My new Mechanic's Friend

Thanks, Gordon! Many years ago, Marianne and I were camping on Emerald Isle, NC. We stopped into a restaurant for a late dinner and walked into a performance by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. It didn't get more authentic than that!

I hope you didn't leave SC without learning the Carolina Shag.

Good on Alexa, Siri, etc for bringing music of our youth!

I have Alexa in the garage to play news and music.  She also turns on the lights over the Speedster.

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@Michael McKelvey posted:

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I have Alexa in the garage to play news and music.  She also turns on the lights over the Speedster.

Maybe so, Michael, but she won't lift a finger to change the oil or set the valves, no matter how often I ask.

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I have ZERO voice control stuff in my home. I'm glad you all like that stuff, it's just not for me. Voice control is shut off on all the household devices.

It's even shut off on my phone, except when Android Auto is in use.

I unfortunately do use it to call people from the car, it's simply safer(and legal!) that way.

The only things I have Alexa controlling are lights in the bedroom and garage.

It is nice to be able to turn off the bedroom lights after being settled into the bed.  The lights over the Speedster are controlled by a switch in and extension cord up high over the Speedster.

I don’t trust having something listening all the time.  As has been reported , things like baby monitors and cameras can be hacked.  I disable microphones on our computers unless one of us is in a conference call.  Cameras too.  My line of work has made me a big paranoid.

One of my neighbors has set his house up as a “smart home” with Alexa managing the hubs which, in turn, control his home security system, HVAC, door locks, garage door openers and house lights.  He can make his outside lights automatic, like for Holiday lighting, as well as a bunch of lights inside the home and his TV.  That way, when they travel the house goes on with the regular lighting and TV routine as if they’re home.  He can also adjust things or get updates on his phone when they’re away.

it’s all pretty interesting but the more you add the more complicated it gets.  I guess there are several Apps involved, all bridged to Alexa so you can manage everything through that single App.  
I’m just happy to get tunes in the shop!

I live in an old, dumb house, and I am the happier for it.

Maybe it's simply an extension of me.

@Lane Anderson posted:

I don’t trust having something listening all the time.  As has been reported , things like baby monitors and cameras can be hacked.  I disable microphones on our computers unless one of us is in a conference call.  Cameras too.  My line of work has made me a big paranoid.

When Mark Zuckerberg tapes over his microphone and web cam, that should tell you something!

There's apparently something in my tone, cadence, or timbre that Alexa doesn't recognize as a human voice. Attempting to shut off the saccharine kids music blaring in the kitchen once Jeanie and the grandchildren have left the house is a sight. I have resorted to unplugging the device from the wall.

OTOH, at least Alexa doesn't think I'm a deviant. Siri has her mind in the gutter, and thinks I swear like a sailor and talk about s-e-x all the time, which makes it interesting to reply to a female store manager's text while my hands are full. If I have to proofread and correct every text, I'm not sure what I've gained with the "miracle technology".

I know it's 100% possible that the NSA, and the Rooskies, and Jeff Bezos' world domination AI algorithm ^tm is listening in on my every utterance, but I think they've found it to be pretty pedestrian so far within the borders of Stanistan. If we were planning a jewelry heist, or a contract killing, or the armed overthrow of the JB Pritzger's Worker's Paradise, I'd probably unplug from all of it... but then again I doubt I'd be posting anything at all on a clown car forum. Once you sign the user agreement, you've pretty much traded away anything the founding fathers carved out for you.

If you're all worried about "the man" listening in on your conversations, I'm a lot more worried about you than I was before we had this conversation.

Like Bob: IM S6, I too, live in a dumb house.   Too many of these devices & apps are as much for data mining as they are for convenience.

One of the many insidious examples is the harmless looking little floor sweeper that sends data about the owner's house.

I can't stop it, but I'm not going to knowingly help.

I remember being creeped out when Caller ID first became widely used.  Having folks answer the phone with "hello & my name", made me look around my office for cameras & mics.

Privacy is extinct.  Trying to maintain a semblance of it is like climbing a greased flagpole, you end up dirty, on your rear, and on the ground.

Believe me Stan, I am NOT worried about "the Man" listening in. But I'm certainly not inviting hackers inside my home. There are no security cameras or microphones inside.

And yes, everything we do is data-mined. From the grocery store and gas station to every other store unless you pay cash. Which I often do.

I do log onto FB through a laptop(so I can talk to crazy aircooled engine builders and clown car owners and such), but I do not have their app on my phone.

Now I only get ads for what I've searched for rather than ads for things we've simply discussed within "mic-shot".

It's funny, those of you who know me know that I love technology. I guess as I age I'm losing interest in it.

There is a difference between being paranoid and simply not interested in being tracked. I lean toward the latter.

