Micro Robots

[yogi]

My AI search engine says ...

• how does an oximeter work
  
  An oximeter is a medical device that measures oxygen saturation in the blood. It works by using two wavelengths of light to measure the absorbance of oxygenated hemoglobin and deoxygenated hemoglobin in the blood. The device then calculates the ratio of oxygenated to deoxygenated hemoglobin and reports the oxygen saturation level. This measurement is a useful indicator of overall health, as oxygen saturation levels can indicate underlying health conditions such as anemia, heart failure, and COPD.

I'd have to agree with you that accurate BG readings are essential, but the #1 priority is that oxygen. I really don't know what kind of wearable BG equipment I read about. The article seemed pretty upbeat in that it said this device would do what sticking your finger used to do. I left with the impression that no needles were involved and that was why the article was written. Most likely it was a lab experiment and not anything marketable.

[Kellemora]

Actually, there are all kinds out there now, even some you just press your fingers to and it uses sweat to make the measurement, no more poking to get blood.
They even have patches now that add insulin as needed through the skin somehow.

Here is a sight that explains some of the different types now available.

https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine ... y-attempts

[yogi]

That article was impressive. I probably read about the Samsung version for their wearable watch because I was looking for that kind of information when I got my wife the Android wearable for Christmas. Interestingly enough the article points out that Android doesn't seem to be interested and doesn't have any plans for a noninvasive BG measuring machine. One of the critics in that article makes a very good point. Even if people have good data about their blood sugar, most don't know what to do about it. That is where I see you being well ahead of the pack.

[Kellemora]

I've been able to control my BG using diet and the only drug I take is 2 metformin tablets at dinner. That's it for that.

I just wish there was some way of getting the CO2 out of my lungs more efficiently than doing pursed lip breathing.
That one machine my O2 guy told me about that works better than BiPAP, my doc won't prescribe it yet.

[yogi]

There have been many times when you impressed me with your knowledge and thinking out of the box even in regard to your health regime. No doubt if you had access to the right equipment you could invent something to overcome the CO2 problems. Once in a while I've had situations where a doctor won't prescribe something because the insurance would not pay for it. It seems that is a huge issue here in Missouri. They are very conscious of costs, but can't do a thing to reduce them. I don't talk to very many people about health issues, but I can say you are way ahead of all those I have spoken with. Many just accept what they are told by the doctor.

[Kellemora]

I hunted around and found a slightly used oxygen concentrator just at the right time for me to need an extra one around, for my office actually. Got it for half the price Medicare is paying the leasing company MONTHLY for my doctor ordered one. It also worked much better than the one I was leasing, so they finally replaced it for me with a newer one.
I'm supposed to be back in bed resting, so cutting most of the replies very short.

[yogi]

Y'all do what you got to do and need not worry about how short your responses need to be. If my computer doesn't crash and burn I'll be here once you feel up to sitting in your office again.

[Kellemora]

I feel my best sitting in my office. But like today, by the time I finished all of my meds, inhalers, nebulizers, new meds and wait between them, it was 3 hours sitting at the kitchen counter doing all of that stuff. Plus it was pouring down rain all morning.

As I said all week, and told my doctor when I was at his office last week. I wasn't feeling good and having problems with my CO2 and O2 dropping like a rock, plus I just didn't feel right. As usual, the doc brushed it off, even though they did the lab work and sent me a copy.
If you recall, he said I wasn't quite ready for the APAP machine yet.
Plus he didn't say much about my constant wheezing.
Well, the ER doctor gave me some new meds to help with the wheezing and I could tell the difference right away.
I don't have an infection, so I don't understand the week of antibiotics I have to take, plus another powerful drug I take for 7 days, and both of those drugs make one feel like H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

[yogi]

Yikes On a positive note I must say it is better to feel like H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks than it is to actually be there.

It's not for me to reason why doctors come to whatever conclusions they come to. They certainly don't use logic. This goes double for the doctors manning the emergency rooms. They got to be sharper than the average GP and many of them are. I could only guess why you are on antibiotics, but if it helps, why question it? I'll add that I'm grateful to see you here. Even more grateful that you are able and willing to write a few words when you feel so yucky. You have my admiration in addition to my sympathies.

