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Quickly importing events using Khal

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 10:07:16 +0100

I keep a little file on my computer. It synchronizes with my other devices using Syncthing. The file is called useful-commands.md. Basically, if I ever had to spend more than 5 minutes figuring something out, I keep the commands in that file.

Problem

I have multiple employers that have all, for some reason, decided to not only use the same planning software, but to hide the link to the calendar. This is an option, one of the employers has activated it, the others chose not to because:

If we activate the iCal link, nobody will download the app.

Yep. They have all paid (the same developer) to make an app using their branding and colours to inform students and professors of their schedule.

Stupid.

I can still see my schedule online, though. And, as it turns out, when you export your schedule as a PDF each event is listed like this:

DD.MM.YYYY HH:MM HH:MM Class (Group)

This is extraordinarily convenient because Khal—a CLI calendar program that synchronizes with CalDAV calendars—uses that format for adding new events, so I only need to copy and paste each event into the terminal:

$ khal new 27.02.2024 08:45 10:15 Class (Group)

That is awesome. But, if you need to do this 120 times per semester, it gets old fast.

That is why, in my useful-commands.md, I have this noted:

# How to... use khal to add a list of classes
file="lessons.txt"
while read -r line; do khal new $line; done < $file

This is my reminder to copy all the events to a .txt file and loop through the list of lessons and make Khal add them.

explainshell.com can break it down if you like that sort of thing. I just copied things I found around the web and modified them to my need.

Since I will be importing these events, I can also add a description for each one while I’m at it. So, I make a tiny modification on each line:

27.02.2024 08:45 10:15 Communication Skills (Group S3) :: Public Speaking Evaluation

Running the commands takes little to no time, even with hundreds of events.

After, I force it to synchronize with

$ vdirsyncer sync

and it is added to my shared calendar for my partner to see.

Happy Birthday Blog

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The first post I made to this blog was on 2021-01-28. That was three years ago.

Since then, I have made around 60 posts. The intention to write more was there, but time and inspiration were not on my side.

Nonetheless, I feel that the past three years have been a success.

This is a blog. It serves no commercial purpose. It is made with free software and hosted on a free service. (note to self: make a donation to codeberg) I have no idea how many people have ever read it. Even if 10 people have read something I wrote, I am happy. I don’t want to be an influencer, I am not a certified expert on anything, and I consider most of my hobbies a little dull. I like it that way!

How then has this blog been a success?

It let me express myself. It doesn’t paint a picture of who I am; it is more of a doodle. An honest one, mind you.

Over on the stats page, there is a word cloud that is somewhat representative of how I would describe my interests, because the biggest words in the cloud are:

technology (but not really anything specific),
education (because I am a professor),
digital privacy (it is one of my personal obsessions),
and things like Linux and Pandoc (because those are tools that make my life easier).

Best of…

I know that some people have read things from my blog. They even sent me kind words via email about what they liked, disliked, and disagreed with.

If we count that engagement alone, along with maybe some mention on Mastodon, my best guess as to a “BEST OF” for this blog are (in no order):

These three short stories: Freak, Homework, and We Have a Winner
The Privacy-Security Rabbit Hole
The (rather long) Low Friction Introduction to Digital Privacy

And, much to my surprise, I’ve received two emails thanking me for a post about making an invoice with Pandoc

Finally, I’ve received no less than 10 requests to write sponsored articles. Strangely enough, they all decide to retract their request when I answer. This is the email that I use when I respond:

Rates for Sponsored Content

Product review with photos and links:

Basic 300–500 words: €90

Detailed 500–800 words: €120

In-depth 800–1000+ words: €200

Sponsored content will include a “disclaimer” or note informing the reader that the content they are reading was requested by the company. Transparency is key, but rates will not be revealed.

I do not use X (Twitter), Meta (Facebook, Instagram). I may share the review on Mastodon, depending on the product or service.

My favourite things to write about

If I had to narrow the focus of this blog, I simply would not. A blog that takes on a singular focus is great. Give me a blog that is 100% music or 100% gadgets and I won’t complain. I could probably stick to one thing 80% of the time, but I am so infrequent when it comes to blogging that I would end up breaking my own rule after a month or two.

As much fun as I had writing about different phones (see here, here, and here) I could not just do that. In fact, one of those companies, Crosscall, even let me beta test an unreleased model for several months. Did I write about it? The thought didn’t even cross my mind. If you are interested, though, the STELLAR-X5 is fast and fluid in all the right ways.

I would like to write more about education, but as a non-researcher with only 17–18 years of experience in higher education, mostly private, my main thoughts have already been laid out, i.e., students are less adept with technology now, the digital experience is hindering instead of helping, AI and LLMs are going to fuck things up. My students are not clamouring to learn how to write prompts or be taught lessons that were planned by OpenAI’s ~~carbon footprint~~ chatbot.

Should I set goals?

The #100daystooffload idea is tempting. But, it has taken me 3 years to write 60 odd posts. I don’t think I would set such a high goal. Maybe 2 a month? We’ll see how that goes. Place your bets: will I have posted 24 times in the next 365 days? I don’t know how to calculate odds, so maybe no bets.

Finally, an easy goal: changing the appearance. I think I would be very content with using one of the minimalist Hugo themes, preferably one with no JavaScript. Maybe I will switch to something that isn’t Hugo? Who knows.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Blog!

🎂🎂🎂

Make Digital Privacy Sexy

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 22:42:44 +0100

Digital Privacy has an image problem. At the moment, there isn’t anything sexy about it. If it were a trailer for a film, you’d be playing on your phone while it was on. It needs an image makeover and a re-branding. Many movements have the right idea and are presenting it as inviting and ethical. We need more of this, and less fearmongering.

Who says it’s not sexy?

This is all opinion.

I am just a teacher with an interest in digital privacy. Yes, I degoogled my phone. Yes, I use Linux. No, I don’t use Gmail or Facebook. I am not a researcher or hacker. I would call myself a (non-militant) advocate for humane, ethical, and privacy-respecting technology and services.

Browsing the web, one can come across innumerable sites and communities dedicated to this topic. In some instances, these communities come off as slightly unwelcoming. That is not sexy. Digital Privacy also comes with its own myths and legends that make it harder to get people interested in their own personal digital privacy. The methods of persuasion are often flawed, repetitive, and are filled with a dictionary’s worth of terms that to the uninitiated mean nothing. Finally, there is the occasional call for an “all or nothing” approach and commitment to the cause.

Tinfoil hats and Neckbeards

A simple question on a forum or on social media can sometimes open a can of worms. In the case of digital privacy, some of those worms are of paranoid and conspiratorial leanings.

You just had a question, but the replies sound more like quotes from 1984 and Brave New World. You’ve walked into a circle-jerk of self-appointed experts (NB. Yes, there are very knowledgeable people among them). Now, they have things to share, but if you are not aware of the culture you will find it surprising to referred to as a “normie” (are they being derogatory?).

I find it rather contradictory that any community, big or small, that wants to “bring privacy to the masses” could be off-putting in any way. I won’t be brandishing the t-word around (toxic!) to describe this little corner of the web. The best description is that some forums and subreddits come off as “No Normies Clubs” where asking a beginner question will earn you manifesto-length essays filled with calls to “wake up,” “question authority,” “do your own research,” and “develop your critical thinking skills.”

Once you decipher their lexicon—“Goolag,” “Micro$hit,” etc.—you’ll discover their advice, and their own disagreements. “Just install GrapheneOS,” one might say, while another will call them a shill. Soon, you’ll be directed to websites with black backgrounds and green monospace fonts. As you dig deeper you’ll discover the inherent insecurities of Android, Windows, iOS, and even (*gasp*) Linux. Signal will be good enough in one group, and rubbish in the other.

The communication style of some of these communities needs to be brought into check. It is not their fault, they were a sort of echo-chamber of freelance, grassroots, DIY people with a common interest. They injected their hatred of Big Tech into their rhetoric. It is 2024, it isn’t appealing any more, and it will not get the next generation of Internet users to pay attention.

Myths and Legends

Another issue with digital privacy is the prevalence of certain myths. All these years, and still people will say they have nothing to hide. Clearly, the messages are not making it downstream.

It is true that many companies already have plenty of information on you. You are tracked, yes, but that doesn’t mean it is pointless to start protecting yourself now. How has this myth not been dispelled?

Similarly, it has been put forward that it is too hard to protect yourself. It is not. It is just different. You change an app, you make a new habit. The “all or nothing” approach mentioned above does not help. When you learn maths as a child, the teacher does not explain addition, subtraction, division and multiplication on Monday and give a test on it on Tuesday.

Simplicity of use has lead many a user to the walled garden of the iOS ecosystem. I have no personal experience with these devices, but it is said they are secure. Privacy is not security though. Perhaps the police cannot easily unlock your phone, but your privacy is still being invaded the same way it is with any connected devices.

The urban legend of infallible Apple hardware is at least understandable to an extent. It is part of their marketing. Incognito mode, on the contrary, is just poorly understood. Perhaps the greater public will soon see for themselves that companies still track you no matter what. It is, after all, another marketing trick.

Persuasion and Marketing

Privacy advocates have been using different techniques to persuade users to change their ways. Fear, uncertainty and doubt make up a decent portion of these techniques.

Fear of a dystopian world of mass surveillance, and clichéd metaphors and analogies about “your life on the cover of the newspaper” have failed to appeal to emotion and logic. We’ve been bombarded with words like tracker and cookie, instructed to use a password manager and 2FA, and YouTubers remind us of the existence of VPNs around the clock. Did we mention E2EE and why it is important? Because of MITM attacks, obviously.

This word soup goes hand in hand with the broken record named “The Best of Toxic Tech”…

WE KNOW ALREADY!

It is important to know, but this dead horse has been flogged. People still use Facebook, they still tweet their lives and post pictures on Instagram in between group chats on WhatsApp. Google knows what time they wake up and Amazon is better at suggesting gifts for my partner than I am. And, for crying out loud, we all know about Microsoft. It isn’t a secret that when they invested in the next hype (generative AI) that they’d find a way to cram it into their OS.

Go to the top of the highest mountain and scream your lungs out about it, the mountains will echo back “we know!”

Occasionally mainstream media will do a piece on this. Bill Maher did one in 2017 called Social Media is the new Nicotine and told viewers that the tech bros were just “tobacco farmers in t-shirts” and concluded with “Philip Morris just wanted your lungs; the App Store wants your soul.”

I’ve used that video in class with my students. They laugh. They compare the hours spent on their devices with pride. However true this is, we’ve reached Silicon Valley Sleaze Saturation. If a whistleblower came forward with a new scandal, we wouldn’t be surprised. We wouldn’t bat an eye.

It will be essential for digital privacy advocates to tackle the problem from a different angle, otherwise getting the next generation to commit will be an even bigger one.

Commitment Friction

Getting people on track usually starts off fine: use a different browser you say? As long as I can binge-watch Netflix on Firefox, not an issue. Easy. No friction.

But it isn’t all as simple as getting your friend or relative to make that switch. In fact, switching browsers isn’t even a commitment. It’s parallel to parting your hair on the other side. Someone might notice, but the end result is the same.

A real commitment is, for example, doing sport three times a week. That takes a little forethought and planning, much like changing your email provider. If you jump ship too quick, you might end up paying for something you won’t use or is missing that one little feature you didn’t know you wanted.

But, today, the commitment of all commitments might be quitting social media. That will turn heads. That will make you a weirdo. When my partner stopped using WhatsApp, she was called “selfish.” When I told a student I didn’t use Google search they thought I was pulling their leg, and when I told another I won’t use ChatGPT they asked if I was Amish. Quitting these services that we’ve been domesticated to use (read that article!) is not just hard for the quitter. It can lead to a form of cognitive dissonance for observers too.

I am not all doom and gloom. There are things to be optimistic about.

Hippies today… Squares tomorrow

Hippies are optimistic, aren’t they? Sexual revolution and all that, you know?

Seriously, though, it is important to look back (briefly, this is a blog after all) at how other movements evolved. It is also worthwhile to make note of a handful of truths that we tend to forget.

The Nature of Counterculture

Values change. The counterculture of yesteryear is the norm today. Peace and love in one decade is war in another. Progressive then, conservative now.

If we consider the fight for digital privacy as a movement against the norm, it might be viewed as a counterculture. It does seem like that sometimes, and even gets political like with the GDPR or how France will soon put “large-scale, real-time, algorithm-supported video surveillance cameras” to use. Digital rights are becoming more and more important, and calls to protect them are getting louder.

So, if today the advocates for digital privacy are the counterculture, there is a hope that it will become the norm. Not tomorrow, but someday. That doesn’t mean we have to forget established truths about big tech.

More Truths

Technology as a whole, the Internet, the web, social networks, and other ICT have done wonders for the world. The creativity and connectivity that has stemmed from these inventions is jaw-dropping.

Apple has more than once revolutionized technology: with home computing, design, iPods, iPhones, and other gadgets. Now, they regularly crank out new versions of their rectangles that are just evolutions requiring new accessories to function.
Microsoft made computers accessible to the masses. Now, they make an operating system that sucks up your data and auction it off to data brokers.
Amazon was a revolution. Granted, Bezos wasn’t just some guy in a garage making his way in the world, but still, he started something that many have tried to emulate, and exploited some employees along the way.
Google organized the web and made searching simple at a time when a generation was just embarking on a journey into the World Wide Web, and Gmail was a great free email when compared to Hotmail. Now, they maintain a browser monopoly and are trying to dictate standards while selling data to the highest bidder.
Facebook was cool in 2004; Zuck too. That didn’t last long. Plus, nobody forgot about the origins of Facebook.
Twitter opened the fire hose and appealed to our anger and rage. Today, it is owned by another face of tech that may have a vision, but is no Tony Stark.
OpenAI is hyped, like Blockchain and cryptocurrency, but was positioned as “the thing” we need everywhere. So they put it everywhere they could. Not a day has gone by without some story mentioning the failures and harms this toy has caused.

Something “cool” can quickly turn into a dumpster fire. The “Pirates of Silicon Valley” are in the same boat as a well-known “Pirate of the Caribbean”. They do deserve recognition, but not veneration. The worm has turned. It turned some time ago, in fact.

Time and Place

The great work of so many digital privacy advocates and whistle-blowers cannot be for naught. We know, thanks to the effort of many, the negative effects of technology. The Millennials, and older Gen Zs, grew up with the technology. We watched it change, we watched the canary keel over and turn to dust, and we mustered all of our strength into an apathetic shrug, thinking “what can I do about it?”

Well, here’s the thing. Millennials are politicians now, and educators, and parents, and aunts, uncles, and mentors. We have responsibilities, a flock to tend to, and an audience that sometimes listens when they look up from their phones.

We need to begin sharing our experience and knowledge. We have the information, or at least know where to find it. We need to make it available.

But that’s haaaaaard

Too fuckin’ bad.

You can’t just whinge and whine and cram buzzwords like “enshittification” into your tweets and toots and whatever for Internet points and pat yourself on the back (no offence meant to Cory Doctorow).

Have you ever walked a senior citizen through a Windows install over the phone for 5 hours? That’s hard, but you take it screen by screen, one hair-pulling baby step at a time, and try not to break the phone.

That is what it is time to do. It is time to start taking these baby steps together, instead of creating insular communities on obscure forums. If you are reading this, you have likely taken these steps. That makes you a credible individual who can teach by example rather than impose your ideas of what is the right way to be private.

For example, instead of indirectly berating someone for using Google, show them that other search engines can find better results sometimes, and casually tell them that Google’s results are getting worse. You might tell them to use Firefox and Kagi, and they end up using Brave. Take the win, even if you are one of the anti-Brave folks.

Because we already tried fear, and hate, and “those guys are evil” as methods of persuasion. We need to change the script, and focus on helping the younger generation find the tools that reflect their values and teach them that their private information deserves respect.

We walked on dial-up, so they can run on fibre optic.

We’ve been around. We’ve seen stuff. We can furrow our brows and think outside the box to find solutions that work.

Pray tell, random Internet person

Here are two.

1. Sex Education

See, more sex… it wasn’t clickbait!

Depending on your age, culture, country of origin, whatever, it is possible that you took some classes in elementary, middle, or high school on sex education. It was usually part of a general health class. It was sometimes controversial. I remember the clutching of pearls when we watched this raunchy cinematic masterpiece in class.

Moving on.

Sex education has saved lives. Rates of teenage pregnancy start dropping, STDs are less frequent among teenagers, and when they do happen stigmatization is lower than it was before. It isn’t perfect, but it teaches young people about perfectly normal things by presenting knowledge, and giving access to information that they may not get elsewhere. When taught in the right conditions, it respects their individuality and freedom.

We should make digital privacy part of the curriculum. I know, digital literacy is a big thing already. But, digital privacy can be a separate part. You can even throw in some scary stuff if you want to, like sex education does with photos of warts. You can use it to dispel myths, like how we learned that it is, in fact, possible to get pregnant your first time. And who better to teach this than the current batch of teachers who are 30 and over?

2. Buy Local

There was a time when hearing someone state, “I only buy locally grown oranges” stirred up images of some long-haired, bare-footed, hippy-granola archetype. Today, it is normal and accepted, even by the “suits and ties” types. This was a movement that took it step by step and curated an image. That image was ethical; it was one that said “the effort is worth it.”

The effort is worth it. As a general rule, most people would advise deciding with your wallet. That is hard when we know that supermarket fruit and vegetables may be covered in pesticides, or be scary GMOs. If you do make the effort to buy local, you can sometimes get better quality produce that wasn’t washed by robots in a factory and transported across the country by truck. You can support a local business and build a circle of trust. You can indeed trust the little, local farmer.

We can also trust privacy-respecting tech. Many great grassroots associations, like Framasoft, have the right idea. Image is everything, and we need to take that image and resize it. Framasoft, and similar associations, have a mission and a message that isn’t based on fear. They are a respectful response to the question of how to protect our privacy online.

Very often, when I try to show somebody that application B is a drop-in replacement for application A, they argue that they would rather put their trust in an MNC like Apple than in some guy with a GitHub. This is akin to somebody not buying from the local market because they trust the supermarket strawberries imported from halfway around the world more. Bad analogy, I know, but the gist is there. Free and open source software that respects our privacy and has been vetted by users and associations deserves our trust and support the same way a local farmer does.

It is about time we changed the metaphors we use. Both application A and B do the same thing, but one may contain pesticides that can have an effect your well-being.

Final words

This started as a list and just kept going. I do mean what I say, though. I am optimistic that a change is on the horizon. Thanks for reading and, please, shoot me an email or message on Mastodon to let me know what you think.

Note to self: How to update PineTime

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 09:48:04 +0100

The PineTime is great. I say this with some bias because it is the the only smartwatch I have ever used.

Long story short: after a year and change of use, the PineTime has not let me down. Updates have improved battery life and added new watch-faces. I am not a hacker so I cannot speak for the development capacities of this cheap little gadget.

Speaking of updates, without fail, I always forget how to update this thing. I get the files. I read the manpages. And, finally, I remember.

It isn’t complicated, though. It is clearly a me issue.

Get ITD and start the daemon

The InfiniTime Daemon can be found here: https://gitea.elara.ws/Elara6331/itd.

I use Debian, but have used this daemon under other Linux distributions. Head over to the releases and snatch the file you need. For me, it was the .deb.

$ wget https://gitea.elara.ws/Elara6331/itd/releases/download/v1.1.0/itd-1.1.0-linux-x86_64.deb
$ sudo apt install ./itd-1.1.0-linux-x86_64.deb

Now it is time to turn off the Bluetooth connection with your phone.

Since I only need to connect to my PC for these updates, I will not “enable” this itd daemon permanently. As a regular user (not root) you can start and stop the service with these commands:

$ systemctl --user start itd
$ systemctl --user stop itd

If Bluetooth is active and working on your laptop, you should get some sort of prompt asking you for a passkey. On my computer it looks like this:

It wants my digits

Now you need to get the new firmware and resources.

Get InfiniTime firmware and flash it

You can grab necessary files from the InfiniTime releases page. You will need two files.

As of writing, the current release is v. 1.14 “Quince Fruit”:

$ wget https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime/releases/download/1.14.0/pinetime-mcuboot-app-dfu-1.14.0.zip
$ wget https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime/releases/download/1.14.0/infinitime-resources-1.14.0.zip

I don’t know if there is a specific order to do this, but the last few times I have started by installing the infinitime-resources-version.zip file, then flashed the firmware. These are the two little commands I always forget:

$ itctl res load infinitime-resources-1.14.0.zip
$ itctl firmware upgrade -a pinetime-mcuboot-app-dfu-1.14.0.zip

Remember to read any prompts and follow instructions and your PineTime will be up-to-date.

External Links

PineTime Official Shop
Elara6331’s InfiniTime Daemon
InfiniTime GitHub
InfiniTime Official
@JF@mastodon.codingfield.com (follow this account to know about updates)

Why did I waver?

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 17:58:33 +0100

Sometimes peculiar thoughts cross our minds. I’m not a deep, philosophical person; I hate overthinking. But, actively fighting against overthinking is just overthinking, isn’t it?

Now, you can call me silly—I have laughed at myself over this—because somehow a video game console brought about a minor epiphany. A Nintendo Switch, a console released in 2017, left me scratching my head and pondering the titular question: Why did I waver?

Let’s back up a bit.

And a bit more.

And still a bit more.

The year was 1990 or 1991. My brother had a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was amazing. But, it was his, and in his room. The NES was sweet, but it was not this:

the DMG-01

Holy smokes, did I ever want one of those! And so, I irresponsibly used the great power all children are imbued with: emotional manipulation. And, much to the surprise of nobody, my efforts paid off, and I was rewarded with a Game Boy.

I was a gamer and Nintendo fanboy from that day forward.

Despite having just that portable console, I still bought the magazines. I even subscribed to Nintendo Power. I read reviews and guides for games on systems I didn’t own, like the Super Nintendo after it launched.

That Game Boy was one day upgraded to a Game Boy Color. I did get a Super Nintendo (the pack with Killer Instinct and the soundtrack CD). Around the time the GameCube dropped, I managed to finagle a Nintendo 64.

Alas, I was off to university and working four jobs. Still, my mother decided that video games had never caused me any harm and surprised me with a GameCube.

Then I moved to France, and told myself: gaming is for children, and I cannot afford it now that I am independent. I couldn’t afford it, but I did get a Nintendo DS Lite as a gift along with one of the Zelda games.

You have noticed a very Nintendo-themed pattern here. It was always Nintendo. It always will be Nintendo, or nothing.

Then one day I came home from work, and there, in my home, was a sight of which the memory still makes me shudder. There was an Xbox 360 attached to my television! My roommate had gone out and purchased it that day.

Shame. Shame on me. I picked up the controller and tried the game. I had that machine for several years before giving it away and telling myself: next time, Nintendo.

Then one day my partner and I decided that holiday was too expensive, so why not buy a console for fun. A great and glorious idea! Off to the store we went. I drifted towards the Nintendo section, trying to hide my joy.

From the corner of my eye I saw my partner coming in my direction carrying a garish blue box. A Sony PlayStation 4 and Crash Bandicoot. I looked at her, ready to put my foot down. Our eyes met. I steadied myself, I knew what was coming. I had nothing to parry with. I was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun filled with armour-piercing ammo: emotional manipulation.

Well played… well played

I wavered, and, up until December 2023, I have been playing another console I didn’t really enjoy, except for a handful of games.

Why did I waver and continue to waver? I don’t have an answer.

I do, however, have a few words to say about the Nintendo Switch.

It is an amazing device. I don’t have any of the big games for it yet, so I am not even taking content into account. I’m talking about the whole design of the product.

Wavering took away some of the fun. Why didn’t I enjoy the PS4 as much? Let’s make a list:

noisy
slow startup time
buying a physical edition and coming home to be forced to download a 7.8GB file because the disc doesn’t have the game on it?
slow startup of games
in-game load-times
slow shutdown time

I would not play the PS4 unless I was positive I had at least a 60-minute window for playing.

Now, Nintendo may have opted to low-end silicon, but that did not prevent them from creating a machine that:

is quiet
turns on and off quickly
has shorter load times
uses cartridges and smaller update sizes for physical games
can suspend overnight without overheating
is PORTABLE
looks nice
is small

The list can go on, but you get the point. I’m enamoured with this gadget. Once a Nintendo guy, always a Nintendo guy.

And that was the epiphany.

I wavered, and have just now discovered that I’ve been missing out on something joyful for several years.

What if I applied this idea to other things in life?

What if that could be a resolution for 2024?

The time has come for me to put my foot down, to draw a line in the sand, and hold my ground. Fun and joy could be a simple decision away, but first, I have a game to finish.

I didn’t say I would stop procrastinating, did I?

My Best Albums 2023

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0100

Hello music nerds. The end of the year is creeping up on us and that means it is time to take a look back at the year in music.

As much as I love discovering new music, this year was not a huge year for that. As far as I can tell (using beets and ListenBrainz as sources) I listened to about 190 albums released between 2023-01-01 and today (2023-12-18). Now, normally I could easily rattle off my favourite 10 or 20 releases, but this year is a blur.

I will keep it short and unordered: some honourable mentions and my favourite release of the year.

Honourable Mentions

Artist	Album	Link(s)
Fiera	Pueblo Nuevo	Bandcamp
Helena Hauff	fabric presents Helena Hauff	Bandcamp
Pangaea	Changing Channels	Bandcamp
Cyk	Lore	Bandcamp
Duane Betts	Wild & Precious Life	Bandcamp
Four Tet	Live at Alexandra Palace London, 24th May 2023	Bandcamp
Miss España	Niebla Mental	Bandcamp
Aesop Rock	Integrated Tech Solutions	Bandcamp

Best of

Super Dope, Punk Rock B-Boy, 14 KT Gold, Drum Study #3, #2, and #1, North American Adonis

I was spoiled this year with not one, but several excellent Buck 65 releases. Last year, after coming back from hiatus with a surprise release, I was overjoyed. This year, Super Dope took the cake and the blue ribbon and the whatever. This ensemble of releases is my choice for best of the year.

Super Dope
Punk Rock B-Boy
Drum Study #3
Drum Study #2
Drum Study #1
14 KT Gold
North American Adonis (Buck 65, doseone, Jel)

They Lie

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:45:09 +0100

Opportunities are everywhere.

Sometimes, though, you need to make your own opportunities.

All it takes is an idea. And ideas can come from anywhere.

This is the story about a boy. One day, towards the end of the 1970s, he read a book. Some would call it historical fiction, some science-fiction, many others would call it conspiracy theory. I will not tell you the name of this book, or the author, because this book plants a seed. No tree of knowledge will sprout from this seed; it only festers and rots.

Growing older, the boy, now a man, was not getting what life had promised. He had gone to school, which is what we were told to do at the time. He wondered where his riches were. ‘Life isn’t fair,’ he would think to himself. Thoughts like these were like water for the seed.

Mental healthcare, at this point in time, was not an available resource. In fact, the idea that these thoughts could be a warning sign did not in cross the man’s mind.

The Internet was an available resource. And the man dove—deep—into different corners of the web. Doing his own research paid off. The book he had read years before was just a springboard to the truth. The world was the problem; not him. And the world as the normies know it, is not as it seems.

He began to see himself like Nada in They Live, but, in reality, he had become the alien among us. The wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Major history events? After doing his own research, the man discovered them to be fake. Hoaxes.

Health problems? It turns out, according to the man’s sources, that Linus Pauling was right and was silenced by “Big Pharma”.

It was all making sense now. It was all a lie. Lying, it seemed, was the key to success.

And, just like that, an idea came to fruition. Yes, the normies need to know the truth. They need to know that the those in power are lying about everything. Spreading the truth, however, does not pay the bills.

‘If those in power are exempt from the rules,’ thought the man, ’then why should I have to follow them?’

Taking advantage of innocent victims is, as the saying goes, like taking candy from a baby. The man founded a company, Amazing Privacy Services LTD, and became a scam artist. Unsolicited phone calls and classic email scams were practically victimless crimes. If the person on the end of the line wasn’t woke enough to realize they were being scammed, that wasn’t the man’s fault, was it? In fact, from his point of view, he was doing them a favour by teaching them a lesson.

Alas, victims were becoming harder to get to. The people were waking up, and digital privacy was becoming more accessible to the normies. Unfortunately for the victims, digital privacy was something the man was concerned with. Running scams and hosting information about controversial topics and presenting fringe theories as fact on a website requires some attention to detail, and digital privacy.

Today, this man is present in forums and groups about privacy. On the outside, he is an individual with some controversial opinions and an interest is protecting people. In reality, he is using these groups to glean information on how people protect themselves, and taking advantage of weaknesses.

He is not just a silly looking little snake in the grass. He is a criminal. He is a cancer. He is a bad seed.

This story may be fiction, but it is based on truth, unlike the book that the man read decades ago.

The path to take here is not clear. Yes, we have a person selling the poison and fighting for an antidote at the same time. It is hypocrisy. Yes, the same person is also peddling lies, misinformation, and even making claims that are punishable by law, but I am not about to go on a wild goose chase to track this person down. That would just put a target on my back.

I am writing this as a simple warning, one that I have made before, and everyone will agree with:

Do not trust what you read on the web, even if it looks to be good advice
One good piece of advice that you agree with does not mean all the advice on that site or forum is good
Do not reveal private information, including details on how you protect yourself online, anywhere

Cherry-picking the apocalypse

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 12:00:00 +0200

“Did you hear what happened today?”

“No, what?”

“Somebody was killed…”

That is a common exchange I’ve had with my students. It seems to me that more than once a day, something atrocious is happening here in France. Statistically, that is likely true. France is small, but that doesn’t exclude it from tragedy.

Most times, I ask where they heard this gruesome news. And the answers are many. It could be France Info, or the Courrier, or BFM. But, that is only half the story.

I have come across something so utterly common that it is truly banal, yet it bothers me. It bothers me just as much as fake news, and Internet trolls.

It is an Instagram account. Yes. Just a fucking Instagram account.

If it bleeds…

I believe we have all noticed while reading the news that sensationalism leads. And, if it bleeds, all the better. Who cares about a breakthrough cure for a deadly disease when there are robberies, car-jackings, and kidnappings? And all of those horrible things take a backseat to the big ones (you know what I’m talking about). Obviously, when there is a war happening in another part of the world, news outlets are clawing at the door of any tale of woe they can get their paws on.

It is our fault, as readers, though. We like the dirty details. So we read. Today, though, reading is hard. You need to click on a link, accept some cookies, maybe turn off the ad-blocker, scroll past the header, and just as the story is getting good the text fades away and a subscribe button is waiting for you.

That is a bit of a turn-off for anyone, especially social media sites. They want you to stay on their feed. I would, too, if I ran a social media page. That is the goal, isn’t it.

What if there were a way to combine the most horrible stories into a feed and keep the readers on the page?

This is what Occidentis is. It is a rundown of the nastiest shit to happen in France; an echo chamber of racism, xenophobia, fearmongering, homophobia, and hatred. The nearly 90,000 followers have 6,400 posts of one-sided cherry-picked stories to share and comment on. The stories are not fake, but the fear and hatred is amplified.

At this point, if I had a comments section, a reader would be scrolling to the bottom to point out the 90,000 followers is hardly anything to write a blog about. That is micro-influencer territory. We would agree on that, but we cannot dismiss accounts like this.

Unfiltered media

Have you ever been told to do your own research by someone who has alternative sources of information? Have you heard people talking about how mainstream media doesn’t want us to know things? Well, congratulations, you have rubbed elbows with an Alternative Influence Network. I am not too keen on using political labels because I don’t have the background in that subject, but I can say with some certainty that these types of networks are generally of the conservative (read right-leaning) mindset.

Occidentis is therefore a micro-influencer for people whose “values and norms of behaviour differ substantially from those of mainstream society”¹. Because, yes, the hippies of yesterday are the squares of today, and being conservative is a counterculture. By presenting itself as a form of unfiltered media, Occidentis is attempting to appeal to its audience as “countercultural social underdogs”² in order to influence, and maybe even radicalize, its audience by presenting a political ideology by amplifying the negative.

The founder of Occidentis can be found on LinkedIn. They finished high school in 2016, went on to post-secondary studies, did some internships and sandwich courses, founded Occidentis in 2019, and became a freelance writer for Valeurs Actuelles (“Magazine of the outspoken right”) in 2020.

How bad is it?

The word ideology is a tad loaded. A set of beliefs is an ideology though, especially when these beliefs cover politics, economics, the environment, and other systems. Without committing myself to a deep-dive, because I don’t have Instagram, I collected a handful of examples from just the first few pages of posts to highlight their beliefs.

None of this is private. There is no detective work going on here. But, I will blur the names of the other users, just because.

Example posts (retrieved using Proxigram)

Most of their posts are textual cards that feature a sensationalist or slanted version of the news. It is very important that I point out again, this is not fake news. The source is mentioned, but the text on the card has an added spin. Looking at the examples above, we can see a post about the top 30 subventions to pro-migrant associations (top left) with comments complaining about what taxes are being used for. The top right image is a video from BFM when the recording was interrupted by protestors, the comments are about how security is lax because of leftists. In the second row, on the left, a story about a terrorist attack in Brussels with a quote.

Let’s stop on that one for a moment.

None of these posts actually link to the stories. It just says Source: something. Do you want to stop your scrolling streak to search for a story? What are we, animals? But a mouth-breather like me did want to see how this quote matched up with the article.

That story is from La Libre, a Belgian source. If you were to look at the article, you’d notice that the quote isn’t quite right. If I were to quote an article and wrote it like this:

“Blah blah blah (…) yadda yadda yadda”

You would think that that was the quote. As in, I started a sentence with Blah, paused, and completed my sentence. Or, maybe, that I began speaking with Blah and went on a tangent before finishing up with yadda.

This is not what happened here. Whoever worked on this post (LinkedIn lists some students as freelance writers) took two parts of the article and put them together, creating a new, false quote.

The full article contains quotes from the parents explaining that their son had always had problems with violence. It is not apologetic. It is factual.

Moving on…

The post on the right in the second row is about a bus driver attacked by someone who happened to be from the migrant camps in Calais. The comments talk about arming yourself and how the government is financing murderers. The post on the bottom left unnecessarily mentions the nationality of a student found carrying hydrochloric acid outside their school—this is not mentioned in the article, but only in the accompanying video—with comments calling for the teen to be deported.

The last post is sourced from SudInfo. The story sounds sensational. It is a quote from a school teacher that says, “My students wanted to pray for the terrorist.” Well, I just had to go look at that article. And, guess what? Subscribers only. After bypassing that, I was able to read the full story. It is actually more interesting than that quote lets on. The teacher works at a school located rather close to where the incident took place. The article points out that the school is a positive discrimination school. The full quote is more of a complaint about social networks, and the teacher is lamenting that they are learning about religion through TikTok.

There is one funny thing, though. And that is the comment on the very bottom right:

Pays full franc mac […]

This user thinks that the Freemasons are somehow involved. Conspiracy theorist? Coincidence? Who knows?

…it leads

While I applaud the entrepreneurial endeavour of attempting the near-impossible—becoming an influencer—I cannot applaud profiting from negativity bias, doomerism, and straight up lies. The posts shared by Occidentis do not include direct links to the source, meaning the authors and publishers are missing out on clicks. This is likely because the posts on this channel are just a mixture of false connections and context, misleading content, and textbook definitions of fake news.

Molina et al., in “Fake News” Is Not Simply False Information: A Concept Explication and Taxonomy of Online Content, talk about the seven types of fake news and present several easy to follow tables to help categorize it. Occidentis is polarized and sensationalist (see table 5):

the content is not completely factual and is one-sided
the evidence is not there because no direct links are presented
alarm words are overused
excessive generalizations, emotionally charged statements, and ad-hominem attacks
the headlines are re-written as clickbait
the sources are one-side on many occasions and not always reputable
solely shared via social media
presents itself as “unfiltered,” implying that the media is not to be trusted because it is censoring information

Fearmongering for likes by cherry-picking the worst things happening in a country is low-hanging fruit, which is probably why Occidentis has not managed to go beyond micro-influencer levels of popularity. Channels like this are actively engaging in racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and other forms of hatred, all while hiding behind a thin veil of sharing the news or a sloppy definition of freedom of speech. They propagate a curated set of beliefs that misrepresent and twist reality. We should not overlook channels like this, no matter how small of a following they have.

The Glass Pyramid

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 13:30:35 +0200

There once was a magical glass pyramid.
It sat on top of a hill.
All were welcome to come and live in the glass pyramid.
All you had to do was follow the long and winding path up the hill.

Outside the pyramid, it was dangerous.
There were no houses.
There was no food.

Inside the pyramid, it was like a grand city.
Everyone had a job to do.
Some jobs, even though they were not difficult, were more important than others.
The important people lived at the very top of the pyramid and made all the decisions.
The important people knew best.

After a time, there were too many people in the pyramid.
The important people were upset.
There were too many people with less important jobs sharing their space.
That is not the way of the pyramid.
Something had to be done.

“We should make the pyramid bigger,” said one person.
“Amazing idea,” said another.
“But, that’s not fair!” said one of the important people.
“Why should I have to live near these less important people?” said another.
“Well,” said one of the most important people, “perhaps we should make it harder to get in as well.”

And so, a vote was held.
The higher you lived in the pyramid, the more your vote counted.

A fair and democratic solution was reached:
They would raise the ceiling of their magical glass pyramid, to make more space for important people.
And, each time they raised their glass ceiling, they would make their hill higher as well, to make it more difficult to get in.
This was called raising the glass floor.

Eventually, the hill became a mountain.
And the pyramid became a needle that went high into the sky.
So high and close to the sun that it became very hot for the important people.
They blamed the less important people.
They told them it was their fault.

The least important people worked even harder:
They only ate local,
they recycled,
they spent their earnings on electric vehicles and solar panels,
they never used air conditioning or plastic straws.

They were told to lower their carbon footprint.
So they did.

They were told that everyone had to do their part.
So they did.

But…

The important people were not doing their part.
After all, it was not their fault.
They did what they wanted, when they wanted.
But, despite having everything they could possibly need,
they were still not happy.

They decided that it was still too easy to get in.
Raising the glass floor was not enough.
Some of the less important people had to go.

“These people have it too easy,” complained one of the important people.
“Maybe they shouldn’t even be in the pyramid,” said another.
And so, they came up with a plan.

They made things more expensive,
like food and houses and doctors and school.
The less important people worked harder and harder.
They even stopped having children.
No matter what they did though, it was not enough.
And this was the plan:
If you could not afford to live in the pyramid,
you had to leave.

After a time, it became so difficult to get into the pyramid,
and so hard to stay,
that there was nobody left to do the work that had to be done.
The important people had forgotten how to work.
They had forgotten how to make food and clean and build things.

Little by little, the pyramid started to crack.
People who used to be important became less important.
Some were even forced to leave.

The people outside the pyramid saw that something was wrong.
They shouted, “how can we help you!”
And the important people shouted back, “nobody wants to work any more!”
“Give us jobs, give us homes, let us help you!” clamoured the people outside the pyramid.
“NO,” shouted the important people, “you are not important enough to live in our pyramid!”

And as they slammed the door on the faces of those willing to help,
a crack began to form.
It started at the bottom.
The grew and grew, spreading higher and higher.
The people outside did not want the pyramid to fall,
it would crush them if it did.
So they all came together and tried to hold the pyramid up.

“Come down and help us,” the people outside cried.
“We only have one pyramid,” they pleaded.
But, the people inside were only interested in getting to the top.
They all climbed to the top floor instead of helping hold the pyramid together.
They were more afraid of the people outside getting in than they were of the crack.

All the important people reached the top of the pyramid.
They held a meeting to decide what to do.
“We just need to use the magic to fix the pyramid,” they said.
The most important person spoke up.
They controlled the magic.
They could fix everything in a snap.
They said, “I will do this for a price!”

The other important people thought this was fair,
but they did not want to spend their money.
“What if we asked the least important people to donate? It is their fault, isn’t it?” suggested someone.

A very famous and important person went down to see the people on the glass floor.
They were very emotional.
They spoke at length and finally asked the people at the bottom to donate their money.

The people at the bottom looked around at each other.
One of them began to chuckle.
And another.
And another.

A contagious laughter spread among the people at the bottom.
They could not stop.
They fell over laughing.
They laughed so hard the mountain began to shake.
The more the mountain shook, the more the pyramid wobbled.

The crack spread faster and faster.
“HELP US!” cried all the important people,
as they clutched their pearls and wallets.
“After all we did for you ungrateful people!” scolded one of them,
sipping champagne.
“Don’t you know who I am?” growled another,
sat in a rocket they had no idea how to fly.

The laughter and the shouting continued until a final crack echoed across the land.

The magical glass pyramid shattered and fell.

When the dust settled, the people at the bottom of the pyramid were relieved.
They had not been crushed.
They began fixing and rebuilding.
They made their homes, and schools, and hospitals.

Many months later, a group of people came climbing up the hill.
They stopped in awe of what they saw.
The pyramid was still standing.

These people were hungry and tired.
They wanted to bathe and sleep in beds.
They walked straight to the front door,
but their path was blocked.

“Unhand me, filth!” said one of the travellers to the person barring their way.
“I am a very important person, and you will let me pass.”
“Well,” started the person at the door, “you see, that is not how things work around here.”
“This is our magical pyramid,” explained the guard.
“If you want to get in, you need skills, you need to be able to work because everyone has a job to do!”

Alas, over the generations, the important people had forgotten how to work.
So they could not enter the pyramid.

Years passed, and the pyramid began to grow,
and the glass ceiling became further away,
and the glass floor went up with it,
and the story repeated itself,
again,
and again.

Starting the 2023–2024 School Year

Sat, 09 Sep 2023 11:58:50 +0200

It will (again) come as no surprise that we will (predictably) work on finding a way to use GPT-4/LLM/ChatGPT/whatever to create content for classes and find ways to allow students to use it in class.

me, 3 months ago

It might be worse than I thought. Not only are we going to be looking into using generative AI, but all staff and faculty must attend obligatory training camps.

Have I been living in an echo chamber of my own design? Perhaps too much time on the Fediverse? Maybe I’ve become that crotchety middle-aged employee who lives to disagree with everything, or my millennial nature is preventing me from doing something that wasn’t laid out in my contract years ago.

I love teaching, and I want to keep doing it, but I cannot wrap my head around how generative AI fits into the scheme. The ultimate goal of a learner it to be able to create something, to express themselves—at least in my discipline.

You see, I like to keep things simple:

memorize
understand
solve problems
express creativity

For the past year, my students have been eschewing steps (counts on fingers) 1 through 4. Studying and memorizing is out the window, understanding, solving problems, and expressing creativity have been replaced by ChatGPT.

So, why not use it in class anyway, just to show the students how bad it is?

That is a fine idea, but there are always a few students who won’t pay attention and continue to use it, and guess what? They will graduate! I teach in France, and lots of students are happy to get the average (10/20). There are absolutely go-getters trying to be top of the class, but I have never heard, in my 16 years teaching here, a single student talking about their GPA. So, why wouldn’t a student give it a try?

Would you want to write a 25-page report during your exchange year, or would you want to enjoy your time abroad?

Innovation calling

Back in my day (am I old enough to say that yet?) we learned about instructional design and formative assessment. Neither are particularly innovative nor novel ideas. That is, unless we rebrand them?

Now we must foster engagement and be student-centric while using varied pedagogical materials in class. I’ll let you in on a little secret: it is all instructional design, but with apps and AI. So many f u c k i n g apps. And do these apps give us any useful metrics? Not really. Most of them are third-party and require teachers and students to fork over names, dates of birth, email addresses, and whatever crap the app wants on your phone, all in order to take a quiz and see some virtual confetti on your screen. As a teacher, I receive neither difficulty index nor discrimination index (except from Moodle)¹.

Not everything needs to be an app or a third-party service with AI.

Speaking of innovation, if everyone is jumping on the generative AI bandwagon—like, literally everyone—is it innovative to do the same thing?

A hill to die on

I don’t think we should even entertain the idea of a battle over this. Alluding to hills I am willing to die on would be far too overdramatic, but I am not opposed to quoting Picard:

The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!

Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact

You will say I have been reading too much hard sci-fi, and that might be true, but what will the class of 2027 be like if we are training them to cop out of learning? Why would employers pay you to be a manager or a head of marketing when they can pay you less to be a ChatGPT prompt-writer? How can schools pat themselves on the back for handicapping students and making them pay for it as well?

Do you want my answers?

The class of 2027 will be scared shitless. Their anxiety will be through the roof. They will go on social and share memes about imposter syndrome, but since they have no idea how to do research any more, they won’t realize that they are misusing the term. They will use ChatGPT and friends to write reports and emails and presentations and software.
Employers will make record profits by outsourcing to AI and exploiting underpaid university graduates to validate and correct the shit AI spits out.
They will do it while sipping champagne because partnerships—with data brokers and fossil fuel companies, for example—keep them set for life.

In short, I believe we will very soon be entering the find out phase of the fuck around and find out process.

the former determines if a question is too easy or difficult, the latter determines if a question is effective at sorting out the stronger students from the weaker students ↩︎

Digicams are still fun

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 22:38:13 +0200

I bought a little digicam.

