My granddaughter, Khadija, turned 18 this week. It was here in Kibbles that I first said “just call me gramps” and of course, my grandkids do just that. But to have a granddaughter choosing a college just seems impossible – aren’t I just like 25 years old?

College is unbelievably expensive. I did not realize just how much it costs until I started looking at the schools Khadija is considering. It is no wonder this became a political issue. It is just not right that a kid should be saddled with such an enormous debt when they are just starting their lives.

I just want to mention Small Dog Electronic’s privacy policy. From the very beginning we have pledged to never sell or give your personal information to anyone. You can see our complete privacy policy at http://www.smalldog.com/privacy/privacy-policy.

Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

_Don, Emily & Hadley_

Somewhere along the line, even basic devices started becoming loaded with sensors. iPhones (and indeed many smartphones) now come with a pretty wide array of sensors. This includes things like basic light sensors, proximity sensors, accelerometers, barometers, magnetometers, and of course, the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Some of these sensors are pretty interesting and easy to explain, but others are complex in design and operation.

One sensor that is typically very easy to use, even in analog circuits, is an ambient light sensor. Some types of light sensors use semiconductors and are more complicated, but one basic type of light sensor has been around for decades. It’s called a photoresistor. I took a basic electrical engineering course in college and one of our projects was to design a build a circuit with two LEDs and an op-amp. The circuit needed to show one LED when the room was bright, and flip to the other LED when the room was dark. There are actually at least two simple ways to use an op-amp for this, but the actual sensor used to gather information about the ambient light was a photoresistor. As the name might imply, the device simply changes its resistance based on how much light it is exposed to. More light means less resistance and less light means more resistance. Even simple circuits can be designed to accomplish complex tasks based on changing resistance like this.

An accelerometer sensor is much more complex than a light sensor, especially in terms of physical construction. The ones used in something like an iPhone are extremely small, but the basic construction is the same. They use a mass that is dampened by some type of spring device. When the sensor is accelerated, the mass, which is free to move independently, lags behind the initial movement. This lag in movement is what we measure and how the accelerometer measures acceleration. The lag can be measured in a number of ways, but one of the simplest is by using a piezoelectric crystal. When the mass resists the initial movement, it exerts pressure on the piezoelectric crystal. I’ve talked about piezoelectric crystals before, but just to refresh, when a piezoelectric crystal is compressed or pulled it will create a voltage. This voltage can then be measured and the magnitude can be converted into some amount of acceleration. By using three independent masses locked into three axes a single sensor can measure acceleration in any direction.

Proximity sensors can vary wildly in their construction and size. In high school I remember we used ultrasonic range finders in a number of our basic physics lab experiments. These devices emit an ultrasonic sound wave that propagates away from the device. When the sound wave hits an object, it bounces off of it and returns to the sensor. The internal circuitry is then able to determine the difference in time from the time the wave was sent to when it returned since the speed of sound is known. This allows it to compute the distance. A laser rangefinder works the same way, except it uses light (visible or infrared) instead of sound. Since light travels so much faster than sound, the circuitry must be capable of operating fast enough to measure the extremely short amount of time it may take for the light to be reflected back. Even a simple photoresistor could technically be used to create a kind of crude proximity sensor under certain conditions. If an object got close enough to the photoresistor, the ambient light would probably be reduced. This type of sensor wouldn’t really be able to determine distance, but it would be able to answer if something was close or not.

A barometric sensor is basically a specific type of pressure sensor. Pressure sensors are actually not too complex because once again, they often use piezoelectric crystals. In fact, this is pretty much the most basic property of piezoelectric crystals. When they come under pressure, they produce a voltage, which can be easily measured. Depending on what kind of pressure you’re looking to measure, the sensor can be set up to respond to that type of pressure. For example, a barometric air pressure sensor would need to have some way to have a sealed, known quantity of fluid or gas (air in this case) and then be able to pressurize or depressurize that fluid based on the environmental trigger.

In most cases, sensors are fundamentally simple, but engineers have come up with ingenious ways to miniaturize them so that we can enjoy the benefits of a large array of sensors in something as small as our phones. I eagerly await the day when Tim Cook announces that the iPhone will come with sensors able to detect Klingon warships under cloak. “One more thing” indeed!

Apple just released new versions of all its operating systems–iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS–fixing bugs, plugging security holes, and, best of all, adding a few new features. Here are four things you can do once you’ve updated.

1: *Sleep better after using your Mac late at night*

macOS 10.12.4 Sierra has gained Night Shift, a feature from iOS that automatically shifts the colors of the screen to the warmer end of the spectrum after dark. Night Shift may help you sleep better by reducing the amount of blue light that tricks your body into thinking it’s earlier than it is. Drinking less coffee late in the day works better for me.

