Announcement: Updates in Progress

Over the years I have published nearly 200 articles here on BLOGGING THE KNIGHTS’ QUEST. As time went by some facts and details have changed. Technology certainly has, too. This includes our platform: WORDPRESS.

Over the next 6 months I will be refreshing many of my articles in terms of both content and platform currency. For now, only 20 are available but that will soon increase. I will also be publishing new articles, as well.


Thank you for your patience during these updates.

Buddy

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The Great American Porn Boycott of 2024: What Parents Need To Know

This year, 2024, is turning out to be an interesting one with regards to children’s access to online pornography. Sixteen states have passed new laws requiring stricter levels of proof that a viewer is over the age of 18 before a web site can allow them to view their pages. These states are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Because of these new laws many porn sites, including PornHub & xHamster (#1 & #4, worldwide, respectively) have electronically “boycotted” those states in protest. To be fair, they also did it to avoid the wrath of various states’ Attorneys General!

What’s going on here?

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Secure Your Kids’ Devices

Parenting today isn’t easy, especially where technology is concerned. It seems that as soon as we put protections into place another threat to our children pops up. Or, after all we’ve done to protect them, they just don not get onboard with the program and mis-use technology. They can even become obsessed or addicted to it. When that happens, you need to secure your kids’ devices.

Fortunately there is a great way to do that: LOCK ‘EM AWAY.

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Filter Your Home Network…for FREE!!!

OpenDNSIt is expensive, and often confusing, to filter your computers, tablets, and game systems for inappropriate material, especially when you have lots of devices in the home. Your children are at risk on any device that has a browser, not just the family PC.  So, how can you filter all these items in your home without breaking the budget or going crazy????

Easy!  You use a free service that filters the web at your ROUTER!

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The WINTER 2024 Newsletter is Out!

The Knights’ Quest WINTER 2024 Newsletter is out!

Click on the image, below, to go directly to the newsletter.

If you are not currently receiving our newsletters and alerts by email you can sign up with the button at the top of the newsletter.

HAPPY 2024!

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THE TECH-SAFE HOME Webinar – Schedule for January & February 2024

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Should Your Family Try the New Public Betas for Apple and Android?

Apple has recently announced the Public Betas for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and other Apple Devices. This is in anticipation of the release of the “Gold Versions” (or “Release Candidates”) of these operating systems this Fall, probably in October. Likewise, The Android Community also has Beta versions of the Android OS available for testing. So, with Internet safety in mind, should your family try the new Public Betas for Apple and Android?

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IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR CIRCLE HOME PLUS

For a number of years Circle Home Plus has been Knights’ Quest Ministries’ #1 recommendation for parents due to it’s features, simplicity, and price. Not only were phones and tablets filterable, but EVERYTHING in the home that used the Web was filtered at the network level. And the price was not bad at all! As with all things, there have been some major changes so I have published this important update for Circle Home Plus!

Circle Has Been Sold

Internet security firm, AURA, acquired CIRCLE, the company. Aura has it’s own parental control app. So, I thought I should post an important status update for Circle Home Plus users!

This purchase of CIRCLE has brought about some changes:

  • The Circle Home Plus production has stopped.
  • The Circle app remains available. It is still recommended for phones & tablets.
  • Aura may offer a hardware solution in the future but the details are not available. The Aura App can be used along side the Circle Home Plus hardware with no problem.

Options

So, where does that leave parents who are using Circle Home Plus, or who wish to use Circle Home Plus?

  • Your Circle hardware and software will continue to function. I do not know if that will change in the future.
  • Circle Home Plus is still available for purchase from eBay. There are both new and used units available as of 7/14/2023. If you get a used/refurbished unit make sure you reset it to factory conditions. Used units, obviously, will not have the 3-months or 1-year of the Premium Services included.
  • BARK HOME is a relatively inexpensive alternative to CIRCLE HOME PLUS. The main thing is that the Bark unit does not have internal batteries nor does it have WIFI. These are useful to counter children just unplugging the power or network cords to disable the parental controls. This product is also in testing.
  • There are a number of routers that have Parental Controls included. Knights’ Quest is testing the Gryphon Tower router, their mid-range device, and will publish reviews in the very near future. If you need such a device now, our recommendation is to use one of the GRYPHON GUARDIAN routers. These come with an app as well as the hardware parental controls system built into the router, itself.

I am also investigating the offerings by Aura, and monitoring for new developments.

In the meantime, I have scheduled Back-Too-School presentations of THE TECH-SAFE HOME Webinar. You can find the schedule and register on the WEBINARS page of my web site: www.knightsquest.org.

Here are some of my articles you can find on Blogging the Knights’ Quest:

Please share Knights’ Quest Ministries with your friends family!

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Raspberry Pi Parental Controls: What Parents Need To Know

Between the Pandemic and increasing emphasis on STEM, many youth and adults are seeking to expand their tech skills. Many are using the RASPBERRY PI series of computer-on-a-chip systems. Middle schools, high schools, and even come colleges use them to teach programming (often called “coding”) as well as other computer skills such as hardware design and programming. Despite their small size, these are capable computers. It is important, therefore, for parents to be aware of the system’s risks, as well as its benefits. So, let’s take a look at Raspberry Pi Computers and Raspberry Pi parental controls.