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We were kinda jazzed, a few years back, to learn we could just say, "Play Sonny Rollins" and then hear Newk's baritone sax coming through the speakers. We signed up.

Then, there was the famous story of the couple in Portland suddenly hearing their friends' conversation piped through, and we started having second thoughts. Maybe third thoughts, too.

We eventually shut down Alexa and went back to our old ways of listening to music. It hasn't been a great hardship.

What I found most amusing was that Amazon quickly announced they had fixed 'the mistake'.

The Mistake, of course, wasn't allowing the device to record the conversation and send it back to Amazon's servers, where it could be transcribed into text and analyzed for any commercially useful content. That had been laboriously engineered in. Nothing that complex could have just happened 'by mistake'. It was likely the main purpose these things came to be.

'The mistake' was accidentally sending the eavesdropped content to the wrong ip address. Oh well, an honest mistake. Won't happen again. No harm done.

Just how Orwellian a slant you put on all of this is up to you. I don't believe Jeff Bezos or his minions care too much about me or what I think beyond their ability to make some money out of that. And making money is a good thing, right? It's what this country is all about. The constitution protects our right to make money however we want to, doesn't it?

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@Bob: IM S6 posted:

I live in an old, dumb house, and I am the happier for it.

Maybe it's simply an extension of me.

Right there with you Bob, besides the desk top pc, the only high tech things we have are  the $9.99 wireless door bell for the patio door and a garage door remote opener.~)

@Alan Merklin posted:

Right there with you Bob, besides the desk top pc, the only high tech things we have are  the $9.99 wireless door bell for the patio door and a garage door remote opener.~)

That makes you more modern than I, Alan.  We have an external mechanical ringer door bell, and I'm the garage door opener (in all weathers).

Before I retired, I had the opportunity to create 2 offices of information security and to hire a couple of Chief Security Officers.

I also got to interview Admiral John Poindexter, the nice, old, guy who created the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program for DARPA after 9/11. This program's goal was to capture everything - email, website posts, phone calls, etc and filter the data with really big computers to identify threats. Congress was concerned about privacy and shut TIA down.

I asked Poindexter about the shutdown and he smiled and said, "You know, it takes at least 2 years to start up a black, multi-million dollar program." Well, there you go...

I use Google for everything, so "OK Google" is frequently heard around my house. It turns on and off the TV, tells me what the time and date is (retired, don't usually care), plays my music playlists (piano-Oscar Peterson, Red Garland, Junior Mance, etc; country; blues; Texas flood; klezmer; Cajun;.....).

The idea is to use Google to do things that make it easier for us and things that aren't complicated enough to break often. My son passed over a big box of smart lights, but I just can't see the point for our use.

I do like being able to quickly settle arguments by asking Google for answers on things.

The TV is an 82" 8K monster that serves as our view into the world as well as a great PC monitor. It has a 4K webcam mounted on top and has helped us be with family and friends via zoom, duo, or whatever. The cam has a snap down cover but I never snap it down.

I only use a VPN because my local Internet provider likes to decide how fast my connection runs based on what kind of packets I'm sending, and from whence packets are being sent.

I'm not concerned about people snooping on me. I use incredibly strong, but very easily remembered passwords. My router and computers have their firewalls enabled. Dangerous downloads and websites are flagged for my review before acting. Marianne isn't a computer lovin' gal so she gets a nearly unbreakable Google Pixelbook laptop with few complications.

I only worry about keeping the keyloggers and ransomware off of our systems. That said, all of our critical documents are kept up on Google with 2 copies on our local disks. I subscribe to the philosophy of just making it tough enough for the bad guys to not want to waste their time on me. There's plenty of easier fish out there.

Finally, after my conversations with Poindexter and with my son (recruited by the NSA to be an intern when he was in high school - didn't do it), I don't worry about what the smart speakers hear me saying. I also don't worry that the webcam on top of the TV might catch me going to the fridge in my boxers. More power to them if they're good enough to get through the hoops and really want to see a 70 year old man in his underwear (although there's probably a Reddit subgroup that posts pictures of that genre).

I figure online privacy has been dead for nearly 20 years and I just have to make sure I don't make it easy for the non-governmental bad guys. Make my life easier, but not too complicated.

Clap-on, Clap-off wasn't too bad.

I guess being a Luddite fits with driving a car with 90-year-old technology.

@DannyP posted:

It's funny, those of you who know me know that I love technology. I guess as I age I'm losing interest in it.

I'm not at all in love with technology (I think we passed the point where it served us and moved right into us serving it right about at the turn of the millennium).

