T3’s most famous son plugs in for another electrifying Q&A session
Q WILL TIMSBURY, ISLE OF MAN
I’m worried about public USB ports. Can I get a USB condom?
A Savvy question. You get a big clap from Guru. Trusting anything to a public USB port is a big risk. You cannot necessarily rough the port up to check for potential naughtiness like you might if you were hunting for a credit card skimmer. You’ve just got to trust that someone hasn’t stuck something nefarious on it along the line, whether it’s designed to swallow up your data and ship it off to some poor individual in the Far East for processing, or install malware onto that phone you’ve been waving away the security updates for. Is it likely? No, not at all. But could it happen? It could.
Pack yourself a suitable prophylactic in the form of a charging-only cable. Amazon naturally has a bunch – look to spend around £10 – and also boasts even more ingenious devices, which vasectomise any old cable, sitting in line and cutting everything but the power. Look for a ‘data blocker’.
What none of these things can do is protect against ports that are inadvertently providing too much juice
What none of these things can do is protect against ports that are inadvertently providing too much juice. These could fry certain devices – to prevent this, you could buy an overcurrent protecting USB Isolator (around £25, the same product available from numerous generic no-name brands) but you’ll be stuck with USB 2.0 speeds if you plan to use it for data.
The best prevention, dear reader, is abstention. Just make sure you’ve got a battery bank handy (Guru would like to make it clear that he will not refuse a £259 Shargeek 100 if one happens to be sent to him) and stay away from filthy public ports.
Q MATTHEW IRELAND, EAST FINCHLEY
Video on my iPhone Pro Max 15 is... less than good. Help!
A Guru, a staunch Android man since his iPhone 4S had an argument with some gravel over a decade ago, will admit that this is a bit of a gap in his otherwise universe-spanning knowledge base. However, his good chum Wade from the excellent YouTube channel DankPods – which is, amongst the man’s many other channels, filmed on iPhones – has clued him in to some fixes.
The problem is Apple’s barmy default settings. From the factory, stereo audio recording is switched on, which does undesirable things when you zoom. Switch it off unless you’re using a static shot. Auto FPS is also activated by default. This cuts the FPS down to 30 when the phone detects low light conditions, and switches to 60 when things are bright. Logically giving the sensor twice the time to suck in light when it’s dark sounds good, but evidence suggest
