421: Meet Me In The Back Of Sizzler

420: Floppy Emu

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0edy8orrdqin6g3/MacSE_DataTransfer.mov?dl=0

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Topics:

-A family approaches Jerry about retrieving data from a Mac SE. The story has some depth to it outside of the technical. 
-Jerry gets an assist with the Emu, which behaves exactly like a real disk drive, requiring no special software or drivers: https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/
-A tool available in Windows to view these files was http://a2ciderpress.com
-Another win was an online file converter called http://convertio.co
-Joe had some anecdotes about older Mac computers and accessories he had in high school. 
-WWJD (What Would Joe Do)?
-TextExpander was proving to be troublesome for Jerry and he was given an interesting workaround involving Mission Control. 
-Some other tools we like are Keyboard Maestro and Alfred
-Jerry puts Joe on the hot seat about taxes. Joe actually has a story to tell about dealing with the IRS. 
-Are chicken coops tax deductible?
-Pro Tip - fast.com for speed tests. 
-Joe recommends Proton Mail for secure email communication. Especially for data at rest. 
-mail-tester.com is recommended by Proton Mail to test security of your email messages. 

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419: When Jiggled by The Jiggler

Season 8 is here!

• Thank you to our long time sponsor, Jon Brown of Grove Technologies for his continued and increased support of Command Control Power.

• If you would like to contribute to the show, please visit http://patreon.com/cmdctrlpwr

• In the latest “I should have known this” corner, Joe learned something new about widgets from the TidBITs newsletter.

• Sam adds another TidBITs tip about AirTags.

• Jerry revisits the Mouse Jiggler app from Episode 246: Let Go Of My Echo or Echo Location that helped his Fusion Drive encryption proceed, and shares some excellent feedback from Tom Bridge re: encryption requiring the mouse to be moving. Tom suspected Apple is "using the entropy from the mouse cursor to do part of the encryption" which is apparently the case in High Sierra with APFS (although Jerry's drive was not APFS). 

• Jiggler 1.9 : No-Doz for your Mac

  http://sticksoftware.com/software/Jiggler.html

• A benefit to working remotely is that the client won’t see every time you have to google an answer!

• Sam purchased a 13 inch MacBook pro M1 and then somehow a random serial number got added to his apple business manager.

• He made the mistake of not listening to Joe’s rules for making a new migration work properly.

• Joe and Sam are both very happy with their newer M1 computers since they finally have devices that can keep up with everything they do.

• Jerry suggests Synology Migration Assistant because it works very well for him.

• While completing a migration Jerry ran into a password problem.

• Both Joe & Jerry have gathered a treasure-trove of knowledge from a series of YouTube videos from SpaceRex. He has put out helpful videos that can improve Synology performance like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYEEfAI-Upo

• Little tips like disabling SMB1 or SMB encryption on Synology to increase speeds have been helpful.

• Jerry also talks about the realities link aggregation.

• Always consider the quality of drives you add to your drive array.

• Avoid SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives and look instead for CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) drives.

• “Cache” is king.

• Jerry has a real issue with terrible unboxing videos.

• Jerry would love to have a better partner relationship with Synology.

• Joe wants to talk more about ransomware, malware, and protecting your data more in future episodes.

• Important tip: Always have a backup!

• There are risks to relying solely on backups without an “air gap”.

• Sam and Joe highly recommends the Security Advisor on Synology

418: Interview With James Chiappetta, Security Expert From Better Appsec

Topics:

• This week we are pleased to welcome James Chiappetta, Security Expert from Better Appsec.

• An intro to the human element of security.

  • https://betterappsec.com/how-appsec-can-help-balance-product-usability-with-security-e958463aad81

  • https://betterappsec.com/how-to-account-for-the-human-element-in-appsec-146548ecb9a1 

• What are the most common iphone PINs and what drives the creation of them? http://danielamitay.com/blog/2011/6/13/most-common-iphone-passcodes

• Is a 6 digit PIN really more secure than a 4 digit PIN? 