It looks like this:

Kodak Pixpro WPZ2

It is yellow and plastic and is exactly what you would expect to get when you go into the local electronics shop and ask for the cheapest thing they have. Well, this was the second cheapest. I probably should have gone for the cheapest since this model is from 2019. But it doesn’t matter. This (very) little yellow gadget—it is practically a toy in some aspects—brought back childhood memories of Kolorkins, and so I forked over my cash.

Why?

I am not a photographer, but I think photography is an awesome hobby, passion, and art form. When I was younger, around the time Kodak was marketing Kolorkins, I always wanted to touch my mother’s camera. That, however, was a big “no-no.” It was such a mysterious device, and I was convinced at the time that it was either extremely high-tech, expensive, fragile, or all of the above. I don’t think it was any of those things. It was just something she cherished.

Once, at a used clothing store of all places, I found a 35mm camera for sale. It was $5 or something, so I took my allowance and bought it. It was one of those junky plastic things that you needed to manually advance the film on. I used that for a few years, and into university. Digital cameras were definitely around by then, but still expensive. I remember taking it to a Matthew Good concert at the Marquee in Halifax. Melissa Auf der Maur was the opening act. I had a roll of 24 pictures to take. I had to keep my finger over the flash. One of those shots came out great¹.

Even before this time, though, my mother had retired her treasured 35mm and moved on to a compact digital camera: a Samsung Digimax A5. No, I don’t have an eidetic memory; I have EXIF Data and this picture of the sweetest dog ever:

Phoebe (a good dog)

This photo was taken on the 4th of July 2005, at 5:55 in the morning. I can smell this photo.

When I moved out, I was gifted a digicam of my own. It was a Fujifilm Finepix A805. That thing went places. The advent of phones with better cameras lead me to sell it sometime in 2009 when I bought an LG Viewty and thought to myself, “Why would I ever need a camera again?”

I was wrong

Sometime, in 2014, I was fed up with the pictures my phone could take. So I marched down to the camera shop and walked out with a reasonable camera for someone who has no idea what they are doing: a Sony HX60V. I found an e-book about digital photography and read nearly the whole thing on a flight to Canada. I was going to get a picture of the supermoon.

I did. It turned out great. I was eaten alive by blackflies and mosquitos, but I got that picture. And then I took pictures of everything. I put them on Flickr and made a shared album on Google Photos. There were weeks that I was out taking pictures every single day. It was cool. That camera went on holiday with me too. Totally reasonable and worthwhile investment.

I did take some decent pictures, too. One was used on a tourist website, another in an article about trees, and another was used for the cover of a Moleskine notepad. But, below are two of my favourites:

shack by the sea / tiny toad

Little fingers

When my son was born, I was so happy to have a camera to capture memories with. Phones can be stolen or hacked. I wanted those memories in a safe offline place. Children, though, have a tendency to grow. And they like to touch things. So, that camera found its way onto a shelf until this summer, when I was planning to take a very short trip. I took it out and was sad to discover, that through disuse or possibly a fall, the flash had stopped working. I will repair it, but I wanted to be able to walk around snapping pictures. And then, a little voice that I hadn’t heard in years whispered in my ear.

“Fuck it,” it said. “Just go buy a cheap digicam.”

And I was out the door…

It looks like a toy… because it is fun

I bought it, took it out of the box—in the street—popped in a microSD card and started snapping. It became clear that this is something that even my son will be able to use. A smile crept across my face.

All the fun stuff is built in:

filters for colours, fisheye, negative, montages, etc.
scene modes
full auto and semi-auto (no true manual mode)
you can control it with an app
you can crop and rotate photos
you can record videos, even slow-motion

But, most importantly: you point and you shoot. The LCD on this thing is piddly. You will not be stopping between shots to admire your craft or show to your friends. This is a thing that dangles from your wrist to be used at a moment’s notice. Getting a steady picture requires holding your breath and genuine hope. You could turn on the full info viewfinder mode to have a grid and a histogram, but, honestly, it is just too small to care about.

poor kitty

Keep it easy; call it a day

Backing up photos is really easy now. I just use gphoto2. Plug it in and run

gphoto2 --get-all-files --skip-existing \
--filename="%Y/%m/%d/%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.%C" && \
rm */*/*/*.THM

and call it a day. When I’m out and about, I use the app to transfer photos to my phone and share on Pixelfed. Go have a look at the randomness: pixelfed.fr/@bbbhltz.

the hunt for this picture continues… ↩︎

On making a video for a podcast

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My partner has a podcast! It’s in French, and it is about the history of Spain. So, if you speak French, check out Pourquoi les espagnols sont comme ça ?:

It is also on YouTube, and that is what this post is really about. Now, my better half is an independent woman. Stubborn, some might say, but fundamentally determined to do things on her own. She isn’t shy about testing things out on computers, either. I was a little surprised when I saw her YouTube videos. I decided to let her do her thing and not be a backseat driver.

Screenshot from episode 3

I like this. It is to the point, and she did spend some time on that cover art (she made it with Paint, millennial flex) so it makes sense to put it front and centre. She wanted more, though. She wanted titles, and logos, and a waveform. And didn’t I open my mouth and say I could do that in 2 or 3 commands? I did. I bit my tongue after, but the damage was done.

“Could you really?” she asked.

“Send me the audio, and I’ll take a crack at it…”

Readers, I had no idea how to do this, but I knew it could be done. I knew I had the tools at hand: FFmpeg and ImageMagick. And, I knew that with a search engine and 20 minutes, I could sort it out.

Well… I had a few doubts, because I know from prior experience that FFmpeg has lots of options and flags.

Luckily for me, a couple searches and some trial and error was all that it took.

Making the labels/overlays

ImageMagick is fun and easy. Here are the commands I used for Episode 5:

convert -background none -fill "#FFDE59" \
    -font Nickainley-Normal -size 1100 \
    -gravity center label:"Pourquoi les espagnols sont comme ça ?" \
    title.png

convert -background none -fill "#FFDE59" \
    -font Nickainley-Normal -size x150 \
    -gravity center label:"Épisode 5 : Conquête Hispania (2ème Partie)" \
    episode0.png

montage cover.jpg -label '' episode0.png -geometry x150 -geometry +5+5 \
    -background none episode.png

(I still don’t know how to combine/chain commands together, but it works)

Podcast title overlay

Episode title overlay

Making the waveform and overlaying the images

After some trial and error (and searching¹), this is what I came up with:

ffmpeg -i input.wav -i bull.png -i title.png -i episode.png -filter_complex \
    "[0:a]aformat=channel_layouts=mono,showwaves=mode=cline:s=1920x1080:colors=#FFDE59[sw]; \
     color=s=1920x1080:c=#FF5757[bg]; \
     [bg][sw]overlay=format=auto:shortest=1,format=yuv420p[v]; \
     [v][1]overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2[v1]; [v1][2]overlay=(W-w)/2:20[v2]; [v2][3]overlay=(W-w)/2:910[v3]" \
    -map "[v3]" -map 0:a \
    -c:a aac -b:a 384k -profile:a aac_low \
    -c:v libx264 -preset veryfast -profile:v high -crf 18 -coder 1 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart -g 30 -bf 2 \
    -metadata title="title" -metadata year="2023" -metadata album="podcast name" \
    final-draft.mp4

This takes the input (-i input.wav) and runs it through a filter. That filter will make a 1920x1080 video of the waveform and overlays it on a coloured background.

Screenshot of the waveform

Overlaying the pictures

I had three images that needed to be overlaid: the two I made above, and a little logo of a bull. We wanted the bull in the middle and the other titles at the top and bottom. I did manage to chain these commands together. I suspect there are better ways to achieve the same results.

Screenshot of Final.mp4

I think it looks pretty sharp for something made with ImageMagick and FFmpeg.

Next Steps

I think I should leave space at the bottom for subtitles. What do you think?

New episodes of the podcast launch every Sunday!

Here is episode 5:

YouTube recommended encoding settings on FFmpeg ↩︎

On the 2022–2023 School Year

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 16:12:15 +0200

Reflecting upon this school year as it draws to a close, the word that comes to mind is “predictable.” Perhaps with age and experience, I am becoming overly critical, and predictable as well. I must say, though, that many of the frequent criticisms of education and GenZ proved all too (predictably) true this past year.

The schools where I work are also businesses. They are not public. The students are also clients. You may have heard that “the customer is always right.” Well, in predictable fashion, all of my employers have decided to double down on this maxim. Here are some examples:

an absent student being excused without proof
students requesting grade changes
students requesting group and professor changes
overlooked plagiarism
students excused from classes and exams for breakups

I could continue and go into details on cases. I could also tell you about how, while teaching a class to future notaries, I was informed that I should avoid the use of the word “testament,” because it could trigger some students. I respected those instructions. I thought that it was quite forward of them to make that suggestion. And, I managed to avoid it most of the year. But, there came a time when we had to cover the subject of inheritance. Let’s just say they were right, because there was crying.

There are those who might roll their eyes and scoff at this. They may mutter that overused word — snowflake¹ — and grumble about how society has ruined the youth. Broken records, predictable and perhaps uninformed. This is not that at all. The fact is that in my short career as a teacher (16 years) I have observed a slow and steady uptick in what can only be called anxiety.

Carefree students, able to laugh at their mistakes and take things with stride, are few and far between. My students are increasingly and visibly worried about their futures, fatigued and irritable, and some even suffer from panic attacks in class. They constantly police their own verbiage, find it difficult to give their opinion, and need more time to complete tasks.

As a teacher at multiple schools, I also watched as the number of students given extra time (called tiers temps here in France²) grew from 0 to 10 in a class of about 25 students. Not only are they granted extra time, but also access to computers, dictionaries, Internet, etc., in order to complete the same task.

This is worrisome for me. It should be worrisome. Let’s all be worried.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief, though. The administration got us. Wellness centres and school nurses are available (counselling services upon request).

With those bases sufficiently covered, we can focus on teaching and content. And, what’s on the table?

Predictably, whatever is trendy. And what’s trendy is the not-at-all-anxiety-inducing subject of sustainability. And in order to talk about sustainability, we sometimes talk about such joyous topics as:

pollution
fast fashion
microplastics
global heating/warming
climate change
climate refugees
human rights violations
child exploitation
deforestation
extinction

It goes without saying that teaching this makes sense. Teaching, not force-feeding. This material is crammed and stuffed into students of all disciplines. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen The True Cost. I avoid watching it in class now because it makes students uneasy.

If students need to be taught the material, the professors need to be trained too. That means training days and workshops. I love free training, and I adore paid training. I am not an expert and learning is the flip-side to my career, so you might expect me to be first in line to sign up for such a thing.

Well, I surprised myself this year — I never would have predicted that! I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like we’ve been over this topic. I grew up when we were all flustered about the hole in the ozone — and saw how when people put their minds to it, such a thing can be overcome. I watched Captain Planet on TV and learned about reducing, reusing, and recycling year after year at school. I took a class trip to a dump (sorry, “sanitary landfill”), another to a recycling facility, and yet another to a composting facility. I sorted (by penalty of law) my garbage. I returned my bottles for the deposit. I did the beach cleaning and the park cleaning. I haven’t owned a vehicle since 2006, and I only wore second-hand clothes until I got to university.

So, forgive me for rolling my eyes when my employer — who only started sorting the bins three or four years ago — tells me that I need to watch 40 5-minute YouTube videos from 2021 produced by a multinational insurance company. I’ll do it, begrudgingly.

And while we are on the topic of computers, I’d like to make another statement of fact. The newest cohort of students is undeniably worse than the previous when it comes to computers. I ranted about this in 2022. No more ranting. Pure observation.

It is unacceptable that a student can assert their expertise — mastery, even — of Office when they are unable to add [expletive deleted] page numbers, a [expletive deleted] table of contents or [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] headings and subheadings. I realize that Word processors are notoriously convoluted, and I know — all the teachers know — that students are using ChatGPT and online translators to complete their work, but, dear students, there is this thing called a search engine that can help you learn how to format a document.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

As someone with a geeky side, I followed the development of GPT. I even included a slide in a lesson about how GPT-3 wrote a song. I played with the different image creation things in class. When OpenAI dropped ChatGPT I immediately sent a message to my manager and colleagues. It took until last month for the school to form a task force. For some reason I received an invitation to said task force. I refused and shared my thoughts (summary: me no likey) but was not removed from the mailing list.

It will (again) come as no surprise that we will (predictably) work on finding a way to use GPT-4/LLM/ChatGPT/whatever to create content for classes and find ways to allow students to use it in class.

And so the 2022–2023 school year comes to a close… FFS

On Debloating Android Phones

Sat, 20 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, a new Android phone has come into my possession. It is fortunately very light on the bloatware that comes on many devices. Just the standard Google stuff, the required packages, and 4 OEM packages. What’s more, it is very up-to-date and will probably stay that way based on the company’s reputation (I am purposely refraining from saying that company name because it is irrelevant here).

The unfortunate thing about even the least bloated phones on the market is that it is still impossible to remove certain applications. Gmail, for example, is of no use to me. It isn’t exactly hurting me being there, but I want it out because that is what I do on my phones. Like all but one phone I have ever owned, this phone cannot be rooted. There is a tool for that.

UAD, the Universal Android Debloater is a GUI that uses ADB to debloat non-rooted android devices. This is my usual go-to. It is self-explanatory in use and seems active enough by my standards. This time around, it wouldn’t launch. I tried both binaries on my laptop before realizing that since Alpine Linux uses musl libc instead of the GNU equivalent, I may need to build it myself. Well, I gave it my best and it wasn’t good enough. I could not get that sucker to build (I think I may have sorted out my problem now, better late than never) and patience ran out, so I just did it manually.

Here is how I got the Google (sort of) off my phone.

Requirements

Android SDK Platform Tools: The Android tools (adb is the one we want) are usually easy enough to install. There are loads of other, more precise, resources on the web that explain how to enable developer options on your phone and install these tools on your computer.
jq: an application included in many Linux distributions and also works on Mac and Windows.
The UAD Package List: You can grab the package list from the website.
A little time: I would start by making a directory to keep track of things. I called mine debloat. Now run

$ wget https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater/raw/main/resources/assets/uad_lists.json

to get the JSON file we want.

Removal Decisions

Get the package list from your phone
Get the recommended removable packages from the UAD JSON
Compare
Double-check
Remove the packages from your phone

If your phone is connected to your computer and adb devices shows your device (sometimes you need to put in a pin or confirm on your phone), you should be able to run this command and be given a list of packages:

$ adb shell pm list packages | cut -f 2 -d ":"

* daemon not running; starting now at tcp:5037
* daemon started successfully
com.google.android.providers.media.module
com.qti.phone
com.google.android.overlay.modules.permissioncontroller.forframework
com.android.calllogbackup
com.qualcomm.qti.lpa
com.qualcomm.atfwd
com.qualcomm.qti.cne
com.android.dreams.phototable
com.google.android.overlay.gmsconfig.comms
com.android.providers.contacts
com.qualcomm.uimremoteserver
com.qti.pasrservice
com.android.dreams.basic
...

I put it in a text file by adding > packages.txt to the command.

Next, we need to use jq to check the UAD list for removable Google packages.

$ jq -r '.[]' uad_lists.json | jq -r 'select(.list=="Google" and .removal=="Recommended")' | jq -r '.id' > removable.txt

Now we have a packages.txt file and a removable.txt file. There are lots of ways to compare, but on a quiet night with nothing to do, one may not feel like opening up LibreOffice Calc or using an online tool. A couple lines of Python works in this case.

with open("packages.txt", "r") as installed:
    package_reader = installed.readlines()
    package_list = set()
    for package in package_reader:
        package_list.add(package.replace("\n", ""))
    # print(package_list)

with open("removable.txt", "r") as removable:
    removable_reader = removable.readlines()
    removable_list = set()
    for rpackage in removable_reader:
        removable_list.add(rpackage.replace("\n", ""))
    # print(removable_list)

debloat = set(package_list) & set(removable_list)

for bloat in debloat:
    print(f"adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 {bloat}")

This should print out a list of removable packages with the appropriate command prepended to each line.

$ python chck_pkgs.py
 
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.feedback
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.as
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.wellbeing
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.marvin.talkback
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.setupwizard
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.deskclock

Some Google packages have obvious names, com.android.chrome is clearly Chrome. But, what is com.google.android.apps.tachyon? Well, that’s Google Duo/Meet, of course!

So, it is time to double-check instead of going crazy on the removals. Just because some people on the Internet suggest something does not mean it is the right thing for you to do. After all, breaking the functionalities of a device you just paid money for in the name of privacy is just silly.

I read through the descriptions of many of the packages before giving them the boot. Either open the UAD list file in a text editor or ask jq to do the work for us:

$ jq -r '.[]' uad_lists.json | jq -r 'select(.list=="Google" and .removal=="Recommended")' | jq -r '.id + ": " + .description'

If you decide that you need one of the packages that you removed, it can be restored using:

adb shell cmd package install-existing --user 0 <packagename>

This is because the packages were only removed for the user, but not removed from the device. Worst case scenario: factory reset will restore all packages and unbreak anything that needs to be unbroken.

Final words

The best place for information on doing this likely the XDA Forums where you can likely find device-specific recommendations.

I have found some benefits to “removing” these packages: you won’t save much space, but possibly some battery will be saved. Also, if you live somewhere where it is not reasonable to pay for unlimited data, some of these packages might be using data that you want to keep for yourself. It is certainly worth looking into in you have devices by other brands that include OEM-specific bloatware that you never use.

On using Alpine Linux as a Desktop

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I used to use Gemini. (I cannot recall why I stopped using it). Call it prescience, call it hoarding, but I happened to keep my bookmarks file from those days. During some Spring cleaning I opened it up to see what was there.

There were a number of bookmarks, one of them being a post . The post was about Alpine Linux. “Why would I bookmark this post?” I thought to myself. So, off I went to their website…

And, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a proper and navigable website. This required my attention. While I am not such an expert on websites and design, I have navigated (or have attempted to navigate) many a Linux landing page. When the Alpine Linux page loaded I was obliged to give it a nod of approval. Debian, seriously, what is up with your site?

Great Logo

The logo, as well, garnered yet another nod. Hexagons are the bestagons, and this logo is wonderful. The choice of colour, and the simplicity, make it stand out. The site even made it easy to track down the epic tale of logo bikeshed-ification and notes on their website design.

Within moments, I was on the Downloads page and remarked a logical selection of images to choose from. There are even idiot-friendly descriptions, which is perfect for me. I initially decided to take it for a spin on my disused Raspberry Pi400. And here came another surprise: the size of the download.

The image for the RPi is under 100 MB. And for desktop? Just over 150 MB. “Impossible,” I thought. And I was wrong. Totally possible. Apparently their slogan — “Small. Simple. Secure.” — is at least 33% true. To know more, continue on to my glowing review of this Linux distribution.

Review

Installation

Note(s)

~~I am currently in the process of jotting down instructions of my own~~.

I have added my instructions to the Alpine Wiki, here.

Alpine Linux may turn off many desktop users. This is because installation is done via the command line. There is no Calamares or Live image. After getting the image on a USB drive, for example, and booting, you are in the terminal (tty) with a blinking cursor and instructions to login as root. From here, you can run the setup-alpine script that walks you through getting the basics installed and configured. I followed this process.

After rebooting I was still at a command prompt, but now had Wi-Fi and began following the instructions from the Wiki. From here, all it took was reading the Wiki and learning to use the apk command.

APK — Alpine Package Keeper

apk works like apt on Debian-based distributions, but I do find it easier. I searched (apk search x) and I added (apk add x) without difficulty. apk also takes care of removing dependencies — apk del x is like apt purge x && apt autoremove — and this is just so… simple. Yes, there was the matter of uncommenting a repository, and I did need to pay special attention to how to use rc-service and rc-update, but in under 10 minutes I was able to install the necessary packages to install LXQt on my old laptop (an Acer Aspire from 2015).

The apk tool is also extremely fast.

Use as a desktop

I could wag my chin all day and bore the pants off anyone reading this, but I’d rather keep it simple. Once installed, everything boots quick enough and the hardware works (trackpad, webcam, Bluetooth, optical drive, number pad, function keys, etc.). Of course, using something like LXQt makes the system snappy and quick. Desktop users, however, tend to want access to the latest and greatest software.

Access to Software

One does not need to install a distro to learn these things. Alpine Linux Edge is quite up-to-date.

(For comparison: Arch Linux and Debian Unstable)

Using the Edge (rolling) repository gave me nearly everything needed to do what I do on a computer:

use the web
update my blog
consume media

Some packages are out of date, and that can be a pain. But, here I am with a desktop up and running on an 8-year-old laptop that has not been used in years, and it is fast. ~~So, if the pandoc version is 7 months behind, I can grumble a little, but it won’t stop me from using this distro~~.

Beyond this, up-to-date packages for browsers and many desktop environments are available. You can quickly have access to LibreOffice, Python, audio and video playing software, IDEs and other helpful tools that can get many users through the day.

Downsides

Alpine is a “general purpose Linux distribution” but does not target desktop users. Anything that could be perceived as a downside stems from this distinction and should be considered a bit of a feature, rather than a bug.

Drew DeVault’s article on Alpine (mentioned above) mentions the only downside I have noticed in my week or so of using this on my old laptop.

Documentation is one of Alpine’s weak points. This is generally offset by Alpine’s simplicity — it can usually be understood reasonably quickly and easily even in the absence of documentation — but it remains an issue. That being said, Alpine has shown consistent progress in this respect in the past few releases, shipping more manual pages, improving the wiki, and standardizing processes for matters like release notes.

Drew DeVault

Conclusion

Obligatory screenshot

I am looking forward to my coming holiday because I will likely switch my main laptop to Alpine Linux. In fact, I am even inclined to finally, after years of being a basic Desktop Linux user, contribute to a project with more than the rare bug report. I will probably need a little help before I do that though.

As I am writing this I have also came across Bradley Taunt’s Alpine Suck project, a script that installs the core suckless programs. If they don’t already exist, I believe that other projects of this nature will appear. Perhaps, even, a desktop distro based on Alpine.

It may be apparent, but I will let you in on a secret: I have never tried to write a review of distribution — ever. My Linux experience only goes back to about 2006. Since then, I have tried a good number of distributions. Never once have I ever thought about sharing my thoughts in more than a few words. Also take into consideration that I am a desktop Linux user.

If I were to apply the same grading methods to Alpine Linux as I do my students, I would state the following:

Excellent — above average with only minor weak points.

On Blogging in 2023

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:44:35 +0100

The vinyl bandwagon has made a few laps around the block in my lifetime. I have occasionally run alongside it, too. While I have never climbed up on my soapbox to tout the strengths of the format or rally followers under an “It Just Sounds Warmer” banner, I must admit that the ritual and process is pleasant. That little crackle when the needle drops; the minor changes you need to make to the levels and equalizer; the size of the liner notes and elaborate gatefolds of the jackets; all of these give vinyl a nostalgic je ne sais quoi.

by Alex Gregory, for The New Yorker

source

In my home, the turntable holds a central position. On a slightly higher shelf, out of the reach of children, it sits flanked by two speakers. Many are drawn to it, only to notice my lack of tube amps (cue disdain) and low-end, entry-level, hardware (activate disgust). In reality, I rarely use my turntable. I suspect I am not the only one like this. It sits, in wait, for the chance to be used, much like Andy’s toys in the Toy Story franchise.

An album collection, or toys in a trunk, is a decent metaphor for how things seem to work now. We are given new and shiny, but sporadically decide to flick though the collection and listen to a certain album on vinyl, hoping for warm feelings. Toy Story is done, we thought it was over. The toys had a warm, happy, ending. But, over at Disney someone ran out of new and is considering pulling out the faithful, warm, sound of the Toy Story franchise for another spin.

Looking around we can see Disney is not the only one. Our own nostalgia closets aren’t just open — we’ve torn the doors off. Our shirts are plaid, our pants are oversized and of the cargo variety, our footwear is made by the good Dr. Marten or features a Michael Jordan silhouette, and the hairstyles are throwbacks to Dawson’s Creek. With our vinyl records spinning in the background, we feel warm and cosy.

In September 2016, Andrew Sullivan wrote “I Used to Be a Human Being” for New York Magazine. He put into words a sentiment that had been building for years: our collective resentment of social networks. The abruptness of this disruption is noted:

“We almost forget that ten years ago, there were no smartphones, and as recently as 2011, only a third of Americans owned one. Now nearly two-thirds do. That figure reaches 85 percent when you’re only counting young adults. And 46 percent of Americans told Pew surveyors last year a simple but remarkable thing: They could not live without one. The device went from unknown to indispensable in less than a decade.”

Since then, the resentment has not stopped growing. Different trends, like Digital Minimalism, took root (just look at the wiki for the /r/digitalminimalism subreddit for a taste). We strive for the warm feeling, but it seems out of reach and intangible, and our closet of nostalgia seems to provide nothing old for us. And so, today, 2023, we have begun looking back with sentimentality at a time, towards the end of the 90s, when blogging was a thing.

The Open Diary homepage, c. 1999

Before the arrival of social media and microblogging services, before Web 2.0 took off, we had methods of sharing our thoughts with strangers on the web. We blogged. Well, I didn’t really, but people did this. And today, more and more people are flicking through their album collection, and digging in their toy trunk, for warmth and declaring that blogging is it. Blogging must come back!

Blogging à la 90s was a ritual. Lots of bloggers used FTP servers. There was a “manual” feeling about it. Other users followed you via RSS. You couldn’t really know if people read what you wrote. You bounced ideas off walls, and bounce by bounce became part of a community. Blogger, now part of the Alphabet family, has been around since then.

Blogger.com in 1999

Some notable attempts have been made to inject new life into blogging. WordPress, Medium, Substack, and a slew of other tools are all popular. Another tribe of bloggers swears by static site generators.

And here we are now, new tools in hand, hoping that one of our old tricks will fulfil the need. Monique Judd (in “Bring back personal blogging”) wrote that “Twitter threads just don’t do the trick” and personal blogs are “primary sources in the annals of history,” so you should,

“[b]uy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you.

“Bring back personal blogging in 2023.”

by Matthew Diffee for The New Yorker

source

Similar to Sullivan’s article, Judd’s article (among others) kicked off some threads on HN and garnered some buzz. The trend had been building before this article was published. Blogrolls, Webrings, directories¹, and challenges, like 100 Days To Offload, never died. In a warm corner of the web, a very niche corner, people have continued to share their thoughts and ideas with strangers, similar to how vinyl addicts never stopped collecting.

This circle of bloggers sometimes overlaps with neighbouring circles on the web, forming a virtual Venn diagram where people who dislike mainstream social media or Big Tech chin-wag on the Fediverse, swapping blogs with activists, techies, privacy experts, gamers, retro geeks, and many more. The lay-offs of 2022–2023 increased the size of these circles to a point where the content can overflow into the mainstream attracting more and more users. This phenomenon is not new.

The optimist in me believes that personal blogging could become bigger than it is. Many users already have a tendency to post using threads, recounting stories or events in a digestible way. I would go as far as calling it a modern skill. Take this thread by Security Writer on the Infosec Exchange Mastodon instance for example. While the situation as a whole is technical, they managed to write a more or less layman-friendly thread that had me hooked. This type of writing works as a thread because with each post there is drama and anticipation.

Threads like the one mentioned above, I must admit, rouse the pessimist in me. Would I have read that story as a single post on a random blog? Would I have even been aware of the post? Maybe, and probably not, are the honest answers. Despite only ever using Twitter for a few months in total, the concept of the thread, despite what Judd says, strikes me as enough in many cases, and the perfect medium in rare cases.

Taking someone who has honed their skill as a thread-writer and getting them to post it on a blog takes away from the interactions we’ve been conditioned to love. I am left with doubts whether reading blogs hits the addictive nerve centres like social media and podcasts do.

“As I’m sure most people who keep a blog will tell you, one of the big benefits is just having somewhere to organize your thoughts and solidify your ideas. I personally see it as an alternative to keeping a journal, which I’ve always been lousy at. Knowing my writing might have an audience, no matter how small, is a good motivator in keeping it up and thinking up interesting things to write about.”

moddedBear

Many personal blogs do not seek that attention, though. I recall people questioning the point of blogs back in the early 2000s. What is the point of sharing if you don’t know who is reading? As stated, that isn’t the point for many bloggers. The remaining bloggers have all the new tools to work with, and can give you an answer to that question. Today, you can have access to data and metrics about your readers that were not readily available in the early 2000s. You can attribute numbers to your posts, which would certainly appeal to a number of social media users.

Blogging is, in the end, a Pharmakon. It is an agent of change, in the written form. For the active blogger, it works as a cure, giving an outlet, a place to offload thoughts and share, in a world that is becoming lonelier each year — the warm crackle of the needle hitting the vinyl. For others, it will offer no healing effects. It will act as poison preventing the blogger from thinking for themselves — the visible disgust of the audiophile when they see your turntable.

###

This article you have just read is not an article. It is not published, it is posted. A blog post has no formal rules, structure, or standard. Should I structure this like an essay with a thesis? Should I have a clear conclusion? Should I ask fewer questions? I suppose if I were a professional blogger I could have presented a clear thesis, given the context, discussed problems, consequences, solutions, examples, and created something witty, meaningful, and blogworthy. This is not, as you can tell, a professional blog. It is my personal blog to do with as I please. And today it pleases me to end here, without a true conclusion, because I feel that I have sufficiently offloaded for now.

Some examples of these would be https://blogroll.org/, https://blogsurf.io/, https://personalsit.es/, https://indieseek.xyz/, https://indieblog.page/, The Indieweb Webring, and https://fediring.net/ ↩︎

TMI: Sharing your CV on LinkedIn

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 22:05:02 +0100

Note(s)

The images provided here have been anonymized in such a way to preserve the original appearance. This is not meant to be a personal attack on anyone, but if you recognize your CV here, email me and I will make it disappear.

I am fed up.

LinkedIn, the “professional” network, is a valuable tool for jobseekers. Not a guarantee, mind you, of finding the dream job, just a tool. There are multiple functions on this site. There is the social function, where you can post thoughts and articles, and, there is the profile function, where you put your employment and educational history. The latter serves as an online CV (or résumé) to help you find the perfect job or perfect employee.

Schools around the world teach digital literacy and computer skills at different levels of education. We see stories online and on TV telling us to be wary. Just read this story about a stalker who used social media and dating profiles to track a woman to her home address. This story ended fine, with the stalker being punished. Not all stories end this way.

So, what about LinkedIn has me fed up?

The Problem

I find it inconceivable, unbelievable, and downright moronic that many young people would double-down on a platform like LinkedIn by having a profile and using the social feature to share a PDF of their CV.

“Well,” you’ll say, “it looks nice and it is eye-catching. You don’t understand, silly millennial!”

And, I will agree in part. Despite having nearly 20 years of experience with social networks, and over 25 years of Internet under my stressed out belt, I don’t understand. In particular, I don’t understand how you could be so careless to share a) a PDF file that contains metadata, sometimes about your device, and b) also include details like your personal phone number, personal email address, home address, and date of birth. And I’m not even mentioning the fact that you include your photo. Have you not heard of identity theft? Do you think that only the people in your 1st degree network can see that?

Now, clearly, there are some reasonable people out there that take the time to remove personal info from a document like that before sharing. And still others that set the sharing permissions. But, it is a site with a search bar. So, being curious, I decided to search for posts containing phrases like “my CV,” or “my resume.”

The expected happened. Post after post, 1st degree and 3rd degree contacts, of PDF files being shared.

Now I know where you live

LinkedIn lets you download the PDF. So I downloaded enough to be able to get some numbers (I also sorted by most recent, and included all levels of contacts). Based on what I was able to see, both directly and indirectly by reading the CVs and looking at the metadata, I can say that:

20% of my contacts shared their full date of birth
50% used their school-provided email addresses
50% used their personal email addresses
40% shared their full home address, including street number
100% shared their personal mobile number

I literally know where you live. I can look at your addresses on street view. Not only that, but I can search for you on other social networks with your personal email. That is creepy.

Scratching away at the surface, I know that (roughly):

10% made their CV using Google Docs
10% used PowerPoint (why?)
20% used Word (one of which used Hloom; another the 2013 edition of Word)
40% used Canva
20% of the PDF files I downloaded included no information besides the creation date

Note(s)

re: Canva

I cannot knock what I haven’t tried, but if you are going to use Canva, at least be smart. One of the PDF files even included the name of the template. It is called “Foncé Violet Femme Photo Service à la clientèle C.V.”. Don’t list Canva as a skill if you just know how to edit a template.

Simple Solutions

TMI

Don’t include that personal information when you share a PDF of your CV. Problem solved! It is, however, somewhat important to include your email address. The way around this issue is via aliases.

An alias is still your email address, but you will know where that email came from. Here is an example:

If you use Gmail (so early 2000s) you actually have built-in aliases! Imagine your email address is joan.dark@gmail.com. Guess what? joandark@gmail.com is also your address. As is j.oandark@gmail.com (at least it was the last time I checked, let me check again right now…yup, still works!).
You also have + addresses, so joan.dark+linkedin@gmail.com works too, but that doesn’t look great on a CV.
Now, when you open an email you will see in the to: field that it was sent to joandark@gmail.com instead of your regular address, and you will know that someone got it from your LinkedIn CV.

This is, as stated above, a simple solution. There are others, like creating a separate email address just for job searches, that many would see as a hassle.

Standing out from the crowd

Looking at the picture above, you will notice that more than one of those CVs uses the 2-column template. If you have never encountered this before, just know that it is overwhelmingly used in France. So many CVs look the same. The lack of creativity comes from using templates, or perhaps there is some logic to using this template.

Canva, and many tools like it, seem like creative ways of doing things. In the end, it is overkill. There are colours and shapes, lists, icons, and other flourishes that neither reveal your creativity nor your actual skill level.

Tell me, for example, why in your soft skills section do you rate your communication skills as 4-stars? Is it out of 5? 6? If you are a skilled communicator, why can you not communicate how skilled you are at communicating with words? And what is a 4/5 in Excel? Does that mean you can use VBA, or do you just know how to filter columns?

You want to add pizazz to your CV? Try something out of the ordinary? Learn how to use the tool. Are you a creative person? Make an online portfolio.

Don’t blame yourself

A study by Dell of 15,105 people, aged 18–26, across 15 markets revealed that 44% of Gen Z feel as though both schools and businesses should work together to bridge the digital skills gap; 1/3 feel that their school education did not prepare them with the technology skills needed for their planned career; and 56% received either very basic or no digital skills training.

Digital literacy concerns us all, and educators need to underline the importance of digital privacy. Perhaps they do, and you just forgot. Be wary of social networks, even the professional ones. Become digital natives one step at a time. Help your friends along the way, and stop telling us all where you live.

Using Pandoc for My Slides: 2023 Update

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 11:50:50 +0100

In March 2021 I wrote about using pandoc to make my presentations for class. Towards the end of that post, I wrote:

My next quest will be to figure out how to make my own themes and styles. If you know how or have a nice, simple, guide, let me know.

Well, it turns out that I was not far from a simple solution. With the recent release of pandoc 3.0 I was reminded that pandoc is, quite certainly, my most-used-tool for teaching — I use it for my slides, and all the different documents that I need to make at my various teaching positions.

Adding some colour

Being quite content with the built-in options for themes (colortheme, innertheme and outertheme) I was under no pressure to seek out a solution. That is, until it became necessary to my sanity to be able to open a presentation and immediately recognize what school it was for — I teach at four different places!

The answer was in the Beamer user Guide and involves making a small .tex file.

Here is a (slightly modified) version that I use for one of my schools:


% define some new colours
% NB RGB and rgb are not the same thing!

\definecolor{sgreen}{RGB}{52,201,33}
\definecolor{lessdarkbackground}{RGB}{95,96,93}
\definecolor{darkbackground}{RGB}{40,38,39}
\definecolor{sorange}{RGB}{235,175,0}
\definecolor{sred}{RGB}{212,33,39}

% tell LaTeX to use one of those colours for the structure

\usecolortheme[named=darkbackground]{structure}

% tell LaTeX which colours to use for which elements

\setbeamertemplate{blocks}[shadow=true]
\setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=lessdarkbackground}
\setbeamercolor{block title}{bg=darkbackground, fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{block body}{bg=darkbackground, fg=white}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=white}
\setbeamercolor{titlelike}{fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{itemize item}{fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{itemize subitem}{fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{itemize subsubitem}{fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{enumerate item}{fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{enumerate subitem}{fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{enumerate subsubitem}{fg=sorange}
\setbeamercolor{section number projected}{fg=white, bg=sorange}

% some extra commands

\usepackage[os=mac]{menukeys}
\usepackage{fancybox}
\usepackage[many]{tcolorbox}
\usepackage{pgf}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}

These LaTeX instructions override the default blue theme, whale, and add a few extra functions that I rarely use, but don’t want to bother looking up again.

Running pandoc with the appropriate commands gives me this:

Open the image to see the gory details

Personally, this is not my favourite colour scheme. It does match what is used at the school, however, and that is what I was going for.

Why the quote?

I included a slide with a quote to point out that some solutions are more obvious than others. I am not at all comfortable with LaTeX, maybe someday. For now, I have the tools I need, and time-wise I can manage. I believe that learning LaTeX would be a logical step for someone in my position: many academics use LaTeX — I am just a professor, and do not need to publish, but knowing this skill would be an advantage.

Moving on to the quote.

I like to keep things simple. A quote, with italic or emphasized text, followed by the name of the person quoted, flushed right, boldfaced, preceded by “—.”

See? Simple.

At one point, I had some trouble getting the author’s name to the right of the slide. Then, I had trouble getting the text to be bold without resorting to LaTeX commands like \textbf.

As is usually the case, the problem was how I was positioning the Markdown markup.

This was wrong:

\hfill **--- Kim Stanley Robinson** \
\hfill *The Ministry for the Future* (2021)

Why? Because of how pandoc interprets the * following the \hfill (horizontal fill) command. It just doesn’t work like that.

This is the simple solution:

**\hfill --- Kim Stanley Robinson** \
*\hfill The Ministry for the Future* (2021)

Wrapping the \hfill command in the markup takes care of the problem. No more resorting to LaTeX commands.

Workflow 2023

Nothing much has changed since before in terms of workflow.

Generally, I keep a “build” folder for each of my employers. Things have become disorganized since deciding on this structure, and I need to revamp it. But, right now, it might look like this:

SCHOOL
└── COURSE
    └── build
        ├── assets
        │   └── logo.png
        ├── Slides.md
        └── style.tex

I would prepare my Markdown file with the appropriate front matter and run:

pandoc -t beamer --pdf-engine=xelatex -H style.tex input.md -o output.pdf

(-t beamer is the output type, --pdf-engine=xelatex because I like to use different fonts, -H style.tex includes my “theme” in the header)

Doing that is not what I call a fluid workflow. And I have seen many, many solutions. My “solution” is to use Kate.

Kate has an “External Tools” plugin. With that, it is possible to create a button, or menu item, to do the work for you.

Several little tools, like spellchecking with LanguageTool

Under the hood

So, now I have a single-click “build” button for Markdown files. That means I can “preview” my slides when I want by leaving zathura open. I also tend to spellcheck things frequently.

Once I have the PDF file, I manually copy it into my shared Syncthing folder, so the file is on my phone. Then, when I turn on my work computer, the file will be synced to it as well.

Ready to teach.

The Next Step

Learning how to make a bloody Makefile!

I don’t need it (yet), but it would be nice to know how to do this. It would streamline things, for certain.

Some links

pandoc has a website and a GitHub. It can be installed on different operating systems.

I highly recommend you follow the pandoc account on Mastodon https://fosstodon.org/@pandoc as well as https://scholar.social/@tarleb; those accounts are overflowing with tips like this trick to prevent pandoc from adding title, date or author to the document text or how to create example and alert blocks in Beamer.

Wrong

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 11:43:56 +0100

Gather round, my younglings,
hear my prose.
I will tell you a story
everyone knows...

Our good hero has things to say and things to share.
Belly full and coffee prepared, they take their seat and stare.

A blank screen beckons.

Fingers fly and letters coalesce into words and sentences and paragraphs.

Headings and subheadings, table of contents, references and footnotes; the œuvre is ready for public viewing.

The wordsmith climbs the rungs of the digital soapbox.

“Redditors, come read my righteous words, give me your karma!” they declare. “Good people of Hacker News, Lobsters, and Mastodon; Lemmy, you too may enjoy my writings. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you have not been forgotten.”

Finally, the tension our hero felt is released. They relax into their chair and sip their coffee. Content with their content.

ping!

“Ah, surely a word of encouragement from one of my many followers,” they think.

Nay. It is not the case. Confused and perplexed, leaning closer in hopes of gaining insight from the pixels on the screen.

The chair creeks; a drop of coffee falls and lands on writer’s keyboard; the wings of a housefly beat…

thump thump thump

They squint, reading the words, mouthing them:

You. Are. Wrong.

“Wrong? Me?” they think.

Our hero places their beverage aside, index fingers finding the home row, and prepares a polite retort.

“Please, stranger, enlighten me with proof of my fault, that I may amend my previous statement and learn from my mistake.”

ping!

A hasty reply: “Everything is wrong, because you neglected this [link to a personal blog that cites no sources] and this [article from three years ago on a conspiracy theory website]. Not to mention, your claims contradict this statement made by [a sockpuppet account of the mod of this forum].”

“Ah, bless their heart. A troll attempting to draw out my ire,” they think to themselves. “A waste of CO₂.”

ping

A tab calls, it is Hacker News. Lobsters, too, favours our hero.

Could it be? No. An army of trolls, for sure. For their is no other explanation.

“What preposterous nonsense is this? Hacker News is a joke, for shame! And I thought more of you Lobsters! I shall not engage you belittlers. I shall block you deriding denigrators. You cannot bait me into this most basest of disagreements. I will not, shall not, could not, cannot get into an argument on the Internet,” they proclaim as they block, report, filter, and mute those who dare disagree.

But…
what if…

A seed of doubt takes root, confirmation bias clouds, cognitive dissonance boils blood.

“I know what to do. Exactly, and most precisely, I shall riposte. The haters shall learn that this is something up with which I shall not put!”

Copy
    Paste
        Format
            Markdown
                BBCode
                    Plaintext

“See [here], misguided stranger, not to mention [this], [that], and [still more things] that confirm my position. Easy mistakes to make, but when you do your own research and forge your own path, you will understand. Also, your grammar needs work.”

And so the day goes…
Our hero’s coffee is cold, their stomach growls as the sun travels from east to west.
Duties are shirked, friends are ignored.

Far away,
on another continent,
another stranger awakens and joins the conversation.

But, that troll from before?
They are unbothered.
Their day was filled with friends and family and dogs to walk.
Our hero is the furthest thing from their mind.

Who is the hero?
Who is the troll?

The end of this story?
Nobody knows.
One cannot win a battle
against Internet foes...

Review: Crosscall CORE-Z5

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 13:57:00 +0100

Mid-November, 2022, my trusty Nokia 5.3 began acting up. I began looking for a new device. I was only looking, though, because I don’t relish spending money on a device, or reading reviews, or dealing with transferring things from an old phone to a new phone. I rediscovered the French brand, Crosscall and spent some time learning how to compare devices. I initially planned of getting an eco-friendly or privacy-oriented device, but that idea didn’t pan out. Before I knew it, I had spent way beyond what I was planning on a device just to get something different…

A Chonky Boy

Photo from Crosscall website

Judging the book by its cover

First impressions mean a lot

The Crosscall CORE-Z5 comes in a plain brown cardboard box (recycled, of course). What’s inside the box?

A chonky phone
a printed guide
a USB-C to USB-C cable and charging block
a Crosscall X-BLOCKER (which I have no use for yet, so I won’t mention it any more)
three different sizes of earbud tips
no headphones or earbuds
no lanyard

There are first impressions, and there are first impressions. I knew beforehand that it would be bigger and heavier than most phones I have used in the past. This thing is a beast.

It doesn’t just have bezels. It has a chin and a forehead. And a notch camera too. It is thick. There are buttons. Many buttons! But, most of all, it is heavy and quite solid feeling.

Inside the CORE-Z5: the magnesium chassis keeps things safe, and heavy

(source)

Around the sides of the phone there are 7 (seven!) buttons. Two are for the volume rocker, one is the power button (which doubles as a fingerprint scanner). On the top there is a single red button, and on the left side there are three buttons — these buttons can be configured with two functions each. This is a rugged device, so the headphone jack and USB port are protected.

Button placement on the Crosscall CORE-Z5

The body is made of polycarbonate and thermoplastic elastomer, the screen is Gorilla Glass 5. I find the device to be rather slippery. On the back we have a camera (a single camera!), a speaker, and a Magconn connection (Crosscall X-LINK).

Overall, I like the physical design of the device. I do wish Crosscall had used the rubbery elastomer on the back as well, for comfort and to make it easier to hold.

Getting to the CORE of it

What’s inside this unit?