But the thing I'm saying is that none of us are as invisible as we might wish- anybody who's online (and here we all are!) generally leaves a digital footprint a mile wide, starting with your search engine (really, Google has your very best in mind) and extending right on through your online banking platform, etc. Do you let Google "manage" your eleventy-billion passwords? Me too. Got a car built in the last 5 or so years? It's probably sending data back to the mothership.

You can use Firefox for your browser and duckduckgo for your search engine, but I'm pretty sure that somebody, somewhere is mining your data anyhow.

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For you irony fans out there, it's been 38 years now since we were told '1984 won't be like 1984 '.

Today, the same folks automatically copy all of our data to 'the cloud' for safekeeping unless we know enough to turn that 'feature' off. They also want your fingerprint and a photo of your face, but just for 'security' reasons.

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1984 might not have been like 1984, but 2020-2022 sure started to look a lot like it.

@Stan Galat posted:

But the thing I'm saying is that none of us are as invisible as we might wish- anybody who's online (and here we all are!) generally leaves a digital footprint a mile wide, starting with your search engine (really, Google has your very best in mind) and extending right on through your online banking platform, etc. Do you let Google "manage" your eleventy-billion passwords? Me too. Got a car built in the last 5 or so years? It's probably sending data back to the mothership.

You can use Firefox for your browser and duckduckgo for your search engine, but I'm pretty sure that somebody, somewhere is mining your data anyhow.

Google does not know or manage my passwords unless they are using keystroke software. They are all very secure, and most are unique but like Mike, easily remembered. And they get changed every 3 months, like they made me do at work.

My newest car is 2009, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Guys! Shhhhhh!!

They'll hear you

@DannyP posted:

Google does not know or manage my passwords unless they are using keystroke software. They are all very secure, and most are unique but like Mike, easily remembered. And they get changed every 3 months, like they made me do at work.

Wow. Good for you (and I mean that).

Not this cat. I've got a good one for banking, and change it.

All the rest of them (and there are hundreds, very literally) - the Google remembers, because I surely do not. Did I mention there are hundreds of passwords? I think I did - hundreds. No exaggeration.

I order a lot of materials and whatnot on line. I care not a whit if somebody gets my password to supplyhouse.com or superbrightleds.com or any of 98 other sites.

Yeah, I could care less about the SOC or Appletreeauto or JBugs or FCP Euro. The stuff that doesn't matter pretty much uses the same one, otherwise I'd get locked out, every time. But I always click "never" when the Google asks to save.

I meant the bank stuff, and a certain website I moderate, and Amazon. That stuff gets changed.

Sorry for my lack of clarity.

I used to use the same, throwaway, password (watson12) for all the websites that didn't really need to be secured. The trouble was, I couldn't remember which ones were using the throwaway and which one was using the super tough password that was specific for most sites. I finally just converted everything over to my tough password scheme. I do keep a list up on Google of 90% of the websites I have an ID on and have a cryptic reminder if there's an arcane exception to my normal password rules.

For example, SOC needs no exceptions and has NORMAL4 listed as the password. That means I know it's my normal pattern of numbers, letters, capitals, special characters with a part of the URL mixed in. My wife can remember it and you don't have to look anything up 99% of the time.

I suspect Danny's approach is something similar.

While we here at Five Cent Racing's aircooled division are not quite into going the VPN route (it's not really necessary for us as our ISP connection sits around 100MB all the time), we do have a really good firewall enabled as well as managing our passwords and we get flagged about untrustworthy internet sites, plus we're very careful what we click on.  

The other side of the coin is that hackers don't usually waste time in households - They go after insurance companies and financial institutions and on-line stores with a lot of traffic, like Walmart or DIY stores, where they can get a lot of info for not a lot of work.

I am a little jealous of Mike Picket's 82" laptop monitor, though.  Just the thing for zooming in on photos of Danny P's EFI mods or Lane's body-colored wheels.

Or this Bike Rack I saw this morning, held on by Suction Cups.  Like I'm gonna trust my Carbon Fiber bike to suction cups.  And there wasn't a speck of dust or grime on that "Mountain Bike".

I use a password manager.  It generates a strong password for each site and fills them in for me when I log onto the site.  I only have to remember the password manager password.

@Gordon Nichols, I'm with you, there's no way I'd trust suction cups to secure a bike like that.

@Michael McKelvey, I'm a bit more obsessive than a lot of people, but I don't trust password managers with my passwords.

I know they're a lot better than post-it notes and they do emphasize security, but they are obviously targets for black hats. It just makes me nervous.

This little car was (apart from my Speedster, of course) THE most interesting car at a local cars and coffee.  I'm accepting guesses as to what the heck it is.  It is NOT a kit-car, has an 800 CC 3-cylinder engine, 3-piece removable top, rather narrow seats (although about the same as a Speedster seat, truth be told) weighs about 1500 pounds and, as you can see with Pearl in the background, is roughly the size of a Speedster.  If you zoom in on the fender decal it says "Dealerdents.com" so that won't help you.   Wazzit?