• https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.04868.pdf >> In a throttled scenario, simply increasing the PIN length is of little benefit. In our results, there was no significant difference between 4- and 6-digit PINs within the first 100 guesses

• Product and Usability/Convenience - Opting in vs Opting out

  • The Engine Start/Stop example - https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/do-stop-start-systems-really-save-fuel.html && https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/engine-stop-start-systems-save-fuel-at-low-cost.html 

• What is the responsibility of consumer brands on data privacy and security? 

  • GDPR - accept all cookies?

  • Steve Job’s stance on prompting the user about the decision of opt in vs opt out

  • How or when does the question of optin vs opt on get asked factor in? 

Consumer empowerment. The individual should be able to actively manage their own data via consent, access, and correction mechanisms. In the event of a lack of adherence to these principles, there must be a way for the individual to address the breach without negative consequences. >> https://lolokaufman.medium.com/is-privacy-by-design-enough-12aa4fddb747

417: Nana-Technology or Sitting In A Bubble Of Time

Topics:

• Sam gives a shoutout to Armin Briegel of Scripting OS X for solving a huge problem he was having. If you’re not subscribing to his site, you should be.

• Being a part of the Mac Admins community is invaluable.

• Joe talks about creating a custom AppleScript to sync data in the Photos app. Jerry brings up an interesting point about support over the network.

• Note to self: Triple the estimate when quoting a scripting/automation job!

• The group talks about their automation processes.

• One of Sam’s old difficult clients who he had not talked to in years reached out to him for help. He was not sure how to respond.

• Joe shared a similar story about a client who rebook things off with him coming back after years.

• Jerry says that taking notes can be extremely helpful especially when trying to remember what happened with a client in the past. Daylite is an excellent tool for documenting this information and attaching to a client record.

• Sam tried to part ways with a client that was very time consuming but he didn’t have the heart.

• Joe shares a tip on setting up hot corners because even though they’ve been useful, they also drive him crazy.

• Shoutout to the TidBits content newsletter for sharing tips that even the professionals don’t know!

416: Interview With Annie Chen VP Of Product At Splashtop Inc

Topics:

• This week we are joined by Annie Chen, the VP of product management at Splashtop.

• Splashtop is a Silicon Valley company founded in 2006 that started off as a browser based product.

• Today they focus on remote access to your devices, working closely with GPU manufacturers to optimize and leverage hardware encoding to achieve high performance.

• Jerry commends Splashtop on the feature parity and he talks about how Mac had seemed to always receive the short end of the stick with other remote access products.

• Splashtop has three major offerings: Splashtop Business Access, Splashtop Remote Support - useful for MSPs looking to replace their RMM products, and Splashtop SOS for quick remote access.

• It is easy to try out and adjust to Splashtop, which Jerry found really helpful.

• Sam recently tried to use SOS with a customer and ran up against macOS security settings but was able to deal with it by blindly typing in admin credentials on a Mac

• Annie explains how the Safe Reboot feature works, which will help you reboot a computer remotely without losing access.

• Jerry likes how the screens that Splashtop SOS presents to the clients because it makes it easier for them to know what to do.

• Joe has been really happy with the consumer side of Splashtop as well.

• With Splashtop’s next version release, Mac Streamer will support native hardware encoding.

• They have recently formalized their MSP support group and an advisory panel.

• Splashtop is also working on having a specific build for M1 that they hope will be a universal binary and installed on Mac as a whole.

• They have just launches a monthly subscription plan for Splashtop’s remote support product.

• With Splashtop your subscription can grow as your business does.

• The group is impressed with Splashtop’s feature set in general.

• Jerry mentioned how Splashtop’s competitor would show advertisements even though you paid for the product.

• Focusing on security and protection, Splashtop has set up a security advisory counsel as well.

• Annie says the remote support and SOS products are really great for MSPs and service class teams.

• Visit Splashtop.com to set up a free trial and see what all the fuss is about.