OS: Android 12
Display: 1560 x 720, 6.1"
Processor: Octa-core CPU @2.6GHz
SoC: Qualcomm QCM6490 (ARMv8)
GPU: Qualcomm Adreno 643
RAM: 4 GB
Camera: 48MP (f/1.8) and 8MP (f/2)
Video: 4K 30fps capable
Sensors, etc.: accelerometer, altimeter, Bluetooth, cameras, compass, GPS, gyroscope, light sensor, NFC, pedometer, proximity sensor, and Wi-Fi

Performance-wise, I don’t have much to complain about, nor to compare with. Aside from a quick in-store test, I have never used a high-end flagship phone. That said, I find it fast enough to do what I do most: work. From quick emails to large, multi-tab, spreadsheets, the CORE-Z5 has made me realize how people are able to accomplish so much on their devices. I decided to run some tests on the phone and they confirm what I experienced: The phone is faster than what I was used to.

Benchmark Comparison (interactive chart)

The comparison chart above shows how the CORE-Z5 matches up against several other phones. The Nokia 5.3 (my previous phone), three phones that I considered buying (the Teracube 2e, the Murena One, and the Fairphone 4), and a recent flagship device (the Pixel 7 Pro). I won’t claim to understand these tests, but I am pleased to see that the PCMark Work test nearly doubled the results of my former phone. The Geekbench benchmark was probably the most user-friendly of the tests that I ran, in case you are also looking to benchmark your phone and, like me, you have no idea where to begin.

Additionally, I ran the GFXBench test on the CORE-Z5. I don’t game on my phone, but for those who are interested, here are the results:

GFXBench Results

OpenGL Aztec Ruins High Tier: 3034 Frames (47.2 Fps)
OpenGL 4K Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 490 Frames (7.6 Fps)
OpenGL Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 1086 Frames (16.9 Fps)
OpenGL Aztec Ruins Normal Tier: 3844 Frames (59.8 Fps)
OpenGL Aztec Ruins Normal Tier Offscreen: 2728 Frames (42.4 Fps)
Vulkan Aztec Ruins High Tier: 3188 Frames (49.6 Fps)
Vulkan 4K Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 523 Frames (8.1 Fps)
Vulkan Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen: 1155 Frames (18.0 Fps)
Vulkan Aztec Ruins Normal Tier: 3844 Frames (59.8 Fps)
Vulkan Aztec Ruins Normal Tier Offscreen: 3131 Frames (48.7 Fps)

Connectivity

Note: I do not have 5G

I tested the connectivity of the device on my home and work Wi-Fi networks, on 4G, and using it as a hotspot. Here are the results:

	Upload	Download
Wi-Fi Home	16.4 Mbps	0.96 Mbps
Wi-Fi Work	104 Mbps	89.1 Mbps
4G	82.9 Mbps	23.8 Mbps
Hotspot (4G)	59.5 Mbps	6.61 Mbps

Photography

In a world where most phones have at least two cameras on the back, the CORE-Z5 stands out. It has just one. It is listed as a 48MP camera, but the default in the camera app is set to 12MP “Fusion⁴”. Crosscall brands this as Fusion⁴ technology, but what is happening here is pixel binning. The default photo app is in need of a little upgrade, and is missing options like panorama altogether, and hides common options in the settings (timers, exposure, white balance, etc.)

The results are fine for me. If you love to take and share photos, you will be let down. A rugged phone is not meant for shutterbugs.

Kup has a face, and the phone detects it

Bokeh achieved? (3000x4000 / 4.7mm focal length / 1/25 shutter speed / 1.8 aperture / ISO 834 / no flash)

While this isn’t the best example, it is realistic. One does not stage every photo, we do hope for things to turn out a little clearer. Even more so given that the product page for the CORE-Z5 states: “Accurate photos, even in low lighting.”

Daily driving

Weight and size notwithstanding, this is an easy device to use. I don’t know why more phone-makers haven’t put more programmable buttons on their devices. It makes the experience better.

My button layout looks like this:

(long/triple-tap)

Button 1: answer call / torch
Button 2: camera / emergency
Button 3: OSMAnd~ / Total Commander
Button 4: Silent toggle / Vibration toggle

Out of the box, you have Android 12 and a minimal, near-vanilla, experience. Crosscall has added a few apps (that cannot be removed — booooo!):

X-STORY: an app for making video montages
X-Sensors: a neat little app that does nothing but show you that the sensors are working (the compass is nice)
X-SAFE: a shortcut to the phone’s emergency settings
X-CAMP: a sort of social network
X-Talk: a PTT / walkie-talkie app (I deactivated this one because I have no use for it, and it maintained a constant network connect — yuck)

Screenshot of Crosscall X-CAMP app: not so international...

Note: the phone is only available in 14 countries (see map)

Many of the close-to-vanilla Android devices can make the same claim: decent battery life. I have squeezed up to two days of moderate use from the CORE-Z5, three days of light use. I never need to worry about taking the charger. The phone itself can act as a charger, too, and I have used it to recharge my DAP while on the go.

I also purchased a USB hub for it, so I can output via HDMI and connect other USB devices to it. It worked perfectly, and I was able to give a lecture that included slides and a video. On another occasion, I corrected 25 homework assignments and entered the grades in a spreadsheet. Work-wise, I am very content. Additionally, I am more than impressed with the fingerprint sensor and the ability to use the phone while it is wet.

Conclusion and Complaints

A review without complaints is not a review. I have complaints, and here they are:

Let us remove those Crosscall apps — bloatware, even cool bloatware, is still bloatware.
The X-CAMP app is neat, but users need a forum, a FAQ, and a wiki.
- A high percentage of the questions on the app are about storage space and Bluetooth issues — give the users a place to refer to when those problems are encountered.
The X-CAMP map is provided by Mapbox, which relies on OpenStreetMap, but OSM is not credited in the app itself — this should be rectified.
The X-Talk app needs an easy option for deactivation for those who do not wish to use it.
Update the camera app and add additional modes, like panorama.

I have many positive remarks about this phone. Some are mentioned above (battery life, usefulness of the buttons, performance) while others fit into the category of “I forgot how much I missed that”:

Programmable buttons
LED notifications
Magconn charging
Ruggedness
Powerful torch
Speaker volume
Precise GPS (good enough for Mapillary)

I am not even close to the target market for this type of phone (no sports, not outdoorsy, etc.) and I can certainly see myself using it for the next five years, or more. Especially since it has a 5-year warranty and promises 10-year availability for parts and a high repairability score. Despite the many good things, I cannot give this phone a score higher than 3/5.

The Crosscall CORE-Z5 takes things somewhat beyond my expectations, but still falls short of exceptional.

Claws Mail

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 10:42:46 +0100

Note(s)

The following is neither a review nor a recommendation. It is a brief look at one of my most used pieces of software.

You turn on your computer. There is work to be done. Work sometimes requires communication, and despite all the amazing ways we have to communicate, email is still here.

I do not lament the persistence of email; it is my preferred method of communication. I like how an email is just there. Do you want to reply to it now? It doesn’t matter. Email can wait awhile.

Client Conundrum

Desktop email clients come in several varieties, or flavours:

All Dressed
Gourmet (think Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar)
Plain Salted

While some of you may have never heard of All Dressed, I am using it here to refer to email software that is, in fact, Personal Information Management, or PIM, software. PIM software is what we are used to when we think of “email software.” It includes email, but also an address book, calendar, alerts, scheduling, and even RSS sometimes. Outlook and Thunderbird are the two most popular examples (forgive me, I have never used a Mac, so I am likely ignoring an obvious example).

Your Gourmet clients may have some elements of PIM software, but their focus is more on the visual panache; an attempt at adding zest to the bland potato that is email. These are the “minimal” clients that look a little nicer and newer, like Geary or Mailspring.

Finally, we have the plain salted variety. This is where Claws Mail is found. It does email. It can do some other things, but really, it is all about email.

Why Use Claws?

Claws was always on my radar, and I had tried it out multiple times. Two years ago, however, it started becoming easier to have a desktop email client. The number of employers providing email addresses began to grow, and they all insisted on using Office365. My workflow was thrown off.

Traditionally, I use the browser-based webmail client for all emails. They are generally just as quick to access, and they provide notifications. No problem. That is, until you have three different employers using Office365, and it becomes challenging to stay logged into several accounts at once! There are workarounds for this, but why bother?

And so, along came the need for a desktop email client. It goes without saying that I tried Thunderbird, Evolution, KMail, and the rest. Thunderbird worked the best, but it is an absolute behemoth. It is a suite of integrated software. At the time I was testing these out, my desktop was actually a Raspberry Pi 400, and Thunderbird was not friendly with that device — even when running from an SSD.

This also coincided with moving my personal email away from Gmail and transferring emails over to Mailbox.org. The decision to move away from that service was part of a bigger personal project: digital privacy. Furthermore, there was a growing frustration on my behalf with HTML emails; it seemed as though all of my employers decided that adding multiple images and graphics to their signatures was a great idea.

Therefore, a low-end computer, a multiplication of employers using Office365, and a distaste for “fancy” emails put me on the path to Claws.

Overview

Claws Mail is, in their own words, “user-friendly, lightweight, and fast”. There are the features you’d expect, along with a few extras. Something that might surprise users coming from other desktop clients is the appearance. Although similar to modern clients, there is a nostalgia present as well — in a good way.

Keeping it simple

There are all the panes one would expect to find: lists, columns, messages, etc. And there are the familiar buttons to check, send, reply, delete, and so on. There isn’t a calendar (although it can be done using a plugin) but there is an address book. Diving into some of the preferences, it is apparent that some degree of personalization is available. There are a few themes, folder colours can be changed, signatures can be edited, and you can sign and encrypt emails. Nothing out of the ordinary, in other words. A set of plugins is available too, and with them, you can extend Claws Mail and use it as an RSS newsfeed reader, have access to some calendars, deal with spam, digitally sign and encrypt emails, and even show avatars.

Does it work?

The short answer is, yes, it works wonderfully. It does require flexibility on the part of the user, though. There are methods to sync your address book using Vdirsyncer (read-only!). There is a plugin for calendars. I was convinced that lack of a calendar and synchronized contacts would be a deal-breaker. It turns out that it isn’t a big deal.

I postponed synchronizing my contacts for a week or so, before realizing that it doesn’t matter. Most of the time I reply to messages, sometimes I write messages. The messages that I write for my work are generally to the same people. It is quite rare that I need to have more than 25 email addresses in my address book. Claws lets you right-click > “Add contact” so that issue solved itself.

Claws Mail is an email client aiming at being fast, easy-to-use and powerful. It is mostly desktop-independent, but tries to integrate with your desktop as best as possible. The Claws Mail developers try hard to keep it lightweight, so that it should be usable on low-end computers without much memory or CPU power.

— Claws Mail Documentation

To answer the question with some more detail, Claws is user-friendly. There is a familiarity to the functions. There might be a speed-bump here or there when adding accounts (what’s the SMTP port for Office365 again?), but many desktop clients require manual adjustments for certain types of accounts.

Less than text editor while idling

Claws is fast. That is true. RAM usage is low, it starts quickly, it quits quickly. There are moments of lag. For example, if I happen to try and do several operations at once at the same moment it tries to synchronize all of my accounts. It has never once crashed, however. Neither has it locked up for more than a few seconds. This is quite different from my experience with KMail and even Thunderbird.

Claws Mail is an effective piece of software, which is a sign of power. The small team behind the project has done a great job putting nearly everything a perfect email client needs in a small package.

Favourite Extra Features

Minimize to tray: email needs to be put in the corner sometimes.
Claws Mail has a notification plugin with a good number of options.
Themes: a little visual flourish doesn’t hurt.
A small set of themes is available. And sometimes you can find ones in the wild, like the Papirus theme.
Fancy HTML Plugin: for when you do receive HTML email.
Can be configured to use custom CSS, disable JavaScript, images, etc.

Conclusion

With a little effort, switching from the web frontend to a desktop client was painless. (If you are wondering, I do handle contacts and calendars with khard, khal, and vdirsyncer. I keep some config files for them in my repo). Claws Mail gets the job done, is fast, and is plaintext-friendly.

Adding Featured Images to My Hugo Blog

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 12:30:00 +0100

It is funny how little I understand the tools that make this blog work. Sure, I can (sort of) read HTML, and I can guess my way through CSS and JavaScript. But, when it came to making this blog, I just picked Hugo and stuck with it. I followed Mogwai’s Creating a simple.css Site with Hugo guide and pushed it to the web and called it a day. Then I followed another guide, Simone Silvestroni’s A human-readable RSS feed with Jekyll, in order to add a slightly different RSS feed to my page. Then, yet another guide for adding admonitions.

I would call it a Frankenblog, but that would imply that I am some sort of scientist who knows what’s going on. It is a lot of guesswork, and it is fun, and when I screw up there is CTRL+Z. The last guide mentioned above, on admonitions, is a good example of how things go for me. Do you think I knew what an admonition was before I happened across that blog post? No, I did not. And today it happened again, for I didn’t know what to call the “Featured Image” that appears on social media when I share my blog. I really didn’t care about it, and I still don’t, but it looks nice and turns out that once you know what you are looking for, the answers are out there.

I came across https://metatags.io/ which is a tool to debug and generate meta tag code for any website. I plugged one of my blog entries into it and…

missing something...

…it looks a little dull.

From there I searched and quickly found the guide “Adding meta tags in Hugo blog” by Erin Jeong. It turns out that was what my blog was missing: meta tags!

You can see for yourself that there isn’t much to it, and in my case I only needed to modify two files:

head.html in /layout/partials
my config.toml

Here is the line added to head.html.

{{ if .Param "featured_image" }}<meta property="og:image" content="{{ .Param "featured_image" | absURL }}">{{ else }}<meta property="og:image" content="{{ $.Site.Params.Avatar | absURL }}">{{ end }}

Here is what I added to my config.toml

[params]
  avatar = "Avatar1024.png"

As an experiment, I modified an older post that already had images in it. Returning to the Meta Tags site, it now shows a “card” with an image. That is what I was hoping for.

success!

Using post validation tools from LinkedIn and Facebook confirms that it should work!

Facebook Sharing Debugger

LinkedIn Post Inspector

(I decided to add the other meta tags to my blog while writing, for Twitter cards and Description)

Using Bitwarden CLI to Create Login Items

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 21:25:14 +0100

I read the docs for the Bitwarden CLI. All straightforward enough. But, I am not always clear-headed. Having, as I tend to do, skipped a step I was stalled for about 45 minutes trying to figure this out.

I use the Bitwarden CLI regularly through a qutebrowser userscript (and rofi — link to script) to log in to websites. I tend to never use it to create login items. It honestly looked like a pain. This morning, though, coffee in hand and new calendar on the wall, I decided to take a look at it. As I just mentioned, I managed to bork it up, and then decided to make it easier on myself.

I don’t know how to make Bash scripts, but the magic of search engines resulted in this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

read -p "New Item Name: " name
read -p "New Item URI: " uriname
read -p "New Item Username: " username
read -sp "New Item Password: " secret

echo "{\"organizationId\":null,\"collectionIds\":null,\"folderId\":null,\"type\":1,\"name\":\"$name\",\"notes\":\"\",\"favorite\":false,\"fields\":[],\"login\":{\"uris\":[{\"match\": null,\"uri\": \"$uriname\"}],\"username\":\"$username\",\"password\":\"$secret\",\"totp\":\"\"},\"secureNote\":null,\"card\":null,\"identity\":null,\"reprompt\":0}" > tmpItem.json
clear
encodedItem=$(cat tmpItem.json | bw encode)
bw create item $encodedItem
rm tmpItem.json

This is just the basics. It only gets four things needed to create the login item: the name of the item, a single URI, a username, and a password. Those variables are thrown into a JSON file, encoded by Bitwarden, and transformed into a login item. The JSON file is deleted after.

Now, I am not a security expert either. But, this gets the job done. I also use bw generate -usln to make my passwords, so that helps. AND 2FA. Don’t forget the 2FA.

You can go complain about my naïve understanding of how Bash scripts and privacy work here on Codeberg: bbbhltz/newbw. I do hope this helps other beginners like myself.

2022 in Review

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 01:00:00 +0100

Hello out there, people of the World Wide Web!

It is now 2023 here is France. I am wide awake and ready to write about 2022.

2022 ripped by at warp speed, but my Millennial brain has managed to pick out a few titbits. This is a very unstructured flyover of those titbits.

I warn you in advance, though, I might swear a little.

Let’s get this show on the road!

Music

I listen to a lot of music. Most of the time on my DAP, but sometimes on my computer. You can get a better idea of my tastes over on ListenBrainz.

Despite my preference for all things electronic, IDM, Industrial, Metal, and such, my stand-out album of the year was from nerd-core hip-hop genius, Wordburglar. I, too, hail from Canada’s ocean playground, and when I saw that Burgie dropped some tunes I stopped what I was doing and got my headphones out.

First, check out that artwork. Gorgeous. Every track is a gem. Lyrically splendiferous songs about CDs and Sega and using the word “like.”

Burgonomic by Wordburglar

Films

I didn’t watch that many films this year, and I have a tendency to like everything I see. Whatever. Here are some films that I remember seeing.

Absolute surprise, glad I didn’t see the trailers

These are films that I either had low expectations for, or no idea about before pressing play. Nope was probably the most surprising.

Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Nope

Great, would watch again

Films that were not horrible and lived up to the hype.

Glass Onion
- I know, lots of people were a little fed up with this one, but the actors did a great job.
Prey
The Bob’s Burgers Movie

Passable with caution

Meh.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Pinocchio
Sonic 2
Thor: Love and Thunder

TV

I watched a lot more TV that I did films. Way too much, in fact. I would say that I have a great year of TV. I was hooked on the January 6th Hearings. I was confused by Raised by Wolves (and then confused again when it was cancelled) and Undone. I laughed at the violence and vulgarity of Peacemaker, The Pentaverate, Human Resources, and The Boys. I was committed to Julia and her butter. House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power were both great shows. I even liked Wednesday. And, fuck the haters, Obi-Wan Kenobi was perfectly fine.

Every single Star Trek series was great. Every one. Brave New Worlds got off to a good start, Discovery hasn’t lost strength, Lower Decks developed story arks and characters, Prodigy found its place too. Obviously Picard had me breathless. Seeing John de Lancie on screen again with Sir Patrick Steward and Whoopie Goldberg, Brent Spiner killing it, and a cameo by Wil Wheaton. I was in tears at times and I cannot wait to see season three!

And then there was Better Call Saul. What can be said about that show? It was better than Breaking Bad. A true experience. I was all set to call it the best of 2022 until…

ANDOR

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I mean. Fuck. What a triumph. Every scene, character, angle; the music; the actors; the plots, subplots, and intrigue. Touching, thrilling, loaded with emotion. I even said, out loud, to my partner, “I don’t know how they can make it better.” And what did they do? Do you know what they did? Andy Fucking Serkis is what they did! Barefoot and bearded, portraying Kino Loy, and stealing the show. And, then… “I can’t swim.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Gut-wrenching. Brutal. Beautiful.

Some tech notes

I bought a PineTime this year. Absolutely zero regrets. It does what it is supposed to do. I admit that I didn’t see the draw to having a smartwatch of any kind, but I get it now. And the PineTime works very well. It might not be as fancy as other watches, but it is a worthwhile investment.

I think the most useful tool in my tech box this year was Syncthing. I have been using it for quit awhile now (like, 2 or 3 years…), but this year it really came through. It came through for me professionally and personally. Lifesaver, easy, free, open. All good.

Finally, in the tech category, there is a video game series that I need to mention. There were no new releases in this series in 2022, but this series was my summer. Mega Man. I bought 4 collections and Mega Man 11 on PlayStation. I would recommend them to anyone, young or old, looking for a nice, worry-free, challenge. I don’t know if I would recommend all the X series, but definitely the first collection. The challenge is just right, the music is awesome, and it is a classic franchise that everyone should have a go at.

The News

I regularly read and collect news articles (using wallabag) to have on hand in class. I like to use them for debate, but also for reading (I am an ESL teacher) as students tend to have something to say about social networks and technology. Here are some of the articles I wallabag’d this year. You will notice a theme: social networks and abusive technology. You will also notice that 2022 started off with a bit of an oh my, is FB going to die? attitude. It did not.

Furthermore, you will see that many these articles tend to come from similar sources (The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Economist). This is not by design. I do not go hunting on sites for these articles. They are articles that come up on Mastodon, HN, Lobsters, et al. It makes me question just what kind of filter-bubble I am living in.

NOTE: I did not search for alternative sources for these articles. I know I should be sharing non-paywalled links.

2022.01.02 - F-Droid Security Issues
2022.01.02 - Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen
2022.01.15 - Why is LinkedIn so cringe? by Trung Phan
2022.02.08 - Mark Zuckerberg Is A Liar, And He’s Lying To You About The Metaverse
2022.02.24 - I’ve been waiting 15 years for Facebook to die. I’m more hopeful than ever by Cory Doctorow
2022.03.14 - Former TikTok moderators sue over emotional toll of ’extremely disturbing’ videos
2022.03.17 - The latest marketing tactic on LinkedIn: AI-generated faces
2022.04.06 - US zoo fears teen gorilla’s exposure to phones is behind anti-social behavior
2022.04.15 - TikTok under US government investigation over child sexual abuse material
2022.04.18 - The Digital Age is Destroying Us
2022.05.13 - How a new age of surveillance is changing work
2022.05.20 - TikTok Boom by Scott Galloway
2022.05.25 - “How Dare They Peep into My Private Life?”: Children’s Rights Violations by Governments that Endorsed Online Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic
2022.05.29 - Molly White is becoming the crypto world’s biggest critic
2022.06.03 - How Harmful Is Social Media?
2022.06.12 - Computers are an inherently oppressive technology
2022.06.14 - A New Student Movement Wants You to Log Off
2022.06.16 - The Privatized Internet Has Failed Us
2022.06.19 - Web 3 is Flawed
2022.07.03 - Is your smartphone ruining your memory? A special report on the rise of ‘digital amnesia’
2022.07.29 - I was on TikTok for 30 days: it is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy by Luiza Jarovsky
2022.08.09 - The downfall of smart TVs: From promises of seamless viewing to ad tool on steroids
2022.08.16 - Twitch Streamers are burning out and logging off
2022.08.22 - Google Tracks 39 Types of Private Data, the Highest Among Big Tech Companies
2022.08.23 - Scanning students’ homes during remote testing is unconstitutional, judge says
2022.08.26 - How much would you pay for this? NFT market in the dumps after exploding in popularity last year
2022.08.29 - Is the Internet Killing the Nude Beach?
2022.09.19 - Gen Z Uses TikTok Over Google but 20% of Videos Contain Misinformation
2022.09.19 - Social Media May Be Costing Children 1 Night of Sleep a Week: Study
2022.10.14 - A Neo-Luddite’s Lament
2022.10.31 - Facebook Has a Hidden Tool to Delete Your Phone Number, Email
2022.11.27 - Smartphone addiction linked with lower cognitive abilities, less self-control, and worse psychological well-being
2022.11.29 - Tech layoffs approach Great Recession levels: ‘It was not sustainable or real’
2022.12.09 - A Case Study on Raspberry Pi’s Incident on the Fediverse
2022.12.16 - Welcome to Digital Nomadland
2022.12.19 - MSG’s Facial Recognition at Radio City Gets Girl Scout Mom Kicked Out
2022.12.19 - The Internet Is Kmart Now
2022.12.20 - The new tech worldview
2022.12.22 - No laptops, no phones.

Coolpad Cool S

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 21:50:00 +0100

I am in the market for a new phone.

One of the phones I nearly purchased is the Coolpad Cool S.

Wait.

Sorry.

That link isn’t right.

This is the Coolpad Cool S.

You might have noticed a striking similarity between these devices.

Look. See?

Are you seeing it?

Moving on.

I did not buy that ~~rectangle~~ phone, nor did I buy the phone that is not that phone.

Why am I not saying the name of the phone that is not the Coolpad Cool S. Well, for one, they are not exactly the same. It looks like one has a bigger battery than the other. The other reason I don’t want to explicitly type out the name of the company that makes the phone that is not the Coolpad Cool S is because they are trying to take things in the right direction. They really are. If it gets people thinking outside of the Android/iOS box, that cannot be a bad thing.

You might have also seen a pricing difference. I was uncertain, so I did the math:

$$\because \newline 350 - 160 = 190 \newline \therefore \newline 350 > 160$$

Why pay more, right?

Moving on, iterum.

We are not all so naïve. I’m sure that many of you have seen a phone exactly like you own, but with a different logo on it. I have. It is abundantly clear that many OEMs sell us devices that they did not concoct in their secret labs. This is where ODMs come into play.

I only just learned about this in the last few hours. Clicking around the web, as one does at work, I came across an old-ish post on Reddit which linked to an article on Nokiamob.net which states that

“in 2019, some 9% of Samsung phones were designed by ODM companies, 17% of Huawei devices, 49% of LG devices, and most importantly 54% of Nokia devices. In 2020, the percentage rose and now some 22% of Samsung devices, 18% of Huawei, 74% of Xiaomi, 89% of Lenovo, and 88% of Nokia phones are designed outside of the house. This means that the brand OEM is just tuning the details, but companies like Wingtech is doing all the rest.”

After that, I thought I would look up one of the phones I was considering. It was as easy as heading over to GSMArena and using their “Phone Finder” tool to look up devices with the same processor, a fingerprint scanner on the side, a 48MP camera, etc. and poof, there it was: a near identical match the phone I was looking into purchasing.

Well. It pays to look around and do your research. I do hope that the next phone from the company that does not sell the Coolpad Cool S is worth the price they ask for it.

Crosscall

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 22:00:00 +0100

Note(s)

I do not own any of the devices mentioned below. While searching for new phone I came across a brand that I have known about for some time, but never considered as I am not a target customer. I was, however, wowed by the presentation of their website and repairability promises. The more I read, the more I found myself convinced by this French brand. I am strongly considering becoming their next customer.

Summary

Crosscall is an ethical mobile device manufacturer that targets segments of the population who need something more rugged than a regular black rectangle. This French company stands out from the crowd with its devices and commitments in different fields. There is strong competition in the sector globally, and the market for such devices is growing. Crosscall will soon be one of the few manufacturers making phones in France instead of China.

By sticking to their commitments, Crosscall’s customer base will likely grow. Innovation in their field should remain their constant, and more presence on social networks (even alternative ones) to share these innovations would be a plus.

Introduction

Shopping for a new smartphone is only as hard as you make it. Looking closely at the details of each device, while ignoring their similar exteriors, is easy for consumers, but hard for shoppers. The difference being that consumers are generally well-informed, until they are confronted with an overwhelming number of similar products as a shopper. Smartphones are all very similar in appearance — ubiquitous black rectangles — with some exceptions: the somewhat recent arrival of foldable smartphones, and the “rugged” phones.

This is a brief report on the French company, Crosscall, and their smartphone offer (using their latest device, the Core-Z5, as an example). We will look at the company, their products, their competition, and overall presentation. That will be followed up with a conclusion and recommendations. The goal of this report is to underline that — despite outward appearances, limited target market, and high prices — Crosscall’s range of devices deserves consideration when shopping for a new smartphone.

Details

Crosscall was founded in 2009 by Cyril Vidal. Since then, they have designed over 25 different mobile devices along with 20 different accessories. They have (or have had) contracts with Decathlon, the SNCF, the French Ministry of the Interior and many others. One of their devices, the Action-X5, won the iF Design award for telecommunications product in 2022. The current VP, David Eberlé, is the former president of Samsung Electronics France.

This company, one of the few French mobile phone brands (Kapsys, Wiko, Archos, Murena, and Thomson are a few others), sets itself apart in more than one way. The first being that they are moving production from China to France in 2023, a unique endeavour.

The brand had the choice between “doubling its workforce in Asia to ensure quality control or relocating the facility and strengthening the value chain.” An industrial choice, but also a societal one. The company is following the trend of promoting projects aimed at restoring France’s digital and industrial sovereignty.

The other unique features of the company are their promises and the very devices they make.

Fundamental Uniqueness

It is so common for a company to make promises regarding the 3Ps (people, planet, and profit; the foundation of Corporate Social Responsibility) that we take it for granted. Most companies have a page on their website dedicated to this purpose. Crosscall does not differ here. Their promises do, however.

Manufacturers of any device tend to propose warranties. Crosscall one-ups this trend by offering a 5-year warranty and 10 years of replacement parts (on their most recent 5-series). This is an effort to fight against planned obsolescence they refer to as their “greatest promise:”

As well as reflecting the durability of our products, this warranty could make a real difference on the telephony market, where the duration of manufacturers’ warranties for the majority of phones is still only two years. At Crosscall we strive to design devices that last, so that we can move away from the current cycle of feverish smartphone replacement, which is much too fast and bad for the planet.

And, naturally, Crosscall guarantees 3 years of security patches and one major Android update.

Their other commitments are detailed in their CSR report (download at the bottom of this page) where they talk about offsetting the environmental impact of production through a “second life” program (refurbished phones) and contributing to sustainable development goals by providing spare parts. They use packaging without plastic and plant-based inks. Sea-based transportation methods are used. They also train all employees in cybersecurity.

The fundamental uniqueness behind these buzzwords is the 5-year warranty, availability of spare parts, and the right to repair your own device. This is in contrast to other big brands that glue their phones shut. The most recent model, the Core-Z5, can be disassembled and repaired using a single Phillips-head screwdriver.

Smartphones and Accessories

Crosscall’s range of consumer products — which includes smartphones, feature phones, tablets and a growing collection of accessories — are all designed around “rising to the challenge” and durability, while “prioritising [their] users’ needs”. A clear visual identity is observed across the range. The naming scheme is consistent as well.

Selecton of Crosscall devices, clockwise from top left, Core-S4, Core-T5, Core-X5, Core-Z5, Action-X5, X-Vibes

A universal sign of durability in 2022 is the IP rating and meeting the MIL-STD-810 H military standards — the eighth version of the test standard most commonly used to determine if a product can withstand the effects of difficult environmental conditions. All of Crosscall’s devices have an IP rating, and most of their mobile devices meet the military standards.

These ratings are important because of Crosscall’s target market: extreme sports enthusiasts, military, police, firefighters, paramedics, and anyone who works or plays in harsh conditions. Communicating with their target market is done mostly through ambassadors and events (as far as I can tell). A person needing this kind of device would likely go to them out of need for a rugged device. As such, finding reviews of their products is not as easy as finding a review for a recent model by more popular brands. Crosscall’s website is well-designed and up-to-date compared to some of their competitors and their YouTube channel is slowly filling with informative videos, interviews, unboxings, events, and the like.

Crosscall’s devices are built upon a magnesium chassis with an I-beam inspired shape, inside a polycarbonate and thermoplastic elastomer body. As can be expected, the screens are usually Corning Gorilla Glass that allow for glove- and wet-touch. The devices are tested in Crosscall’s own lab in an effort to confirm the device will last 5 years: e.g. 300 1.2-metre drops on concrete, heat, cold, immersion in water, scratches, etc.

Additionally, a feature of Crosscall’s devices is their compatible with a collection of accessories that leverage Magconn™ technology for recharging. They call it X-LINK and combine it with a clip called the X-BLOCKER to secure your device to an external battery, car or bicycle attachments, selfie-sticks, armbands, chest harnesses, and a docking station. This is an attractive and unique proposition in a world where purchasing accessories made by 3^rd parties can (somehow) void warranties or damage your device.

The Rugged Phones Market

Crosscall faces both direct and indirect competition. Direct competitors focus on rugged devices and target a similar segment of the population. American manufacturer Caterpillar, like Crosscall, targets logistics, health, agriculture, construction, security and production industries. China’s Ulefone targets those same segments as well as the extreme sports enthusiasts that Crosscall also targets. There are additional direct competitors, like Blackview, that make rugged devices as well as non-rugged smartphones.

Both Caterpillar and Ulefone include FLIR in their devices, making them more suited to certain industries than others.

Phone	IP rating	Screen	Camera	Chipset	Battery	Price
Crosscall Core Z5	IP68	6.08"	48 MP	Qualcomm QCM6490	4,950 mAh	€800
CAT S53	IP68/IP69K	6.5"	48 MP	Qualcomm SM4350 Snapdragon 480	5,500 mAh	€530
Ulefone Power Armor 18T	IP68/IP69K	6.58"	108 MP	MediaTek Dimensity 900	9,600 mAh	€640

Crosscall’s screen, battery, and camera are less impressive than the others above, but comes with a (slightly) newer SoC (the QCM6490 was announced 6 months later than the Snapdragon 480 — 7 June 2021 and 4 January 2021, respectively; the Dimensity 900 was announced in May 2020).

The market for rugged phones is growing, so the list of competitors will likely grow as well. This is due to growth in the “oil & gas, aerospace, automotive, transportation, telecommunications, and logistics [industries, and] owing to the fact that rugged phones are water-resistant, dust-proof, and can operate against shock and extreme temperatures.”¹

Rugged Phone Market Growth, Source: Markets and Reseearch

CNET reported in June 2021 that rugged phones have “gone from oddball to mainstream”:

“No matter how elaborate or expensive a phone you buy, the manufacturer generally assumes you’ll take it upon yourself to immediately swaddle it in an after market case, so it can survive daily use. There’s no other consumer electronic product that leaves the factory so not ready for the real world.”

They also pointed out that it is not just the ruggedness and lack of need for a case that draw users to these devices, but the presence of other niche features like programmable buttons, thermal imaging cameras, dual SIM card trays, and replaceable batteries.²

In addition to the companies mentioned above, other competitors in this sector are Kyocera, DOOGEE, OUKITEL, Juniper Systems, AGM Mobile, Sonim, Zebra, and Unitech Electronics.

Price Range and Availability

The number of phones in the same price range as the Core-Z5 — ~€800 — is limitless. Many shops (in France) dedicate the most space on the shelves to two brands: Samsung and Xiaomi. These devices, due to their price, are indirect competitors. Some customers tend to buy with their wallets and may, when presented with the option, put their money on a more well-known device and name brand, like the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G and the Xiaomi 12T Pro, which can be purchased in-store more readily than Crosscall devices.

Note(s)

Based solely on personal observation, it can be said that Crosscall devices are not easy to test hands-on. Even here in France, home of the brand, stores generally do not keep the devices on display. In my area, the main electronic shops do not have any models in stock.

Overall Presentation

Aside from a handful of English errors (typos really), the only thing negative that can be said about the Crosscall website is that it is not lite. Similar to other rugged phone manufacturers, Crosscall has opted to give as much information as possible, in the shiniest way possible. Scrolling down the product page for the Core-Z5 reveals animations and videos. The photos of the device are large enough to make out the details.

The entire website is designed to give you more than enough information to make your decision. The company comes off as proud, trustworthy, and transparent. With great detail, however, comes great resources. Website Carbon Calculator rates their website as “dirtier than 65% of the web pages tested” but also states the website is running on sustainable energy. Ecograder gives the site a 78/100 with some points of improvement. GTmetrix gives the site a D ranking with an uncompressed size of 6.69MB.

Conclusion

Crosscall is a serious company that will likely branch out into other sectors. Their consumer devices that come with guarantees and repairability promises make them excellent choices, and the company’s focus on CSR and transparency does not go unnoticed.

While the style and design of the objects are not what the average smartphone customers are accustomed to, they are necessary in order to achieve durability and ratings, such as the IP ratings.

In conclusion, Crosscall is undeserving of being under the radar, but does have to keep on eye on their competitors who have different ratings and features, pricing, and communication strategies.

Recommendations

Crosscall must maintain its visual identity. Changing would be a mistake. An optimistic recommendation would be to push into other sectors and create a less angular device, but other telephone manufacturers tried changing their style, and we have not forgetten the BlackBerry Storm.

Without a doubt, Crosscall must continue making devices that go beyond the call of duty. Why have an IP68 rating when there are competitors with IP69 ratings? With each device, they must do something better than the competition as they have done in the past.

A small suggestion would be a price breakdown of a device on their blog. Not one of the recent devices, but perhaps one of the discontinued models. Give us the transparency provided throughout the website. What was the cost of the device? How much time went into design? How many prototypes before finding the right balance? These are things consumers need to know in order to accept paying the price for these devices. The prices are, however, acceptable.

Communication needs a small boost. Crosscall has ambassadors, and is present at events, but finding reviews online is not easy, nor is finding a store where the device is on display. YouTube has some video reviews, and there are written reviews on different sites, but consumers need to have more than Amazon reviews to rely upon. If Crosscall is opposed to oversharing on social media, perhaps considering an alternative social network, like Mastodon, would be an option. An area where less would certainly be more is the website: Perhaps a “lite” version is in order for 2023.

A New Phone, or, Overthinking Future Purchases

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 17:50:00 +0100

The Quest Begins

It pains me to even think about embarking on this quest. There is nothing wrong with my phone. I will keep it until it honestly and truly bites the dust. A series of things have led me to once again start thinking about replacing it. The first being that it looks like the phone is bent. I cannot tell if the battery is swelling, or if my son damaged it when he tossed it across the room (not to break it, he did one of those, “here daddy, catch” things…and I have the reaction speed of a sloth). The second is the battery. Only a week ago, by battery lasted up to four days. Even with lots of browsing. For me, battery life is one of the key aspects of a mobile device. Then, an upgrade was pushed to the device and that was that. Battery life is breakfast until lunch now. Quite a pain, to be honest.

I spend a lot of time pre-buying. I keep track of new devices and read reviews regularly, in the event that my phone dies. It is quite an ordeal if you even care a little about one or two features.

Do I want a phone with a nice camera? Should I try out an iPhone? Is there a screen size I want? What’s my budget? Do I need a headphone jack?

All of this is confounded in certain countries with SIM locking. Or how some models of phones will not work with some carriers. How can this be a thing? I know that this is the situation for some people in North America. I cannot imagine getting a new device only to find out it will not work with my carrier. It makes my blood boil thinking about it.

Luckily, there is a thing called the Internet and some kind people keep track of this on sites like https://willmyphonework.net/ in order to take the hassle out of things and leave the question of “what is a band?” to searchable databases.

This is something that I haven’t needed to worry about for a long time, though. Where I live I can walk down to a shop and test drive several dozen different phones. Well, they are all in demo mode, but at least I can have an idea.

I know I am digressing, but I want to underline again how different the purchasing experience can be with another example. Where I am from in Canada, many of the people I know simply get their phone through their carrier. They tell me that it is “free,” but they pay for it over two years on their bill. Worst of all, the lack of choice. My mother, an elderly person who uses her phone for phoning was talked into a flagship Samsung after being offered a selection of three Samsung devices.

Now, back to it…

What’s my thing?

Photo quality? Screen size? Removable battery? I already mentioned that battery life is important to me, so we can add that to my list of requirements. Despite being versed (notice I didn’t say well-versed) in the worlds of phones, I am ignorant to many things…

Take, for example, this review of a phone, where it states:

The Galaxy S22 Ultra runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor in the US and Samsung’s Exynos processors in some other regions.

You cannot see me, and reading a stranger’s words on a blog like this tells you very little about the person. But, if you could see me, you would be able to tell by the neutral expression on my face that I don’t know what that means.

Who is that review even for? I would love to make one of those hidden camera videos with an elderly person being sent into a store to buy a phone and see the reaction of the salesperson when grandpa says, “I want the newest Snapdragon, not that Exynos rubbish!”

I saved myself the trouble and didn’t bother reading that review. I don’t want a flagship smartphone. That is not my thing.

My thing, for the moment, lies somewhere within the Venn diagram of green, ethical, reparable, private, and bonus points for different.

My ideal phone was the BlackBerry. How awesome was the BlackBerry? The Hub — a simple feature presenting all messages and notifications in a single feed — was all I needed. There was nothing of note in the App Store on BlackBerry. Notifications could be customized. Shortcuts added to the keys. Touchscreen was there. The BlackBerry Classic was a great device, and before that the Bold.

Right now, there are two paths that I can take:

Order a phone online.
Avoid shipping costs, CO₂ and pollution, and walk down to the shop and buy a phone in person.

Ordering online opens the possibility to green and ethical options like Teracube and their sustainable model with a warranty, Fairphone and their reparable devices, and Murena’s deGoogled devices. I could also acquire an oddity like the Jelly 2E and its 3-inch screen (gotta admit, I am tempted to have one, just because) or a device with a keyboard!¹

Going down to the store limits me. I need limits. I even like limits. The world is bigger than Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi. I know which brand has a reputation for battery life, and it also meets another criteria I have yet to mention: Bloatware.

The Samsung phones I’ve tested come with extra apps that are baked into the device; they cannot be removed. And, it is not just Samsung that does this. This takes up space, and if you don’t use the apps, the most you can do is disable them. Motorola, for example, comes with the standard Google suite of apps, and very little extra. Nokia, Sony, and Asus also remain close to Stock Android. So, I would likely buy a recent Motorola model if my phone were to die, and I needed a swift replacement.

The Dilemma

My phone still works. I will let it charge again, and then restart it a few times. It is said that after an update it is worth a try when problems are encountered. In a perfect world I would root the device and install DivestOS or LineageOS. Alas, my cheap Nokia has an annoying locked bootloader and, while not impossible, rooting this device to run an alternative OS is a pain I am unwilling to endure. I do so want a deGoogled device, or a device that would force me to use my phone less. Murena seems like a logical choice, and I have tried /e/ on another device and the experience was not a problem. I would love to try it again, especially since I live in France and the founder of Murena (as well as /e/ and Mandrake Linux) is French.

I recently read an article (in French) that includes user testimony (not just of Murena) that at first seems negative.

Sophie’s phone switched itself off in areas with poor coverage. Matthieu’s suddenly lost the folder structure. Ilario’s banking applications do not work. Neither does Julien’s wide-angle camera nor the payment options from within applications — he even had to resort to an old smartphone to do that. Many have found workarounds, but not Anne-Sophie, an English teacher, whose phone keeps turning off without warning.

The article follows up with positive notes,

“I was afraid I wouldn’t understand, but it works like a charm,” says Hervé.

before doubling down on the geekspeak talking about frequent updates, NewPipe, F-Droid, Aurora, and MicroG (all without providing links to the projects, mind you!):

“I tried to do without MicroG for a fortnight, it was unbearable,” says Pierre. “Notifications didn’t go through, location didn’t work, applications wouldn’t start… I gave up, I’m not a fan.”

and finally concludes with pessimism:

“It’s annoying and worrying to see that a 100% alternative solution is so complicated to implement,” regrets Emilie. “I wonder if people aren’t idealizing the benefits of deGoogled Android,” wonders Gregory […]. The vast majority of users interviewed, however, are quite comfortable with these limitations. “Yes, there are contradictions,” admits Matthieu. “But, being 100% free would mean cutting yourself off from others. I prefer to take small steps.”

It remains to be seen whether Google will continue to tolerate Aurora and MicroG, which are essential to many users, if by any chance the popularity of /e/ or Iodé grows. “Google did shut down Vanced this year, an application that broadcast YouTube videos without ads,” notes Julien, for whom it is not impossible that the American giant will one day decide to ban these two valuable bricks. When asked about this, the company did not respond.

Right there is the question, isn’t it? A company promises a warranty lasting x years, but will the company be around in x years? My current phone was promised five years of updates, I don’t know if the poor thing will make it now.

Having typed all this out, a third path may have revealed itself:

Become a tech journalist; obtain a free phone to test; keep that phone.

or wait for the creator of the Pebble to start making his small Android phone! ↩︎

I have a PineTime

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 11:50:00 +0200

It has been long enough since my last update that I honestly forgot how to add a new post…

This is going to be a bit of a hodgepodge of information and updates.

PineTime

After a short exchange over on Fosstodon, I needed little convincing to buy a PineTime. For starters, this is the exact type of “end-user-geek” gadget that I love. The setup and updating is easy, though not as direct as other smartwatches may be.

I bought it for one reason, and you might think that reason is privacy. That is a benefit of using the PineTime, though not the feature that I wanted it for. I just wanted a cheap heart rate monitor that does not require sharing my info with a company. So, I suppose the final deciding factor was the benefit of privacy. Maybe you were right.

Gadgetbridge homescreen showing InfiniTime connected

I had already used the companion app, Gadgetbridge with my hybrid Fossil Q. So, it made sense for me to continue using that. Installing the latest firmware or update was pretty clear, and fast. You just need to navigate to the releases page on GitHub, download an archive, open it with Gadgetbridge and wait.

The latest update did require an extra step. To give you an idea of how easy this was, the entire process, including:

turning on my laptop,
installing the InfiniTime Daemon and figuring out how to connect to my watch,
downloading the archive containing resources,
and launching the command
itctl res load infinitime-resources-1.10.0.zip

was all over and done with in less than 6 minutes.

I do, however, maintain one of my principal gripes with smartwatches: charging. Smartwatches are not the Casios of yore. The battery does not last 5 or even 10 years. My worries, while confirmed, are not actually that much of a problem. I won’t be taking my PineTime on holiday with me, because I don’t want to travel with the charging dongle, but I haven’t succeeded in draining the battery to 0 yet.

