought a gas generator when she bought that, for a longer haul outage, and for running a fridge or freezer. Another option would be to buy a Rivian or Ford Lightning, but that’s quite a bit spendier.
 
I go on Amazon to buy everything, so that’s my reference. You can go elsewhere but read reviews on whatever you buy.  Items shipped from Amazon (rather than on Amazon from third parties) usually have a good return policy.