[Kellemora]

I told a couple of friends, well it took 12 hours but the staff at the hospital PUT MY WHACK BACK!
They also put me on a 6 day fine-tuning regiment!
This was to make sure I didn't Go Out of Whack again, hi hi.

I've heard some people say they know people who are Out of What, but never knew anybody who went To Whack.
So I will say, you go To Whack, you can only go back INTO Whack, hi hi.

My office is my Safe Space where I have all the comforts of being Meshugenah, hi hi.

[yogi]

I don't know what you said there, but is certainly is whacky. I have an idea what Meshugenah is however.

It's good news to learn that you can get your Whack Back and it just adds to the admiration I have for those ER doctors. Over the many years I've been here I have personally been treated by ER staff more than a few times. A couple of those times were actually life saving events. Once it had to do with massive pulmonary embolisms where I could not take more than a few steps before I ran out of breath. My heart rate was around 180 then too, if you can believe it.

I guess we all have a safe harbor and yours is custom made. The best kind. At times I feel kind of desolate here in Missouri. All I can say is this Command and Control Center is comfortable ... when it's not windy and cold outside.

[Kellemora]

Meshugenah is a Jewish word for CRAZY, hi hi.

Well, so far I've made it through a 35 foot fall, a major electrical shock, two heart attacks, and my two terminal diseases have not quite killed me yet, but they are desperately trying to.

My move to Tennessee was a MAJOR cultural shock for me, and worse than that, all the TIES I had to companies and suppliers back home, plus many friends I could call for help, I have NONE of that down here in East Podunk.
Ham Radio was my key to the outside world, and now the Internet has more or less replaced that in a more interesting way, that is functional for me.

I've played caregiver twice at home, and once down here, so never had time to get involved in anything or meet many people.
So my office and my computers are my friends and entertainment.
And now that I'm stuck in a chair hooked up to medical machines, I guess this is my fate now!
Good thing I can sit all day and use a computer and not get bored from it.

[yogi]

I had some Jewish friends for many years and the term meshugenah came up a few times. The context in which they used the word gave away its meaning, but I never did ask for a definition.

I'm sure it's only a temporary phenomena but I'm not feeling very meshugenah these days. My computer had a self-induced problem that revealed a few other problems I never knew I had. It took a lot of effort but I solved some highly technical problems and I can't help bragging to myself about how sharp my mind still is. The darnedest thing about it all is that I actually feel good mentally and physically, sort of like you do after a workout in the gym and a hot shower afterwards.

I got to tell you about the followup to one of those problems. It seems that Microsoft in all its wisdom by default binds every new Windows installation to their OneDrive cloud. They send copies of all your profile folders up to the cloud for the purpose of syncing to all the other computers you have that particular OS installed in. Windows 10 in my case. But, I only have one computer with Windows 10, and even if I had more I would not want to use the cloud for syncing. Finding out how to un-sync and how to disable this built in "feature" was a nightmare and a half. But I did it. I no longer am linked to their OneDrive cloud.

It turns out that unlinking my system and uninstalling the software does not remove whatever has been collected in the cloud over the years. All that content is still there. Fortunately I can get to my OneDrive account over the Internet and edit it all I want. I decided that for a little while longer I will keep my profile data up there in its present form. However, I decided I don't need the photos. I could not believe how many photos there were until I started to delete them. There are old pictures going back to 2007. Yes, 2007. That must be the year they invented OneDrive and I just migrated from Win 98 to Win 7. Needless to say there were hundreds, perhaps a couple thousand, of images of all sorts. Even a few I would never put on a public server such as OneDrive.

If the above isn't incredible enough, get this. About half way through the deleting process, which took nearly an hour, I get an urgent e-mail from Microsoft. They wanted to make sure I knew a large bunch of files were being deleted, just in case I didn't know it. I laughed at first because they now don't have my photos on their server, but then it dawned on me that Microsoft, or their robot, knew what I was doing in real time. This is a double edged sword, obviously. I would want to know if somebody is hacking into my cloud storage, but I don't want to know that Microsoft is watching me 24/7. Knowing that they are watching EVERYBODY who uses OneDrive doesn't make me feel better either.