Gadgetbridge battery log

Always Learning

There is always some new thing to deal with, and opportunity to learn. Since the last update I finally completed the CS50P Introduction to Python course. I also had to figure out some basic ImageMagick commands, and wrap my head around something that should be clearer than it is.

The two following “tricks” I am putting here — so I don’t forget them.

ImageMagick

I had a stupid simple thing I needed to do. Place two images side-by-side, with labels and a title; and one of the images needed to be resized. There was nothing to this. ImageMagick is a tool that I use from time to time and I have always managed to find the solutions I need through search engines. I was surprised by the results this time around. I think it turned out OK.

The solution I needed is a combination of the Montage command and Text to Image Handling.

montage -label A -resize 'x800' crime-real-manip.png -label B crime-real.png -tile 2x1 -geometry +20+20 -background none -shadow -title 'Real and Better' -pointsize 30 -font Humor-Sans real-better.png

I added the shadow for good measure.

Note(s)

You can find the name of the font you want to use by running:

identify -list font | grep "Humor"

where “Humor” would be the name of the font you are looking for.

Digitally sign a document in Okular

This should be presented in a user-friendly manner, or streamlined somehow. I mean, once I found the commands and zipped through the man page, all the information was there. There were even examples and step-by-step instructions. But, for some reason my searches lead me down overcomplicated, winding paths.

The solution was simple.

This is all there was to it.

First, install certutil. On my Debian install, you need to run sudo apt install libnss3-tools to have this binary.
Create a directory; cd into it.

mkdir newcert
cd newcert/

Run two commands.

certutil -N -d ~/newcert/ # creates new databases

certutil -S -s "CN=name,O=organisation,E=email" -n examplecert -x -t "CT,C,C" -v 120 -m 1234 -d ~/newcert/ # creates the certificate we need

You will be asked for a password. Don’t forget it. I did.

Add the certificate to the Okular backend by changing the “Certificate Database” location.

Settings > Configure Backends

Sign your life away.

Tools > Digitall Sign...

It ain't pretty, but it works!

As always, if you see mistakes that need fixing, let me know.

I’m off to get my steps in.

Time Well Wasted

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 15:40:00 +0200

Let’s keep this short, shall we?

As a professor, I am privileged with some time off that other professions do not enjoy.

One would expect—and some hope—that I would spend that time on holiday, or practising a hobby.

That is not my bag.

First, I do not get four, three, or even two months of holiday. I am not complaining. I have about six weeks off. It is paid. Sort of. Anyway.

After finishing up a collection of interviews and report corrections, the plan was to head to Canada. That did not happen for a few reasons. None of those reasons are stories worth telling. I decided that I must make my holiday worthwhile by mixing time-wasting behaviour with some personal development.

Personal Development

Personal development, for me, is not what others would call personal development. I decided to return to my attempts at learning Python. I signed up for the [free version of] Harvard CS50P course. I am very close to finishing it up, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn some programming in an enjoyable manner.

Normally, personal development would also include some reading. I love reading. I did not read enough this summer. I only read four books this summer, and two of them were novelettes.

“A Prayer for the Crown-Shy” by Becky Chambers: Highly recommended series, fun, enchanting, buzzwords, etc.
“Upgrade” by Blake Crouch: Very good.
“Master of the Revels” by Nicole Galland: Excellent. I wrote a little comment about this book here.
“Unlocked” by John Scalzi: I had previously read first book in this series, this is a prequel. Interesting read. I particularly liked the number of times it was mentioned how excellent the health infrastructure of the United States is for dealing with a pandemic.

Absolute wastes of time that I will never regret

I am very proud of this next one. Insanely proud. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

I finally binge-watched all 13 seasons of King of the Hill. Excellent series. Incredibly prescient at times. Crazy good. 11/10. Would watch again, I tell you hwat.

Finally, I played games. I have been a casual gamer since the late 80s when the NES and Game Boy came to my house. So, when my friend came by with his Switch and showed my the Mega Man Legacy Collections, that was it. Sold! The next day I shelled out €60 for a bundle containing:

Mega Man Legacy Collection Vol. 1
Mega Man Legacy Collection Vol. 2
Mega Man X Legacy Collection Vol. 1
Mega Man X Legacy Collection Vol. 2
Mega Man 11

I spent any and all spare moments getting through those games. My son, who is five, enjoys watching because I fall (a lot) and say many colourful things. He prefers the X collection. So far I have beaten Mega Man 1, 2, 3, and 11 as well as Mega Man X, X2, X3, X4, X5, and X6. I enjoy all the mainline games, but really lost interest in the X series. The first three games in the X series are perfect. X4 is very good. But, I found the addition of certain gameplay elements in X5 and X6 made the games less fun. X7 adds 3D sequences, and I won’t get into that.

Results and ramifications of sitting on my rump

It became noticeable in a short period of time that my physical activity had dwindled, because my physical appearance had dilated. After just one week of programming, TV, and video games I had managed to gain about 4 or 5 kilos. That is not really a guess. I had a doctor’s appointment just at the beginning of the holiday, and one week later I was much heavier. So, I bit the bullet and made a promise to do some sport.

Every day. Every day I did about one hour of sport. I did cardio and weight lifting. I did resistance training. I tried an app one day. I kept up the routine for five weeks.

I did not lose a single kilo. Not one.

Conclusion

It was all worth it!

As always, feel free to contact me via email or on Mastodon. I will answer.

Peace.

We Have a Winner

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We Have a Winner

SEATTLE, Washington — We are happy to announce that we have a winner to our yearly lottery draw. As with our previous draws, the winner was randomly selected in the presence of the CEO and the board of directors. The winner has yet to claim their prize, and due to anonymity laws we are unable to divulge the name, location, or any other personal data about the individual.

As a reminder, in order for the winner to claim their prize, the individual must meet the following requirements:

Be at least 18 years of age.

Have made at least one purchase on the site or through one of the partners in the last 12 months.

Have a completed profile, including confirmed postal address.

Have scanned and uploaded their palm print in one of our physical stores.

This year’s winner has yet to upload their palm print.

We urge all users who have yet to complete this step to make their way to one of our physical stores.

You might be the world’s next billionaire!
###
OneStop.shop has been the world’s leading online and physical shopping experience since 1995. Lead by billionaire philanthropist and innovator, Gina Troy, we make the world a better place by giving you the best deal.

“The press release is live.”

“Do we know who the user is?”

“Ma’am, we can find out, but we would violate our own privacy policy.”

“Who is it?”

“Are you sure?”

“Damn you, just tell me!”

“The personal information cannot be decrypted. User a55o-omah-UyaU-9Ggh-fuAj-9aUM is the winner.”

“Online activity?”

“They made one purchase this year: a pack of 24 BIC ballpoint pens and a notepad, $16.48. The account was created on the same day as the order. Payment via gift voucher purchased at a physical store. They haven’t even connected to the site since to use the remainder of the balance.”

“And the winner is…somebody who still uses pens and paper?”

“Ma’am?”

“Make sure nobody can tell we looked this up. I’m going home to drink wine and forget about the fact that somebody who spent less than what I spend a day on coffee is going to be a billionaire.”

Breakfast

The news is blaring in the kitchen. Day 17 of the lottery watch. It has been a slow month. Do we really idolize wealth that much? Someone might be rich! Oh! la la!

“Can you turn it down?” I yell.

Mouth full of food, they answer back with an onomatopoeia best transcribed as, “yeahmmu’,” which I guess is “yeah, mum.”

I complain about it, but I am a hypocrite. I was online watching the draw when it happened. THANKS FOR PLAYING! TRY AGAIN NEXT YEAR! is burned into my eyes. I see it when I blink. Time to put on the good mum face. Time to pretend like we aren’t drowning under debt. “Plans today?”

They swallow, take a breath, and with an eye roll reply, “Job search. Yippee!”

Adolescent sarcasm still prevalent at 18. Maybe I did baby them too much. Too long with the dummy when they were young? Too lenient? At least they aren’t some tweaker sleeping on the street, and they clean up after themselves. “So, you’ll be here all day?” I ask.

“Nope. Gonna hit the streets. Walk in. Face to face cold-call!”

“You’re kidding!”

To be a fly on the wall to watch them walk in the door — piercings, candyfloss coloured hair, torn jeans, and chewing gum — and announce they are looking for a job! The thought lightens my mood. “Can’t wait to hear about it! Fingers crossed!”

“I bet,” they smirk back at me.

“Love you.”

“Yup. Love you too mum.”

Pain in the ass that they are, I know they’re sincere when they say that.

Lunch

Get a job; get money; help mum. Easy-peasy. Belly is full enough to get to lunch without fainting. Been in America for several generations and mum still maintains that “stiff upper lip” thing, but she can’t fool anyone. She’s been wearing the same clothes for the past five years. She shines her shoes and mends her stockings like we’re living in… a long time ago. I make a note of the food I eat, what she pays for my clothes, my hair, my medication. I’ll pay her back. Just need a job.

Here we go. Alix goes job hunting. Round one. Fast food. Shouldn’t be too hard. They hire everyone, right?

“Did you fill out the form online?” says the person who I assume is a manager (they have a grey short-sleeved shirt on and a black tie).

I clear my throat, “Form?”

“All applicants must apply using the online form.”

“Oh? No. I thought I could…”

He’s shaking his head, “Sorry kid. I don’t decide who works here. You gotta apply online, and the AI does the rest.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Well, nobody gets a job on their first try. Right? I mean. I guess I could have asked around how people get jobs. Or at least paid closer attention in class. An enterprising young person should be enough, or so I thought. Die and retry, like in the games. Into the next overpriced, neon-signed, burger joint we go.

“All openings are announced on our social.”

…and the next.

“We are managed remotely. I’m not even from here, I was relocated after training.”

Again and again. The same answers. Mum might have had a point, but I don’t like using social or the net for that matter. I know mum has to pay, so I keep it simple.

Clothing stores next? It isn’t even lunch, and I have already been shut down about 9 times. What’s a little more humiliation?

“Hi! I was wondering if you were hiring?”

The girl behind the counter lifts her glasses and looks at me from head to toe, and then again from toe to head. “No,” she states. “If you don’t plan on buying anything, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

Okay. Early lunch it is. And I know just the place.

“My man with the frying pan! Whaddya got for me today?” I blurt out as I hop over the mat at the entrance. That damn ding-dong sound annoys me to no end.

“Ah, my worst customer who won’t even tell me their name. You have money today?”

“Come on, some kind soul must have paid something forward today! And that isn’t nice. I’m not your worst customer. I’d have to pay in order to be a customer!”

“‘Come on,’ they say. I say, ‘come on and pay me for once.’ You clean. Have place to live. Pink and blue hair; not cheap. You buy someday?”

“Someday, but not today, my man! Soon, though. Out looking for a job, and I need sustenance.”

“I give you grilled cheese. To go! But first, I need laugh. Say something with that funny accent.”

“You’re one to talk! You sound like a racist stereotype, ha!”

“This? This character, kid. Talk like this just for customers. Come on. Just a word.” He looks around and points at a large roll of thin shiny metal hanging near the kitchen entrance, “you call this what?”

“Aluminium,” I say, the way my mum says it, the way her parents said it, the way many people from outside of America said it back when.

“ALUMINEEEEYUUUM! Hahaha! That’s good. Classy. Not like American accent. They all talk like they have hot food in their mouths. Aluminum. Ha!”

“Oooookay. You got your laugh. Hit me up with some hot carbs and casein. Gotta hit the streets.”

“Here. And, if you get job, I give you free dessert with first purchase!”

I walk out the door as he changes the “Open” sign to “Be Back in 30 Minutes” and head on my merry way. Maybe I should ask him his name. I make a note in my journal of the free grilled cheese. A block later I am done eating and decide on a little digestive rest on a bench. Cars zip by silently. People walk carrying bags. A couple strolls by carrying armloads of produce in a small wooden crate. That’s different. I look down that street and see a fruit and vegetable stand at the very end of the block.

Could be worth a shot.

“Hi. Nice, uh, stuff,” I say to the lady behind the stand.

“Thanks. Do you want some of this stuff?”

No glasses. No watch. This looks promising.

“I was actually wondering if you were looking for help? Like, hiring?”

“You wanna to work for me? Here?” she says incredulously.

“I mean. I need a job. I’ve asked around, but it isn’t my lucky day. I just need a little money to help my mum out.” Emotional manipulation might work on someone other than my mum, right?

“If you’re serious — If you are really serious — be here tomorrow morning, 5:30. At 5:31, I leave, and you won’t get a second chance.”

“Do you need anything? Like, an online application? Because, I don’t have any of that. I don’t even use social. I don’t even have a résumé.”

“A bank account is all you need for this job. And don’t wear anything nice. We don’t just sell, you know? We pick it ourselves.”

Holy crap!

This is a job.

I got a job. I can’t wait to tell mum.

So caught up in the moment that I was, I didn’t see the person walking towards me carrying an armload of groceries. I walked smack into them. Everything fell on the ground. “Oh no! I’m so sorry! Let me help you,” I say without even thinking.

“No problem. I live right here,” said the man while pointing at the door of the building we were standing in front of.

I picked up some things and followed him as he used a badge to unlock the door. I took a step inside and felt a prick on the side of my neck. My knees. Something…is…wrong… “I need to thit down…” Was that my voice? My mouth is numb. There are two men standing over me.

“Look what I caught us, Ronnie,” says the grocery guy to the other man.

The other man, Ronnie, starts to sign something back.

“OK then. This is how we do this,” Ronnie is crouched down beside me, holding my face. “You’re gonna give us your money, and in a few hours you’ll be all better. Nobody gets hurt.”

“Don’t…got…money…” I manage to mumble.

“No money! Everyone has money. Where’s your phone?”

Ronnie and grocery guy’s hands start patting me down. They’re looking in my bag.

“A pen and a book?” exclaims grocery guy, shocked.

Ronnie is signing something back to him.

“Well, Ronnie. I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing. This here’s just a boy if you didn’t notice. If you wanna do that, well, I won’t be watching your back.”

Ronnie signs again. Points at me.

“What? A woman? What do you mean?”

Grocery guy leans in closer, “Well…fuck me! I must be higher than I thought, ha! This here is a girl. And not no kid either. Ain’t much of a looker, though.”

Here I am, completely doped out of my gourd, about to be who-knows-whated, and I decide to correct two cretins about my desired pronouns: “They,” I squeak out.

The two men are looking down at me. I can’t do much more than blink and breathe. I feel a tear roll out of my left eye, down my temple, and into my ear. Blurry-eyed, I look up at them, hoping that there is a thread of empathy that I can latch onto.

I hear something crunch. I can’t lift me head. Did they just break my leg?

No.

Light.

A bang.

Someone just came in the door.

“Thefuck…” says grocery guy.

A third person is standing over me. Ronnie, or grocery guy — who knows — throws a punch. Door guy — or girl?… Door person seems to swat the punch away. I hear a slight ping as he blocks it.

“Oh fuck dude! My hand! You broke my hand. You’re gonna get it! Ronnie!”

Why are they all still standing over me? Can’t they take this outside? Ronnie has a knife now. Maybe? Ronnie has something shiny, and he is pointing it at door person.

“Be smart or be dead,” says door person. Man’s voice. Sounds familiar.

I see Ronnie cock his arm back. He takes an awkward swing. Door person catches the knife with his hand. In his hand? Whatever they drugged me with is good. Is this tripping? I think I am tripping. I wish my mum were here.

Door person is holding Ronnie’s hand in his. I hear a crunch. Ronnie groans and whimpers, falls back out my my field of vision.

Now grocery guy is up behind door person. He grabs him around the neck. Door person reaches up and grabs his arm. Another snap, followed by screaming and swearing. Then door person turns around and clocks him in the head. I hear his body slump on the ground.

“I’m taking them. Don’t even try to follow me.”

I feel an arm slide under my shoulders, another under my knees. Door person is picking me up.

“Let’s get you to a clinic. Closest isn’t far. Can you walk a little?”

“Who…?”

“John. I’m John.”

“Alix.”

“Nice to finally know your name, Alix. Job hunt going well?”

“…grilled cheese?”

“Yes. I made you the grilled cheese.”

“…alu…minium…”

“They really drugged you good. The clinic is just across the street.”

“No money.”

“I know. But, we’ll deal with that after.”

They carry me through the door. I see the logo. It is one of OneStop.shop’s clinics. This is going to be expensive. Someone is putting my hand on a palm reader. Then I am on a stretcher. I let myself fall asleep.

Dinner & Dessert

Awake.

I look around the room.

Someone is here with me. I wipe my eyes. It is…the guy from the restaurant!

“What the…”

“Oh good. You’re awake. I can get back to work.”

“How?” I say, while making punching and chopping motions.

“Oh? Yeah. Titanium prosthetic.” He holds up one hand and spreads the rip in the prosthetic skin to reveal shiny metal bits. “Accident with a door a few years back. Long story. I was walking back from my lunch break when I saw those guys grab you.”

“Your…voice.”

“I told you. Just marketing. My name is John, and you’re Alix. Your mom should be here soon. You were only out for 30 minutes. They flushed your system. The miracles of modern medicine, I guess.”

“How much?”

“How much what? Money? I don’t know. They didn’t ask for payment; said it was taken care of. They found your photo in the system and scanned you in. No questions asked.”

This is confusing. My account has about $12 on it. I hear shoes clip-clopping down the hall. Unmistakable shoes. My mum’s five-year-old shoes.

“Oh sweetie! I was so scared!” she walks in, ignoring John, and throws herself onto me with more hugs than I could have ever imagined. “And you,” she says looking at John. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She looks back at me, “tell me what happened.”

John excuses himself and walks out, nodding to me.

“I got a job, and then some guys grabbed me,” I answer. “Then John — the old guy that was here — found me and brought me here. I’m sorry, mum. I just wanted to help. How much is the bill?”

“What bill?”

“For the clinic.”

“I guess they’ll tell us when we leave.”

We chitchat some. I tell her about the bad morning of job hunting, and the fruit and vegetable stand, and how I need to be up early tomorrow. A nurse passes by and takes out the IV.

We head to the reception and ask for the bill. We’re told there is no bill. That it was paid.

“By whom?” asks mum.

The answer: “By your daughter.”

We look at each other. She looks as confused as I am. Her head swivels around, and she grabs my arm — the arm that had the IV in it — hauling me toward a OneStop.shop banking machine.

“Ouch.”

“Sorry honey…”

She puts me in front of the machine.

“I’ve never used one of these,” I tell her.

She takes my hand and slaps it on the palm reader.

A loading screen and then…CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE OUR WINNER!

“What the hell did I win?”

“You won…the draw,” she whispers to me.

“I won the –”

“Shhh! Be quiet. You won the yearly draw. The big one. It was you. You won…”

The notification fades away, and I see my balance: $999,999,275.35.

My eyes fill with tears. I reach into my bag and pull out my notebook. Mum is shivering. Speechless.

“What are you doing?” asks mum.

“Taking care of business,” I reply.

I set up a transfer and then grab her hand and slap it on the palm reader.

“Alix, no! Stop! You don’t have to.”

“No, mum. I do. Besides, what I owe you is a drop in the bucket.” And then, I look at my watch.

“I’m getting hungry. Are you hungry? My treat. I know a great place that owes me a free dessert. Let’s get you some new shoes along the way.”

Indigestion

Bzzzz-bzzzz-bzzzz

Gina Troy picks up her phone and answers. “Yes?”

“Ma’am. We have a winner.”

“Please tell me that it’s not some idiot druggy that’s gonna get themselves killed.”

“No. I think this will play out well. Winner is 18 years old. Low income. Very low income family. Lots of debt. Found out they were the winner in one of our clinics where she was dropped off after being attacked.”

“Do we have video?”

“Yes.”

“Can we use it?”

“I’ll let you decide. Sending it to you now.”

“… Pink and blue hair? Cute-ish. Maybe she will agree to be in promotional material. I almost feel good about being a philanthropist.”

“They go by ’they,’ I’ll start getting the press—”

“Wait!”

“Ma’am?”

“Who brought them in? Who is that man? Do we have ID?”

“Uh…no. We have a clear shot of him leaving though. Sending now.”

“Motherfu— Get the press release ready. I trust you. Just send it as soon as you can. You don’t need my approval. I have other business. Keep in touch.”

Gina ends the call and pulls a small notepad from the bottom drawer of her desk. After a few pages of flipping she finds what she needs. She gets another phone from the same place she found the notepad and dials a number. Someone answers after just one ring.

“Yes?”

“It’s me. Tell him I found him. I found John. He can meet me at our usual spot.”

Homework

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 12:00:00 +0200

“Dinner time!”

“Coming, mom!”

“What were you doing in your room? You were being very quiet for once.”

What was I doing in my room?

“Homework.”

“What subject?”

“…history?”

“Is that a question, or an answer?”

“Just tired, mom. History. Not done yet. Can I eat in my room?”

“Yeah, sure. But bring the plate out when you’re done. Your room smells bad enough!”

“Ha ha, you are so funny.”

Now, where was I?

> truthseeker29: When I was a kid I saw a guy with no gear. Freaked me out.

> unblinded99: yeah right i call bs

Fuckin’ chatroom trolls.

> truthseeker29: fu you don't know me, I saw the dude, the one who the police say fucked up the restaurant owner that time, I was like 6 or 7.

> unblinded99: this one [link]?

OK, still a troll, but at least they reply quickly.

Police save restaurant owner from deranged man

WASHINGTON – Time and place were on the side of the law today, when a deranged individual was arrested while attacking a restaurant owner.

“He came in my restaurant, and I told him I could not accept cash or card, he needed to use the app like everyone else,” said the owner, John Hu. “Not a second later he grabbed me and started hitting my hand with a hammer he had with him.”

Luckily for the owner, three off-duty officers were in the vicinity and heard the commotion. Without hesitation, they raced into action and apprehended the individual.

Once in custody, they determined that the perpetrator had been cited for previous violations of disturbing the peace. He was taken into custody pending trial.

“I’m just so thankful that those officers were nearby. Once my hand is healed, I would love to shake theirs,” says John.

UPDATE:

After his arrest the perpetrator of this heinous act was evaluated in a psychiatric facility. There, it was quickly determined that due to prolonged disconnection from social networks, he had fallen into a deep depression. This depression exacerbated his anti-social behaviour which eventually lead to a mental break with reality.

“It is important to remain in touch with friends and relatives as much as possible. To deprive oneself of a technology used by most of the developed world is to open the door to grave consequences,” says Dr. Phil Framer, psychiatrist at UMHW.

> unblinded99: done?

> truthseeker29: fuck

> truthseeker29: no way that dude had a hammer, my mom was there 2, she looked right at him

> unblinded99: no way you remember if he had a hammer or not, i bet you didnt see shit

> truthseeker29: how can you be so fuckin stupid to believe in this shit tho?

> truthseeker29: you really think that ungeared ppl are all crazy?

> unblinded99: open your eyes @truthseeker29

> unblinded99: you came here a normie, now you learn the truth, i gtg

# @unblinded99 has left the chat

# @truthseeker29 has left the chat

No fuckin’ way did that dude have a hammer. I can’t deal with that level of crazy.

“Mom?”

“Done your homework?”

“Uh, yeah, can I ask you somethin’?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you remember when I was little, and we saw that ungeared guy get arrested?”

“Michael…”

“What?”

“His name was Michael, we went to school together, until we were about 13.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I? You never asked?”

“So, do you think he was crazy?”

“What? No! Not him. He was just a bit…different.”

“So, you don’t think he attacked the restaurant owner?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, someone sent me this article.”

“Honey, where did you get that? That isn’t even a real news site.”

“Huh?”

“Here, look, first, no author. And, I bet that that doctor, isn’t a doctor, or doesn’t exist. And look at the other junk on that site. Do you really think that there is some sort of global conspiracy to take over the world,” she said sarcastically, wiggling her fingers in the air like she was casting a spell, “that people without implants spread diseases, that the president rigged the votes? Look at that one! This is an article about how billionaires and film stars are cannibals! Fuck off — Are they still going on about Pizzagate?”

Mom stopped reading and looked at me, tilting her head to the side little. “Paul,” she began, “my mother told me stories her mother told her. I know that you are smart and mature, but even smart people can get sucked into Internet fantasies. Back when social networks were still figuring things out, there were lots of problems with them. Many people were sucked into believing things that were just not true, or real, or… Some of it was make-believe, like, obvious nonsense, and even when they found out who was doing it, people still believed it.

“I am not going to police you on the net. I don’t want to know what you’re looking at anyway,” she stopped to smile at me.

“Don’t be weird, mom.”

“Just…don’t believe everything you read.”

So, what am I? Gullible? Stupid? I’ll show that little troll…

John Hu still owns the restaurant. I just have to swing by tomorrow and ask if he has seen Michael lately, that my mom and him are old friends.

DIIIINGDOOONNG

A little bell rings as I step into the restaurant. It smells like any other restaurant in the city: fusion! Burgers and fries, vinegar, tofu, fish, sweet, sour…and sweat. Behind the counter is the man from the article, John Hu. I bring up the ordering app on my glasses and pick two cheap items and a drink. I stand at the counter and wait for him to bring my order. I decide to send a quick message to that little dipshit to let him know what I’m doing. Before I can hit send, though…

“Order up! This one for you kid?”

“Uh, yes. Yes. For me. Um, hey…little, uh, question. My mom wanted to know if her friend still comes around here?”

“That depends. What’s friend’s name?”

“Michael.”

“…”

“Are…you OK?”

“Michael still comes in. Now you get out. Customers waiting. Go tell your mom he comes by almost every day.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Every day! I could just wa…

“Hey John, how’s it going?”

“Michael! Just talking about you. With that boy. Your order almost ready. You two talk. He says his momma wants to meet you, haha!”

Michael looked at me. I might be 17, but I suddenly felt a lot younger. It wasn’t often that I looked at people so closely. He had the connected glasses and watch, but was for sure the guy I saw when I was a child. Before he could say anything, verbal diarrhoea kicked in.

“We saw you. My mom and I, I mean. We saw you the day that you came here…with the police. She knows you. My mom went to school with you.”

He didn’t flinch. “Follow me,” he grunted. “John! Can I use the restroom?”

“I say ’no’ you do it anyway.”

I followed him behind the counter. We went through the kitchen and down a hallway. He stopped and I nearly ran into him.

“We can talk here. White zone. What do you want?”

I told him. I told him about when I was a kid, what I saw, and what the news says happened. He told me what happened, for real.

“But, you still come in here?”

“Of course, John is my friend. He was hurt, but we know who was to blame. Who is to blame.”

“The cops!”

“No. They were just being jerks. Violent and dangerous jerks. I hate those cops, but not all cops.”

“So, who? The government?”

“A little, but the problem is a little bigger and harder to explain. They are to blame.”

“They?”

“You know? They. Sure, the government is partially to blame. The companies that made all this garbage we have to wear. They are some true fuckers. But they did this when they gave up.”

I am totally lost here. Maybe this guy is crazy. How do I get outta here?

“Back when, you know, before my grandparents’ time and all that. Like, early 2000s,” he began, clearly seeing my confusion, “the tech companies and the government and advertisers and all that were up to some unethical stuff. People, some NGOs and stuff, they started to push back. But then, poof, no more pushing. The people fighting for our rights just…gave up. People called them retro-nerds, and neo-Luddites, and the media convinced everyone that what they were doing was a trend or something.

“They were the government, and the monopolies, but they were also the people, like us, that were just so complacent.”

“That’s…a lot…to believe.”

“Yup. And you shouldn’t believe it, I wish it weren’t like that. But, I know what happened to me, and I can tell you one thing. That story you read? It didn’t happen like that. Other things that people say? Lots of bullshit. The Internet is like a dog park after a nice sunny day.”

“A what?”

“It’s full of shit. Mainstream news? They just want viewership. They spin it, they make it spectacular. They are a business, hard to blame them sometimes. But, just the walking path through the dog park. Alternative news sites,” he said making air-quotes, “is all half-truths, falsities, misinformation, and omissions preying on weak-minded people for the same thing: likes and clicks. Today, they make what I do hard. Tall grass, you know? Might be safe, might be full of shit.”

“And, what do you do?”

“I recruit people.”

“To do…what?”

“I could tell you, or I could give you a little job to do for me, and you can find out for yourself.”

“Like…homework?”

His eyebrows raised behind his glasses. He smiled a little.

“Sure, kid, like homework. I’ll be in touch. Get out of here, before John throws a hissy fit.”

Teach(p)ing

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 12:24:07 +0200

Another notification,
What could it be?
Click this, open that,
Why was this sent to me?

An email from my manager
To say I need to check Teams.
Let’s install another app
And choose from one of six themes.

Come navigate this list of groups
And help me find my way.
It’s not like I have something to do,
I only have to teach today.

There. We found it.
Ah, a file to download.
Fill out this spreadsheet,
Log into to Moodle and upload.

Now, time to go to work.
Teaching is what I like best,
Not Yammer this and Doodle that,
Not another software to beta test.

Turn on the laptop.
Plug it in.
Connect to WiFi.
Why can’t I log in?

Down for maintenance,
Yet again.
The hours on OneDrive,
The weeks of eyestrain.

A training session for Slack,
Do we really need that?
Yes, it is the same but different.
A lot of effort for group chat.

Reply all.
Out of office.
What to do?
I’m nauseous.

How many accounts must we use
Just to prove we’ve gone digital?
This feels like more work,
Not a little bit paradisiacal.

Listen here, administrators:
Nothing about this is streamlined.
The teachers are run ragged,
They’ve lost all peace of mind.

Technological progress in the name of efficiency
Creates more work in the long run.
If the teachers are all exhausted,
Our school won’t be number one.

Do you want to make things easier?
Do you want a suggestion?
It would be easier to teach
Without all this interruption.

Stop sending me messages.
I don’t want another app.
Don’t take it the wrong way,
But it’s all a load of crap.

I’ll still do my work
Without this DX.
You’ll still be happy
As you cash all those cheques.

You want to be innovative,
But you just copy the rest.
I would give you a zero
If you did that on a test.

So, turn off those screens.
Time to disconnect.
It’s the only way I know
To teach the present perfect.

I have spoken,
You have heard.
Please don’t make me remember
Another password.

Children's Cartoons

Wed, 25 May 2022 11:00:00 +0200

The 1980s were a wonderful time for children’s cartoons. No questions were asked, it seems. It gave birth to things that today would have no chance of survival against television censors and parents¹. Sure, there were rules about violence, but they were fundamentally long-form toy ads, and some of them were great.

My childhood was Transformers, GI Joe, ThunderCats, SilverHawks, M.A.S.K, The Masters of the Universe, and the like. Most of the time, the premise was straightforward: Good versus Evil. And nearly all of them had kick-ass opening credits, that were often very similar…

ThunderCats Opening Credits

Interesting, no? Let’s try again…

SilverHawks Opening Credits

OK, amazingly similar. And these cartoons were produced after the toys².

So, as a fan of cartoons (and toys) I was delighted and filled with joy by the idea of watching cartoons with my son. Now, I know, TV is bad for children. No screens before three years old and all that. I read the studies and I promised myself I would try not to overload him with TV.

I failed…

I knew, though, that things would not be like in the 80s and 90s. The shows for younger children are not like before. There is a little less action, things are a little less scary, the vocabulary is subdued.

I did not know I would be up against literal crack for kids…

PAW Patrol

Guru Studio & Spin Master Entertainment

PAW Patrol should need no introduction. It is a TV show designed to sell merchandise, there is no doubt about that. It took some great ideas from the past, and diluted them into an addictive slurry for young minds.

Don’t get me wrong, I let my son watch it and I have seen every single episode, special, and film. I can say, based on my hundreds of hours of watching TV since the 1980s, that this show is a drug for kids.

Before we get into this, I recommend watching The Science of Cute. Skip to around the 9 minute 39 second mark.

This mini-documentary is about why we find puppies cute. In the video, Julie Hecht says:

Cuteness is incredibly important for us as a human species […]. Konrad Loranz — one of the ethologists, people that study animal behaviour — introduced the idea that there might be certain physical features that are particularly cute and endearing that we are attracted to.

They would have a high and protruding forehead, very big eyes, [and] big cheeks. [They would have] a little nose, and a little mouth. And they have short, pudgy, extremities.

[A]ll of these features would essentially elicit our attraction […]

Shortly after this explanation, an artist draws the definition of cute. It is a puppy that is similar to the pups in PAW Patrol:

Screenshot from "The Science of Cute"

Rocky the recycling pup

PAW Patrol takes one of the animals that we find the cutest, puppies, and creates exaggeratedly cute versions of them as heroes. Even the humans follow the description given above. The whole concept is excellent. And they can’t be blamed for wanting profit, but they can be blamed for cutting corners!

The CGI animation used in this show is awfully basic. Over the course of nine seasons, not a whisker has been changed. As little detail as possible is used. Yes, they have added new characters, and new vehicles. Yes, just in case you didn’t know, the PAW Patrol have the OG vehicles, dog houses that transform into themed vehicles, as well as a slew of others: sea patrol vehicles, city vehicles, race cars, motorcycles, planes, knights’ chariots, dinosaur themed vehicles, superhero vehicles, and “ultimate rescue” vehicles. You need to have something new to sell, right? But, they have never updated the quality of the animation.

The content of the show, on the surface, seems fine. The pups rescue people in danger and teach kids to be careful. There are attempts at inclusivity as well — one of the pups has physical handicap that doesn’t prevent him from being a hero, another is supposed to be hyperactive, one of them speaks Spanish, and there is even a cat who occasionally helps out. But, if you look at something like Blue’s Clues and then watch this, you will immediately notice that the pacing is off:

A problem occurs in town, so The PAW Patrol is called. Sure, there is an entire sequence involved with pups getting HQ to receive their orders, but there is no invitation to the audience to guess which pups will be called upon to solve this problem. This sequence is very similar to the one used in M.A.S.K., so I must ask you watch the opening credits.

M.A.S.K. Opening Credits

Want further comparison? I have been thinking about this for years now, so you will have to bear with me. Both shows have:

transforming vehicles
themed heroes (e.g. water specialist, flying, etc.)
specialized equipment (helmets in M.A.S.K., backpacks (“Pup-Packs”) in PAW Patrol)
a villain with a moustache who also has access to innovative technology
- no explanation as to where said technology comes from
a robot
occasional non-hero characters that help out
a “get to HQ” sequence
a “get your costumes on” sequence
catchy opening credits
an attempt at providing a moral for younger children

In the end, PAW Patrol is essentially very cheap eye-candy, but, you might think that there is a moral of some sort? Nope. No moral. The major protagonist, Mayor Humdinger (voiced by the wonderful Ron Pardo) is never punished for his wrongdoings. The pirate who steals stuff always gets away. The villains clean up their messes, and they go home.

Also, the adults in the show are awful. The safety of a town, the nearby city, the jungle, the Kingdom of Barkingburg, the oceans and the skies is left in the hands of a 10-year-old boy and some puppies. The adults are clumsy and inept, incapable of taking care of a chicken in some instances. The only ones with any sense are the children and the pups. What message is this for children?

Finally, it is confusing. Really confusing. Children like stories, but this show has no story really. There are no parents in the main town, but there is a child, Alex, who lives with his grandfather. There are two other kids that come visit their aunt. The main character is 10 years old, but never says anything about his parents. Where did these people come from?

PAW Patrol is not the only show like this. Off the top of my head I can say that PJ Masks is on the same level. Cheap animation, no morals, designed to sell toys.

Speaking of toys, PAW Patrol managed to botch this too. Whether it is by design or some other reason, it is quite difficult to find toys of the human characters. They were produced, but have since been discontinued. Your kid can be addicted to the show, and get a truckload of toys, and imagine their hearts away, but, they will have nobody to save and nobody to save them from — they will have multiple versions of the pups in their different vehicles, and maybe a dragon.

Note(s)

I feel it important to note that I do not hate this show. I just think it can be better. The PAW Patrol movie shows that: better animation style, a story that provides some background for a main character, a lesson for children on overcoming fears, and so on. Ryder, though, is freakin’ creepy looking in the movie:

PAW Patrol: The Movie Poster

And, I am looking forward to the movie sequel and the spin-off series in the works. I can’t help it, I am hooked now too.

Two Can Play

It has not been as easy as it should have been to find TV shows that my son likes and that I would call good. Shows that have an educational side, a funny side, or an emotional side that demonstrate an effort from the creators to make something good.

I want to talk about five of these shows. You will notice that some of these shows have taken advantage of the “big head, big eyes, small body” science mentioned earlier. The difference is that these shows go the extra mile. Sometimes in terms of content and message, sometimes in the quality of the presentation, sometimes both.

Tumble Leaf

Amazon Studios

The first big hit in our household, before PAW Patrol, was Tumble Leaf. This show was beautiful to watch, and the creators were nice enough to give it an emotional finale. The stories were perfect for kids and follow the same premise: Fig the fox finds an object and must use that object to have fun. This is what kids do. A mirror can be a play thing. A drumstick can be more than a drumstick. A tool can be used more than one way. The overall message: go play!

Tumble Leaf Teaser

Furthermore, the show is calm. It is soft, and quiet, and subtle. There are no screeching characters, or overly anxiety-inducing scenes. While this is not the case of my son, I am aware that some kids are sensitive to sounds and action scenes. This is a show that you could let your children watch unattended, but you won’t, because it is too gorgeous. You will also be happy to know that there is no merchandise available. That means you will not be buying toys or stuffed animals or lunch boxes or anything like that to please you children.

Tumble Leaf Making of Featurette

I did play my cards wrong. Tumble Leaf is a great show for children of all ages, but I should have started with something like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood that is explicitly for very young children. I do occasionally propose an episode of Tumble Leaf

Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood

Fred Rogers Productions, 9 Story Media Group, 9 Story USA

Daniel Tiger is the continuation of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. That is all you need to know. Appearance and content-wise, this is the most childish of the shows in this list. It is for 3- and 4-year-old children, after all.

The series centers around Daniel Tiger […]. Two 11-minute segments are linked by a common socio-emotional theme, such as disappointment and sadness or anger and thankfulness. The theme also uses a musical motif phrase, which the show calls “strategy songs,” to reinforce the theme and help children remember the life lessons. Many of the “strategy songs” are available in albums or as singles under the artist name “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.” The program is targeted at preschool-aged children; it teaches emotional intelligence, kindness, and human respect. Its content follows a curriculum based on Fred Rogers’ teaching and new research into child development. ³

In short, this is a safe show for children.

Hey Duggee

Studio AKA

This one is just as entertaining for parents as it is for children. It is silly and loud, but educational. It is a show that gets the audience involved through the use of a narrator, and teaches things in the same way that something like Sesame Street does.

The concept is that question kids ask all the time, what are we going to do today? And while doing that thing, we learn. We learn about tadpoles, elections, trains, kites, building, shapes, singing, whistling, water, being sick, being quiet, and, yes, sticks.

The show is about a group of children at day camp. Their camp counsellor is Duggee, a dog, who always has ideas and seems to know about everything. The group of children is loud and colourful: There is a sensitive rhino named Tag; Norrie, a quiet and calm mouse; Betty, a know-it-all octopus; Happy, an alligator obsessed with water; and a loud, hyperactive, disruptive, but yoga-practicing hippo named Rolly. Of course, there are a series of other characters that they interact with.

Adults will have no problem watching this show with their children, because there is always a little joke in there for them. Keep in mind, though, that some of these jokes do require a little knowledge of British culture — note the reference to Spaghetti Trees in this episode:

Hey Duggee - Gardening

Stillwater

Gaumont Animation & Scholastic Entertainment

Calm and Zen; soft-spoken, but powerful. Stillwater is visually beautiful to watch, and filled with detail that children’s shows normally ignore. As an example, the characters in this show have different outfits in nearly every episode. They have detailed expressions, and flowing hair, and fur. The environment is rich and there are different locations and weather events. Finally, each episode has a story within a story using a different animation style to present an anecdote in response to a problem.

Stillwater is a panda, he lives next door to a family with three children who, as humans do, encounter difficulties. Jealousy, dismay about the outcome of a race, growing up, getting a haircut, and so on. The anecdotes used to help the children to find solutions to their problems are retellings of Zen Buddhist and Taoist stories, mostly, and use lots of metaphors and analogies.

Stillwater Trailer

This series is based on a book, which is a good thing. It means that behind it there is an author, an IP, and a vision maintaining the course of the production. It isn’t something for your children to watch religiously when a new episode appears — there are only 20 episodes containing two stories each. This is something that you can use like a story book for children, and say, “hey, how about a Stillwater?” And, like when you read a story to your child, there is a certain memorability to each episode and story that does stick.

Bluey

Ludo Studio

Bluey is pure, unfiltered, entertainment. It is a lesson for children and their parents. It is the source of roaring laughter in my house. It is all about play and creativity. In my opinion, Bluey represents the standard in children’s television programming. It is the ideal show to transition from the more “preschool”-style program — think Daniel Tiger, or shows that have a narrator like Hey Duggee — to something that reflects the psychological development that children experience at this time in their lives.

As we grow, many of us use private speech during play. You will hear children muttering and telling stories with their toys. They narrate the events, and ask themselves questions out loud. At some point, we grow out of this and begin using inner speech. There are many scenes where we see the main characters of the show reflecting on what happened, but no narrator is there to help, and the character does not look at fourth wall and ask for guidance.

Bluey: Hotel

Bluey stands out in 2022. It has a very Saturday morning aesthetic, whereas many shows have taken a more 3D-CGI route. The characters have lives and jobs and backgrounds: Bluey is in a bit of an alternative school, she has a little sister named Bingo, a mother who works part-time, Chilli, and a father, Bandit, an archaeologist. There are aunts and uncles, babysitters, neighbours, teachers, friends, and even an episode dedicated to one of those friends. The production team spends about three months on each episode, after, the whole Ludo team gets together on a Friday to view the almost-finished product with friends and family, and their children ⁴. The children in the show also voiced by the children of the team. Finally, there is another minor twist.

It goes without saying that many shows like to focus on the mother as the main caregiver in a family, and the father as the breadwinner. Doing the opposite was often seen as a gimmick, some little twist — it is a show about a family, but different. Bluey does not feel like that at all. You hardly register the fact that in many episodes it is Bandit getting wrapped up in his daughters’ strange games, trying to keep them entertained. It is this aspect that draws parents in, at least in my case. There is a realness to Bandit, and the rest of the characters, that when seen through the eyes of an adult does not register as “this is a silly kids’ show”, but rather as “holy crap this is brilliant.”

Conclusion

It won’t come as a surprise to learn that I do feel some regret. My son has seen too many episodes of these shows. Time that could have been spent outside, playing, or being creative and actively learning was wasted on passive entertainment. Ideally, I would have known about these shows before my son was born, and therefore avoided the dreaded path of the PAW Patrol. I also would have changed the order: Daniel Tiger first, then Hey Duggee, followed by Stillwater, Tumble Leaf, and finally Bluey.

If you are a cartoon lover, or parent, I recommend that you watch these shows — even PAW Patrol, because it is important to be ready when your son or daughter comes home from school and asks why they have never seen that show. I also recommend that you try and see TV shows from your own childhood.

(I say this because it is amazing how things have changed. An innocuous little cartoon from our childhood, when seen through adult eyes, can be traumatic. The Animals of Farthing Wood is quite heavy, and just look at the synopsis for the first episode of Capital Critters⁵ which my mother let me watch: “After Max the mouse’s family is murdered by pest control workers, he moves to Washington, D.C. to live with his cousin Berkley.”)

Finally, always check the merchandise situation of a show before letting your children get hooked. PAW Patrol is a vector for toy sales, whereas the other programs mentioned above are not.

Read about the “Adult Story Line” and cancellation of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future ↩︎
It may surprise you to know that the two examples above, ThunderCats and SilverHawks, were produced by Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment who were previously known for their stop-motion Christmas specials, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. ↩︎
Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood - Wikipedia ↩︎
I took my daughter to see how they make Bluey at Ludo Studios in Brisbane and it sort of blew her mind - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) ↩︎
Capitol Critters - Wikipedia ↩︎

In Search of Digital Natives

Sat, 07 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Promises were made, people. I’m not talking about flying cars, I’m talking about the people that were supposed to make those cars and the cool things to go along with them. We were promised a generation of digital natives. Where are they?

If you’re reading this, there is a good chance you are one of those digital natives we were promised. You are everywhere. There are throngs of you across the globe. I have met many of you, and the things you can do! You programme and solder; you make robots; your front-ends are gorgeous, your back-ends robust; you are makers and tinkerers. But, we were told there would be an entire cohort of digital natives.

The term was coined back in the 90s, but I have been teaching since the early 2000s and every year I hear students give the same speech. They say, “my generation is the first generation to grow up with the internet, we are digital natives.” Millennials, like myself, have also been saying the same thing.

We experienced the joys of 300bps modems, dial-up, and broadband. The arrival of the World Wide Web, Amazon, eBay, and the first dating sites. There was ICQ, MSN, AOL, GeoCities, Rotten.com and Warez. We had floppies and diskettes and burned CDs. We had monochrome CRT monitors. We installed games that were distributed on multiple diskettes. The sneakernet was a thing! We had laptops that didn’t have Wi-Fi. We were friends with Tom. We used websites like AltaVista and Alt.box.sk.