To set up Night Shift, open System Preferences > Displays > Night Shift and choose Sunset to Sunrise from the Schedule pop-up menu. Night Shift knows when the sun rises and sets wherever you are, but if you prefer, you can also set custom on and off times. (If you don’t see the Night Shift button in the Displays preference pane after upgrading to 10.12.4, your Mac is unfortunately too old to support Night Shift.)

If you’re working with graphics at night, or if video looks odd, you can to turn off Night Shift manually. Do that either in the Displays preference pane or by scrolling down in Notification Center (click it in the upper-right corner of the screen) to see the Night Shift switch.

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2: *Find the AirPod that fell between the couch cushions*

Apple’s wireless AirPods earbuds are cute, but they’re also easy to misplace. If you can’t find yours, iOS 10.3’s Find My iPhone app can help. Bring it up, tap the AirPods icon in the display, and then tap the Play Sound button to make them play a locator sound. If you’ve lost only one AirPod, you can mute the other so it’s easier to hear where the sound is coming from. Make sure to grab all that loose change from the couch cushions while you are at it!

Note that Find My AirPods works only when in range of a paired iOS device, so it may not help if you lose an AirPod while running.

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3: *Don’t be “that person with the Apple Watch” at the theater*

You’re in a darkened theater, at a movie or a play, and when you move in your seat or cover your mouth to cough, your Apple Watch’s screen turns on, annoying the people around you. Even worse is when a notification rolls in, causing the watch to make a sound. Embarrassing, we know. Happily, watchOS 3.2 adds Theater Mode, which turns on Silent mode and keeps the screen dark by disabling its standard “raise to wake” behavior.

To enable Theater mode, open Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Then tap the Theater Mode button, which is emblazoned with theater masks. After the performance, you’ll need to disable Theater mode manually by tapping its button again.

If you do need to check the time surreptitiously (who knew this performance would go so long!), tap your Apple Watch’s screen, or press the Digital Crown or side button.

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4: *Ask Siri to find your car in a humongous parking lot*

We’ve all been there. You parked at the stadium or mall, but got turned around while you were inside, and now you can’t find your car in the sea of automobiles. In iOS 10.3, you can now search for “parked car” in Maps, or just ask Siri, “Where did I park?”

And if you ever lose your car at a place like Disney World, this feature alone will be worth the price of the iPhone.

Okay this article is admittedly partially a soapbox but I think most of you will agree. I believe that our congress sold out to the large internet providers like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and others when both houses passed legislation to strip away internet privacy rules that prevented these same internet providers from SELLING your personal browsing history and personal information to anyone that wants to pay for it. And who might want it? All those guys with pop-ups and advertisements that mysteriously try to sell you whatever you might have been looking up on the internet. How did they know I was looking at Chicken shoes for Grace?

Our elected representatives are charged with looking out for our best interests. In this case, they abandoned that and sold out to these companies. It is no accident that the same congress-people that voted for this bill, which btw, was written by those same internet company lobbyists, received huge campaign contributions from these companies. So, rest assured, it was not a big national emergency that required a new law to allow them to sell your information, nope, it was, as usual, money. There is no reason whatsoever that these companies should be selling your data, it is not in your interest and not in the national interest. It was a complete sell-out.

But this is going to be the law and you need to be informed about how it may impact your internet usage and what you can do to protect your data.

When I learned about this, one of the first things I did was to contact my internet service provider in Vermont, Green Mountain Access. I got an immediate response from my friends there saying not only were they not ever going to sell my data but that they reiterated their long standing privacy policy. They even posted a notice on their web site:

??Recent news has prompted many to reach out regarding changes in Internet privacy protection. Please be assured that Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom/Green Mountain Access has stood for customer privacy from the beginning. We have no intention of selling or freely distributing private information.??

So, one of the best ways to prevent your browsing history from being sold is to know your ISP and check into their privacy policy. If they do not explicitly say they will not sell your information, assume that they will.

Okay, so I have Comcast down here in Key West so I am pretty sure they are on the other side of this discussion and would love to sell my boring web browsing history. Well, I don’t want them to regardless of how boring it is because, well it is mine, not theirs to sell. So, one way is to use a VPN connection. Fortunately, Small Dog Electronics maintains a VPN network and our ISP believes in privacy so using VPN makes sense. Even if you do not have a company VPN network there are many VPN networks that will give you access for a monthly fee. Do NOT use free VPN services — there really is not a free lunch!

There are more secure browsers to try if you do not want to use a VPN network, such as Opera or Tor but they come with trade-offs in terms of ease of use and speed.

Those are really the only options I can think of besides making your internet browsing really really boring. But the most important thing you can do is to write or phone your congressperson and express your outrage that they would sell you out and remind them that they work for you. This is not a little minor hiccup it is a major shift in privacy that certainly reminds me of Orwell’s 1984.