Meet The Raspberry Pi

You can think of a Raspberry Pi as a “hobbyist’s” computer. The Raspberry Pi Foundation created it to promote basic education in computer science in schools, and in developing countries. There have been a number of generations, with the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Raspberry PI 400 being the latest. At its most basic, the Raspberry Pi is a single board computer. Unlike the motherboards in typical personal computers, the Raspberry Pi is TINY and extremely affordable.

First off, parents must know that the Raspberry Pi also does NOT run WINDOWS or macOS operating systems. It uses a modified version of LINUX called Raspberry Pi OS. (LINUX is pronounced “LEN-UKS”).

Here is the basic computer.

Raspberry Pi 4

This computer has the following features:

  • The microprocessor (the main “chip”)
  • 2GB – 4GB of RAM (Memory)
  • 2 x Micro-HDMI ports supporting 2 x 4K displays.
  • 2 x USB-2 ports
  • 2 x USB-3 ports
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • WIFI (802.11ac, 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz)
  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • Micro-SD Card slot for loading operating system and data storage.
  • 40 Pin GPIO Header for experiments and connection to other hardware

And that starts at $35.00US. NOT BAD!

Incredibly, it is roughly the size of your VISA card!

You still have to provide a power supply and USB-C cable to connect to the board. It also doesn’t have a case, keyboard, or mouse, nor does it come with micro-HDMI cables. There is not a micro-SD card or an operating system. It’s just the circuit card. So, you have to supply the missing pieces, and that includes downloading the operating system package and installing it on a micro-SD card. Seems like a pain, but this is not a computer for everyday use (although it CAN be).

Don’t worry, a number of enterprising firms have created “starter kits” that provide everything but a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. For my investigation I went down to my local Best Buy and picked up the Raspberry Pi 4 4GB Starter PRO Kit by CANAKIT. It was only $99.99US and included everything I needed except for the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Fortunately that was not a problem! The kit also included a case, a micro-SD card w/ the OS installed, and an on/off switch.

Raspberry Pi, LINUX, and Included Software

The Raspberry Pi runs a version of the LINUX operating system. LINUX comes in many different flavors and is extremely popular with corporations and industry. Here are some stats:

  • In 2019, 96.3% of the top 1-BILLION servers ran on LINUX.
  • By the end of 2017, LINUX dominated the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.
  • The ANDROID system built upon a foundation of LINUX.
  • Compared to Windows and macOS systems, LINUX is far less user-friendly.
  • LINUX is seeing increasing use in “embedded systems” such as digital phone switching, TV sets, and more.
    Source: Fortune Mobile Insights, https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/linux-operating-system-market-103037

So as you can see, if your child is going into engineering or computer science, a knowledge or LINUX could be very useful. The Raspberry Pi systems are a good introduction to the LINUX operating system which also allows some hardware interaction.

Like many operating systems, LINUX comes in different “flavors”, called “distributions”. While the Raspberry Pi OS is the primary OS for the Raspberry Pi system, it can use many other distributions of LINUX. For this article, I will stick to the recommended version.

When your Raspberry Pi OS is loaded and your system up and running you will see a fairly familiar sight: A computer screen with a menu button in the lower left, just like with Windows. This menu has a number of programs pre-loaded including TWELVE programming environments, including JAVA and PYTHON, two very popular coding languages.

It also comes with a very capable office suite: LibreOffice. And this is FREE.

Raspberry Pi Parental Controls

The basic package of Raspberry Pi OS also comes with an Internet browser (Chromium) and an email program. This is the major vulnerability. LINUX is NOT supported by the vast majority of parental control software. And the Raspberry Pi O install package has no Raspberry Pi parental controls included. The parental control solutions that do exist in the LINUX world are very technical and are mostly limited to web site filtering based upon web sites YOU input manually. Given the thousands upon thousands of inappropriate sites that we don’t want to expose children to, this is a cause for concern.

There is a solution. You can filter and control a Raspberry Pi by using network-level parental control. Examples are OpenDNS, CleanBrowsing, or (our #1 recommendation) CIRCLE Home Plus. These solutions only work for systems are in your home, on YOUR network.

So, what parents need to know is:

  • Raspberry Pi systems are a great way to learn coding and computer science.
  • Since they have a browser and connect to the Internet, there is some risk of access to inappropriate content/persons.
  • Easily-implemented safeguards are available to the diligent parent for filtering at the network level via products like OpenDNS, CleanBrowsing, and Circle Home Plus.

Resources

To learn more about what we’ve talked about, here are some useful links:

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New Date: THE TECH-SAFE HOME: PROFESSIONAL EDITION Webinar

We have added a 3rd date for THE TECH-SAFE HOME: PROFESSIONAL EDITION Webinar. It will take place on 18 November 2020.

The webinar is FREE, but registration is required. You can register via the link, below:

REGISTER

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