But, all along, were told that the next generation would be the real deal. Their level of digital literacy would dwarf ours. Everyone and their dog would be the next Zuckerberg. I must say that I am underwhelmed.

Again, you will tell me they are everywhere. And, I will agree with you and nod my head, but follow up with a question: How is it that so many are so digitally illiterate?

Was it social media? It is definitely one of the factors. Was it because Google and Wikipedia took away their curiosity and willingness to learn? Could be. Did the smartphones make things so accessible within three clicks that they all decided they were hackers? I cannot say, and as this is meant to be a short blog post, some stream of consciousness, I am not going to stop and do the research to answer those questions.

With each year that passes, my students become less and less adept when it comes to computers and technology. Obviously, where I work, I cannot expect to run into the prodigies that are self-caught programmers, but hell, would it kill them to learn a thing or two?

My average student keeps all of their files on the desktop of their MacBook. They have at least three browsers installed, an upgrade warning, and 97 tabs open. I ask them to go to their webmail and watch in disbelief as they proceed:

Open browser
New tab
Google search the school website
Login
Navigate to the link for outlook.office365.com
Login again
Scroll through screens if unread emails instead of searching
Open email
Figure out how to download the attachment
Open the attachment from the browser

Meanwhile, noises. The sounds of overlapping Facebook notifications. Because they have Facebook open in multiple tabs. Their €1,400 MacBook is revving up. It sounds like I’m standing under a wind turbine, but in reality I am in a classroom. It locks up. They look at me with one of those, “whatcha gonna do?” expressions.

Another students steps in, but is also unable to present the work. Why? Because somehow, after three years of school, they do not have an adapter for their computer. Does someone have an adapter? Of course someone does. We are saved, but then comes a new horror.

This student opens Facebook and asks the first student to send her the file through that platform. So, student A gets out their iPhone, downloads the attachment, and sends it over Facebook. Lo and behold, we have a PowerPoint… but not.

Because, unbeknownst to us, these students made their presentation with Canva and downloaded the PDF, which, clearly, would not contain videos and animations, right? A look of shock and panic, “Sir, can we try a different computer?”

Up comes teammate #3, “The Maker.” Their computer has HDMI. Battery levels are optimal. They connect. Now six hands are jamming away to get the screen to stop extending in order to mirror the content. Success. Angels weep for my soul as I die a slow and agonizing death — on the inside. There is no sound. There was no need for animations. They read, word-for-word, the text from their presentation.

At the end, “The Maker” holds down the power button, forcing a hard shutdown.

This is not a one-time thing. This is not bi-weekly. This is multiple times per class per week per semester. The digital natives I work with think PowerPoint is too hard. They don’t know how to turn on spellcheck or put page numbers on their documents. They copy and paste and submit Wikipedia articles as their own, but leave in the hyperlinks and footnotes! They use their phones to take pictures of their computer screens. And, on their CVs, they proudly proclaim:

Computer Skills: Proficient user, Expert in Microsoft Office, Social Networks, Windows, and Mac.

I digress.

Digital natives, what went wrong? You got off on the right foot: Powerful pocket-sized computers, high speed internet, streaming services, the cloud, laptops with batteries that last longer than two hours, but you can write a report faster with two thumbs on your 6-inch slab of plastic and glass than you can with 10 fingers and 105 keys. They mock you and call you “zoomers,” but many of you cannot seem to activate your microphones and cameras in order to use Zoom. I ask you to send me a file, you say it is too big for email, so you send it with WeTransfer, and it isn’t even 4 MB.

Natives and immigrants of the digital age, you know in your hearts that I speak the truth. So, tell me, please, how can we bridge the gap? How can we teach you the skills you need? How can it be made interesting for your hyper-connected generation to learn the basics?

I like E-books

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

No joke. I do, truly, like e-books. Of course, real books are better. It isn’t a cliché to say that. Most of the time, a real, printed, book makes more sense than reading an e-book.

In many instances, the printed book may cost less, and, in a way is easier to transport and travel with. I say this because there is less concern about losing a book or having it stolen. If you lose a copy of a recent paperback, you lose a little money and one book. If you lose a brand-new e-reader, you lose a collection of books, the money used to purchase the e-reader and the books, and possibly some online credentials and banking info.

The printed book can be handled, and mishandled. It can sit in the sun and be left in a glovebox, fall down, and even get a little wet. You can dog-ear the pages and take notes and write your name on it. Your copy of a printed book is yours.

E-books are a different beast.

How I wound up with an e-reader

I have actually had three different e-readers. All of them are the same brand. All of them still work. Two of them were the same model.

It all started well over 10 years ago. I wanted to get into reading again, but living in France, it isn’t always easy to have immediate access to new releases in English. Reading a translated version of a book does not interest me. I have no problem reading a French book, if that is the original language, and when I do want to read a French book, I still just buy the printed version.

So, I bought a Kobo e-reader. I travelled to China with that device to visit someone, and they borrowed it. I never got it back. So, returning to France I went straight to the shop next to the train station and bought the same model.

What got me hooked on e-readers?

That first year with an e-reader was wonderful. I read 12 books. That is nothing compared to hardcore book readers, but I didn’t think I would read more than five. It is certainly more than the one book (actually, a play) I had read the previous year.

The two books that got me hooked were 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and The Martian by Andy Weir. I don’t even remember how I ended up with copies of these books on my device. I know I didn’t buy them.

Reading with the e-reader was motivating. I like seeing numbers and knowing how many minutes are left in a chapter, or in the book. I could only estimate if reading a printed book. Not only that, but I also liked being in a bubble when I am on the metro: mp3 player plus e-book means nobody knows what I am listening to, or what I am reading.

Reading Stats on Kobo

There was also the aspect of reading at night. My flat at the time was as awful as it was small. There was no way for me to have a night stand with a light. E-readers, with backlit screens, solved that problem. Also, I love reading and falling asleep mid-sentence. I could do that with an e-book, and it would shut down automatically, leaving me to sleep peacefully in the dark.

Finally, there is a practical side. Yes, your library can fit in your backpack, but you can also highlight sections and create annotations. This is a function that I use on nearly every book I read. There is always a sentence, or a quote, or an entire page that needs to be highlighted for later use. This functionality, mixed with the other obvious functions, left me hooked on e-books.

How I use my e-reader

Where do my books come from if I don’t buy them? I cannot tell you, but you can guess. Except for a few books, my collection is all sideloaded onto the device as EPUB files. This is why I bought a Kobo instead of a Kindle. I knew that I could get EPUB files from many places, usually the day of release. I did learn after that it is possible to accomplish the same thing with a Kindle.

One can just drag and drop the files and be off to the beach for a long read. Or, one can use a piece of software called Calibre. Calibre is not a secret. Even people who have never dealt with e-books have caught wind of this beast.

Since the point here is not a guide, I won’t go into getting the Kobo to work with Calibre. It is easy. There are plugins. There are guides. Everything you need to know is on the MobileRead Forums It works like this:

get an e-book
open Calibre and import the e-book
ask Calibre to get the metadata (cover, series info, tags) and save it to the file
upload the file to your Kobo — and if you have the right plugins, it will upload as a “kepub”

Managing your library is easy like this, and even allows for exporting annotations to your computer.

Getting annotions from a book with Calibre

Kobo also has a “My Words” feature. It is just a list of words. It seems banal at first, but after some time you do amass a list of words that are not part of your working vocabulary.

My Words

Tweaking the e-reader

Kobo has features that cannot be accessed easily. It is a pity, some of them are useful. Kobo e-readers come with several games, a web browser, a “dark mode”, and the ability to take screenshots. None of those features, other than the browser, can be accessed without some tweaks.

While we can all understand the concept of “beta features”, it would be nice to be able to test them without going through a whole rigmarole of modifications. Luckily, there is NickelMenu.

NickelMenu adds a custom menu to Kobo devices. It is quick and easy to install. Once again, I will spare you all the “how to” part of this. It is documented on the website and different forums.

My NickelMenu config looks like this:

# NICKELMENU CONFIG

# Main Menu Items

menu_item : main : KOReader  : cmd_spawn : quiet : exec /mnt/onboard/.adds/koreader/koreader.sh
menu_item : main  :Unblock It :nickel_extras : unblock_it
menu_item : main  :Solitaire  :nickel_extras : solitaire
menu_item : main  :Sudoku     :nickel_extras : sudoku
menu_item : main  :Word Scramble :nickel_extras : word_scramble
menu_item : main  :Sketch Pad :nickel_extras : sketch_pad
menu_item : main: Screenshot : nickel_setting : toggle : screenshots

# Library Items
menu_item : library : Rescan Library : nickel_misc : rescan_books_full

# Reader Items
menu_item : reader : Screenshot : nickel_setting : toggle : screenshots
menu_item : reader : Dark Mode : nickel_setting : toggle : dark_mode

NickelMenu on Kobo

With it, I am able to access or toggle things like…

Solitaire

Solitaire on Kobo: I have no clue why it is in colour

Sudoku

Sudoku on Kobo

A Sketchpad

Sketchpad on Kobo

(it saves as an svg)

Unblock It

Unblock It Game on Kobo

A “Boggle” clone called Word Scramble

Word Scramble on Kobo

Dark Mode

Dark Mode on Kobo

Extending the e-reader with KOReader

KOReader is a document viewer for E-Ink devices. It runs like an app on your Kobo. Essentially, it shuts down the Kobo software and launches a different, alternative, operating system. Installation is as easy as it sounds here: Installation on Kobo devices.

I have it installed, but don’t use it for reading everything. I use it for reading PDF files, accessing Wikipedia articles, and reading articles saved via Wallabag. You can also configure it to work wirelessly with Calibre.

I recommend installing KOReader, even if you don’t think you will ever use it, just to have a better way to read PDF files.

The downsides of Kobo

According to novou on the MobileRead forums, usage data from your Kobo is sent to Google Analytics. Not a single person would ever be surprised by that.

They don’t tie metrics to accounts and clear UID’s and unsent callbacks across sessions (meaning they don’t track devices across reboots.)

But aiming to report each time you load the home-screen, or read a book for X minutes nonetheless seems like overkill to me. Their metrics are not super-invasive, and an extremely far cry from stuff like CarrierIQ, or individual menu button tracking.

That said, for me at least, they still do cross the line into ‘creepy,’ especially since the callbacks are being sent to Google, where those stats will be saved and analysed as a part of Google’s hoard of personal data. (If it were Kobo infrastructure, I’d still be concerned, but much less so. Kobo isn’t a business built on harvesting personal data.)¹

You can disable Google Analytics by editing the /etc/hosts file on your Kobo.

The easiest way I have found to do that is to install KOReader, using the nice one-click method above, connect to your Wi-Fi, enable SSH, and just go change it by hand.

My /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 host localhost.localdomain localhost localhost localhost.localdomain # default
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com ssl.google-analytics.com google-analytics.com # GA loopback

The other thing about the Kobo is that it comes with several baked in features that I have come to dislike:

A system of badges that were once meant to be shared on social networks, like Facebook, but can no longer be shared. This is fun for about two minutes, but it is just cruft.
When searching the web from a highlight, it defaults to searching with Google, and you need to accept the cookie policy every time.
Pocket integration, which I did use for years, but which cannot be disabled. It didn’t sync some articles, like comics, either.

The state of e-books, e-readers, and e-book readers

Worldwide, the number of e-book readers is growing — slowly, but surely — but that growth will taper off in the coming years². In terms of revenue, the same growth can be measured³.

Number of e-book readers worldwide 2017-2026 (in millions)

E-book market revenue worldwide 2017-2026 (in million U.S. dollars)

In France, a country that is all about culture and supporting small independent libraries, Amazon has the majority of the market (63% as of May 2020, Kobo had 33%⁴), e-books are not that popular. They have managed to get some traction with the 20 to 29 year-olds — 43% of which had read an e-book at least once, but the majority of French people do not read e-books (Statista, 2017⁵).

The future of e-books, though, is colour⁶ and more functionalities:

Rich colour on e-ink screen (E-Ink)

PocketBook is already selling colour devices.
Vivlio makes e-readers with flexible software that can even play audio files.
Bookeen has a rather stylish, but chunky, e-reader as well as other e-ink devices for note-taking.

Final words

E-readers are developing quickly. Almost quickly enough that an e-reader you buy today could be obsolete in two years. This is as good as it is bad. New features mean that consumers will feel the need to buy a new device. Hesitant consumers may buy a newer device, one of the colour e-readers, for example, and find themselves disappointed with the experience. We all know that e-waste is a growing problem, and this type of situation is one that could lead to even more waste.

As someone who enjoys reading e-books, I do want to see some development in the sector, but there is no way I will ever replace my e-reader every two years. An ideal e-reader for me would be something a little more flexible, in terms of configuration, or perhaps something more open and privacy-centric. I would purchase a “bare e-reader”, if such a thing existed, so I could control what kind of software went on it.

Now, back to reading!

Call to action

If you have made it this far, you should consider joining one of the BookWyrm instances. These are social networks for book lovers. If you know what Goodreads is, but don’t want to use another service owned by Amazon, give BookWyrm a shot.

Also, add me to your contacts while you are there: bbbhltz on BookWyrm.

Touch KT’s Google Analytics integration, and how to disable it. - MobileRead Forums ↩︎
Statista. (February 3, 2022). Number of e-book readers worldwide 2017-2026 (in millions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/forecasts/1294239/number-of-ebook-users-global ↩︎
Statista. (March 4, 2022). E-book market revenue worldwide 2017-2026 (in million U.S. dollars) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/forecasts/1294207/ebook-market-revenue-worldwide ↩︎
Foxintelligence. (June 16, 2020). E-reading market share of the most popular digital e-reader brands in France between March and May 2020 [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/statistics/1147874/online-market-share-of-e-readers-by-brand-france/ ↩︎
Statista. (juillet 1, 2017). Fréquence de lecture d’e-books par les consommateurs français en 2017, selon l’âge des répondants [Graphique]. In Statista. Retrieved avril 11, 2022, from https://fr-statista-com.library.ez.neoma-bs.fr/statistiques/761557/media-technologie-frequence-lecture-ebooks-france-selon-age/ ↩︎
E Ink’s New Color Electronic Paper Is Fast Enough for Video – https://gizmodo.com/e-inks-new-color-electronic-paper-is-fast-enough-for-vi-1848768109 ↩︎

Low Friction Introduction to Digital Privacy

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Note(s)

This guide is not meant to be a list of suggestions and recommendations in the traditional “you should do this” sense. It is up to each individual person to contemplate their needs and how far they are willing to go to achieve them. Your privacy, security, and anonymity matter. The decisions to take should not be decided by a stranger on the Internet. When the wording in this guide implies suggestion, it should be understood as “several websites and individuals on the Internet suggest,” and not “if you don’t do this you are doing it wrong.” Take your time. You will need it. Find your own sources too. Don’t hesitate to send me a message to tell me how wrong I am about things.

I don’t talk about “big A” in this guide. I have no idea what the deal is vis-à-vis security, privacy or anonymity when it comes to the “fruit company”.

Introduction

Several years ago, my interest in digital privacy and security ballooned. While I had been interested in some time, I found myself digging deeper, constantly changing settings. I became a little obsessed. The thing is, I am not an expert. I was putting the horse before the cart, so to speak. I made extreme choices that lead to lots of friction that could have been avoided had I taken my time.

This guide, which will hopefully be brief and light on opinion, is my attempt at proposing various things that most people can do. The target audience for this guide would be someone who is also interested in the topic and is in a position where they can start making changes without too much friction. The friction that I speak of is when the changes you make have unintended consequences on your digital life. An example would be switching to a new piece of software that none of your friends or family use, or forcing yourself to change phones and use something that you are neither happy, nor comfortable with as a device.

The suggestions that I make below will not go as far as rooting your telephone or installing a new operating system on your computer. You will not need to spend too much time configuring. This guide will just be a taste, hopefully enough to give you an appetite.

Each suggestion below will be qualified by its level of friction.

Level of Friction
◆ Little to no friction Your friends and family will not notice anything. You may need to install a new piece of software.
◆ ◆ Some friction You may lose access to some things that you have become used to, or need to configure some things.
◆ ◆ ◆ Lots of friction Noticeable changes. Friends and family might begin asking questions.

Doing everything below will not make you 100% safe on the Internet, nor will it guarantee your privacy. It will only create a little more friction for the different actors (advertisers, hackers, etc.) to gain access to your assets.

Example of "Friction"

The assets are anything we want to protect; a file, for example. We want to protect this file from a bad actor. How likely will you be hacked? Well, it happens quite often, even if you think you have nothing to hide. What will happen if you don’t protect it? Perhaps you will lose access to your email accounts, or someone will make purchases on your Amazon account, or go as far as committing identity theft. Are you willing to make an effort to prevent this from happening? The answer to that is up to you. How much friction can you handle to create friction for the bad actor?

Recommended viewing: Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters

Basics

These are not even suggestions. There isn’t a single computer user that would advise you against doing these. They are extremely easy and can be set up with little to no friction.

Using a Password Manager (◆)

This is something that a number of people don’t think about. You might be using Chrome or Firefox, you log into a site, you let your browser save the password. Cool. No problem, right? Admittedly, I did this for quite some time. I was very happy with Chrome, or Firefox, having my passwords synced across devices. Well, what if your Google account is compromised? Now you don’t just lose access to your email, but all of you accounts. Also, depending on how you use your computer, if someone steals your device from you while it is unlocked, they would also have access to all of your passwords.

Bitwarden.com

Bitwarden is a popular recommendation for password manager. There are many reasons for this. It works across many devices, it is open-source, and if you are willing to make the effort, you can even self-host your own server. The basic service is free and secure. They explain how to get your passwords from Chrome and Firefox, as well as other services. The whole process takes minutes to complete.

After, you can install the app on your phone and the plugin for your browser (or use a standalone piece of software on your computer) and you are set. The only minor bit of friction is that you need to remember one master password. You can also access your passwords from an online vault.

The perks of using a password manager are many. I am particularly fond of having access to a password generator.

There are, obviously, many password managers to choose from if Bitwarden is not to your taste.

Using an Authenticator (◆ ◆)

Now that your passwords are a little safer, it is time to make account access more difficult for anyone who isn’t you!

You may have seen people doing this. Or, you have heard people talking about “two-factor authentication”. The process is actually easier than setting up a password manager. I do, however, rate this as a task that can result in some friction.

Most people use 2FA for their most important online activities: email, social media accounts, banking, etc. If something stores your personal information, photos, emails, or any asset you want to keep to yourself, use of 2FA is generally a baked-in feature. Facebook and Google use it and recommend that their users take advantage of it.

How does this cause friction? The friction comes from the perceived amount of time it takes to a) take out your phone, b) unlock your phone, c) launch the app on your phone, d) enter a pin, and finally e) type out the token on your computer or device. The process is fluid and fast, but for lots of people, it seems like a hassle.

It is worth it though, for the piece of mind that comes from knowing that the target on my digital back is smaller.

Like with password managers above, there are many apps to choose from. I ended up using Aegis Authenticator, but before I also used the Google Authenticator. If you have never seen the concept in action, it works like this:

Go to website and login
You will be prompted to enter a token or pin
You use your phone (or in some cases another device) to get the token
You are connected

You don’t have to set up every account on the same day. But, be sure to add it to any account that you may ever access on a computer that is not your own!

Using an Ad blocker (◆)

I suspect most people use an ad blocker of some sort. Good on you. It goes without saying that browsing the web is awful when there are ads everywhere. The most highly recommended ad blocker that you can use is probably is uBlock Origin (often referred to as uBO). uBO is light on resources, available on most devices and browsers, highly customizable, and open source.

There are many guides¹ for uBO on the web. This is because uBO is more than an ad blocker. It is a content filter. In addition to blocking ads, it can block JavaScript, frames, images, 3^rd party fonts, etc. It also helps prevent tracking. As such, this is the first tool presented in the guide that can increase your privacy while using the web.

The default options are good, but you can try activating the different lists and filters and see if it interferes with your daily browsing. Or, activate everything just to see what the Internet would be like without cookies, JavaScript, trackers, or ads.

Note(s)

There are many copies of uBlock Origin available. ublock.org is not the same thing, despite looking very similar.

Tough Choices

The next round of suggestions to increase your online privacy will cause friction. You will need to be thoughtful about your decisions and be prepared to make some tough choices.

Choosing a new Email Provider (◆ ◆)

Changing email providers is a hassle. Yes, nearly every alternative service provides some sort of migration guide, but it is still annoying. No matter what, you will need to activate some form of email forwarding on your old account, check it from time to time, or set up automatic replies. That said, there will be other friction-inducing moments as well.

Toot from @gerowen@mastodon.social regarding Gmail

If you are a user of Gmail, then changing email providers means changing a lot of things: cloud services, bookmark syncing, password syncing, etc. If you are trying to increase your digital privacy and reduce your attack surface, moving away from the Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft is a good idea. There are plenty of choices. I will only talk about three here, because I have only used these three. Feel free to try all of them as well, as well as any other you come across.

ProtonMail is generally the first stop. Using the clever tools of the public relations trade, they quickly made it on every list of alternative email providers. The keywords we are looking for are all there: independent, secure, encryption, 2FA, open source, Swiss. What’s more, it has a modern and fast interface. According to their privacy policy,

Our overriding policy is to collect as little user information (personal data included) as possible to ensure a completely private user experience when using the Services. We do not have the technical means to access the content of your encrypted emails, files, and calendar events.²

There is a calendar, a drive (if you pay), a VPN, and a free plan with 500 MB of storage. When I was originally looking to change email providers, Proton did not yet have a calendar, which was very important for me. Also, the free version does not let you access your emails from apps or clients like Thunderbird. That, for me, meant when I was testing I was unable to have a preview of all the features without spending money. Spending money causes friction.

Since Proton did not have a calendar when I first looked at it, I had to look elsewhere. I landed on Mailbox.org. I decided to stay there. There are some things that bother me about Mailbox, but they are very small things. They offer a free trial, which is great, because I wanted to see what it would be like to migrate from Google. They had the different features I was looking for and an extremely flexible pricing plan. Like several other alternative choices, they run on 100% green energy and publish yearly transparency reports. Almost everything about it was perfect for me. I say almost because there are two things that bother me:

I find the interface slow compared to Proton and Disroot.
The servers are in Germany, and Germany is part of the 14-eyes Surveillance agreement³.

Disroot is a community effort. Like with the previously mentioned alternatives, you get the whole kit and caboodle (2 GB cloud storage, online office, calendar, chat, video, etc.). If you are the rebellious type, and like to go out and protest or take part in actions that are socially good, Disroot may be your type of community.

Disroot aims to change the way people are used to interact on the web. We want to encourage and show them not only that there are open and ethical alternatives but also that it is the only possible way to break free from the walled gardens proposed and promoted by proprietary software and corporations, either through our platform, others that have similar values and goals or even their own projects.⁴

The interface is quite fast, but lacks options that other services have. In the end, it is free, and you can test it easily. I have used this email address the least, so I cannot make any claims to how well it works.

As this is a tough choice, it cannot be made for you by a list like this. Many articles and sites that propose “best alternatives” could be biased or misinformed, or be written by people like me (who have tested these services, but are not professionals). You should make a table. Decide how much you are willing to pay for email, and the services you would like with it. Also, consider the email address. The number of times I have had to correct people because my @mailbox.org address was written down as gmail or with a .com or even as @mèlboxe.org.

Feature	Proton	Mailbox	Disroot
Pricing	Freemium	Flexible	Free
Calendar / Drive	✓ / ✓	✓ / ✓	✓ / ✓
IMAP/SMTP	✓	✓	✓
2FA	✓	✓	✓
Open Source	✓	✓	✓
Aliases	✓	✓	✓
Your criterium

In addition to the services mentioned above, there are others:

A short list of Email Providers

If you do decide to switch email providers, then you will want to back up and maybe even import your old emails into your new email account. The entire process took several days for me, but I had been using Gmail since 2004 and Google Drive was where I kept everything.

Prepare for friction. Quitting social networks is hard.

Recommended viewing: Cal Newport: Quit social media

If you cannot imagine doing it, then possibly it is not for you. Just know, it can be done, with difficulty.

Does everyone in your family use a certain social network? Your friends too? Well, you may just have to stay put. But, don’t be naive. Meta/Facebook/Instagram do not have a good history when it comes to privacy and personal data. Facebook has an entire Wikipedia entry on criticisms. Even social networks like Reddit lack transparency. Everything you like, dislike, or comment on has value.

If you are a social person, and you like to interact with strangers on the web about different subjects, there are alternatives. Here are some examples:

Network	Alternative Frontend	Alternative Network
Facebook	-	Friendica
Twitter	Nitter (doesn’t work as well anymore)	Mastodon
Reddit	Teddit / Libreddit (no longer reliable)	Lemmy
Instagram	Proxigram	Pixelfed
YouTube	Piped / Indivious	Peertube
TikTok	ProxiTok	-

The alternative frontends let you access, and sometimes interact with, the social networks in a more privacy-friendly manner. Or, you could try out a different social network inspired by the original. It is a very hard choice, especially if that is how you stay in touch.

An easier option is “spring-cleaning.” Take a few days to casually audit each social network you use. Do you need to follow so many brands? Do you need to like everything and always comment? Do those likes and comments need to stay there?

Let’s take Facebook as an example. While I know that many younger people are not that enthused by Facebook, it is an important social network. I did not delete my account. I just stopped using it. No, I did not deactivate it. I wanted to make sure that my face and name on Facebook are me, and not someone else. All I did was clean it up.

I unliked and unfollowed anything that was not a friend or person that I had met in real life. Even music and TV shows.
I painstakingly deleted every like and comment I left on other posts.
I deleted all photos except my profile photo.
I left every group except the Alumni group for my university (I needed to have a video meeting and show my diploma to get access. That was a lot of effort for something so useless.)
I signed out of the chat.
I removed personal information from my “About me” page.

So, now the account sits there, doing its thing. Nobody has contacted me in about a year. When I do visit, Facebook struggled with recommendations. Today I checked, and they were trying to sell me an online course for something ridiculous.

But, I am not the average social media user. It was easy for me to walk away. I have never used Instagram or TikTok, and my Twitter account lasted about a year before I forgot about it. You will need to figure things out on your own or just accept that some companies and services will have information about you.

Communicating

Beyond email and social media, there are many ways to stay in touch.

Preferred Chat System via xkcd

Email Clients (◆)

If you have already made the decision to step away from Gmail or Outlook, maybe it is time to change email clients too. For years, I ignored the existence of desktop clients. Outlook was never my cup of tea. If you like having a desktop client, for accessing multiple accounts maybe, you can look at some choices below.

Thunderbird: Very similar to Outlook in functionality. This is another Mozilla product, like Firefox. There are loads of add-ons for it too for blocking ads and trackers. With some friction and time, this program can replace Outlook and even more.
Claws Mail: The extreme lightweight approach. Just email. The interface will seem dated, but there are themes and plugins to extend the functionality. I use this, but I haven’t even bothered syncing my contacts. Too much of a bother for the moment.

Android has some great email clients. Two very similar options are K-9 and FairEmail.

K-9 Mail: an open source email client focused on making it easy to chew through large volumes of email.
FairEmail: fully featured, open source, privacy-oriented email app for Android.

Planning

If you have decided to leave Gmail or Outlook, you may also be looking for a way to read your emails on your desktop without going through the web client. And, if you have also left Facebook, you might be looking to replace the Events feature. There are options for both.

Thunderbird: Mozilla’s answer to Outlook has a calendar that lets your interact with different services. You can sync your contacts with various services as well.
Mobilizon: A platform for organizing events.

Messaging

Messaging Systems via xkcd

WhatsApp and Messenger can be replaced too. Signal quickly became the WhatsApp replacement during the pandemic. Telegram too has a large fanbase. While I don’t use the latter, I can tell you that both are good examples of “drop-in replacements”. My 70-year-old mother switched to Signal without issue or help from anyone, and my partner’s entire family went on to Telegram.

Here is a very short list of the many “instant messaging” / “group chat” services available:

Signal: Edward Snowden’s messenger of choice.
Telegram: Another full-featured messenger.
Threema (never used this one, so I won’t even leave a comment or description)
Delta Chat: A different concept of chat — one without central servers! It works through email accounts, so you don’t even need to even a new account.

Video Chat

Zoom took over during the pandemic, but like Jedi and the Sith, there are always more. Some of them do not even require an account!

Jitsi is simple and secure, it doesn’t even require an app, it runs in the browser. No account is required. It has saved me a few times. Some other services mentioned here integrate with Jitsi (Mailbox provides a Jitsi instance).

And, if you are a teacher, BigBlueButton has some excellent features. BBB is made for teachers, by a team that works with teachers. It is not a second-tier video chat, just look at the features added in their last release.

Browsing

While browsing the web, cookies received from the different websites you visit are stored by the browser.

Some of them contain login information or site preferences, and some are used for tracking user behaviour over long periods of time.

This is why browsers are popular targets for hackers (and governments), who try to steal information, destroy files, and commit other malicious activities.

The browser is probably the most used programs on your computer. For some, it is also one of the most used apps on your phone. Staying with the default browser is a choice that you can make. After all, in most cases, you cannot delete the browser, only disable it and ignore that it is there, taking up space. You do you.

Changing your Browser (◆ ◆)

Why would you change your browser? It is a legitimate question. The short version is that by using the default browser, you are making it easier for corporations to track you. Chrome, the most used browser in the world, has some privacy features, but in the end Alphabet (Google) is a for-profit company. When a company gives something for free, that means you are the product.

Recommended viewing: Richard Serra: Television Delivers People (1973)

Changing your browser creates some friction. It shouldn’t, but it does. The choices of browsers are many; the opinions on those browsers are strong. A given browser may indeed provide excellent protection against tracking and ads, but company or people behind the project may not be as transparent as they claim.

As I have not had the Apple experience, I will make no attempt to provide specific advice about the options available for their users. Outside the fruit company’s offering, you will surely have come across the two main families of browsers: The Chromium Family and the Firefox Family.

Chrome sits on their thrown with little to fear. So little, in fact, that the competition usually includes the Google search engine as one of the default options. There was a time when many hoped Firefox would overtake Chrome. It is unlikely that will happen. Why so few options? Simple. It is incredibly complicated, expensive, and time-consuming to build a new browser engine. Furthermore, most websites are built with Chrome in mind these days.

Google / Chrome / Chromium Family

The Chromium Family

The code upon which the Chrome browser is built is open source, so there are many browsers that are copies of Chrome with modified features. Even Microsoft Edge is based on that code. In the logos above you might recognize Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, and the Android browser Bromite. There are more, but listing them here will not help you decide.

If you have gone ahead with some steps above, you may have decided to change your email provider. If it was Gmail, and you have decided to begin distancing yourself from that giant, there is less reason to use Chrome, or even Chromium, and look at some other options.

Brave is frequently presented as a great alternative. Opinions and controversies aside, Brave fairs quite well when put to the test. It comes with built-in ad blocking, too.

Vivaldi also makes the same claim, and also proposes a translation tool, a mail client, and other features.

Conveniently, Brave and Vivaldi are both available on mobile. Some people like to use similar apps on their phone. It is a point to consider.

Bromite is an Android-only affair. Similar to its cousins, it has ripped the Google stuff out of the code and added extra features and customizations.

I do not want to rank anything in this guide, but if I were, I don’t know if I could give an unbiased opinion of these browsers. I have tried Vivaldi, Brave, Bromite, and another called ungoogled-chromium. I used the latter two for the longest amount of time, and my current browser (qutebrowser) is based on Chromium.

Mozilla / Firefox Family

The Firefox Family

The year was 2002. Netscape had lost the browser war. From its ashes a new project was born. It would grow into Firefox.

Firefox is developed today by the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation. The Foundation is a non-profit that leads the open source Mozilla project, which was founded back in 1998. The Corporation is a subsidiary of the Foundation. The Corporation reinvests its profits in the Foundation.

How Mozilla Operates

Mozilla is unique. Founded as a community open source project in 1998, Mozilla currently consists of two organizations: the 501(c)3 Mozilla Foundation, which backs emerging leaders and mobilizes citizens to create a global movement for the health of the internet; and its wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, which creates products, advances public policy and explores new technologies that give people more control over their lives online, and shapes the future of the internet platform for the public good. Each is governed by a separate board of directors. The two organizations work in concert with each other and a global community of tens of thousands of volunteers under the single banner: Mozilla.

Because of its unique structure, Mozilla stands apart from its peers in the technology and social enterprise sectors globally as one of the most successful social enterprises.⁵

You might wonder where that profit comes from.

Today, the majority of Mozilla Corporation revenue is generated from global browser search partnerships, including the deal negotiated with Google in 2017 following Mozilla’s termination of its search agreement with Yahoo/Oath (which was the subject of litigation the parties resolved in 2019.)⁵

Google, and others, pay the Corporation to include their search engines by default in the browser. Also, since 2015, the proprietary service Pocket has been integrated into Firefox (which is open source). These are points of controversy for many. The controversy has grown since 2017, when the Corporation acquired Pocket. If you have used Pocket, you may have noticed that suggests articles to users, which implies that user data is being accessed.

Despite this, Firefox remains the “private” choice when compared to Chromium-based browsers. There are lots of add-ons and guides to help you harden your Firefox installation. And, it is possible to strip Pocket from Firefox, and disable the bookmark syncing service.

Firefox is open source, there are a number of forks, and a number of ways to customize the way it works.

LibreWolf is one of these forks. The elevator pitch is that they are “an independent fork of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom” with a long list of features. Using LibreWolf with an add-on like uBO and the right filters would be a very easy way to access the web with little to no time spent configuring settings.

Waterfox is a slightly better-known fork of Firefox has been around since 2011. Their pitch is similar, but there are some concerns:

Waterfox web browser has been sold to System1 recently, the same company that bought the Startpage search engine some time ago. To be precise, Startpage was bought by Privacy One Group Ltd which System1 owns. System1 is an advertising company that tries to “make advertising better and safer, while respecting consumer privacy”.⁶

On mobile, you can find Focus by Mozilla, which is essentially Firefox with automatic tracking protection and ad blocking, and a project called Mull (Gitlab) which can be installed through F-Droid. Mull is a “privacy-oriented and deblobbed web browser” like the others, but with features borrowed from Tor and other sources.

A word on Tor

Tor is another Firefox fork, with security enhancement allowing it to connect to the Tor network.

I am not a Tor user. The Tor browser may very well apply to my threat model, but I have never bothered with it.

Before downloading and using the Tor browser, though, it is in your interest to read the “about” page from the Tor manual and look over the Tor training resources. Those two sources will give you an understanding on what Tor is all about. On many sites, you will likely come across a list of best practices regarding Tor that tend to include:

Do not install any other add-ons
Avoid resizing your window
Do not log into bookmark syncing services

If you like syncing bookmarks, or using particular add-ons, then maybe Tor is not for you.

But, Tor is an important tool for people from all walks of life (journalists, activists, human rights defenders, parents who want to protect their children while online, and people in abusive situations). There are many threats that need to be considered, like who may have access to your browser history, anybody you may have angered in the past, the software on your computer, corporations, data criminals, casual hackers, local law enforcement, private investigators, foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, etc. The list is very long.

Think about what type of digital security profile applies to you. Perhaps install Tor and just keep it up to date in case you need it, or, use it every day.

The final decision of browser will be a matter of taste. If you like tweaking, there is something for you. If you are more of an “install and browse” person, there is also something for you.

Searching (◆ ◆)

Google Search is amazing. You cannot deny it. They have crawled so many pages, indexed them, and cross-referenced them. They know what you are looking for even if you cannot spell it. Prior to Google, there were many search engines. Since Google, many have tried to take their throne. They are the kings of the castle for a reason. It is the same reason why when Google Search launched when I was about 11 or 12 years old, that our IT teacher printed out a banner (dot matrix printers, you know) that read “USE GOOGLE.COM” and pinned it to the bulletin board: It works very well.

It also increases your attack surface by providing data brokers with information about you and your preferences. Google Search knows things about you, and you can get away from them. You can do it right now.

There are many alternative search engines that are more privacy focused than Google and Bing. We will look at three of them:

But first, you need to know something. DuckDuckGo and Qwant are metasearch engines. They both depend on Bing for their results (and Yandex in some instances). Bing is a crawler. So are Google, Yandex, and a few others. Qwant and DuckDuckGo will return similar results. If you want a better and more detailed explanation of this, Seirdy has an excellent post on his blog where he also talks about why someone would even bother using a non-mainstream search engine.

I generally use DuckDuckGo. It seems to return what I am looking for most of the time. When it doesn’t, it provides an magnificent feature called Bangs that allow you to use shortcuts to search on other sites. All you need is a !. At the moment, there are 13,565 bangs available. For example, starting your search with !yt lets you search YouTube, !g Google, !reddit Reddit. If a site has a search function, DDG has banged it. Using DDG as your default search engine means that you can search most of your favourite sites from a single place.

DDG promotes itself as a privacy-oriented search alternative, just like Qwant, and they also promise not to track us. I don’t use Qwant that much. While it proposes many features, I mainly use Qwant for its maps. In the end, these two search engines will assist you in your mission to protect your private information online.

But…

[…] The New York Times reviewed the top 20 search results on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo for more than 30 conspiracy theories and right-wing topics. Search results can change over time and vary among users, but the comparisons provide a snapshot of what a single user might have seen on a typical day in mid-February.

For many terms, Bing and DuckDuckGo surfaced more untrustworthy websites than Google did, when results were compared with website ratings from the Global Disinformation Index, NewsGuard and research published in the journal Science. (While DuckDuckGo relies on Bing’s algorithm, their search results can differ.)

Search results on Google also included some untrustworthy websites, but they tended to be less common and lower on the search page.⁷

Mojeek is a different beast. It is a search engine with its own crawler. They are on a mission to build, slowly but surely, their own index. Mojeek has been working on this since 2006 and recently passed “7 billion pages indexed” mark⁸. The scope of the mission is wide. There are the privacy promises (no cookies, no tracking, no selling of data, no outsourcing⁹), the environmental (Mojeek is hosted and run from a green data centre¹⁰), and governance.

[W]e would never intentionally manipulate our results to show any particular point of view. We don’t believe a search engine should have an agenda, whether political or otherwise, and returning as relevant but opposing views should be a goal.¹¹

This focus on ESG¹² speaks to me, but finding the things I want on Mojeek requires patience. I have been using it daily now for about two weeks. Sometimes, I do give up and head back to DDG. Then I remember that when I first used DDG, the results were not always great either. Time will tell. I suggest that you at least bookmark Mojeek, because it is growing.

General Recommendations (◆)

This is short and easy. Just a few points.

Use bookmarks: It saves time. Why do so many people search for something they use every day? Bookmarks are useful. Keep them organized.
Avoid creating unnecessary accounts.
Avoid “login with Google/Facebook/etc.” If you need that service, create an account. I myself accidentally created a Spotify account this way, and it still exists, but I cannot access it because the account I “logged in with” no longer exists.
Avoid letting your browser save your passwords.
Many email providers offer the option to create aliases and disposable accounts if you need to use your email somewhere sketchy.
Don’t trust everything you read on random blogs.

Add-ons (◆)

In addition to uBlock Origin, you can use other add-ons and extensions to improve your privacy. The more you use, however, the more unique your “fingerprint” will be. Again, I am not suggesting you install everything listed below, but being aware of their existence is important.

LibRedirect: A web extension that redirects YouTube, Twitter, Instagram… requests to alternative privacy-friendly frontends and backends.
xBrowserSync: a free and open-source alternative to browser syncing tools offered by companies like Google, Firefox, Opera and others. The project was born out of a concern for the over-reliance on services provided by big tech, who collect as much personal data as they can and have demonstrated that they do not respect their user’s privacy.

The Cloud

Convenience comes at a cost. Services like Dropbox and Google Drive offer so much cloud storage for free, it almost feels like you have to have an account.

This category can create some friction. Here are two possible solutions to leaving Big Cloud.

If you only need to share some files, maybe some photos, or some Excel documents, between the devices you own, you can avoid the Cloud altogether with Syncthing.

Syncthing keeps your information private and encrypted. It is easy, but I did give it a medium friction rating because it is not something many people are used to doing with their devices.

With Syncthing, you would install it on the devices you plan to use and share between. As long as the device is on the same network, the file is shared between the device. This is how I sync my work between my home computer and my work computer. At home, I prepare. The files sync to my phone. When I get to work, the files sync to the work computer from my phone. I also sync my photos, but only to my personal computer.

This is where things can get rough. Collaborating on files is something we need to do regularly. If it is for work, you can use your work cloud and online office tools. But, what if we don’t have those? This is where Nextcloud comes to the rescue.

Nextcloud is a service with features we sometimes need: file sharing, collaborative tools, groupware. You can install this on your own and have your own personal cloud, if you have the time and will to host your own server. There are also free providers. Disroot, which we mentioned in the email section, uses Nextcloud. As do a few others.

Your Phone

I see a few friends with these “cleaner” apps on their phones. I don’t want to cite names, because that is slander, but modern Android phones don’t really need them. Head over to εxodus and look up some of the apps you use. For example, one of the famous “cleaner” apps contains more than a few trackers. Why would an app that clears out useless files need to send data to these companies? Your guess is as good as mine (actually, it is probably money).

Screenshot from εxodus

Your phone is a pocket-sized tracking device combined with a wallet and a closet filled with secrets. It has your search history, your location history, your chats, your purchases, some health information, and photos, among other pieces of information you don’t want to share with the world.

Nothing to Hide (2017)

Cleaning Out Your Wallet (◆ ◆ ◆)

You need to take a moment to consider the apps on your device, and the accounts saved on your device. We have been spoiled over the years, and have taken shortcuts to completing tasks. Facebook has an app; do you need to use it? Did you stop using Gmail? Disconnect your Google account on your phone (don’t worry, there are ways to stay up to date). In fact, if you want to create some real friction, reset your phone to factory settings and do not ever enter your Google information. Then start thinking about what you need on the phone and where you can get it without the Google Play Store.

If you look at F-Droid or Droid-ify / NeoStore you will see that your can install many apps without Google!

Note(s)

As far as I know, there is nothing unsafe about using F-Droid. The app even tells you if there are trackers or if the app connects to other services. The apps on the store are audited in a way, and, in most cases, you can go see the code used in the apps. That said, some people are of the opinion that putting your trust in the hands of an individual is a preposterous idea, and that large companies, like Google and Facebook, are actually more trustworthy. This, like many things, will be your decision to make. I’m not saying “do your own research,” I am reminding you that you can have your own opinion.

If you want to try other options there is Accrescent and Obtainium.

However you feel, it won’t hurt to look and try some things out. Here are some examples:

Install a password manager (e.g. Bitwarden)
Install an 2FA authentication app (e.g. Aegis)
Install something to help block ads, trackers, and other Internet traffic (e.g. Blokada 5, InviZible Pro)
Install an email client (e.g. FairEmail)
Install a calendar app (e.g. Etar)
Install something to watch YouTube content with (e.g. NewPipe, LibreTube)
Install chat clients (e.g. Signal, Telegram)
Install a different browser (e.g. Privacy Browser)

Review Your Work

You can take a moment to see if your work is paying off.

Below are some sites that test for ads, trackers, and other sneaky Internet trickery. Don’t worry about getting 100%. Browser fingerprinting is very tricky to avoid, especially if you want to use your computer or device without too much friction.

Ad Blocker Test
AdBlock Tester
Cover Your Tracks (ads, tracking, fingerprinting)
BrowserLeaks
CreepJS (JavaScript trickery)
No-JavaScript fingerprinting
Browser Privacy Check by EXPERTE.com

Next Step: The Main Course

All of this was just the starter — the appetizer. If you have followed along, even just casually reading and checking out the links, you have only had a taste. Digital privacy is more complex than having a password generator, or avoiding Big Tech, or following a guide from a forum written by a guy with a tinfoil hat.

If none of the above causes too much friction, don’t stop. Keep going. Here are a few more things you can try.

Begin using PGP for your emails.
Stop using MS Office on your computer.
Delete all social networks.
Replace more apps on your phone. For example, you can replace the camera, the keyboard, the photo viewer, the maps, the SMS app, etc.
Take a look at the different communities on Matrix or try out XMPP
Try out Linux¹³ on your computer (NB: installing Linux is not a magic shield that protects you — Linux has malware and Linux can be hacked), or LineageOS for your phone. If you have a Pixel phone, you can also try GrapheneOS or CalyxOS. Another option is /e/OS.