[Kellemora]

I thought you had to pay for cloud storage?
I am surprised they just linked your computer to it and uploaded stuff there you didn't know about.
You can add that to another reason I don't like Windows spyware!

[yogi]

It turns out that you have cloud storage too, but yours is in the form or whatever Google offers. Since you use their browser, you have access to all of Google's services whether you use that access or not. When I got my clever phone from Google, it also linked me to their cloud storage exactly the same way as did Microsoft. No matter what photograph I took with the phone, there was a copy in at least two places in their cloud storage. Fortunately they discontinued the automatic backups to what they call Albums in their Photo service. And they no longer sync anything I do through them unless I specifically instruct them to. As is the case with Microsoft, the cloud storage for all this synchronization is free, up to a point. I think the limit is 10 or 15 gigs on the Google server. Some people exceed that limit and that is the point at which they must purchase more cloud storage. It's considered to be part of the operating system.

I have a funny story to add to this saga. I believe it was on Twitter before they jumped into the toilet bowl, or perhaps somewhere else. Wherever it was a guy posted a note along with a photograph of a scantily clad woman. The note thanked that woman for stealing his phone and told her he is buying more storage space so that she can continue taking pictures of herself. That was the meme and funny by itself. But, it was instructive as well. This guy was deliberately sending all the photos his camera took up to the cloud. That gave him the ability to log into the cloud storage from any computer in the world that has Google services available. I could see some benefit to that for certain people. It's not the kind of thing I personally would want to do, but it is a legitimate service.

My experience with my clever phone was my first direct exposure to cloud storage services. It never occurred to me that Microsoft would be doing exactly t he same things Google is doing, but then again, Microsoft is a direct competitor. So why not? It so happens my wife and her Apple Computer iPad started getting messages from Apple regarding her needing to buy more cloud storage. At first I thought it was spam, but nope. They too are doing exactly what Google and Microsoft are doing, and in fact are in competition with them as well.

The good news is that all this so called sync and/or backup can be turned off and all the stuff in the cloud can be erased. The default, however, is to allow them to do it. Check out Deb's Windows computer. Navigate to C:\users\<account name>\ where you will see the familiar directories Desktop, Downloads, Music, Pictures and others. If a directory named OneDrive is there also, you want to look and see what is inside that directory because all of it is up on the cloud too. If there is no such directory, ignore this warning.

[Kellemora]

I've used DropBox when I was going to writers meetings and they used it, it is how we shared things for editing purposes.
I still use it from time to time to share a file too large to e-mail, and after they say they got it, I delete it to free up my space.

It seems to me that only YOUR stuff should take up part of your cloud storage space. Not folders shared with you from other groups, because they are already on the cloud space for that group. Now if you edit something and put it back in the folder, then perhaps it goes in your folder since you added to it. But I think it should just go to where it came from.

I don't remember seeing any drive named One Drive on Debi's Win7 computer. Could be there though, I'll look.

[yogi]

One of the benefits of cloud storage is what you talk about regarding collaboration. My daughter, the school teacher, uses the Google version of it with her coworkers for all kinds of document sharing. To be honest I don't know what the directory structure is in her case, but I would guess the school district has an account which all the teachers use. Then, each teacher has their own personal account. Thus everybody has access to the school's documents, but nobody has access to the private accounts unless you specifically name them as a shared party. Those shares could be public, private, or with just a specified group, such as the people in your list of contacts. Usually it's all read-only, but they can download anything that is shared. It's a great system in that I can put some humongus document up on the Google Cloud and then designate you as the person I'm sharing it with. You can then view it and download it, which is pretty much the same way Dropbox works. The difference is that everybody already has Google. LOL Each account has a free storage limit which is why the shared files are generally read-only. But, if you trust the person you share things with, or if it's a corporate share, then you can also make it read-write.