A couple of people have asked about my normal password scheme. Here's how we do it.

The idea is that there is a core of letters, numbers, and special characters that once you remember it, hardly ever changes, but meets the requirements of most banking websites. To that core, you insert at different places part of the URL that never changes.

Here's an example of a tough core that you can remember:

519DdfpS!21

519 is the birthday of your first child, etc. It should be non-repeating and non-sequential, just a few numbers that aren't strongly, publicly associated with you. Something you and your loved one can remember.

DdfpS is a jumble of caps/non-caps that are keyed by a phrase you will always remember. In this case: "Danny drives fast plastic Spyders."

Danny didn't ask anything. His scheme is probably better than mine.

!21, "!" plus your age when you married or any set of non-repeating, non-sequential numbers you will be able to remember, but won't be easy to guess (although, at this point, the password is already triple-tough and the cracker has gone on to easier pickin's).

Ok, so you and your loved one, and maybe your trusted, daughter or son know the core. It's never, ever written down anywhere. You call it "Normal" and you can write that down anywhere and associate it with your email address or whatever the website asks you to use for an ID. It's that tough to crack.

Now, you customize the password to the website by taking part of the URL and adding it somewhere to the core.

For example, SOC. For the "Normal1" password, your loved one looks up at the URL bar and sees www.speedsterowners.com.

She/he takes the first two letters of the site name to the left of the .com, .org, .gov, etc and types it in the front of the core: sp519DdfpS!21

She/he then appends the last letter at the end of the core to get the complete, non-guessable password.

sp519DdfpS!21e

Thus, remembering an easy core phrase, some numbers and a pattern that hardly ever changes makes figuring out a super tough password a piece of cake.

I DON'T change my passwords regularly. I only change the scheme when a key site gets hacked and my password is posted (hardly ever). The other time is when a number of my sites change their requirements. For example, you have to have at least two caps, "!" is not an allowed special character, or the password can only be 10 characters long.

When that happens, I change up the pattern to satisfy as many of the key sites as possible and convert all of my passwords over to "Normal2." I retrain Marianne, to much grumbling and aspersions cast in my direction, and update my public directory (password protected and hidden in a Google file where we can always find it).

We've been using this approach for about 20 years with no failures. We do all of our financials online and buy things willy nilly via the intertubes.

More than you wanted to know, but that's the way we do it.

Yeah?

So... yeah.

Sorry, no.

They have been advertising that bike rack (Sea Suckers) during the tour de france for the past decade. First commercial was funny. Had a couple guys in a 60s VW bus. Later ones showed drag cars going down the lane with a bike attached to the top.

@Michael Pickett

All I could think of reading that was this:

Marianne must be a very patient and tolerant woman.......

@Gordon Nichols posted:

@Michael Pickett

All I could think of reading that was this:

Marianne must be a very patient and tolerant woman.......

😄 You got that right! But hey, it's only protecting all the money that's going to have to last until I'm 85 and she's 95...

Gordon wrote: "Marianne must be a very patient and tolerant woman"

So curiosity got to me and I looked back to 2013 when Connie and I got married.  I was on project #32 a red Speedster then fast forward to last year where I ended at Speedster # 58 and toss in a few dune buggy's over the past year until present, that is also a very patient and tolerant woman ~

@Gordon Nichols posted:

This little car was (apart from my Speedster, of course) THE most interesting car at a local cars and coffee.  I'm accepting guesses as to what the heck it is.  It is NOT a kit-car, has an 800 CC 3-cylinder engine, 3-piece removable top, rather narrow seats (although about the same as a Speedster seat, truth be told) weighs about 1500 pounds and, as you can see with Pearl in the background, is roughly the size of a Speedster.  If you zoom in on the fender decal it says "Dealerdents.com" so that won't help you.   Wazzit?

I believe that's a Suzuki Cappuccino.  Honda had a similarly sized sports car with the engine in back (mid-mounted), and one of those shows up at our local C&C periodically.  They both look like they'd be fun on a twisty back road.

Well, son of a gun.  Lane’s right!

I figured Marty might throw a guess given the color of his old Roadster - Caramel-Cannaloni-Machiatto or something like that, but yup, it’s a Suzuki Cappuccino, which sounds a lot better than a Ferrari Scagliette or Scaramuche or whatever it’s called (there was one of those there for a little while, too).   I just hung out with a bunch of local PCA guys (including my son) and ended up talking more about upcoming Little League games than cars but we all sauntered over to see the Suzuki when it arrived.  The guy traded a Suzuki Beta for it.  I guess there is a “Suzuki Madness” about as strong as our madness.