Terms

2FA / two-factor authentication & OTP / one-time passwords: (2FA) An electronic authentication method in which a user is granted access only after successfully presenting two or more factors to an authentication mechanism¹⁴; (OTP) A password that is valid for only one login session or transaction, on a computer system or other digital device¹⁵
asset: Any piece of data or a device that needs to be protected
centralized: When all information comes from one server; e.g. Facebook
cookie: A collection of information, usually including a username and the current date and time, stored on the local computer of a person using the web; Used by websites to identify users who have previously registered or visited the site
crawler: An Internet bot that systematically browses the web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of indexing
decentralized: When information is distributed among multiple hubs; e.g. Mastodon
fingerprinting: “Browser fingerprinting” is a method of tracking web browsers by the configuration and settings information they make visible to websites, rather than traditional tracking methods such as IP addresses and unique cookies¹⁶
fork: A project fork is when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software
harden: To make less vulnerable to attack
metasearch engine: An online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results
open-source software: Open-source software is released under a licence in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose; It may be developed in a collaborative public manner; The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software ¹⁷
PGP: Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication ¹⁸
proprietary software: Proprietary software, also known as non-free software or closed-source software, is computer software for which the software’s publisher or another person reserves some licensing rights to use, modify, share modifications, or share the software; It is the opposite of open-source or free software ¹⁹
tracking: When operators of websites and third parties collect, store and share information about visitors’ activities on the web ²⁰

One such guide is uBlock Origin Suggested Settings – 12Bytes.org. Doing everything in that guide will create a little more friction that you might desire. ↩︎
ProtonMail - Privacy Policy ↩︎
UKUSA Agreement - Wikipedia ↩︎
About | Disroot ↩︎
The State of Mozilla: 2018 Annual Report — Mozilla ↩︎ ↩︎
Waterfox web browser sold to System1 - gHacks Tech News ↩︎
Fed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo - The New York Times ↩︎
Mojeek Updates, August 2023 | Mojeek Blog ↩︎
Mojeek Privacy Policy ↩︎
Doing what’s right, Mojeek and the environment | Mojeek Blog ↩︎
We’re building – Mojeek – the world’s alternative search engine which respects your privacy, and provides its own unique and unbiased results. Ask us anything. : IAmA ↩︎
Environmental, social and corporate governance - Wikipedia ↩︎
I will not mention any specific distribution. Take a look around, you will find one to try on your own. ↩︎
Multi-factor authentication - Wikipedia ↩︎
One-time password - Wikipedia ↩︎
Cover Your Tracks | About ↩︎
Open-source software - Wikipedia ↩︎
Pretty Good Privacy - Wikipedia ↩︎
Proprietary software - Wikipedia ↩︎
Web tracking - Wikipedia ↩︎

That Rabbit is Back

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 12:03:07 +0100

The escape from the rabbit hole left you stronger.

It still beckons you from time to time. You are wise to the ways now, though. You can get close, and lean in, without fear of falling. You’re fine. You can so see what it wants.

Ah, yes, of course. The same news as before, another comparison of browser privacy. Well, not just another. This one is rather detailed. You share it with the strangers of the internet, and continue on your merry way.

A voice…

“Hey! Get back here!”

“No. You can f-ck right off! I know how this deal works. I am not some journalist or researcher. I am not a hacker. I have my ad blocker, I block the invisible trackers, I use https, and I know my fingerprint is not unique. I don’t like it, but I am fine with it.”

“No… Just… Come on, take a look. It won’t take long.”

“You have 5 minutes.”

Just a Peek…

This rabbit hole goes on forever. Your time can be put to use elsewhere. The folks doing the work to inform are doing a great job. More and more people around you talk about “protecting their privacy online.” No need to go down, let’s sit on the edge of this deep dark hole and look.

If what you seek
is to take a peek,
then spend a week
with…

Mojeek Logo

“That’s a search engine, not a browser.”

“Patience. You said I had 5 minutes.”

“Go on…”

Our vision is to be the world’s alternative search engine; a search engine that does what’s right, that values and respects your privacy, whilst providing its own unique and unbiased search results.

Mojeek is the result of years of work. The work of Marc Smith, to be precise. He began this project in 2004 and today employs six other team members. Mojeek is a crawler based search engine with its very own index of web pages.

On 8 March 2022, Mojeek announced that they had surpassed 5 Billion Pages indexed¹.

Mojeek Growth over time in billions

You agree. Mojeek is cool. Their servers a “green”, they are independent and unbiased, and they have a tracker free newsletter and RSS feed and a Mastodon account.

“Thanks for the info. See ya!”

“I still have a minute or two!”

“What about a privacy-centric Android browser with Mojeek as the default search engine?”

“Send me the link. I’ll give it a shot. I’m out!”

Fun with Privacy Browser

Venturing away from the rabbit hole feels good. Your phone beeps. It is a link:

Privacy Browser Android (The only way to prevent data from being abused is to prevent it from being collected in the first place.)

Privacy Browser Logo

You bite. It is on F-Droid, so, why not?

Everything checks out…

Open source
Blocks ads, JavaScript, cookies, and DOM storage by default
Easy to switch user agents
Default search engine is Mojeek
Other search engines must pass Requirements to be included
Dev is on Fosstodon

Oh, that’s different: “uses Android’s built-in WebView to render web pages”.

Let’s give it a (screen)shot.

Ah. OK. Now we’re talking. You cannot even screenshot the app without going into the settings to turn that on…

Take two.

Privacy Browser Home

After a quick load, Privacy Browser takes you to Mojeek. From here you discover that there is a left menu and a right menu.

The left menu takes you to navigation and global controls.

Settings Menu

The right menu takes you to page and domain settings, as well as sharing and bookmarks.

Page Menu

Bookmarks

Domain settings inherit from global settings, but can make the experience for certain sites better. Many sites with drop down menus need JavaScript.

Domain Settings

I leave this as default, but there are a good number of preconfigs here.

User Agent Settings

Finally, just to show how pervasive JavaScript is. This very blog. There is one post that requires JavaScript to render maths. Without JavaScript, I suppose it is still human-readable. But, I did spend about 10 minutes getting Katex working (don’t worry, it is only needed for that post) so I hope you have JS on for that post.

My site without JS

My site with JS

Can I work with this browser?

That really is my only requirement. I need the browser for one specific thing: Accessing my schedule. In order to get to it, I needed to make domain settings for *.microsoftonline.* and *.myworkdomain.* and activate JavaScript, Cookies, and DOM storage. A minor annoyance.

Can I waste time with this browser?

Yes. But, sometimes mobile pages don’t load automagically. Not a big problem. Apparently, different user agents return different pages.

Something that I do like is the “save as” functionality.

Save as notification

Instead of the standard UX, Privacy Browser has a nice little progress notification at the bottom (a “snackbar”, not in the Android menu). There is no persistent notification in the Android menu. According to the dev,

“[T]here are a couple of things about Android’s download manager that are unsatisfactory. First, it doesn’t provide a mechanism to specify a proxy. Second, it doesn’t work at all on Android 7.0 when a VPN is enabled.”²

You are also able to edit the URL before you download. All of this is very nice. I, for one, do not need any more notifications on my device, nor do I want anyone seeing what I have been downloading (for clarity, it is mostly PDF files of articles and magazines from my school’s library).

And, very important, even for me, is the ability to clear cache and cookies when exiting. This is on my default.

Is there a future?

Yes! It looks like this project will continue and expand to desktop. Android’s WebView will be swapped out for Privacy WebView (a fork of the former with added privacy features). There will be Linux, Windows and macOS browsers.³

Silly Rabbit

Well, it seems the little rabbit was right: This was worth my time. I should go thank him…

No.

Not falling for that again. Both of these new tools are good enough for now.

Switching Desktops

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 11:02:11 +0100

“Variety is the spice of life”

“The more, the merrier”

“Too much is better than too little”

Look up from your phone, or computer, for a moment. Are you alone? If not, and the person near has their phone or computer out, take a quick look. No! Not at what they’re doing. Just look to see their screen, whether it is their phone screen or their computer screen.

There is a very good chance that you will see the “out-of-the-box” default. I have noticed that many Android users, for example, just use their phone as-is. There is nothing wrong with that, even though some phones come with bloatware on the home screen. My mother’s phone, a Samsung, has icons for Facebook, Twitter, and an NHL app on the home screen. None of those are useful to her, but she leaves them be and instructed me not to delete them.

I do not know that many iPhone users, but from the few that I see, they tend to leave some defaults in place, in terms of app placement and also choice. My students are nearly all Mac users these days. While there is some variety, I tend to see a large collection of icons on the desktop, Safari, sometimes Chrome, and a small collection of defaults in the dock.

Windows users are in the same boat. They have a set of quick launch buttons, or launchers in the start menu, that they like to leave in place. Who can blame them? When I was handed my work computer, it came with Edge, Firefox, and Chrome. All three browsers were in the quick launch bar.

When I was a student, things were not like this. Oh, no. We were a different breed. Call us kitsch or cliché, but when you don’t have all the streaming services and social networks, you get to wandering through menus and testing different options. At least, that is what we did when I was at university.

You need to remember that back in those days, everything came with “skins”. Many of your favourite applications were skinable. Winamp had a ridiculous number of skins to choose from. Just too many, really, if there is such a thing. The idea of letting users customize the appearance of programs was fuelled by Windows’ boring appearance compared to the simplistic beauty of Apple interfaces.

Screenshop from Archive.org

Wired magazine even wrote about this phenomenon in October 2000 in an article called “GUIs Just Want to Have Fun”.

The faceless interface is dead. Long live skins, the hyper-personal edge of desktop computing.

The article goes on to cite the names of dozens of skinable programs, as well as software that still exists today. I won’t soon forget the time I spent tweaking Windows, from the vendor logo, the loading and login screens, and the shell itself. The article mentions Litestep and WindowBlinds, both of which I used and enjoyed. It was just the way we did things. We all had similar looking devices, we needed to make the screen look a little different at least.

The madness of skinning did die down, I think, but not before Apple got a little upset.

There’s no better example than Russ Schwenkler’s desktop. On one hand, it’s a thing of striking beauty. On the other, you practically need a walking tour to understand how it works. It starts with a Windows extension called NextStart and adds a suite of matching skins for more than a dozen programs. Instead of the standard Windows taskbar, it features a docking area where icon aliases can be shuffled in and out; Schwenkler adds a skinned version of the Launchkaos program manager. Custom minitools include audio playback controls, a hexadecimal calculator, system meters, and file viewers. A WindowBlinds skin holds it all together.

The aesthetic, Schwenkler says, is “tailored, with lots of attention to detail. I use a variety of surfaces that work together visually, along with lights, shadows, and highlights - things a button that’s just a dot or a big broad X isn’t going to give you.”

Schwenkler became an instant skins celebrity this past January when WinAqua, his WindowBlinds-based clone of MacOS X, hit the streets before the beta release of Apple’s operating system. Posted on skinz .org, WinAqua was downloaded more than 10,000 times in a single day before the site pulled it at the request of Apple attorneys.

I have rarely seen a customized desktop outside the Linux world. But, the reason for that is simple. Linux’s users are blessed with an abundance of options. And it isn’t just a question of skins, Linux users can, and have the habit of, customizing the entire interface of their desktop to pixel-perfect precision. And, if for some reason that one thing they want to change cannot be changed, well, they pack up their dotfiles and head on to newer pastures: a different desktop environment.

Paradox of Choice

Just when you are starting to feel comfortable, like you have everything you need, you look over at your neighbour, and his grass seems greener. This was my conundrum very recently. For at least three years, I was happy in my environment. But, things started to get in the way. There was a lack of flexibility. I looked and looked for solutions to this minor problem. And, the solution I found was to change.

For about three years, like I said, I was comfortable. LXDE and LXQt were all I required. I could work and play. But, I started to get an itch. I just wanted to take a look at something new. Looking is OK, right?

While at first it may seem like you are limited, it is not the case. You can have a DIY minimal keyboard-controlled tiled window manager, with no theming whatsoever, a slick modern Mac-like desktop, or a traditional desktop with a panel and a start menu.

The obvious choices when changing desktops are the big players: KDE, Gnome, Xfce along with some forks like Cinnamon and MATE. After a terse look, and to cut to the chase, I chose KDE.

KDE: The Winamp of Desktops

The last time I used KDE was on Netrunner. I think it was on a netbook. It used KDE 4. While I didn’t hate it, it was not adapted to the device. Also, I had no interest in widgets and customizing at the time. I found it clunky, and it really slogged along on that Eeepc.

(I did dabble with ricing and tiling window managers later, but it is not my thing)

KDE Plasma is not KDE 4. Things are faster, integrated, and can be fine-tuned. Even the default layout is agreeable to use, down to the wallpaper. The thing that many people would enjoy is that you can make it work the way you want.

As a very basic example, I have added buttons to the text editor, Kate, that launch a spelling/grammar checker in an external terminal. There are also buttons to help me convert files to different formats without opening up a terminal and typing in an entire command.

Custom External Tools in Kate

Once things are working the way you want, you can make things look different, and here is where things become very flexible. All forms of colours and shapes can be modified and tweaked. Just like with Winamp, there are stores filled with scores of themes, icons, widgets, decorations and scripts.

The recent version of KDE Plasma comes with a great overview mode too, which is something that I was missing during my years of LXDE/Qt usage.

KDE Overview Mode

There is far too much to see and do. This is not a bad thing, but if you like this sort of thing, it can be a massive time suck. No matter how you look at it, though, it is a prime example of the “hyper-personal” desktop that Wired talked about.

Konqlusion

Blissfully ignorant to what KDE can do, my several days of rediscovery have reminded me that when you own a computer, you shouldn’t be confined to the default appearance and functionality. Your device should work the way you want it. It was one of my reasons for abandoning Windows all those years ago.

KDE is a mature and powerful desktop environment that could convince most people that Linux is not all command lines and clunky interfaces. It has quickly surpassed all my expectations. If you haven’t taken KDE for a spin in the past few years, it is worth your time.

As is the custom when talking about this sort of thing, I shall do like those who have come before me and include a screenshot, à la /r/unixporn:

A Generic Screenshot

Info:

Nearly all default settings (Breeze Dark)
Papirus Icons
Qogir Window Decorations
Random wallpaper
Neofetch
cava
Strawberry

A Quick Look at Distro Rankings

Sat, 05 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’m afraid I have the distrohop bug again. But, luckily for my sanity and my family, I will not be doing that anytime soon. My partner has seen what happens when that happens. I disappear for the better part of a day. Thinking about it is a nice exercise, though, and it allows me to learn what’s going on in the world of Linux distributions.

I am a “desktop Linux user”. I don’t program anything, and it has been months since I’ve had to build a package that is not available in the Debian package repository. If something doesn’t work, I just star it on GitHub or forget about it. Like many desktop users, I have the habit of taking a peek at DistroWatch from time to time. I tend to glance at the DistroWatch page rankings at least once a month.

I was first told about DistroWatch in 2002. When I was at university, my good friend was a Linux user. I believe he used Slackware at the time. His desktop was confusing and interesting at the same time. Since then, I look at the site. It is truly very useful, if only for knowing what distros are based on Ubuntu LTS and getting little updates about releases. I can only assume that a good number of people use that site as well.

I also like to see the difference between the page hit rankings, the visitor ratings, and the trends. This is how I got to writing this post. Do these rankings actually mean anything? What are the true “mainstream” distros?

Ranking Comparison

As I had some free time today, I started making comparisons. I chose a not-very-reliable method. I took the top 21 distros from DistroWatch’s page hit rankings from the last six months (to include Arch) and compared those to the global rankings from SimilarWeb. SimilarWeb is an alternative to Alexa.com, which will soon shut down. As I write this, I realize that I should have used just one country, and not the global rankings. But, the end results works out well.

The table below lists the distros by DistroWatch rank. The rightmost column is the global ranking from SimilarWeb.

DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking Trends vs SimilarWeb Rankings

(information gathered 2022-03-05)

DW Rank	Distro	SW Rank
1	MX Linux	123,888
2	EndeavourOS	69,927
3	Mint	19,755
4	Manjaro	28,875
5	Pop!_0S	75,268 ¹
6	Ubuntu	8,959
7	Garuda	107,654
8	Debian	22,133
9	Fedora	57,025
10	elemantary	128,442
11	Zorin	46,294
12	openSUSE	68,228
13	Slackware	288,450
14	antiX	404,101
15	KDE Neon	40,615 ²
16	Lite	200,193
17	Solus	199,704
18	Kali	21,201
19	PCLinuxOS	357,687
20	Kubuntu	217,700
21	Arch	16,512

There are no surprises here. The top six SimilarWeb rankings are:

Ubuntu
Arch
Mint
Kali
Debian
Manjaro

The top six distros include what we expect. User-friendly choices Ubuntu, Mint and Manjaro, Unixporn favourite Arch, and old man Debian. Kali might not seem like a top choice, but it has become synonymous with “ethical hacking”, and received a significant boost being featured on the TV Series Mr. Robot.

Google Trends: Mr. Robot vs Kali

The first season of the series ran from 24 June 2015 to 2 September 2015. Season 2 from 13 July to 21 September 2016. Season 3 from 11 October to 13 December 2017. The final season ran from 6 October to 22 December 2019. You’ll need to zoom in a little, but there are tiny upticks for Kali Linux coinciding with each season of Mr. Robot. As people lost interest in the series, during a hiatus between seasons, there was also a slight loss in interest for Kali. I have just now realized that I did not watch that final season.

Sentiment

Social media plays an important role in everything, so I decided to take a look at the “social buzz” of those six distros. I used Social Searcher for this. This is not the perfect solution, as it does not really take into account things like forums or Mastodon, but the numbers are interesting to look at.

With Social Searcher, it is possible to have a general look at the “sentiment” users have towards these distros.

Comparison of sentiment toward Linux Distributions

You can see that for the most part, people are quite neutral in their opinion. Kali seems to win in the “Positive Sentiment” category, with Manjaro coming in a close second. Ubuntu proves that the more users/customers that you have, the more complaints. If there were a way to search across more sources, I am sure we could paint a better picture.

Not wanting to leave MX without its fair due, I took a look. And I was a little surprised.

Sentiment towards MX Linux

MX appears to have a low percentage of negative sentiment shared on social networks. A very low percentage! Positive opinion is off the charts. Is it the lack of systemd? Having used MX in the past, I can agree that I was very happy with that distro. It was great for my old computer.

Conclusion

The main conclusion I can draw from these numbers is that Arch is far more mainstream than its users make it out to be. Either that, or its users need to visit the site so often to look for direction that it boosts the distro’s global page ranking. Also, Ubuntu needs to do something to increase the positive sentiment. As the door to the world of Linux for many users, the experience should be more positive. Finally, it might be worth noting that many Linux websites are less than inviting. As Matt from The Linux Cast pointed out recently, Linux has a website problem.

Arch has things down with access to documentation, MX has lots of YouTube videos posted by the devs, Mint gives us an easy to find download button and instructions, but Ubuntu has company logos everywhere and a variety of choices for download (do I want LTS or the newest version?). Debian’s website has a big download button, but it is for the version without non-free firmware, meaning that users could spend time installing something that may not work, and a new user would not understand why (I know, I’ve been there).

The URL to the distro was not ranked, I used the domain. ↩︎
The URL to the distro was not ranked, I used the domain. ↩︎

The Joys of Being a Beginner

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:14:09 +0100

Have you ever player Stardew Valley? It is a sort of idle game, an improved version of Harvest Moon, about farming and fishing, among other things. When you first play the game, you want nothing more than to advance. You want to have a bigger house, a horse, visit the areas that you couldn’t at the start of the game. The further you progress, the more there is to do. Very quickly, you will find yourself rushing around without an idle moment. You will wake up, check calendars and weather reports, tend to the garden, go to town, go to the mines, go fishing, and realize that you need to get back home before time runs out. The fun remains, but there is also a nostalgia for that first day. To be able to roll out of bed, water a few parsnips and not really worry about the rest. This is the joy of being a new player. The joy of being a beginner.

A certain number of years ago, I was a student. I absolutely enjoyed being a student. There were some classes that I just couldn’t get my head around. One of those was beginner programming. Much like when I started playing Stardew Valley a few years back, I was fed up with the beginner stuff. I wanted more. When the exams came, I was not ready. I took my bad grades, and decided that programming was not something for me.

Reflecting on this part of my life, I am now certain the professors were doing an excellent job teaching the subject. I was just not ready to be a beginner. Western culture wants us to be experts and proficient. We need to be fast learners with high uptake bandwidth with innate logic and critical thinking skills. Just being literate is not enough. Would you even bother putting a skill on your CV/résumé if you were only a novice at that task?

Since those days, much of which I have now concluded were focused on learning to learn, I have, in fact, become slightly more proficient at learning. It is a recent development, though, as far as I can tell. Perhaps it was learning little things related to computers, or living in another country, or meeting new people, or having different jobs with different tasks. Whatever the reason, whenever it happened, the joys of being a beginner have revealed themselves to me.

Plenty of pompous people produce pithy posts parleying the pros of practising self-improvement and the perfectionment of one’s cognitive processes. Learning is life, life is learning, yadda yadda yadda. Rarely do they stop to remind us that, when we were children, we enjoyed learning something new. Learning to ride a bike, learning to play badminton, learning to swim. Toddlers look like they are having fun just learning to walk! But, those same toddlers, once they become proficient, find themselves bored with the activity and demand to be carried.

If I were to describe my current skill level in programming, I would likely use the term sub-toddler. I would say it with a large smile. The last time I have had this much fun was when I was first learning about Linux, but this is more akin to when I was learning French at age 12. Each day, there is a new thing, and it is great. It is learning to walk, and water parsnips.

Take for example what I learned this morning:

Frogger in Python/Turtle

That is a game made using Python with the Turtle module. I don’t think I need to tell many of you, but just in case, this is the description of Turtle:

Turtle graphics is a popular way for introducing programming to kids. It was part of the original Logo programming language developed by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon in 1967. ¹

Notice that is something meant for introducing programming to kids. I am not a kid, and kid is not even considered academic English where I teach. When I saw the exercise I was meant to work on, I thought to myself, “really?” How will this teach me anything? I have been slowly plodding along learning some Python basics, and now I am drawing shapes like I use to on my calculator in high school?

It only took me 10 minutes to realize that I could do this all day. It is akin to learning how to use a Bescherelle. It is dry, it is not intrinsically fun, you would never brag about it, but it gives you some fundamental skills that allow you to progress. Most importantly, though, it is novel when you have no skill whatsoever. This is one of the most captivating things I have done with a computer since getting a Raspberry Pi, or flashing a new ROM to my phone. The steps are few. The requirements are low. But, there is a little voice asking if it will work; when I click the button, a moment of anxiety as it starts to load; and a spark of joy upon seeing shapes and colours on the screen.

Of course, I won’t be able to dork around with Turtle forever. In a few weeks, I will have likely forgotten how I managed to solve the problem and get things to work per the instructions, but I will not soon forget how wonderful it is to spend a little more time than necessary on the beginner exercises.

Would it be cliché to end with a call to action to never stop learning? To say learning is fun? What about a little, if I can do this, so can you?

Yes, yes, and yes.

It should, however, go without saying that being a beginner is not to be frowned upon. In a few weeks — if I continue down my path of trying to expand my skills, and these beginner exercises get further behind me — I suspect the quale of the experience shall remain present.

Now, back to drawing shapes.

turtle — Turtle graphics — Python 3.10.2 documentation ↩︎

Learning about the Lottery

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I had a busy week. It seems that the busier the week, the easier it is to get distracted by everything.

As is the case with nearly every person I have ever met, my head is filled with information that, albeit cool, is less than useful on a daily basis. I remember a large quantity of the dialogue from Transformers: The Movie (1986), and bits and pieces of my high school AP math classes, for example.

This week, a student asked about the chances of randomly guessing their way to a perfect score on a multiple choice test. I don’t know why they would ask the English teacher, but my brain gave them the answer:

If there are 200 multiple choice questions with 4 options each…

$$\frac{1}{4^{200}} = \frac{1}{2.58224987809e+120}$$

That is a big number, and it put them on the path to studying.

Unfortunately, it put me on the path to thinking about the lottery.

I come from the Maritimes, in Canada. We have a lottery there called Lotto 6/49. As the name suggests, you choose 6 numbers out of 49 possible numbers.

So, I sat with my calculator (i.e. computer) and started figuring things out with a little help from the web…

Calculating Chances and Combinations

The formula for calculating chances looks like this:

$$C(n,r) = \frac{n!}{r!(n-r)!}$$

This might be called the r-combination or “n choose r” or the binomial coefficient.

The formula gives us the number of ways a sample of r elements can be obtained from a larger set of n distinguishable objects, where order does not matter and repetitions are not allowed.

Using all 49 numbers

$$\begin{align*}C(n,r) &= \frac{49!}{6!(49-6)!} \cr &=13,983,816\end{align*}$$

There are 13,983,816 possible combinations. You would have one chance in 13,983,816 of guessing this number.

Using only Odd Numbers

There are 25 odd numbers between 1 and 49, so there are 177,100 possible combinations.

$$\begin{align*}C(n_\text{odd},r) &= \frac{25!}{6!(25-6)!} \cr &=177,100\end{align*}$$

13,983,816 (total possible combinations) - 177,100 (possible combinations with odd numbers) = 13,806,716 losing combinations! That doesn’t bode well.

Using only Even Numbers

There are 24 even numbers, so, 134,596 possible combinations.

$$\begin{align*}C(n_\text{even},r) &= \frac{24!}{6!(24-6)!} \cr &=134,596\end{align*}$$

That leaves us 13,849,220 losing combinations. Again, not great.

Using 3 Odds and 3 Evens

According to How to Win the Lotto 6/49 According To Math, you can choose 3 odd and 3 even numbers to up your chances.

The author states there are 4,655,200 ways to win.

While I can see that that number is the product of these r-combinations:

$$\begin{align*} \frac{25!}{3!(25-3)!} \times \frac{24!}{3!(24-3)!} = 4,655,200\end{align*}$$

I am unsure of the logic here. I believe it, but I admit that I lost some interest at this point.

And… my interest went in another direction.

How long would it take to win?

(and what would it cost?!)

Lotto 6/49 has two draws per week. A single “line” or chance costs $3.00 CAD.

Let’s imagine I will play one line per draw and play the same numbers for both of those draws.

And, let’s also imagine that the payout never changes and is based on the payout from 29 January 2022:

Match	Prize
6 Mains	$7,102,956.40
5 Mains + Bonus	$60,724.30
5 Mains	$2,595.10
4 Mains	$87.10
3 Mains	$10.00
2 Mains + Bonus	$5.00
2 Mains	Free Play (=$3.00)

I slapped together some sloppy Python, which I am only in the process of learning, so be kind:

import random
import babel.numbers

# 6/49 ASK FOR 6 NUMBERS BETWEEN 1 AND 49 (Inclusive)

YOURNUMBERS = []
YOURBONUS = 0

print("Choose 6 numbers between 1 and 49")

x = 1

while x != 7:
    CHOICE = input(f"Number {x}/6: ")
    if int(CHOICE) <= 49 and CHOICE not in YOURNUMBERS:
        YOURNUMBERS.append(CHOICE)
        x += 1
    else:
        pass

# Get a Bonus

while True:
    RANDOM49 = random.randint(1, 49)
    if RANDOM49 not in YOURNUMBERS:
        YOURBONUS = RANDOM49
        break
    else:
        continue

print(f"Your Bonus is {YOURBONUS}")

# Payout Calculations

WINNING_BONUS = 0
PURCHASES = 0
WINNINGS = 0.0
WINNING_NUMBERS = []
MATCHES = []

while len(MATCHES) != 6:
    MATCHES.clear()
    WINNING_NUMBERS.clear()

    y = 1

    while y != 7:
        CHOICE = random.randint(1, 49)
        if str(CHOICE) not in WINNING_NUMBERS:
            WINNING_NUMBERS.append(str(CHOICE))
            y += 1

    while True:
        RANDOM49 = random.randint(1, 49)
        if RANDOM49 not in WINNING_NUMBERS:
            WINNING_BONUS = RANDOM49
            break
        else:
            continue

    for num in WINNING_NUMBERS:
        if num in YOURNUMBERS:
            MATCHES.append(num)

    if len(MATCHES) == 0:
        WINNINGS += 0

    if len(MATCHES) == 1:
        WINNINGS += 0

    if len(MATCHES) == 2 and YOURBONUS == WINNING_BONUS:
        WINNINGS += 5

    if len(MATCHES) == 2 and YOURBONUS != WINNING_BONUS:
        WINNINGS += 3

    if len(MATCHES) == 3:
        WINNINGS += 10

    if len(MATCHES) == 4:
        WINNINGS += 87.10

    if len(MATCHES) == 5 and YOURBONUS == WINNING_BONUS:
        WINNINGS += 2_595.10

    if len(MATCHES) == 5 and YOURBONUS != WINNING_BONUS:
        WINNINGS += 60_724.30

    if len(MATCHES) == 6:
        WINNINGS += 7_102_956.40

    PURCHASES += 1

    # print(PLAYS)

TOTALCOST = babel.numbers.format_currency(PURCHASES * 3, "CAD", locale="en_CA")
GROSS = babel.numbers.format_currency(WINNINGS, "CAD", locale="en_CA")
NET = babel.numbers.format_currency(WINNINGS - PURCHASES * 3, "CAD", locale="en_CA")

WINNING_NUMBERS.sort()
YOURNUMBERS.sort()

print(
    f"""
My Numbers {' - '.join(YOURNUMBERS)} + {YOURBONUS}
Winning Numbers {' - '.join(WINNING_NUMBERS)} + {WINNING_BONUS}
You would have to buy {PURCHASES:,} tickets before winning the grand prize.
The cost of playing would be {TOTALCOST}.
You would GROSS {GROSS}.
Your NET winnings would be {NET}."""
)

And went about playing with it.

As I am writing, I just received this output:

Choose 6 numbers between 1 and 49
Number 1/6: 2
Number 2/6: 20
Number 3/6: 42
Number 4/6: 7
Number 5/6: 33
Number 6/6: 49
Your Bonus is 36

My Numbers 2 - 20 - 33 - 42 - 49 - 7 + 36
Winning Numbers 2 - 20 - 33 - 42 - 49 - 7 + 25
You would have to buy 15,731,789 tickets before winning the grand prize.
The cost of playing would be $47,195,367.00.
You would GROSS $35,228,605.40.
Your NET winnings would be -$11,966,761.60.

I have run this script about 20 times. On one occasion I had a positive net win. But, as you can see, I would have to play more times than possible in a lifetime.

The Takeaway

It is much more interesting to save $6 every week, or only play from time to time just for fun, than it is to try the same numbers every week. I suppose I could also try playing a random set of numbers every week. That might improve my chances.

The Next Distraction

Adding KaTeX to my blog… which I will write about in a future post.

A Month of Python

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 22:48:14 +0100

A month ago today, I began pondering what to do with my time off. My schedule from now until the end of the school year has provided me with a day off. In contrast to previous years, when I would have gone out and found another employer, I wanted to learn something.

Teaching the Teacher

My employer provides us with training. We just have to ask for it and convince our manager, and it is approved (most of the time, if it isn’t too ridiculous). Personally, I have nothing against learning something new. I was “school smart”, and I really enjoyed my studies. On more than one occasion, I have signed up for training. Three times, in fact. Three times I took the same course: Spanish.

The first year started out fine, and I felt some progress, until my schedule changed, and I was unable to continue attending the class. The next year, the same thing. The following year, I took a Spanish course online. It was a disaster. A total joke. Many language courses start off with a test to determine your level, and very good online training software uses computerized adaptive testing to continuously evaluate the learner. The online course I took did not have this option, and the initial test was a multiple choice test about colours and numbers. It was determined that I have an excellent level of Spanish, which is not the case. I completed the 20 hours. It was confusing and difficult, and I learned nothing that I can use in daily conversation.

Learning Spanish is on the back burner for now.

I dove deep into the available options. I had several options:

Take a course provided by my employer
Take a course available through the “Compte personnel de formation” (a French financing scheme for training)
Take a course and pay for it myself
Learn by myself

Taking courses through my employer is an exceptional idea, but I missed a deadline. I began preparing a shortlist on my CPF. There are too many courses to even think about, but I managed to find quite a few that met my criteria (hours, cost). I searched for courses that were not available through the first two options, but found it hard to determine which training courses were reputable, worth my money, or total scams.

I hesitated even thinking about learning my myself. As mentioned above, I was “school smart”, but the context is different now. I am not a student, I don’t have deadlines or homework. Would I even bother? Hard to say.

Then, while doing my research and preparing my lists and weighing my choices, something dawned on me. I liked being a student, and I need that regular (weekly) dose of learning to maintain a sense of progress. I know from my job that it takes more than an hour or two per week to progress. Finally, learning something new by myself is not that crazy. It is what teachers and professors do regularly when given a new subject to teach.

So, that is what I have been doing the past three weeks.

I am trying to learn Python.

How? By preparing a lesson plan, creating my own exercises (so I feel less inclined to give up and just go look at the answers), and presenting it as a course that I would teach.

Yes, I am aware that the beginner teaching beginner thing is very cliché. I cannot argue with results, though.

A Month of Python

Screenshot of https://codeberg.org/bbbhltz/learningpython

These past few weeks have been very enjoyable. I have not enjoyed sitting in front of a screen this much since I first installed Linux. I have been making slow, but steady, progress.

The last time I tried programming was over 15 years ago at university. It was Java. This is a summary of how it went:

Excellent in-class experience with great professors
Great labs with good projects and fun TAs
Challenging, but not impossible, homework assignments
Exams that made me think I sat down at the wrong table!

I still remember leaving an exam, going back to my dorm room, and looking through my notes. The last lesson was easy. So, how did we get from “Make an input box that asks for your birthday and prints your age” to “Make Tetris”? A mystery for sure, and a very low grade. Second semester, it was the same. The exam was far more difficult than the class, but I was ready. I did not produce anything close to a program. I just wrote out everything we had learned in class, and made sure to comment it to prove I knew what I was doing, but didn’t know how to get all those things to work together. I got a B+ and decided that programming wasn’t for me.

Clearly, I have been putting this off for too long — both learning Python, and publicly keeping track of that learning.

Lesson Building

A favourite class when I was a student was learning about teaching. There was a lot of theory, which is what one would expect. At the time there was a lot of talk about online learning (this was around 2002), and the approach to online learning was meant to be the same as what was applied in face-to-face learning (i.e. instructional design). There are variations on these methods. The one I always found easiest to apply was ADDIE model.

ADDIE — analyse, design, develop, implement, evaluate — dictates that I (paraphrasing here) look at my needs first. Well, that is easy. Close to zero programming know-how, so, I start at the beginning. Then, I would need to design and develop. So, I looked at a rather nice collection of books, comparing their table of contents and proposed learning paths to see a common thread. I also looked at what MOOCs recommended, along with the previously mentioned courses provided by my employer and other services.

I didn’t follow the model to the letter here. I did not sit down like I would when preparing my real lessons. I did no storyboarding. I prepared no definitive bibliography. A lot is based on the work of others.

Currently, I am in the implementation phase: doing the actual work. I have had to backtrack a few times due to unfamiliar concepts that required me to review fundamentals.

My personal learning path can be broken down as follows:

Pre-requisites (not actual Python, but computer science notions that I stop and look into)
Fundamentals (basics, but the easiest of basics)
Basics (where things become more challenging, still in progress)
Intermediate
Advanced

While I know what I will be doing in the latter sections, I don’t know how I will feel about it. I do need to go back and review the previous sections and think of different exercises to test myself.

Early Success

Without even getting beyond the beginner chapters, there are already a few things of which I am particularly proud. They are not beautiful, colourful, or elegant. They work, and they made me think.

The Witch (the what?!)

If you have ever played the Witch Drinking Game, you know what this is about. If you haven’t, it doesn’t matter. The game is not as hard as it appears.

What I enjoy about this game is not the drinking. It is an example that I use in class with my students. I have them do this game as an icebreaker. What happens when I describe it is confusion. My students are not native speakers, so they initially think they misunderstood something. Then, when they play, it all makes sense.

Learning Python is analogous to this, for me at least. I read, I try, I doubt my understanding, I try again, and things turn out fine.

So, I gave myself a challenge. It is just a script that generates a dialogue, and I found a solution that works. It is very motivating. Initially, I did not think I understood, or would be able to do it. Then it started working. At the end, I smiled and laughed. Much like my students. A tiny success; an immeasurable win.

Month Two

As I continue learning, I continue having new ideas. And, accordingly, the idea that I have requires what I planned on working on next. I like the challenge, and what it highlights: despite being relatively good with computers, there are notions that are foreign to me.

The goal of learning this is coming into view. If I continue down this path, I will be able to put this tool to work at my job and automate a few tasks. Alternatively, I can show what I have learned to my managers, and they may allow me to develop a course that I can teach. Who knows? Personally, and professionally, I can see how learning one of the most popular programming languages will help me in the future.

Computer Know-how

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 18:18:37 +0100

Discussions with my colleagues and students regarding computers and knowing how to use them are both similar and different. We have the colleagues on one side who complain, among other things, that the students are useless and lacking in creativity when put in front of a computer. On the opposing side, the students, who proudly claim on their CVs (which I have the honour of reviewing and correcting on occasion), that they are not just “proficient” with computers, but in some cases “expert” users of certain software.

Now, those same colleagues, who are teachers, mind you, consider themselves to be pretty decent computer users. You can probably imagine what my young students think of their teachers’ computer skills. Spoiler: They are not impressed.

Recently, I had the pleasure of coming across an article, titled Who is the target user?, in which the author discusses the skills of the average computer user ¹. He immediately brings up a table-top role-playing game and the skills one could acquire within the game regarding computers.

Below is the table (paraphrased):

Skill Level Table

This knowledge represents the ability to operate and program computers, as well as the savvy to keep up with the latest technology.

SKILL LEVEL	DESCRIPTION
●	POINT AND CLICK
● ●	PROCESS DATA WITH RELATIVE EASE
● ● ●	DESIGN SOFTWARE
● ● ● ●	MAKE A LIVING AS A CONSULTANT
● ● ● ● ●	BLEEDING EDGE

I cannot claim to know what the students know, but I have a strong hunch based on years of watching students struggle through basic tasks, that (with the exception of my engineering students) they do not get beyond a two-dot score. On the other hand, I can make some claims about what my colleagues know. I know this because I asked them. It was fun because the results turned out much like we could have imagined.

Several years ago, one of my employers decided to play catch up and carry out a much-talked-about digital transformation. People were hired. VR headsets were bought. Good times. Things were changing, and teachers were tasked with participating in this change. So, we were divided into groups. One of the groups was tasked with the technology side of things.

It was put forward that training was needed. Training in what, though? “At least Office and a few other basics”, said I.

Questionnaires were sent out. We asked about their knowledge of things on this list: “The 20 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher should Have”. They provided answers, claiming training was not necessary. They were OK!

That is exactly what was expected. Much like our students, we consider ourselves to be more proficient than we actually are. How are we to know better? So, more questionnaires were sent out. We asked them to describe their skills as weak, intermediate, or very good. Most ranked themselves as intermediate and very good with Word and PowerPoint, Excel had some weaker users.

We then asked specific questions about the software. Things like, “Do you know how to include a Table of Contents automatically?” (65% no) and “Do you know how to include a bibliography in a document?” (77% no). Excel, being the most difficult and least used, had mostly negative responses. PowerPoint got off easy.

The other questions highlighted the obvious. My colleagues were, for the most part, unable to create or edit audio or video files, and certainly had no idea how to share large files on the Internet. Screencasting was probably a mean question to ask too.

Almost 60% of my colleagues were still using DVDs in class!

I could go on. I will sum up the pages and pages of questionnaires and responses and analysis for you: they all asked for training.

They were (and might still be) somewhere between one and two dots on our skill assessment chart above.

My students, the next generation, the Zeds, are supposed to be “digital natives” (that term is one of my pet peeves, by the way), but, study after study proves that it means nothing:

You’ve heard it before: Today’s kids are “digital natives,” raised in a world of technology that they know like the back of their hand. As it turns out, that’s not necessarily true about Generation Z (the demographic cohort following the millennials born in the mid- to late 1990s).
Results were recently released from the International Computer and Information Literacy 2018 study, and they were sobering: Only 2 percent of students scored at the highest levels implied by digital native status, and only another 19 percent of the 42,000 students assessed in 14 countries and educational systems could work independently with computers as information-gathering and management tools. ²

The “International Computer and Information Literacy 2018 study” mentioned above is a fascinating read.

Now, back to the dots…

Those dots

I am maybe a two-dot user. I am working on getting to three. I know this fact. I have only met two people in my life who are four- or five-dot users. They are scary when it comes to computers. So scary. Finding that table, with the dots, and the accompanying article felt so nice. But, it also affirmed an overwhelming idea: many of my students will not get beyond one-dot. They struggle with any software that doesn’t give them a template to work with, they don’t bother looking through menus to see what the software can do. They don’t use their computers for more than typing and Netflix.

The nice part is what I want to focus on to wrap things up.

I have always liked computers. When I was younger it was the buttons and screen combination. Press a button, see a result. Just typing out things that didn’t need to be typed out was pleasing when I was young. Too bad I had to wait until I was 15 or 16 to have a computer in my house! I didn’t imagine I would ever bother with programming after university, but, as I mentioned above, it is something I am working on.

What if I get to three-dots?

Well, that’s the neat part. There are still more dots to get.

See Nate. “Who Is the Target User?” Adventures in Linux and KDE. November 30, 2021. https://pointieststick.com/2021/11/29/who-is-the-target-user/. ↩︎
See Strauss, V. “Today’s kids might be digital natives — but a new study shows they aren’t close to being computer literate” The Washington Post. 19 November, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/11/16/todays-kids-may-be-digital-natives-new-study-shows-they-arent-close-being-computer-literate/ ↩︎

2021

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 12:06:38 +0100

Satisfied.

I feel satisfied.

Did I do everything I planned?

No. Far from it.

What do I feel satisfied?

Because. That’s why. Just, because.

2021 felt like the fastest year ever. It flew by. I gave myself different things to do. I didn’t fully complete them, but I had a good time learning about these things.

But first!

I am a music person. I like listening to new music whenever I have the chance. So, I will start off with my…

Music Recommendations

Off the top of my head, here are a few albums that I listened to a lot this year:

Archspire - Bleed the Future (Link)
Aquilus - Bellum I (Link)
BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory (Link)
The Bug - Fire (Link)
The Bug feat. Williamson, Jason - Treetop (Link)
Ekulu - Unscrew My Head (Link)
Hollywood Burns - The Age of the Saucers (Link)
IDLES - CRAWLER (Link)
Ishihara, Shigeru - TEWARI (Link)
The Masamune - The Masamune (Link)
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim (Link)
Necrofier - Prophecies of Eternal Darkness (Link)
박혜진 (Park, Hye-jin) - Before I Die (Link)
Parquet Courts - Sympathy for Life (Link)
Radiohead - KID A MNESIA (Link)
Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs (Link)
Tipper - Insolito (Link)
Youth Code / King Yosef - A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression (Link)
ZillaKami - DOGBOY (Link)

Most of these albums can be found on Bandcamp. Consider waiting until the next Bandcamp Friday, so you can support the artist.

Things I tried

The Fediverse

Not being the most social person in the world does not mean I don’t need some sort of social network.

Upon discovering Mastodon, and the different instances, I jumped on the Fosstodon instance. I will probably stay put there. I haven’t looked at other instances, but there might be one that makes more sense for me.

Furthermore, I made an account on Bookwyrm, but still haven’t left Goodreads. I like their recommendations feature, and knowing when new books by my favourite authors are released.

I haven’t bothered with Pixelfed yet, but I might next year.

Blogging, Hosting, etc.

I got out an old Raspberry Pi and, with much help, got Nginx serving a Hugo blog. Then I paid a couple Euros for a domain name.

That domain will expire in about a month, and I won’t renew. I don’t blog enough, and srht has a nice hosting solution.

I fiddled with the Gemini protocol. Awesome fun. Easy too. For now, since I have unplugged my Pi, the server is gone. Maybe I will bring it back to life in 2022.

Time Wasting

I read some books. Not as many as previous years. I could probably make a very short book list. Right now, I recommend Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary and Martha Wells’ Fugitive Telemetry.

I tried to watch all of King of the Hill. Mike Judge’s amazing animated series from the 90s. I laughed so hard. The jokes still work today. I haven’t finished it yet. It is 13 seasons and a few bonus episodes. Some of the subjects he touches on are still debated today.

I used a Raspberry Pi 400 as my main computer for the better part of a year. It lead me to find new ways to waste time, like recreating my dozens of PPT lessons as Beamer slides. Totally worth it, except now I need to figure out LaTeX. Pandoc is awesome, but there are some occasions when I need a little more flexibility.

Excellent time-wasting indeed!

What’s next?

It is time to learn something. After making a longlist, and a shortlist, I have decided that 2022 is the year for me to learn a little programming.

The “how to learn” part came to me in a discussion with some colleagues, when they asked me how I know about [something]. I responded that I had to learn it to be able to teach it, because that is my job. That was the lightbulb moment.

In order for me to learn, I am going to pretend that I have to teach the subject.

The subject is Python.

In order to keep things organized, I have started doing something over on ~~framagit~~ codeberg.

If you click on over to my “Learning Python” project you will get my full name, and a look at my personal learning path for Python. Once things really get rolling, I will probably come bother the Fediverse for some original challenges.

The goal of this is purely personal, but if I can also put something on my CV, why not, right?

Happy New Year to everyone who made it this far.

Be safe, and have fun.

Making my CV with Markdown didn't turn out as expected...