Maybe I'm just naive but I had no idea anybody was backing up my private folders from my computers/smartphone. I can understand why they do it but I would have appreciated knowing that they ARE doing it by default. Well, now that I know what is going on, there are a lot more restrictions on my computers than there used to be.

[Kellemora]

There are quite a few websites, big important ones too, when I log in I get a warning to change my password because my password is on a list of compromised passwords. OK, so what, nobody has ever hit any of those accounts for anything.
Probably some hacker got in and downloaded something from their server, but never did much with it afterward.

I see the CLOUD as one BIG PLACE where Hackers would spend many hours a day trying to hack into to see what they could find there they could use against someone.
I view it the same as I do the Public Airwaves. If you don't want people eavesdropping on your conversations, don't put them out on the public airwaves. They can force the makers of things like scanners to lock out certain frequencies from unlicensed buyers, but they cannot block the public airwaves or make it illegal for a person to receive data sent over the public airwaves. So the way companies are getting around that is to encrypt everything now. Even so, encryption can be broken, beefed up, broken again, and it becomes a vicious circle of trying to stay ahead of the hackers.
Heck, even when they first started making Spiraled 5-1/4 floppies, I managed to figure out how to crack that spiral and copy those disks, and I was no hacker, not by a long shot, it was just that simple back then, hi hi.
But the way I see it, no matter how more complicated they make the protection, there will always be somebody who figures it out and publishes it to the rest of the hacker world. So I just don't worry about it anymore.

[yogi]

It's not as simple as you might suppose. A lot of companies are being hacked these days, but way less than 10% of those hacks are brute force. Most of the breaches are due to either phishing or internal security issues, i.e., disgruntled employees. Also, the security applied to stored data is a lot stronger today than it was even 5 years ago. I will agree with you that nothing is bulletproof, but it takes the resources of a government or a military organization to break into most sensitive databases. Unfortunately a lot of network and database administrators don't have the skill or inclination to come up to speed. Thus it's pretty much like you say, it's out of our personal control when it leaves our home computers. Be that all as it may, the utility and usefulness of cloud storage is growing every day. Saying you don't want to put your data in the cloud because it's vulnerable is like saying you don't want to put your money in a bank because it can be robbed.

Those compromised password list warnings most likely come from your browser. There are several lists of known encrypted passwords for sale on the Dark Web, and people like Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft have those lists. They like to warn you to make you feel better about using their products, but there is no amount of warning that will cure stupidity. Researchers have found that at least 10% of the passwords people use are a variation of the word "password" and only takes microseconds to break. If you truly don't care about what information you put a password on because you have nothing worth stealing on the public network, then you might want to think about the repercussions of somebody stealing your identity on those accounts and doing their dirty work in your name. It's not all about stealing sensitive data, you know.

[Kellemora]

But money in the bank is INSURED so I've not lost anything if the bank was robbed. I get my money back!
You can't get your data back if it gets erased.

People do that on places like Farcebook all the time, without ever knowing or using your passwords.
They simply copy your Profile over to a new page they own, give it your same name, and let folks on the friends list link back again. Many of these are discovered, but a whole lot are not. I often check my own name on websites to see if there is more than one using my name since the last time I checked.
I have an interesting way of generating my passwords so I can remember a lot of the newer ones using my system. I still have many old ones out there from places I haven't been to in years.
I changed my password at the bank where I do business because I got a warning about it being compromised. I don't see how it could have been, since I created a quite complex one for there from the git go, and changed it slightly not to long after that. When I tried to create a new password, it kept telling me that password is in use.
I called the banks IT department and told them I need it fixed. They said they would send me a temporary password, and will delete my old password history file so it will be blank.
Well, they did that for me, sent me a password by e-mail, that said to cut n paste to the password box, don't try typing it.
So I figured there must be some hidden symbols in the one they e-mailed me. In any case, I went and put the password I like to use for them back in again, it took it, and it works with no warnings. The exact same was that was supposedly compromised.

I forgot I had already been here today, so will catch the others tomorrow.