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 21:11:08 +0100

You’ve been there.

If you haven’t, you will be.

A lead on a job! Hurrah! Get out the old CV (or résumé) and drag and drop, and Bob’s your uncle.

Alas, a minor error is noted. Easy fix. Open up the file in your favourite word processor, no muss, no fuss.

The file loads and… That’s not right. Everything is out of place. It was just a few weeks ago that I changed this. No major updates have occurred since. Why is that like that?

Why can’t we just send plain text files as CVs? They are just going to be fed into some Applicant tracking system anyway.

And so begins the easiest thing. Making a CV using a text editor.

AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE

Right. Open the old text editor, throw in some words and dates, put a little Pandoc spin on it, and share the PDF.

Markdown and Pandoc are the two things I use the most on my computer. Sad, really, that I haven’t even tried to do some of the more advanced things Pandoc is capable of. But, also lucky. After spending the better part of this past year remaking all of my course material as Markdown files, I have searched enough and seen enough that I saw the problems before they hopped up and bit me.

The content of the CV is easy enough, the layout is the little bump in the road.

I will be in need of columns, and I will need to be able to flush right certain elements.

Two columns with alignment

Work experience example

This calls for the multicol package. That means I will have to deal with some LaTeX. In fact, it means that my CV will be some Frankenstein hodgepodge of a Markdown file.

THE HEADER

\begin{multicols}{2}

\begin{huge}

\textbf{FIRST LAST}

\end{huge}

Title

\vfill\null

\columnbreak

\Begin{flushright}

Address 1 \\
Address 2

phone number \\
email address \\
website or linkedin

\End{flushright}

\end{multicols}

So far, so good. I have my basic info at the top of the page.

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

Originally, I started out with something like this:

\textbf{Company Name} \hfill \textbf{City, Country}

\textit{Job Title} \hfill \textit{MMM YYYY -- Present}

Details, details, details. \\

But, it dawned on me that that is a lot of effort. So, I added this to the front matter:

\newcommand{\xp}[5]{\textbf{#1}\hfill\textbf{#2} \\ \textit{#3}\hfill\textit{#4} \ \textendash \ \textit{#5}}

This let me achieve the same results with fewer keystrokes:

\xp{A Company}{A City}{A Job Title}{JAN 2020}{SEP 2021}

Details \\

SKILLS

I am lucky. My skills are… Let’s just say it doesn’t take up much space. I have lots of transferable skills, and I definitely know what I am doing. But, how can I, a language teacher, give some proof that I am OK with computers? Public speaking? I don’t do conferences. I don’t publish. As such, I am able to squeeze the necessary into a few lines.

GETTING DISTRACTED

I did it. It didn’t take long. It isn’t exactly beautiful to look at, but it is what I wanted: a CV made with a plain text file.

I was wrapping things up, and sorting out things in my Downloads folder, when I came across the manual for tcolorbox, another LaTeX package that provides an environment for coloured and framed text boxes with a heading line. Pretty soon I was on page 200-and-some, and the notion of a 10-minute CV rewrite was risible.

THE RESULT

FRONT MATTER

---
documentclass: letter
lang: en-GB
geometry:
- margin=1.5cm
mainfont: FreeSans
fontsize: 11pt
papersize: A4
header-includes:
    - \usepackage{multicol, tcolorbox}
    - \tcbuselibrary{skins}
    - \newcommand{\xp}[5]{\textbf{#1}\hfill\textbf{#2} \\ \textit{#3}\hfill\textit{#4} \ \textendash \ \textit{#5}}
    - \newcommand{\hideFromPandoc}[1]{#1}
    - \hideFromPandoc{
        \let\Begin\begin
        \let\End\end
      }
---

BODY

\pagestyle{empty}

\begin{multicols}{2}

\begin{huge}

\textbf{FIRST LAST}

\end{huge}

Title

\vfill\null

\columnbreak

\Begin{flushright}

Address 1 \\
Address 2

phone number \\
email address \\
website or linkedin

\End{flushright}

\end{multicols}

\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=white,sharp corners,colframe=black,title=Experience,fonttitle=\Large\bfseries]

\xp{A Company}{A City}{A Job Title}{JAN 2020}{SEP 2021}

Details \\

\xp{A Company}{A City}{A Job Title}{JAN 2020}{SEP 2021}

Details

\tcblower

\begin{small}\color{gray}

\xp{Old Company}{Old City}{Old Job Title}{MAY 1999}{OCT 2020}

Did some stuff

\end{small}

\end{tcolorbox}

\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=white,sharp corners,colframe=black,title=Education,fonttitle=\Large\bfseries]

\xp{Univeristy of X}{Shitty Town}{Expensive Degree}{2000}{2004}

\end{tcolorbox}

\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=white,sharp corners,colframe=black,title=Skills,fonttitle=\Large\bfseries]

\textbf{Language}:

\textbf{Computer}:

\end{tcolorbox}

OUTPUT

That took longer than 10 minutes

CONCLUSION

A weekend well wasted!

I was able to apply to some different jobs. I will make it look a little nicer once inspiration strikes. Not only that, but I will have to get around to learning LaTeX for real. Is that something teachers put on their CVs?

Skills: LaTeX
Hobbies: Latex

Nuance is everything.

Freak

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 19:33:10 +0100

“Momma, look!”

A little boy is trying to get his mother’s attention. She is staring off into space.

“MOMMA!”

“Honey! What is it? Mommy’s busy, sweetie.”

“Momma, look, the man!”

I look over to see the mother slide her glasses down and look over them at me. She could be the same age as me. Perhaps younger. Too far away to tell for sure. Close enough, though, that I see her expression. She makes one of those, “huh, would you look at that” faces. She knows why her son is staring and pointing at me. A can feel other eyes on me, so I know that attention has been drawn.

It doesn’t take heightened situational awareness. Just experience. Going out in public means eyes on me. Some younger and less accepting individuals have called me names since I was in my teens. “Freak” is the most common.

The mother puts her glasses back into their position and continues ignoring her son, who, from the corner of my eye, is also staring off into space. I continue on my freaky way. Hunger beats humiliation and public shaming. There aren’t too many places for people like me now, and walking is a little less humiliating than taking the bus.

The sound of boots on pavement catch my attention. Ahead and to my left, I see three police officers jogging in my direction. Like most people, freak or not, I am tempted to glance over my shoulder to see what could be the reason for their speedy response. Having just passed through the square, I know there is nothing that would merit their attention. Well, almost nothing.

I stop in my tracks and take my hands out of my pockets.

The police officers slow down. One walks around behind me. Another approaches me head on. The third stays back, mumbling something into her radio.

“Hello, sir. We’ve received several reports that someone fitting your description has been disturbing the peace. We need to ask you a few questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you have any identification on you?”

“I do not. Sorry.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No. I only have my wallet with me. I am going for lunch across town.”

The officer closest to me holds up his phone and points the camera at me. He looks at his partners and shakes his head.

“You’ll have to come with us, sir. And, you will need to be restrained.”

“I understand.”

For freaks like me, this is life.

Their van isn’t far away. Once we are seated inside, they remove the restraints.

“So, sir, are we going to the station or the store?” asks the officer who stayed in the back with me. She takes off her hat and looks at me, sincerely, because she already knows what I will say.

“Sorry, officer. But, I think we might have to do the paperwork again.”

“It doesn’t have to be this hard. We can help you. We can’t stop you every week because people are afraid of you. Everyone is losing here. Just let us take you to the store.”

“I don’t see how this can be a crime. Being different used to me celebrated. Now, I am treated like a freak. All because I don’t want to give my money to a company? Because I don’t want their damn glasses and phones and watches? Because I can walk down the street with two free hands and see things through my own eyes?”

“Right. So…”

She huddles up with her partners for a moment.

“Where’s lunch?”

“Pardon me, officer?”

“Where are you going for lunch”

“The café, near the museum.”

“We’ll drop you off.”

Before I can speak, the vehicle is moving, silently and swiftly, in the direction of the café. In a matter of minutes, we are there. The officers hop out. I move to follow, getting ready to thank them.

“Oh, no. You can stay here. Watch this.” Says the third officer.

The three officers walk into the café and come out almost immediately, dragging the owner behind them.

They slide the door of the van open and place the café owner’s hand on the latch.

“We’ll ask again. Do you want to go to the store, or not?”

Confused, and taken aback, I hesitate. Too long. They slam the door on the owner’s hand.

Blood splatters across the inside of the van, and across my face. The owner screams. He looks at me, then the police officers.

“He’s not welcome in my café. None of those freaks are allowed any more! I promise! Please, let me go!”

“Let you go? But, our friend here hasn’t answered yet…”

They force his other hand onto the latch.

“Well, freak, what’ll it be? Will we go to the store, or will we charge you with assault and take you to the station?”

Four sets of eyes stare at me. All hateful, but one also pleading.

I hang my head. “The store,” I say.

Today is the day I stop being a freak, and become a sheep.

Note(s)

Jw wrote a piece inspired by this story on his blog, so1o: A Question of Price

Using Markdown and Pandoc to make a simple invoice

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 21:38:44 +0100

For the past few years I have had a reasonable solution for my invoicing needs: a spreadsheet. LibreOffice Calc, in my case, is really all you need. I only have to send a single invoice per month, 8 months of the year. You don’t need a spreadsheet to do that math.

I had looked into using LaTeX or Markdown to make my invoice before, and decided it was not worth the time. I saw that there were lots of templates available, some of them even looked nice. And, again, I felt that it was too much hassle for something I can do in a spreadsheet.

Then I came across The Plain Text Project by Scott Nesbitt. Inspired by all of the different links, I decided it was time to see what I had learned over the past few months.

I have not learned LaTeX, so things may get a little bumpy. You will notice that a good portion of this document is made up of LaTeX commands.

Requirements for my invoice

I use my invoices for billing one of my employers, a school, as an auto-entrepreneur or micro-entrepreneur. It sounds a little cooler than it is, trust me.

The invoices that an auto-entrepreneur uses in France must contain certain information. The pictures and the Markdown that I will use in this example are in French, but you will get the idea.

Addresses of the recipient and the sender
Date
Breakdown of the payment (name of good or service, dates, quantity, rate, total)
Bank information (in a box)
Some legalese
An invoice number (in a box)

I wanted to present this information as follows:

My contact information: Left column, top of page
The company’s contact information: Right column, top of page
Invoice number and dates: Right column, top of page, above recipient address
Breakdown below columns
Legalese below breakdown
Vertical fill until bank information
Bank information
Small footer in a box containing invoice number and a page number (this might be important if I ever make a two-page invoice)

Invoice Frontmatter

The YAML frontmatter for Pandoc is fairly complete (see manual), combined with the fact that some LaTeX can be incorporated, a basic invoice should be easy enough (it also helps to be able to search for things on the Internet, because I wouldn’t have had the patience to guess my way through some of this).

---
lang: fr-FR
geometry:
    - margin=1.5cm
documentclass: letter
mainfont: FreeSans
monofont: Hack
fontsize: 12pt
header-includes:
    - \newcommand{\facture}{2021-001}
    - \usepackage{multicol}
    - \usepackage{tcolorbox}
    - \newcommand{\hideFromPandoc}[1]{#1}
    - \hideFromPandoc{
        \let\Begin\begin
        \let\End\end
      }
---

From top to bottom:

Sets document language to French (use en-GB for English)
Sets the margins to 1.5 cm
Sets the type of document to “letter”
Sets a font
Sets another font
Adds some LaTeX commands to the header during conversion
- creates a new command called “facture,” which means “invoice,” changing that number changes it throughout the document
- lets Pandoc use the “multicol” package for columns
- lets Pandoc use the “tcolorbox” package for the grey boxes
- makes a minor modification (I don’t know if I actually need this?)

It is possible that you will need to install something to make all of this work. On Debian, I haven’t found myself unable to perform conversions, but it is possible that having installed many of the texlive packages helps with that.

Creating two columns

We will use the multicol package to acheive this.

\Begin{multicols}{2}

Left column content

\columnbreak

Right columns content

\End{multicols}

To get everything lined up nicely, in the vertical sense, we will need an extra command or two.

By calling the \vfill\null command between the last line of the address and \columnbreak we can avoid a tiny issue: without that function, the second paragraph of the contact information, if there is any, will align with the bottom of the column. I don’t want that. So, the columns now look like this (again, sorry for the French, I might make an English version later):

\Begin{multicols}{2}

**BBBHLTZ** \
**SIREN** : 987654321

321 rue Une \
99000 CITY \
Tél : 06.06.99.99.99\
bbbhltz@mailbox.org

\vfill\null

\columnbreak

\Begin{tcolorbox}

\Begin{center}

**Facture Client**

**n°** \textbf{\facture{}}

05/12/2021

\End{center}

\End{tcolorbox}

\Begin{center}

**novembre 2021** \
01/11/2021 → 30/11/2021

\End{center}

**COMPANY** \
123 rue Deux \
99000 City

\End{multicols}

You will also notice that I used \tcolorbox. That just adds a grey box around that section.

The table

Using Markdown, we can make a five-column table showing the required information. The first column will be aligned left, the others right.

The titles can be bold, and before the total we can add a blank line.

| **Désignation**                  |      **Dates** | **Qté** |   **PU HT** | **TOTAL HT** |
| :------------------------------- | -------------: | ------: | ----------: | -----------: |
| Class or Lesson                  | 24/11/2021     | 3,5     | 46,00 €     | 161,00 €     |
|                                  | 25/11/2021     | 1,5     | 46,00 €     |  69,00 €     |
|                                  |                |         |             |              |
|                                  |                |         | **TOTAL HT**| **230,00 €** |

Some small print

It is a requirement that my invoice contain a sentence about taxes, late fees, and method of payment. I have decided to put these all in small print, but they look fine at normal size as well.

\Begin{center}

\tiny TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du CGI ◦
En cas de retard de paiement, indemnité forfaitaire légale pour frais de recouvrement : 40,00 € ◦
Mode de paiement : Virement

\End{center}

The only thing left to do is the bank account information. Before we do that, we need to tell the document to put it at the bottom of the page using \vfill.

Bank information

The last bit is also in a coloured box, and I wanted it to be monospaced as well. No explanation required here.

**Coordonnées bancaires**

\Begin{tcolorbox}

```
Bénéficiaire MR BBBHLTZ
RIB          NUMBERS BANK
IBAN         NUMBERS
BIC          NUMBERS
```

\End{tcolorbox}

\pagestyle{empty}

To finish things off, I tell the document to have no page number with the \pagestyle{empty} command. If my invoice is ever over one page, I can change that easily.

If all goes well, a quick pandoc --pdf-engine=xelatex invoice.md -o invoice.pdf so give us something like this:

A simple invoice, made with Pandoc and Markdown

You can download the Markdown file here.

The Eco-Conscious Tech Sham

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It is our responsibility, as humans, as earthlings, to do as much as we can to prevent disaster. Companies have been reminding us of that fact for around 50 years now. They claim to hold up one end of the bargain, and have grafted the buzzword du jour, sustainable, to every concept of their business. We must hold up our end, and do our part, for example, by monitoring our carbon footprints and controlling our consumer habits.

The tip of the iceberg

Values of the top 20 technology brands worldwide in 2021 (billion USD) via Statista

Jutting out of the ocean of tech is the tip of an iceberg. It is a majestic thing. Get your camera, take a picture, when will you get the chance to see one again, right? Most of us learn at some point that little factoid about how we can only see 10% of the iceberg, so we keep our distance and marvel at these companies.

Apple, a company started in a garage. Google, two guys with an idea to organise information. Microsoft, another garage. Facebook, a bitter college student. Amazing. They grew and grew. Now, they have so many eyes on them, they must make an effort to appease their loyal clients.

They have given us the things we want. Sometimes, they even do it for free with their search engines and social networks. They exchanged goods and services, and reap the profit. Profit is one of several bottom lines in today’s world. There are also people and a planet involved. Customers must remain loyal, and employees must not leave. The planet should be taken care of as well. Corporate social responsibility, a not-so-new notion, has been a bane and a boon for these behemoths of the tech world.

So, what’s a company to do when they are told to clean up their act? Make promises, of course, answer to the shareholders, try harder, do better. They all have a plan, those companies. Most of them have come up with the same solution:

Be carbon neutral
Use sustainable energy
Recycle something
Invest in carbon removal
Reduce water usage, save trees
Make products last longer
Reduce e-waste
Be part of the circular economy
Fight climate change at every turn
Use ethical labour and ethical sources

We could go on. All of those are mentioned somewhere on Apple’s Environment page. We know similar promises can be found on Google’s corporate page, and Microsoft’s, and the other company sites as well. They have the financial flexibility to do these things, and it is in their interest to be transparent. Can we trust them? That’s not the focus here. Opinions vary on the subject, and we know that shareholders can make things happen, like they did with Apple very recently.

For the sake of this post, we will give them the benefit of the doubt. We will say they are, at least, doing everything they can, and at most, honestly giving it their best. The rest is up to us.

What lies below

In 1971, we were given the gift of “The Crying Indian.” An ad, brought to us by Keep America Beautiful, a non-profit, told us that, “Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. And some people don’t.” We were left with a call to action, People start pollution. People can stop it.

Pure genius. Pollution is not the fault of the producer, but rather that of the consumer. Problem solved, for both parties. In an alternate reality, that would have been the end of it, but as Finis Dunaway tells us in Seeing Green:

[KAB was founded] in 1951 by the American Can Company and the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, a corporate roster that later included the likes of Coca-Cola and the Dixie Cup Company, KAB gained the support of the Advertising Council, the nation’s pre-eminent public service advertising organization.¹

Luckily, for the companies, that sort of news doesn’t stir up consumers as much as a new flavour of some drink, or the newest flagship device from Apple or Samsung. In fact, the play-book was passed around. Such a deceptive PR stunt cannot be wasted, no, it must be reused and recycled.

In 2004, the good folks at BP (the company formerly known as The British Petroleum Company) decided it was time for us to go on a low-carbon diet, and began using the term “carbon footprint”, and gave us the first “carbon footprint calculator.”

In 2021, this is laughable. We are too aware now, just slightly less naïve, to fall for that garbage. In 2004, those who saw through the deception didn’t have the platforms we have today. And so, once again, the blame was placed on the consumer.

BP wants you to accept responsibility for the globally disrupted climate. Just like beverage industrialists wanted people to feel bad about the amassing pollution created by their plastics and cans, or more sinisterly, tobacco companies blamed smokers for becoming addicted to addictive carcinogenic products. We’ve seen this manipulative play-book before, and BP played it well.²

Main barriers to sustainable investing... via Statista

For the consumer, at least a mildly eco-conscious one, sleep deprivation might be setting in.

If you’ve ever tried doing your own taxes, think back to that convoluted task and multiply it by 10. That is carbon accounting, a practice so mind-bogglingly complex that it is hard to imagine anyone but the Big Four consultancy firms, or cloud giants like Salesforce Inc. and SAP SE, doing it properly.³

We have been beguiled by 50 years of propaganda, targeted at the average consumer, leading us to believe that we are the problem. We get a gadget, they get money; that’s totally fair. And two years later, they release a gadget again. If we take the argument made by Keep America Beautiful and British Petrol, it means (in a way) that by buying the new device, we are dropping the ball. Our end of the deal is not being upheld. They are doing green things, and we just created waste. Why couldn’t we wait five years? Why couldn’t we buy a reconditioned phone if we wanted something new? Why are we destroying the planet?

The twilight zone

This dive is getting a little deep, we are well below the iceberg. The ocean twilight zone is full of curious creatures. The world of tech as well.

There are a few beacons of light. There are companies giving us options. Fairphone is an example. They create phones that are meant to be repaired. There is also the e-foundation, creators of /e/OS, who sell some refurbished phones. There are also the countless individuals who make the conscious efforts to keep their devices as long as possible, buy refurbished or used devices, make smart decisions, and use their tech in a humane way.

A little can go a long way. A dim light in a dark ocean can draw an audience. The right company, the right personality, the right moment can make waves.

And then there is this asshole⁴:

Photograph By Norbert Wu, Minden Pictures/NAT GEO Image Collection

That ugly SOB is an anglerfish. They have a little light they use to draw in prey. They are cool, and different, and they can’t be blamed for doing what they do. They didn’t want to be like that. Still, though, they exist.

There are some anglerfish in the world of tech too. And if you have made it down this deep, you will have guessed that it must be companies that have found a niche market in the world of tech in the same way the anglerfish has evolved to hunt in a niche way.

The niche

The landing page has all the hallmarks.

Alegria-styled corporate art
Minimalist design with white space
Some links to social platforms
An about us page with a “philosophy” and “ethics” section

They tell us that the “understand that what [they] do and the decisions [they] make affect many people around the world,” and their “products are built to last” because they want to “lessen their impact on the environment and take a stand against the over-production of rapidly obsolete consumer goods.”

Punkt. anglerfished their consumers this week. Punkt. had them wrapped around their finger because they were naïve. Without warning, Punkt. informed their followers that The MP02 New Generation 4G voicephone would soon be available for pre-orders. The OG MP02 was released in 2019, just two years ago. Now, along comes the New Generation?

The New Generation is very nearly the same phone, with a different OS, a little more power, a €350 price tag, minimised packaging leading to a 40% reduction in transportation CO₂, and no charger in order to reduce e-waste.

No, the older version will not be updated.

This tiny example, from a tiny manufacturer of a tiny phone, shows us that no matter how big you are, no matter how good you want to be, you can make a bad decision. Punkt. made a device that had its flaws. Instead of finding a solution, they made a new one. They claim they are reducing e-waste, by not bundling a charger, but will create e-waste if some of their customers decide to buy the new version. The older version will not longer receive updates, so informed consumers will probably not buy it.

They have created a scenario where they technically did nothing wrong, and where the blame can be placed on us, the consumers.

Resurfacing

Apple does it. Samsung does it. Any tech company that makes a new version and abandons the old does it. The company can maintain their eco-consciousness at the end of the day, we have to make a decision that could hurt the planet.

The PR campaigns, the empty words, are what make this a sham. The companies know that we cannot resist a new gadget. That is why they don’t do what needs to be done:

Make things that last a least 5 years!

That is all there is to it.

Make a device. Make it last. Make a new device, take back the old one, recycle it. That is the circular economy.

Stop making the consumer feel guilty because you made a gadget that is newer, better, and faster. You knew they would get rid of the old one. "Ending is better than mending." That’s what Huxley was talking about in 1932.

The jig is up. It has been for a long time.

The Brutal New Worlds of Alain Damasio

Sat, 13 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dystopia in literature is common. The worlds of Huxley and Orwell, when first described, seemed so far away. Today we read them and find ourselves surprised, shocked and even disgusted by how similar these fictions are to our reality. Companies with immense power; governance and leadership leveraging technology in unethical manners; and our social lives falling apart are common themes in many dystopic fictions.

Alain Damasio is a French author. While he may not be known throughout the world, he clearly falls into the same category as our dear Huxley and Orwell. Over the course of 20 years, he has published three novels, two of which we will look at. Not wanting to spoil anything in the event that you decide to procure a copy, or find a translation, I will do my best to keep the details of the actual stories limited and focus on specific details.

La Zone du Dehors was published in 1999, and Les Furtifs in 2019. The former is a story that takes place on a moon, the latter in France. Together, they describe things that have come to pass and things that have yet to pass. We can therefore look at these works as a diptych in which the themes of totalitarianism, social-democracy, mass surveillance, social hierarchy, freedom, multinational companies, technology and control (to name a few) play a major part of the story.

Things that have come to pass

La Zone du Dehors

La Zone du Dehors was written in 1999, before the arrival of social networks, before society began worrying deeply about mass surveillance, and certainly before terms like “social credit” became part of our working vocabulary. This work of fiction can be considered rather prescient today for different reasons. The major theme throughout is tracking and tracing: all citizens are tracked. Their actions, their interactions, their associations are all tracked and can be used against them.

Much like in Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984, there is a social hierarchy in place in Damasio’s Zone (a place called Cerclon). This hierarchy not only decides how you circulate and where you can go, but it also decides your name. The “president” is, of course, named “A” and the world is controlled by this person and the other single-letters. The two-letters have a little less power, and it goes down to the 5-letters. The protagonist is “Captp” and he associates with other 5-letters like “Kamio” and “Bdcht”.

Your name is therefore your social ranking.

It wouldn’t be fair, however, if you were born a 5-letter and had no chance of social mobility, would it? So, there is a system in place. A voting system. The citizens rank each other. There are votes or elections that take place and your name, which is your rank, is corrected (Damasio uses the portmanteau of class and caste for this vote: the Clastre). You might move up, or down. It is others who decide. Like something from Black Mirror, only in real life. Like being an influencer, but being treated as special in real life because random people decided you were special.

Obviously, there are similarities here to a certain social credit system we can see in the east. I have not been to that particular country, so I won’t attempt to draw parallels. We can all agree, though, that a system that rewards someone for reporting a social faux-pas does exist today, and in that system your circulation can be limited according to your social credit. It is also the basis for our social networks, which many of us consider part of ourselves. Reddit has upvoting and downvoting and a karma system, and Instagram and Facebook use different algorithms to decide who sees what first. This virtual karma-point system has spilled over into real life, where an action, whether recent or not, can result in “cancellation” and job loss when the hordes of the Internet and mass media decide to wage war, and the companies that employ those individuals fear loss of profit.

This concept has become a reality since publication. While the majority of people would never let a system like this dictate who they can be friends with (good for them!) there are some people who do. Since 1999 we have been witness to hate against groups and minorities. Thanks to (and I say that positively) the rise in access to the Internet, we have been made aware of this hate that we once thought rare, or something our grandparents’ generation had done away with. We can also look at the younger generation and how they treat each other in public based on style or the brand of smartphone they own (look it up, there are kids bullied at school because they have Android instead of Apple).

(Another real example is the recent arrival of immunity passports for COVID-19. In Damasio’s world, the concept is put forward as a method for controlling circulation: certain citizens have access to certain places that others do not. There is a slight difference with Damasio’s idea, but the parallel remains: there is a group that can and another that cannot. I will come back to this idea below.)

Finally, on a larger scale, gentrification has forced some families to live in areas with access to less adequate education and therefore less access to higher paying jobs. Social mobility has been reduced in such a way that it took a pandemic to highlight this phenomenon in a clear and understandable way: think of the students who were unable to attend online classes because they did not have access to Internet or a computer in their homes.

The Place of Technology

Glorious technology! Praise be to its creators!

Steve Jobs, a college dropout that lied to his best friend, never programmed anything, and did not know how to build a computer (correct me if I am wrong) is seen as our saviour. Besmirching his name is a sin, blessed be his name, and all hail the iPhone.
Mark Zuckerberg, who studied computer science and psychology, created a website to rank students on their appearance and grew into the largest social network, Facebook. This network collects and sells data (through brokers) that can be used by companies and governments to leverage power, and also spread lies. He is power, he is fear. He sat in front of congress and was treated as a peer. He is untouchable.
Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world (depending on the day of the week), worked in fintech and a hedge fund before borrowing money from his parents and banks to start a company that did not see profit for years. He pays his workers low wages and expects them to never take a break. Amazon kills local businesses and hurts the planet. He “got big fast” by investing in infrastructure, some of which is used today as a service by other companies. Beware Bezos, his blood runs cold.
Elon Musk is not really a self-made man, and did not really found Tesla Motors. Our image of him is the new cool guy that smokes blunts, but he has been on the scene since the 1990s. Is he a genius? Is it all marketing? Is he just in it for the money? Approach with caution; do not follow on Twitter.

In the time since La Zone du Dehors was published, technology companies have become the new oil. A successful piece of technology or software can launch a company or individual to newfound glory and privilege. Amazon’s Alexa is a key example, as is Instagram.

In this story, many citizens have a small black, voice-activated, box in their homes. Sometimes it doesn’t understand what you say, requiring you to yell at it (sounds credible today, doesn’t it?) in order to turn on the television, make a phone call, or read the news. The generalization of voice commands, to paraphrase the author, is both “magical” and “insidious”:

It had taken away the once common relationship with objects, the hand-to-hand contact, however stupid, with the machine, the buttons, the keyboard that we hammered away on… We didn’t touch anything any more: we spoke, and the world activated. As such, we all saw ourselves as gods — or as police […] The worst is that we developed a taste for it[.] […] It had become a common habit: command without resistance…

Another gadget found in many homes is the amazing Mirécran, or Mirror-screen. Today, we have all heard at least one time the term “body dysmorphia”. In 1999, maybe not as much. Damasio foresaw something. Here is the elevator pitch for this remarkable device:

You have a mirror, the most normal of things. In fact, it is a vertical screen with a series of cameras behind it. When you look in the mirror, the cameras turn on and record your face from various angles. The recordings are filtered and retouched by a computer — often erasing wrinkles, highlighting eye colour or lip contours… The image is retouched and displayed on the screen. This happens in real time, to give you the impression that it is your face in the reflection…when in fact it is a video. People buy this, you know! Have a crooked nose, pimples, wrinkles? Not a problem with the Mirrorscreen. “Mirrorscreen, the mirror that lies”. You laugh, but that is their slogan! I’m not making any of this up! Risky, isn’t it? And it works, very well I might add, people love it: they see themselves exactly how they want to be seen.

How is that not a description of Instagram, Snapchat and any other app that lets you filter and modify your appearance? That would have seemed cute and innocuous in 1999, but now we know what happens when people have access to this technology: they try to get plastic surgery to look like their fictional selves, and the celebrities sue to have unflattering images removed from circulation.

La Zone du Dehors also gave us a template for the connected shopping experience, where your eyes are tracked and everything is automatically charged to your account. Shoppers do not look at each other or speak because they are engrossed in their connected experience. While this hasn’t happened as described in the book, the other was right about many things. Eye tracking has been used and shopping has been optimized in ways that we are unaware of. We are not going to get to a point where we wear special glasses for shopping, or a little robot arm to pick and choose for us, but we are at a point where we never take off our headphones and keep one hand free for our phone — this has removed any social aspect from shopping. It has also made the gesture of taking off/out your headphones at the cash the modern day equivalent of tipping your hat to be polite. We also have this now:

Inside Amazon's Smart Warehouse

We know that devices like Alexa, that record us non-stop, and software like Instagram, which can lead to serious social and behavioural problems, are negative. We also are aware that this is a much larger concern with technology: it can affect entire populations.

Leveraging Technology for Power

“Information Economy” is not a new term, but it was still closer to fiction in 1999 than it is today. In the world of La Zone du Dehors freedom and power are controlled through technology.

“[…] I’m not talking about controlling ideas, gentle propaganda or the idealogical models that we maintain — what government doesn’t do that? I’m talking about a more subtle and powerful control, one that doesn’t simply cover you from the outside like a straightjacket, but one that comes from you, the root, to purify it. An internal control, intimate, in petto, that acts on the primary emotional centres: fear, aggression, desire, love, pleasure, unease…”

This is the play-book for politicians today. Use social networks to control citizens. Not directly, but emotionally. The information that advertisers and politicians can have access to from Facebook, to name one, has been used to “control the affective components of a motive to action”. Marketers use techniques that governments have since used to achieve what one character in the book calls the “peak of power”: An optimum alienation under the appearance of total freedom.

Television is a notable tool in this undertaking, described in the book as something that “conforms more than it informs” allowing them to control us. Them? Who are they? We always say, “they control us,” and this story gives us a possible answer:

“Who are they?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“You all, me, us. All citizens.”
[…]
“Because some people or groups, due to their strategic position in the social network, boost this control more easily than others. They also suffer from it.”

Damasio did not foresee the social networks that we currently have. He imagined television personalities as having that influencer power. Oprah-level power.

Damasio’s La Zone du Dehors sounds like a call to action when read today. We are getting to the point where more people are asking questions about their private information because we learned the hard way what answering a quiz on Facebook could lead to.

Technology never stops. Things improve, accelerate, ameliorate. Since 1999, a large chunk of the world has gone from no Internet or low-bandwidth Internet, to high-speed Internet, to a wireless connected world. We now willingly carry tracking devices in our pockets. We share health data with companies, so they can feed us ads. There are numerous wireless protocols, drones, cameras, listening devices and other connected gadgets deployed around our towns and cities. What’s next?

Things that have yet to pass

Les Furtifs

20 years after La Zone du Dehors, Damasio published Les Furtifs (“Stealthies”, in English). While not as blatantly tech-focused as the former, this latter work carries the same message: Fighting against tracking is a worthy fight. This message is expressed through a story that takes place in France, rather than on a moon, just 20 years or so in the future. The themes of the previous work are magnified, with an emphasis added to the role of multinational corporations.

The Role of MNCs

Damasio’s vision of France in the future is one where entire cities belong to companies. The city of Orange belongs, accordingly, to Orange (a telecoms company). Paris belongs to LVMH, Cannes to Dysflix (Disney+Netflix). Outside of France, the same phenomenon: Brussels belongs to Alphabet, and is known as AlphaBrux. The role of the Multinational is that of control. Much like in Huxley’s vision, the MNC has “freed” the population by controlling them.

[Orange] was born the 7^th of December 2021, when 70 protesters from the Take Back collective were crushed under 200 tonnes of rubble. And the 29 families who still lived in the tower, whom they were defending. It was born from the bankruptcy of a city strangled by banks, downgraded to a triple C by the international ranking agencies, and forced to borrow its budget at 18% interest rates; of a city declared in arrears in 2028, abandoned by the State and auctioned off in 2030 on the free city market.

Freed them from what? Bankruptcy. Bank loans. High interest rates. Take your pick. The cities were sold to the highest bidders. A “Free City” is free from the State, but wholly controlled by the company that purchased it. The mayor is chosen by shareholders. The cities then privatize services, and offer subscriptions in order to gain access. Certain streets are reserved for those who can afford.

The privatized cities are filled with AI-controlled taxis, drones keeping tabs on you, and panhandlers known as “vendiants”, which is a French portmanteau of “vendeur” (seller) and “mendiant” (beggar) which I will call “sellhandlers”.

The sellhandlers panhandle their sales. They don’t even beg for themselves, like our old beggars: they beg for their brand, their product, their masters, for a platform floating in the cloud where they will never meet a single manager or see, except maybe on a phone, the start of a head of sales.

Most citizens wear a ring, which contains their profile, allowing the sensors to know their preferences. Without the ring, you will be solicited non-stop. Progress doesn’t stop, however, and a newer and better—and more expensive—ring is always around the corner.

As soon as you go out in the street, in any privatized city, you are systematically hit by three waves: taxiles, sellhandlers, and drones. […]
Without a ring, you have no ID according to the sensors, the network. No profile, no preferences, no possible personalization with regard to solicitation or being left alone.

The “Technococoon” and Controlling Citizens

Politicians maintain control through scrupulous and calibrated techniques. None of them are novel, but rather enhanced by technology. Different segments; different words; different promises. Affecting and fiction scripting, provoking emotional responses and controlling the narrative, are leveraged to the point of being a weapon. As such, it is possible to manipulate the population into choosing the next leaders.

Such a feat would not be possible without mass surveillance, and tracking.

Without tracking, control is not possible […]. You know it. No sustainable security. And without tracking, our algorithms cannot personalize your experience in the city. How can we give you the city you deserve if we don’t know what you like? If we don’t know about your habits, your preferred routes, your tastes?

And so, the citizens of these cities wear rings and use apps–like MOA (My Own Assistant). The publishers behind Les Furtifs, La Volte, even took the time to show us what this is like:

MOA: My Own Assistant

Chilling, if it were not already underway today with our current selection of social networking applications.

The choice is yours, however, to wear the ring and use the application. Your choice, until it isn’t any longer. You can be forced to wear the ring as punishment if you commit a crime, for example.

The citizens of this speculative future live in an “electric smog,” or “technococoon,” where they remain a chrysalis, and never become a “butterfly”. They keep themselves there, living their lives in a second, “ultimate”, reality where they feel they are the masters.

In the ultimate reality, an individual can choose the people and animals they see. The first reality, the banal one, cannot be shared like the ultimate reality. The second reality can be individualized to the point of being a product. Gadgets and applications were just the foot in the door, the ultimate reality, a sort of metaverse, was the real invasion.

Saying the words, “technology studying behaviour,” however common it already is, sounds creepy. Saying, “technology knowing your tastes, desires, and anticipating needs,” is also creepy, but can at least be useful. They are one and the same, obviously, and not in any way synonymous with “freedom.”

It is easy to imagine a world where the majority of the population is, in one way or another, addicted to something like a phone or a social network. When Apple produces a new device, or microfiber cleaning rag, people line up like automatons getting a recharge. When I go to the park, many of the parents are on their phones. I would be too, if I had a smartphone, and if my son wasn’t keeping me on my toes.

Let’s bump it up a notch and give our kids addictive gadgets too. Like a virtual Pokémon or Tamagotchi that they can see, and let others see, through connected contact lenses.

The ring, it’s like a hand. Losing it, that’s an amputation!
[…]
[The children] take their virtual toy everywhere, they see it everywhere, in the school yard, on the bus, in the cafeteria…

Update: The idea of virtual children is being looked into. See: Baby X - Soul Machines

Some parents in Les Furtifs go as far as naming their children after a company. Why? Royalties.

Huxley’s Brave New World talked about this possible future as well. A future where we are given complicated, addictive, entertainment machines. The machines don’t come cheap. You need to work for them, and the update, and the upgrade, and the next disruptive gadget. Technology keeps people working.

Between working to pay for new things, and the time spent using new things, we will lose something: the art of the encounter. Meeting new people. Socializing. Damasio’s future is one where socializing is decaying, and he is opposed to that.

The need to socialize is not gone in his story, though. There are even virtual cabbies that chat to you about subjects of interest. Socializing, meeting, encountering, discovering new things, is the last thing keeping us alive.

Conclusion

I’ve been working on this little write-up for a few months. A sentence here. A correction there. Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself motivated to complete it, but also distracted, by the drama surrounding Facebook. The concept of a metaverse has been visited many times in science-fiction, most notably by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash (1992), and is soon to be a real thing. Seoul announced they will soon “join the metaverse”:

“Seoul’s metropolitan government will develop its own metaverse platform by the end of 2022. By the time it is fully operational in 2026, it will host a variety of public functions including a virtual mayor’s office, as well as spaces serving the business sector; a fintech incubator; and a public investment organization.
[…]
The future of the metaverse is being built almost entirely by companies. Microsoft, Nike, and Facebook’s parent company Meta are all staking claims to digital real estate. South Korea is among the only governments attempting to recreate the virtual public square. But if they can, it could expand the utility of the metaverse to millions of citizens whom might otherwise be excluded.”

Some of what Damasio envisioned in La Zone du Dehors has come to pass, and now it seems that the future imagined in Les Furtifs is on our doorstep. I am at odds. The cynical angel on one shoulder has thrown in the towel, stating that “we are all screwed” between the companies taking over, and the climate crisis. The optimistic angel, on the other shoulder, has his fingers crossed, hoping that we will snap out of it.

The optimist, much like Cal Newport argues in The New Yorker, and Ray Nelson in “Eight O’Clock in the Morning,” hopes that we will see things clearly and ask the right questions. There is another way. We do not need to give ourselves, and our souls, to companies. We are allowed, on an individual and collective level, to say no and call bullshit when people in power begin to use powerful, complicated, technology to do unethical things.

A utopia isn’t the answer, or a possibility for the moment, but let’s not aim for a dystopia.

These books are published by La Volte, an independent publisher.

As far as I can tell, they have not been published in other languages. If you want to read them in a language other than French, you may have to wait.

You can find more information, in French, on Alain Damasio on lavolte.net. You can also follow La Volte on Mastodon, Telegram and Peertube.

Update: Punkt MP02

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 21:04:05 +0100

UPDATE: THE PUNKT. MP02 IS NO LONGER DU JOUR AND THERE WILL SOON BE A NEW GENERATION RELEASED. THE INFORMATION HERE IS ABOUT THE ORIGINAL 2019 MODEL.

In April 2021, I wrote a quick review of a telephone, the Punkt. MP02. This is an update to that review.

What’s new…

Since my last post on this device, an update has been pushed. I didn’t really bother to look under the hood until today to see what’s going on.

…under the hood?

In April, when I checked the number of installed packages, there were 94 installed (not counting the Signal clone, Pigeon). I made a point of noting that:

As we could have guessed, it is close-to-stock Android with the necessary Qualcomm bits, a couple Punkt. apps, a single BlackBerry app, and some “who knows?”

Punkt. has since debloated the device, reducing the number of installed packages to 79.

android.ext.services (ExtServices.apk)
android.ext.shared (ExtShared.apk)
ch.punkt.mp02.appmgr (AppManager.apk)
ch.punkt.mp02.calendar (PunktCalendar.apk)
ch.punkt.mp02.personalise (base.apk)
com.android.backupconfirm (BackupRestoreConfirmation.apk)
com.android.bluetooth (Bluetooth.apk)
com.android.bluetoothmidiservice (BluetoothMidiService.apk)
com.android.calculator2 (ExactCalculator.apk)
com.android.carrierconfig (CarrierConfig.apk)
com.android.carrierdefaultapp (CarrierDefaultApp.apk)
com.android.cellbroadcastreceiver (CellBroadcastReceiver.apk)
com.android.certinstaller (CertInstaller.apk)
com.android.contacts (SimcomContacts.apk)
com.android.cts.ctsshim (CtsShimPrebuilt.apk)
com.android.cts.priv.ctsshim (CtsShimPrivPrebuilt.apk)
com.android.defcontainer (DefaultContainerService.apk)
com.android.deskclock (DeskClock.apk)
com.android.dialer (SimDialer.apk)
com.android.documentsui (DocumentsUI.apk)
com.android.emergency (EmergencyInfo.apk)
com.android.externalstorage (ExternalStorageProvider.apk)
com.android.gallery3d (Gallery2.apk)
com.android.htmlviewer (HTMLViewer.apk)
com.android.inputdevices (InputDevices.apk)
com.android.keychain (KeyChain.apk)
com.android.launcher3 (SimLauncher.apk)
com.android.location.fused (FusedLocation.apk)
com.android.managedprovisioning (ManagedProvisioning.apk)
com.android.mms (Mms.apk)
com.android.mms.service (MmsService.apk)
com.android.mtp (MtpDocumentsProvider.apk)
com.android.music (Music.apk)
com.android.onetimeinitializer (OneTimeInitializer.apk)
com.android.packageinstaller (PackageInstaller.apk)
com.android.pacprocessor (PacProcessor.apk)
com.android.phone (TeleService.apk)
com.android.providers.blockednumber (BlockedNumberProvider.apk)
com.android.providers.contacts (ContactsProvider.apk)
com.android.providers.downloads (DownloadProvider.apk)
com.android.providers.media (MediaProvider.apk)
com.android.providers.settings (SettingsProvider.apk)
com.android.providers.telephony (TelephonyProvider.apk)
com.android.providers.userdictionary (UserDictionaryProvider.apk)
com.android.provision (Provision.apk)
com.android.proxyhandler (ProxyHandler.apk)
com.android.server.telecom (Telecom.apk)
com.android.settings (Settings.apk)
com.android.sharedstoragebackup (SharedStorageBackup.apk)
com.android.shell (Shell.apk)
com.android.sim (CIT.apk)
com.android.simnote (SimNote.apk)
com.android.statementservice (StatementService.apk)
com.android.stk (Stk.apk)
com.android.systemui (SystemUI.apk)
com.android.systemui.theme.dark (SysuiDarkThemeOverlay.apk)
com.android.webview (webview.apk)
com.blackberry.bide (BlackBerryBide.apk)
com.dsi.ant.server (AntHalService.apk)
com.dtinfo.tools (SystemFota.apk)
com.iqqijni.dv12key (Kika.apk)
com.qti.confuridialer (ConfURIDialer.apk)
com.qti.launcherunreadservice (LauncherUnreadService.apk)
com.qti.qualcomm.datastatusnotification (datastatusnotification.apk)
com.qualcomm.embms (embms.apk)
com.qualcomm.location (com.qualcomm.location.apk)
com.qualcomm.location.XT (xtra_t_app.apk)
com.qualcomm.qcrilmsgtunnel (qcrilmsgtunnel.apk)
com.qualcomm.qti.callfeaturessetting (CallFeaturesSetting.apk)
com.qualcomm.qti.ims (imssettings.apk)
com.qualcomm.qti.services.secureui (com.qualcomm.qti.services.secureui.apk)
com.qualcomm.qti.simsettings (SimSettings.apk)
com.qualcomm.qti.telephonyservice (QtiTelephonyService.apk)
com.qualcomm.qti.uceShimService (uceShimService.apk)
com.qualcomm.simcontacts (SimContacts.apk)
com.qualcomm.timeservice (TimeService.apk)
com.quicinc.cne.CNEService (CNEService.apk)
org.codeaurora.bluetooth (BluetoothExt.apk)
org.codeaurora.ims (ims.apk)

Gone are the packages that serve no purpose on a device like this: the call logger, the Wi-Fi login tool, the companion device manager, the android email client and MS Exchange package, calendar storage, quick search widget, the sound recorder, VPN tools, wallpaper tools, and the FM radio.

I guess my original comment vis-à-vis radio can be struck through as well:

Include an FM radio app perhaps? There is about 12 GB of free space on the device, so it would be great to use it for something.

Oh, well.

All in all, this is a positive thing. Any device touting itself as something for minimalists should be working to lower the number of apps and packages installed on said device.

…my experience

The booting is still fast. The device is still easy to use.

Calculator: Fixed

My complaints about the calculator are no longer valid. It works as it should now.

Since April, my little phone has not gone unnoticed. My students and a few others, are not sure if I am joking when I tell them that it is my phone.

New app: Personalization

It allows you to add your name to the lock screen. I find it useful.

…Pigeon?

I gave up with Pigeon. The delays for a message were too long. The scrolling was not as effortless as it should be.

Once again, they are aware of the problems, and there is a nice list of them available on their website.

The Bottommost line

75% — very good work overall, noticeable improvement has been made, keep up the good work!

Conclusion and Recommendations Revisited

What I said about the Punkt.MP02 still holds true. It is truly a device that I am happy to walk around with. My previous recommendations will now be reviewed:

Calculator needs to be fixed
Notes needs an export feature (maybe with Markdown support)
Give the Wi-Fi another purpose (Internet radio? Podcasts? Some sort of management software for our computers?)
~~Include an FM radio app perhaps? There is about 12 GB of free space on the device, so it would be great to use it for something.~~ The FM radio package was removed
Increase the volume
Pigeon audio and video messages need volume control and an easy way to activate the speaker I don’t know if anything has changed here
Pigeon should have been called Pigeon Beta or Testing to avoid too many complaints
Pigeon needs to work with the desktop app (I haven’t tried, but comments on forums make it sound like it does not)
Give us a roadmap for updates
Give us a place to submit issues for the different apps — even GitHub would be good. Or, give the community a blog.
When the device reaches EOL, open up the code and let us root our devices.

Now that the calculator has been fixed, and I have used the device a while longer, I can add a few more recommendations:

Contact editing still requires work
- Adding or removing of prefixes (like Dr.)
- More fields
A few more notification sounds
Make it easier to block numbers

Technology, Ecology, and Whales

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 14:36:27 +0100

Yes. Whales. But also tangents that have nothing to do with whales.

Why whales?

On the 15th of April, National Geographic published a feature on their website, Groundbreaking Effort Launched to Decode Whale Language (link). It is an interesting read; interesting enough that the link made it to Slashdot in their Science and Communication categories.

If you are not in the mood to read the entire thing, here is the summary:

They want to decode sperm whale codas (communication patterns). That is cool. And it is noted at the end that:

“It’s not about us talking to them, [it] is about listening to the whales in their own setting, on their own terms. It’s the idea that we want to know what they’re saying — that we care.”

So, the goal isn’t conversation, just understanding. It is still a great endeavour.

How will they do it?

Science, baby! Computers and science!

Some buzzwords are peppered throughout the article: AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Robotics.

No surprises there. NLP is a very cool branch of AI. Looking up the definition, it is not so difficult to understand. But, videos are nice too, especially when they have concrete, real world, applicable examples. This recently published TED Talk gives us a clear example.

Who is doing this?

The Avengers I guess? A dream team of scientists — experts in linguistics, robotics, machine learning, and camera engineering — are name-dropped:

Shane Gero: biologist, 13 years spent tracking and studying sperm whales.
David Gruber: explorer, City University of New York professor of biology and environmental science, developed robots.
Shafi Goldwasser: fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, computer scientist and one of the world’s foremost experts in cryptography.
Michael Bronstein: chair of machine learning at Imperial College London.
Roger Payne: a MacArthur Award winner, popularized the mesmerizing songs of humpbacks in the 1960s and 1970s
Robert Wood: Harvard roboticist who worked with Gruber.
Daniela Rus: MacArthur recipient, director of computer science and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

David Gruber also did a TED Talk about this very subject.

And, like the Avengers, new members will show up later.

My personal opinion on the project is very positive. I think whales are amazing, and one of my dreams in life is to see whales. It won’t be easy for me because I am afraid of deep water. National Geographic is all about saving the planet and the animals that live on it, so again, nothing negative to say about that. The negative is that I feel like the entire feature on National Geographic is a form of sponsored content. It is a call to action to remind people like me that National Geographic documentaries are available on Disney+. And, what new documentary was released this month, on Earth Day?

Yes. A 4-hour documentary called Secrets of the Whales, a Disney+ original series from National Geographic.

I watched it. It is remarkable. It has everything we want from nature documentaries: drones, underwater shots, slow motion shots, time-lapse, whale poop, a narrator, and a comment from the executive producer at the end. Basically, it is an Attenborough clone. Except, without Attenborough, it isn’t the same. Unless, of course, you bring out the big guns:

Sigourney Weaver: awesome, kills aliens, saves gorillas, busts ghosts, talks to blue people, has timeless catchphrases, narrates this documentary.
James Cameron: Canadian, made some movies, likes submarines, executive produced the documentary and talked for 5 minutes at the end of each instalment.

Now we’re talking! Scientists are cool, but anybody growing up in the 90s knows that a large part of the population thinks that scientists are boring or a source of mockery. Think Ross on Friends or the first few episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Give us Weaver and Cameron, who only mentions once that he is currently filming Avatar 2 and 3 in New Zealand, and now we might tune in.

What we’re tuning into is visually stunning, and doesn’t force-feed us the depressing stuff we know about. There are only two brief mentions of pollution, and two dead whales. It is also a prime example of a tried and true documentary technique: repetition.

Instead of telling us not to eat seafood, to boycott the fisheries, to stop polluting, Disney and National Geographic tell us over and over again that whales have culture. Whale behaviour isn’t learned; it is culture. It isn’t imitated; it is culture. It isn’t simple animal instinct; it is culture. After 4 hours of cetaceous delights, we get it. Whales have culture. The call to action is indirect, but it is there: whales are like us, and we need to save them. Disney wants you to know that this is part of its mission statement.

Ecology and Technology

It has come to this. Getting people interested in something as obvious as saving the planet requires marketing, propaganda, pandering, celebrities, technology, and a subscription to Disney’s streaming platform. The money and the technology required to make all of this possible may outweigh the benefits (unless you are Disney and money is one of your goals). Could that money have been better spent on preservation efforts? And what about the CO₂ footprint of all of this? Sending film crews around the world for 3 years, streaming it all, storing the videos on servers around the world? We need to hurt the planet a little just to save it. I know, I am nitpicking, but things add up after a while.

The Last Drop

Every little thing we do is a drop in a glass, including what we do on the net. A drop is nothing. We do it again and again. We let the tap run while we brush our teeth, or leave a light on, or use our car to go fetch the mail instead of walking. These things are visible, and tangible. Our digital activities are drops too, and they are easily ignored.

A lot of us are aware of this and actively fight against it. We try our best. We choose the eco-friendly option when it is available. It is not always easy, however, and sometimes we make exceptions. We might leave our PlayStation on by accident, or chose the wrong function on our dishwasher. Other times, the choice isn’t available.

Our jobs might require us to use email. My employers remind us very frequently to delete our old emails and use the cloud as much as possible when sending files. This makes sense when everyone in our company is sent the same PDF, because we have heard again and again that emails use C0₂ and have other environmental impacts:

A 1 MB email sent to one person:

uses as much energy as a 60W bulb left on for 25 minutes;
emits up to 20g of CO₂.

This is because the sender and receiver are using energy, along with the data centres.

My house has multiple power-strips with energy sucking things plugged into them, but if I unplug them, then it resets everything. This website is running on a Raspberry Pi attached by USB to my router/modem,, and it is never turned off. The computer that I am using might not use a lot of power, but there is a monitor and speakers and a PLC that potentially do.

In order to watch that wonderful documentary, it required a computer to make the Disney+ account, a PlayStation attached to a TV, a router/modem, a remote to control it, a server to control it, an ISP, etc. Disney+ has around 100 million subscribers worldwide; that is a lot of drops. At some point, surface tension will give way and our glass will overflow.

Conclusion

Clearly, I am overthinking and oversimplifying things. I am not a researcher, a journalist, or an editorialist. I am just a teacher. I like watching documentaries, no matter what the call to action, no matter what the opinion of the person preparing it. The point I am getting at, which should have been mentioned in an introduction somewhere (see, a researcher or journalist would have done just that), is that if a media company wants to play the green card, they should be 100% credible.

Credible would have been pointing the finger at those responsible for the damage. Credible would have been naming names. Credible would have been refusing to work with people, companies or nations that do this damage.

If we ever decode what the whales are saying, it will be amazing, even if we only figure out a word or two. Will it make us, as humans, become better consumers? Will we say to ourselves, “hey, this product or company hurts animals, and animals are earthlings like me.” Will something like this ever lead the majority of the population to consider the environmental impact of a selfie on Instagram.

No. And it shouldn’t, either.

It isn’t the consumer at fault here. Social media companies give us technology that they know is addictive. Media companies make us pay for their services and gain, financially, from our attention. They should be the ones limiting our use.

Whales have been around for tens of millions of years. They survive extreme conditions. They rely on each other. We rely on technology for too much, and have trouble surviving something as natural as boredom. I hope that when we decode their codas and songs, we will be able to take a step back and re-evaluate our priorities.

The Privacy-Security Rabbit Hole

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 14:43:54 +0100

Have you heard? The web is crawling with unscrupulous characters. The web is controlled by those unscrupulous ne’er-do-wells!

For a long time, you assumed your up-to-date computer and phone with ad-block installed was enough to keep you safe from their prying eyes and sticky fingers. After all, you have nothing to hide. Then, you clicked on a YouTube video or post from a friend. Perhaps someone in your entourage gave up the Facebook (shock waves of awe rippled throughout the friend group). A thought coalesced in your brainbox: “Maybe I’m…vulnerable?”

Warily, you enter your query on the Google: “how to privacy web security”

Drats!

Quickly you learn that you have already made a mistake. The Google is evil. Big tech is bad. Corrupt! Cronyism runs through their Silicon Valley DNA. Your nascent research has filled your head with definitions that require deep-diving into a wiki-hole. Nobody is to be trusted.

But, right there, off in the distance. A twinkling, sparkling, light? A mirage perhaps? Carefully you creep. Yes. There is something. Squinting, the words take form, although you are confused as to how this relates your initial question.

Free…Libre…Open-source…

NO!

You have leaned in too close.

You are falling
.
.
.
down
.
.
.
the rabbit hole.

The sweat beading on your forehead, fingers flying across your keyboard, you act!

Change your browser. Your email provider. Should you self-host? What search engine is best? What is 5-eyes? 9-eyes? 14-eyes!? Should I get a new computer? Change my OS? Is Apple safe? F-droid? Degoogle? Signal? No, Telegram? No! Briar! Block this, block that, blocklist, containers, threat models, hot single models in your area? Wait? How did that get through my impenetrable system? There is a weak link. But where?

Click, click, click… Down, down, down…

A hooded figure appears.

“Psst…hey…you…yeah, you! Come here. I gotta tell you something: Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Linux, Github…follow the money.”

And, just like that, he is gone.

Weird fellow that one, he has been down the hole too long. Got a little tinfoil hat and everything.

But, your fingers are already caressing the keys or the screen in front of you.

Follow the money…

No. No. No…

That browser pockets money from the Google, that site is owned by Microsoft, that one shares your data with Bing, the founder of that one is a massive douche, and a lot of these are hosted on Amazon’s servers.

Defeated. They have won. How do you go up against Goliath when your slingshot is made by Goliath, Inc.?

You could join them? Or just stop using their tech altogether? Maybe that is a solution. But, how to keep in touch with friends and family? A phone is all you need. A copy of Tails on a USB flash drive. A recycled laptop that you ripped the webcam and microphone from.

Down to the local rip-off shop you go, because Amazon is evil, and ordering by Internet requires a credit card, an address, a phone number, an account. Aisle by aisle, you peruse the plastic confections of Asian origin to find your pleasure: a basic phone.

You queue up, ready to buy that little gizmo and…

Nope.

That must be a mistake.

This one has Google on it. And Facebook. Qualcomm SoC too. Back to the aisle, you go to discover that the cancer has spread to these devices as well. Their fingers are in every pie. This basic phone is just Android. That one even has WhatsApp. Adjacent, you see another section of ye’ olde gizmo and gadget shoppe: Portable music players. There too you see it. Google everywhere.

“You look like you need some air, friend. Come with me.”

It is your wise Facebook-quitting friend.

“I’m not strong enough…how did you do it?” you plead.

“Do what?”

“Get away from big tech? Use the web privately and safely without giving up your personal information to those companies?”

“Come. I’ll tell you a few things.”

You follow your wise friend to a place. Neither here nor there. Not the rabbit hole, but not not the rabbit hole. They sit you down. They tell you what should have been obvious all along:

“There is no perfect solution.

“If you push hard, it makes you more unique to the companies you want to avoid. You can still be profiled without an account.

“You have likely already done more than most to keep yourself safe and your personal information private, what with your decentralized platforms and encrypted everything. But if you keep digging, you will go insane, because there is always shit to be turned up. And shit stinks.

“It is one big stinky situation.”

Still, you do not understand.

“So, we lose. They win.”

“No. It isn’t a win-lose thing…but if you want to talk about that, tell me something: You quit social media, hardened your devices, blocked cookies and JavaScript and trackers; is there anything that you miss?”

“No. Not at all.”

“That, my friend, is a very big win. But, by the look of you, this is more of an obsession than anything else. How much time do you spend a day looking into this topic and interacting with strangers on the web?”

“Five or six hours. Maybe more.”

“That is unhealthy. Stop doing that. Do something else with that time, and you will truly win.”

The first days were difficult. Your friend was right. It was an obsession, but you did it. Months have gone by since you were pulled from the rabbit hole. You feel healthier, stronger, taller, even. You walk some days, see friends on others — real friends. You shared your knowledge with your friends and family, they too wanted some distance from the evil-doers. You still read the different articles on privacy and security, but you no longer obsess over every possible point of attack or take the time to comment or reply with your hot take on the subject.

You use the Internet; it doesn’t use you.

The Punkt. MP02 Minimalist Mobile Phone

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 17:02:49 +0100

TO SEE INFORMATION ON THE UPDATE, CLICK HERE

For the past week I have been using a new (old) phone. The Punkt. MP02. Here are my thoughts on this minimalist designer phone

Introduction

If you already know about this phone, you can skip straight to the end for my very short review. If you are of the uninitiated, it might be interesting for you to read about the company and the product before reading my thoughts.

I have only been using this phone for a week. It was not provided by the company for review, it is just a gadget that I have wanted to try for some time.

For the privacy-conscious: This is not the phone you are looking for. Read Spy Phone: Hands On With The Punkt MP-02 for more information.

Company

Punkt. is a Swiss company that makes designer consumer electronics. The company was established in 2008 and released its first product, a cordless phone (the DP01), in 2011. Since then, they have developed a handful of products including mobile phones (the MP01 and MP02), cases for those phones, an alarm clock, a USB charger and an extension cable.¹

Ethics play a key role in the company and they claim they only use suppliers wih a “proven environmental track record”. They also emphasise that they make their products to last.²

Product

The MP02 is a “feature-less” phone. Clearly, the picture above tells it all. It is distinctly Swiss in design: Buttons, arrows, a little screen. Black is the only choice for colour. It uses USB-C. You might be surprised, however, to know that the instruction manual for this device is 57 pages long (plus another 23 pages just for Pigeon) and there are security features provided by the immortal and trustworthy BlackBerry.

Punkt. MP01 Controls

Punkt. MP01 Keypad

Although they do not really market this device as a “digital detox” or “digital minimalism” device, it has been typecast as one. From a marketing perspective, they have made the right choice. Trends are ephemeral, Punkt. products are supposed to be long-lasting.

Functions

Beyond calling and texting, you can:

manage your contacts;
set alarms;
use a timer and stopwatch;
set reminders using a simple calendar;
do simple maths using a calculator;
connect to Wi-Fi;
use the phone as a hotspot;
get OTA updates;
take simple notes;
switch languages;
use predictive text;
use Bluetooth headsets;
send and receive group chats;
communicate with your friends who use Signal using the Pigeon app.

You can also set hotkeys to access some of those functions without needing to go through the menu. All in all, this is positive (there is some negative to come). When you buy a phone like this, you don’t want to have links to Twitter, Facebook or random games that you cannot delete. All of the options, or lack thereof, are present by design. And design is what you are paying for here.

Design, Cost, Pricing

€329 is what this little chunk of plastic will cost you. Let’s say €330 to make things easier.

Many people reading this knew beforehand that Punkt. phones are expensive. If you are discovering this now and checking the price online to make sure I am not punking you, you may be thinking, “who would buy that?”

Who would handicap themselves in this world of constant pings and beeps and notifications? People who have had enough! Remember, there are people out there who don’t use email because they have had enough of it. The target market here is not young people. The target is people who want a nice (different) looking device to keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. It is the people who do not want to become their phone. It is people like myself, who like gadgets, who have jobs, who take the time to look into the different options on the market.

When you buy an iPhone or an expensive pair of headphones, you are not just paying for the material and the markup. You are paying for the design. Design could be up to 50% of the cost of the product ³. Think about it. Well-designed products are like well-scripted movies.

UX teams, UI teams, engineers, the whole crew, must sit down and create “user stories”. Mudita, another company working on a minimalist phone that hasn’t been released yet (priced in the €300 range), also talks about the importance of this necessary design step:

In order to visualize the features of MuditaOS and create the requirements, we needed to develop user stories - a complete list of all the functionalities and actions that the system needs to include from a user perspective.

All of the teams were involved in this process. We prepared a list of general functionalities that Mudita Pure should have, and then divided them into particular applications and tools.

For each application, we prepared a separate diagram, which not only showed the functionalities, but also the connections between them and the possible paths that a user could take. In total, we defined 450+ user stories! ⁴

After preparing these stories, the product needs to be made possible through the magic of engineering. Parts need to be sourced; programmes written; prototypes tested. You pay for all of that.

If we imagine that 50% of the price is design, with something like an 80% markup, then the phone might cost about…(€330/2/8)…€20 to make! That seems reasonable for an Android device. Yes, you read that right: the Punkt. MP02 is an Android phone (more on that later).

(EDIT: there is a teardown available on fccid.io)

It is also reasonable for another reason. If you price your product low, the perception changes. It also means that more people will buy it. More customers means more complaints. It also makes it a disposable device, which is not the goal here.

Under the Hood

The phone runs Android, but what is it running? Android means we should be able to access developer options. Developer options means we should be able to inspect the device with the Android Developer Tools and perhaps see what role BlackBerry is playing and how many fingers Google has in this pie.

Settings - About - *Click on Build Number a bunch of times*…SUCCESS!

Package Name                            # Description

android.ext.services                    # Notification ranking service (I think?)
android.ext.shared                      # Android Shared Library
ch.punkt.mp02.appmgr                    # Guessing this is the appmanager for the MP02
ch.punkt.mp02.calendar                  # Calendar App
ch.punkt.mp02.registration              # Phone Registration App
com.android.backupconfirm               # Allows backup/reset/restore operations
com.android.bluetooth                   # Bluetooth
com.android.bluetoothmidiservice        # Bluetooth
com.android.calculator2                 # Calculator
com.android.calllogbackup               # Call logging
com.android.captiveportallogin          # Wi-fi login tool
com.android.carrierconfig               # Configures telephony features based on carrier
com.android.carrierdefaultapp           # Carrier toolkit
com.android.cellbroadcastreceiver       # Registers system and application events
com.android.certinstaller               # Credential storage
com.android.companiondevicemanager      # Manages companion devices (Bluetooth, etc.)
com.android.contacts                    # Contacts manager
com.android.cts.ctsshim                 # Compatibility Test Suite: solves problems between versions of Android
com.android.cts.priv.ctsshim            # Compatibility Test Suite: solves problems between versions of Android (private?)
com.android.defcontainer                # Package access helper for installing and uninstalling apps
com.android.deskclock                   # Clock widget
com.android.dialer                      # Dialer
com.android.documentsui                 # file picker (I've deleted this on other phones by accident, results are as you can imagine)
com.android.email                       # Email for some reason?
com.android.emergency                   # Emergency dialer for when the phone is locked (required by law)
com.android.exchange                    # MS Exchange?
com.android.externalstorage             # Handles access rights between content providers
com.android.gallery3d                   # Photo gallery
com.android.htmlviewer                  # HTML viewer
com.android.inputdevices                # Probably does what it says and listens for input devices like the USB earbud
com.android.keychain                    # Provides access to private keys and credentials
com.android.launcher3                   # Punkt. Launcher
com.android.location.fused              # Location
com.android.managedprovisioning         # Sets profiles for device
com.android.mms                         # MMS
com.android.mms.service                 # Handles MMS (even though the phone cannot receive MMS...)
com.android.mtp                         # Media Transfer Protocal
com.android.music                       # Music app (needed for ringtones)
com.android.onetimeinitializer          # First boot initialisation app (onboarding)
com.android.packageinstaller            # Package installer
com.android.pacprocessor                # Proxy auto-config: defines the proxies if used
com.android.phone                       # Phone app
com.android.protips                     # Provides tips on homescreen
com.android.providers.blockednumber     # Allows phone number blocking (very useful!)
com.android.providers.calendar          # Calendar storage
com.android.providers.contacts          # Contacts storage
com.android.providers.downloads         # Another content provider app
com.android.providers.media             # Scans and stores media file info for quick access
com.android.providers.settings          # Settings app
com.android.providers.telephony         # Provides core Android functionality related to MMS and SMS messages
com.android.providers.userdictionary    # User dictionary
com.android.provision                   # Required service: is needed when the user's phone moves from one cell-tower to the next, networking and Wi-fi.
com.android.proxyhandler                # Proxy handler
com.android.quicksearchbox              # Quick search widget (useless?)
com.android.server.telecom              # Manages phone calls, among other things
com.android.settings                    # Settings app
com.android.sharedstoragebackup         # Works as part of the backup/restore system
com.android.shell                       # Provides shell
com.android.sim                         # SIM manager
com.android.simnote                     # Unsure, but it is required and is related to the SIM
com.android.soundrecorder               # Sound recorder
com.android.statementservice            # App for the privacy statement
com.android.stk                         # SIM Application Toolkit: manages the SIM card (contacts, etc.)
com.android.storagemanager              # Handles storage
com.android.systemui                    # System UI
com.android.systemui.theme.dark         # Dark Theme for System (is there a light theme?)
com.android.vpndialogs                  # Dialogs for connecting to VPN
com.android.wallpaperbackup             # Wallpaper handler?
com.android.wallpapercropper            # Wandles wallpapers as well (useless?)
com.android.webview                     # Webview (useful when there is a CAPTCHA)
com.blackberry.bide                     # BlackBerry Integrity Detection: monitors the device for known security vulnerabilities
com.caf.fmradio                         # There isn't an FM radio app so...useless for now?
com.dsi.ant.server                      # ANT HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) Server (?)
com.dtinfo.tools                        # OTA updates
com.iqqijni.dv12key                     # I think this is the "Kika keyboard" app...provides predictive text and emoji
com.qti.confuridialer                   # Conference call service; could be removed
com.qti.launcherunreadservice           # Works with or is part of launcher
com.qti.qualcomm.datastatusnotification # unsure what it does; needs permissions to send sms
com.qualcomm.embms                      # background service for carriers to use to send you stuff?; can be removed
com.qualcomm.location                   # Location service (GPS off by default)
com.qualcomm.location.XT                # Location service (GPS off by default)
com.qualcomm.qcrilmsgtunnel             # Worrks with the phone dialer app
com.qualcomm.qti.callfeaturessetting    # Not mandatory; can be removed
com.qualcomm.qti.ims                    # Redundant IMS (?); needed for VoIP
com.qualcomm.qti.services.secureui      # WHO KNOWS?
com.qualcomm.qti.simsettings            # Allows settings for SIM cards (names, colours)
com.qualcomm.qti.telephonyservice       # Sound processing for phone calls
com.qualcomm.qti.uceShimService         # Unified Communications for Enterprise
com.qualcomm.simcontacts                # Access to SIM contacts
com.qualcomm.timeservice                # Soes something with the clock; no touchy
com.quicinc.cne.CNEService              # Automatically switchs between Wifi/3G/4G depending on network performances
org.codeaurora.bluetooth                # Handles Bluetooth
org.codeaurora.ims                      # Needed for VoIP

If you see mistakes here, could you let me know by sending me an email or on Mastodon?

As we could have guessed, it is close-to-stock Android with the necessary Qualcomm bits, a couple Punkt. apps, a single BlackBerry app, and some “who knows?”

Within the “who know?” category we have the package called com.iqqijni.dv12key which, when pulled from the device, is Kika.apk. I am unsure if this is the Kika keyboard app, but if it is the case Punkt. should consider replacing it somehow. It is probably there to provide predictive text features or emoji (see entry on εxodus). I uploaded the APK to Pithus to confirm that it is a 12-key keyboard from Kika.

It is easy enough to disable/uninstall a few of these, and for now I won’t go messing around.

Review

There are plenty of review available for you to read. The phone does its job. The newest feature, Pigeon (which is Signal) needs detailing.

My Experience

This is not my first Punkt. phone. I had the MP01 in 2018 just before this model was released. I was not at all surprised to open the stylish box and extract the rather heavy phone from its neat, tilted, place of rest. The box contained what is expected. The earpiece is nice. It is USB-C and is just a single earbud; I didn’t have one like that!

The differences became apparent after booting.

Booting is fast. I knew that I would need to update. I went through the options to find the Wi-Fi options, connected, found the update firmware option and waited.

It seemed a little long. There was no true visual to let me know if something was happening or even working. Finally there was a progress bar, then it rebooted, there was another progress bar, and I was up-to-date.

Quick Tour of the Punkt. Menus ⁵

(I don’t know why some of these screenshots are tinted green)

Home screen

Quick Settings

Main Menu

Interface and Experience

(not counting Pigeon)

The main part of the interface is the device itself. It is solid and has a decent amount of heft. I think I may have preferred the texture of the MP01 over the MP02. The MP01 had a unique dimpled golf ball pattern on the back (as well as some other physical buttons). The unique shape of the phone is not awkward to use. The bonus is that it looks nice when sitting on a desk.

The MPO1 Phone

Navigating the phone is not unpleasant. It is actually quite snappy most of the time and there are some animated effects. Using the buttons to get around is intuitive and it the choice to include a special message and contacts button is a good one. Speaking of the buttons, they are a good size, even for my big fingers.

Moving around with just up, down, back, and OK is not at all hindering

There are occasional delays. Since we don’t always have some sort of visual or icon to let us know something is happening, it might lead us to think that it isn’t working. A good example is when you reboot the device and are asked for the password and SIM password. It is just long enough to begin asking yourself if it is working.

Messaging and Contacts

These are the two main apps on the device. As you can imagine, they work the way we want. The contacts app lets us add all the info we might want to have — first and last name, nickname, email addresses, address, notes, and phone numbers.

Messaging on the MP01 was not threaded. It was fast, for sure, but if you forgot what the conversation was about it was a little challenging. Users complained and so the MP02 has threaded messaging. It is better, but the text can get a little tiny. Luckily as you scroll up and down the text pops out and each message is contained in a little call-out or speech bubble.

There are a series of predefined templates that you can add to. This is something that most users should take advantage of, especially if you frequently use a word that is not in the dictionary, like the name of a shop.

The text input works much better than something like KaiOS, and is similar to what most of us remember from pre-smartphone days. You can input tap-by-tap, numbers, or use the predictive text mode. You can easily switch between languages, which I have to do all the time. I did need to use the guide to figure out how to do all caps.

There is also the standard set of characters that you can access with the * key, and the Android Emoji too (by holding the * key).

Character Map - available by pressing * when inputting text

Emoji - available by holding * when inputting text

It is a good thing that these two apps function correctly now. I updated my device before use, but when you see the changes introduced you can see that the previous version was somewhat less usable:

Text input

An updated version of the text input software package has been installed.

User dictionary has been reintroduced.

When long pressing either the UP or DOWN keys in a text input field, the cursor will rapidly scroll through the text instead of jumping immediately to the start or end.

Several pages of ideograms have been added.

Default mode in the Input method has been reviewed and improved in numerous use cases.

The apostrophe and quote marks have been corrected on the special characters input panel.

Bug entering a new line instead of displaying the contextual menu when pressing the Punkt. key is now fixed.

Contacts

When searching for contacts, the original search term is now displayed until the search has been cleared.

The contact list now only shows contacts stored on the handset. SIM contacts are accessible in the SIM contacts menu.

When using the Call or Message keys to contact a recipient with multiple phone numbers, it is now possible to select the desired number.

Calendar

Calendar (it is just a calendar)

There is nothing to say about this app. It is a calendar. It shows the calendar with days of the week and week numbers. That is all.

Clock

You can set the clock with this app, and list different time zones. The thing I like about the clock app is the graphical map for time selection. It is a nice touch.

Map for Time zone Selection

Notes

Just like on older devices, there is a notes app. It is useful because you can use it to set reminders. The reminders are then listed as notifications on your home screen.

What is missing here is an export feature. I would like to be able to access the notes when the device is attached to my computer. Similarly, it would be nice to be able to prepare a long note and then send it as a message.

Calculator

This app is broken. My CASIO calculator watch works better. What can be broken in a calculator you wonder? The decimal key, of course!

If zero is the first number, you cannot type a decimal after. So, if I want to type 1.9+0.1 I get this:

Calculator has a problem with zeros

This is because the same button is supposed to let you cycle through different inputs:

Calculator Help Screen

But, it does not want to let me put a decimal after a zero. That is one of the six main apps that does not work.

Settings

Settings have all of the preferences you would expect for connections, setting the date, sounds, installing Pigeon, setting the voicemail number, caller ID, etc. You can set the hotkeys here as well, but I don’t know how to delete them.

There is a security option that just shows you this:

Excellent security according to BlackBerry

And of course, the expected Android about info that lets you know you just exchanged your hard-earned dough for Android 8.1.0.

AOSP version 8.1.0

Pigeon

A surprise email landed in my inbox on April the 8th. Signal was available on the Punkt. MP02! The version on the Punkt. phone is called Pigeon but is still org.thoughtcrime.securesms. Punkt., as far as I can tell, released no media to show off this feature except for a few tweets and Instagram posts that tell us nothing.

The features are there: text, voice, call (no video, obviously). And, it can receive audio, video, and photo messages. Groups work, with a few caveats.

The main menu gives you access the the basics, and each conversation has its own menu and settings.

Pigeon Main Menu

Pigeon Conversation Menu

You can get to Pigeon with a long press on the message button or through the menu. As soon as you start messaging with Pigeon, one thing becomes clear: this app was not ready for prime time. I suppose the only way to work out bugs is to throw the app to the wolves. This app wouldn’t survive an attack by puppies.

Sure, it is great that I can send voice messages to my mother in Canada. And I can receive some pics from friends. How I can get them off of the phone is a mystery for the moment. The app is, however, an exercise in frustration most of the time.

If you are having a conversation, you might not notice the problems. But, as soon as you want to look through your conversation, it scrolls randomly. Sometimes you can land on the message you want, and expand it to read the entire thing, sometimes it is hidden behind the input box. There are also instances of the text going outside of the dialogue balloon boundaries.

Design is key!

That is not even the bad part. The bad part is that you sometimes don’t get messages until much later! So far, while testing with my partner, the difference can be anywhere between 4 and 50 minutes. It usually requires cycling the aeroplane mode to get those messages to download.

Punkt. is aware of these problems, among others:

Known issues in Pigeon v1.0.0777

Displaying images: when selecting received images in a message thread, the screen becomes darker.

Forwarding a video or document file: this sometimes causes the MP02 to return to the Home screen.

Exiting Pigeon: this may occasionally cause the system to freeze for a limited period.

Accessing a new message from a notification: the message is highlighted but its font size may not be enlarged.

Notifications: these may sometimes be produced with a slight delay, especially if the MP02 is locked.

Incoming calls: these may occasionally not be received, especially if the MP02 is locked.

Groups: it is not yet possible to appoint a group member as an additional

Notifications options screen: this currently has a scrolling issue.

Calls: an echo is heard in some circumstances.

Message thread: moving through a message thread will sometimes cause the highlighting to jump too

Confirmation messages: some of these still appear in English, despite the MP02 being set to a different language.

That is essentially a problem with nearly every aspect of the app! What they call “moving through a message thread will sometimes cause the highlighting to jump too” is what I mentioned above. Super jumpy.

Over on Reddit, the critiques are similar:

Meh, pretty unelegant. It was such obvious solution to me to integrate it into the SMS app, maybe with an indicator for Signal threads, that I didn’t expect something like this. Breaks all the design principles.
Edit: Also, bad usability. I can’t scroll through threads properly, making some messages unreadable.
Edit2: Also, messages are delivered with half an hour delay. No Pigeon for me thx

via /u/gruetzhaxe

Bottom Line

Outside of Pigeon, the phone is a good phone. Texting, calling, other bits and bobs are working correctly. Pigeon is a step in the right direction. The phone has Wi-Fi, so we might as well use it for something. The phone makes for a very good companion device for weekends when you want to focus on family and friends without being attached to a smartphone. The benefits of this device are somewhat opaque. Limited features should mean limited benefits, but the perceived value of the device could be very high, depending on the type of person you are.

If design matters to you, then this might be something to think about. If you want to give someone a nice designer gift, this might be an idea. If all of your work and socialising is done via calls and SMS, and you want to have a designer gadget to do this with, then this is an OK option. Anything this phone does, a cheaper Android can do better. The only difference will be the appearance of the device.

I like the device, despite what my comment above may imply. I like the appearance and the limited functionality. I like having a very light device in my pocket and I am very happy to have the MP02 because I also liked the MP01. But, I like gadgets. I like things like portable music players, Raspberry Pis, pedometers, calculator watches, and any type of end-user gizmo that I can find a use for. I think that with a few tweaks and fixes, this device could be much more user friendly, especially where Pigeon/Signal is concerned.

65% — good work overall with noticeable points of improvement

If you are thinking about this device, and reading this, do some research. Get on the subreddit and see what people are saying. Read the reviews. Remember that this thing came out in 2018 and consider other options too. The phone will likely reach end-of-life in 2 years.

Conclusion and Recommendations

If anyone from Punkt. ever comes across this, here are my TL;DR notes disguised as a conclusion:

The Punkt. MP02 is an attractive device with a purposefully limited set of features that make it wonderful to use. Seriously. It is light and easy and provides you with the joy of missing out that we have all forgotten about over the years. Future updates need to address glaring issues:

Calculator needs to be fixed
Notes needs an export feature (maybe with Markdown support)
Give the Wi-Fi another purpose (Internet radio? Podcasts? Some sort of management software for our computers?)
Include an FM radio app perhaps? There is about 12 GB of free space on the device, so it would be great to use it for something.
Increase the volume
Pigeon audio and video messages need volume control and an easy way to activate the speaker
Pigeon should have been called Pigeon Beta or Testing to avoid too many complaints
Pigeon needs to work with the desktop app (I haven’t tried, but comments on forums make it sound like it does not)
Give us a roadmap for updates
Give us a place to submit issues for the different apps — even github would be good. Or, give the community a blog.
When the device reaches EOL, open up the code and let us root our devices.

https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/ ↩︎
https://www.punkt.ch/en/about-us/punkt/ ↩︎
I don’t remember where I read this, but if I come across it again I will update this article. ↩︎
https://mudita.com/community/blog/adesign-awards-and-update-on-the-operating-system/ ↩︎
if you want to pull screenshots from your Punkt. MP02, you can do it with adb using the commands adb shell screencap -p /sdcard/scrot.png and adb pull /sdcard/scrot.png ↩︎

Linux Users Like Lovely Logos

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 10:00:14 +0000

NOTE: I haven’t gotten around to resizing these images… Sorry!

“Don’t judge a book by the cover”

This is a maxim to follow, and any one of us can think of examples ad nauseam. For the sake of procrastination however, let us judge the logos of some popular Linux distributions based solely on their logos.

This is not an exact science, so one would not expect things to match up perfectly. To begin with, I will outline the meanings of different shapes, then I will look at a few distributions. In additions to the shapes, we will also consider the colours used.

Shapes, Colours and Their Meanings

According to different sources, most of which state nearly the same thing (see example), shapes express meaning.

The shapes we see regularly in logos are as follows:

Circles
- femininity
  - this is not femininity in the sense of male vs female, but rather tough vs tender, or, if you prefer, forgiving vs unforgiving
- security
- continuity
- protection
Rectangles and Squares
- reliability
- stability
- strength
- efficiency
- professionalism
Triangles
- stability
- ingenuity
Vertical lines
- strength
- courage
- dominance
- progress
Spirals and Organic Shapes
- unique
- inviting
- wellness

Colours and Emotions via The Logo Company

The Distributions

I am not a masochist, so I won’t be looking at every distro. I randomly selected some distros from the Distrowatch Rankings based on no criteria at all besides seeing them mentioned regularly on different social networks and YouTube channels.

Arch

Arch Linux Logo

Description: Arch Linux adheres to the KISS principle (“Keep It Simple, Stupid”) and is focused on simplicity, modernity, pragmatism, user centrality, and versatility. In practice, this means the project attempts to have minimal distribution-specific changes, and therefore minimal breakage with updates, and be pragmatic over ideological design choices and focus on customizability rather than user-friendliness.¹

The Logo: The logo for Arch is a triangle. It is common usage in logos to use a triangle to represent the letter A. As stated above, the triangle is supposed to represent things like stability and ingenuity. In the case of Arch, that could be fitting. While it is a rolling distro, there are plenty of users who state that it is stable. It can also be considered ingenuous due to its nature; minimal but customisable. The choice of colour, in this case blue, is apt. According to “The Logo Company” (and other sources), it is the colour of trust, dependability, and strength.

Verdict: There is a bias here, of course. I do not use Arch any longer, but I did in the past. Despite initial installation surprises I had no issues using Arch. Once you jump through a few hoops you can have yourself a dependable operating system. The nature of the operating system is not user friendly, but does force the user to read the documentation resulting in a deeper understanding of how things work; the user gets stronger, in a sense, and the distro does reflect some of that strength. I therefore approve the choice of logo and colour.

Peppermint OS

Peppermint OS Logo

Description: Peppermint OS is a Linux OS based on Lubuntu, which itself is a derivative of the Ubuntu Linux operating system that uses the LXDE desktop environment. It aims to provide a familiar environment for newcomers to Linux, which requires relatively low hardware resources to run.²

The Logo: It is a circle. Circles represent femininity (i.e. tender and forgiving) and protection. The distro markets itself as familiar and requiring lower system resources. That, for me, is a good example of femininity. Relying on an Ubuntu base with some bits from Mint helps with this. I have never used it, but based on their website, the vocabulary used to describe it, the traditional out-of-the-box interface (and the choice of LXDE as a DE) I would expect a fair amount of hand-holding while using this distribution. The choice of colour, red here, is supposed to represent youth, boldness, and excitement. At first glance, that does not seem to represent what Peppermint is about. But, if you think about different companies that use red in their logos (Coca-Cola, Nintendo, McDonald’s), they are the types of companies that give us what we expect.

Verdict: I have never used this distro, but perhaps when my computer gets a little older I will take it for a spin. Judging it just on the logo, I would expect to find something user-friendly with no surprises, that would make an older computer feel snappy and fast. I accept this logo.

OpenSUSE: Tumbleweed and Leap

OpenSUSE Logo

Tumbleweed Logo

Leap Logo

Description: Tumbleweed is the flagship of the openSUSE Project. A stable and tested Rolling Release, which receives new software each day, and which is basically unbreakable: if a fault occurs as a result of system updates, a snapshot function allows users to revert to a previous system state. Tumbleweed is preferred by openSUSE users as a desktop system.

Leap is a classic stable distribution approach, one release each year and in between security and bugfixes. This makes Leap very attractive as server operating system, but as well for Desktops since it requires little maintenance effort. Online release upgrades are mostly so unspectacular and trouble-free that the community already proposed, the next release should be called ‘boring’.³

The Logos: Some variations here, and combinations too. The main chameleon logo would fall under the organic category above, and should inspire feelings of uniqueness and invitation. Having never used any version of this distro, I do know that it has some unique features such as the reputation of being unbreakable. The Tumbleweed logo could be interpreted as having the continuity of the circle family of logos, and the uniqueness of the spirals. The Leap logo, on the other hand, echoes the promise of the distro through its square shape: stable, reliable, and efficient. Colour-wise, the green logos convey a sense of peace and growth, while the Tumbleweed logo leans more toward the trust and strength of blue.

Verdict: OpenSUSE is certainly unique, so using an animal shape with a spiral tail is fitting. The Leap logo is particular precise in the emotion it conveys. Like with Arch above, the rolling release Tumbleweed, went with a bluish tint to give us a feeling a trust, while also telling us that it is safe and inviting. I don’t believe I have ever tried OpenSUSE, but the Tumbleweed variant does seem tempting. I really like these logos, and I think that there was some thought put into them. I say yay.

Void

Void Logo

Description: Void is a notable exception to the majority of Linux distributions because it uses runit as its init system instead of the more common systemd used by other distributions including Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mageia and Ubuntu. It is also unique among distributions in that separate software repositories and installation media using both glibc and musl are available.

Due to its rolling release nature, a system running Void is kept up-to-date with binary updates always carrying the newest release.⁴

Unlike trillions of other existing distros, Void is not a modification of an existing distribution. Void’s package manager and build system have been written from scratch.

Void focuses on stability, rather than on being bleeding-edge. Install once, update routinely and safely.⁵

The Logo: I would say that there are two things going on here. First of all, there is the circle. We have already seen circles, so no need to go over that again. Void is about security, continuity, and protection. There is also some vertical lines in the lettering that to underline strength and progress. The shades of green that are used might not be the most obvious choice, certainly for something called Void, but like the circle shape and its continuity, the green speaks of growth. For a distribution that is built from scratch, growth and continuity hopefully mean that Void is here to stay. The lettering is black, expressing balance and calm.

Verdict: I have been tempted to try Void after reading many different things. The thing that I was interested in the most is that is does not use systemd. I have since stopped worrying about that because there are other things to worry about. I feel that this is a decent logo (based on the shape, I thought it would be an Ubuntu derivative). Not perfect, but certainly well-adapted to Void’s promises. Initially, when I first read about Void, I expected something darker as a logo. If these ideas about shapes and colours are true, however, I have no choice but to applaud the designer’s choices.

Debian

Debian Swirl Logo

Description: Debian is composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project. The Debian Stable branch is the most popular edition for personal computers and servers. Debian is also the basis for many other distributions, most notably Ubuntu.

One of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kernel, the project is coordinated over the Internet by a team of volunteers guided by the Debian Project Leader and their foundational documents.⁶

The Logo: The reddish circle-spiral is supposed to tell us that it is inviting, safe, and forgiving, with a touch of youthfulness. Stability is not conveyed through this logo, as we would expect. In 1993, when the project began, this was a bold and exciting distribution. The swirl was selected by vote after a contest in 1999 to replace the original chicken.

Verdict: Debian’s logo does not scream “NEW AND EXCITING”. I suppose in 2021 we are used to seeing shapes that we can easily reproduce with InDesign and Inkscape. As a Debian user I do agree that it is a forgiving distribution with lots of documentation and a large community making it rather inviting. I would grade this logo as “good” but in need of rejuvenation.

Linux Mint

Linux Mint Logo

Description: A community-driven Linux distribution based on Ubuntu (in turn based on Debian), bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications. It can provide full out-of-the-box multimedia support for those who choose (by ticking one box during its installation process) to include proprietary software such as multimedia codecs.⁷

The Logo: I guess we call that a squircle. It should combine elements of circle-emotions and square-emotions. I did use Mint for a time and can confirm that, at the time, it delivered on those promises. The ease of installation also lends a feeling of peace (which is green) and balance (the white lettering).

Verdict: Excellent choices all around based on our colour and shape theories (mint is green, so the colour choice is a no-brainer). Bravo.

Manjaro

Manjaro Logo

Description: Manjaro has a focus on user-friendliness and accessibility, and the system itself is designed to work fully “straight out of the box” with its variety of pre-installed software. It features a rolling release update model and uses Pacman as its package manager.⁸

The Logo: Square. Rectangles. Vertical lines. Strength, stability, and progress. Manjaro is all of those things, like it or not. Sitting at number 2 on Distrowatch’s “hits per day” ranking and 28 on their “visitor ratings” ranking is a good example of strength for a 9-year-old distro. Green is about peace and growth.

Verdict: I used to use Manjaro. I was never fond of the logo. I wouldn’t want it on a t-shirt or even as a sticker on my laptop. I started using Manjaro when there was an Openbox edition and I absolutely LOVED it. The first time I used it, it was like having a new computer. The installation was efficient. The user experience, with the consistent visual theming, was always stable. Despite my unjust dislike of the logo, it cannot be denied that it represents Manjaro. It is no wonder it was chosen to be one of the default distros for Pine64’s Pinebook Pro and other vendors as well. Very good overall.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu Logo

Description: Ubuntu is named after the Nguni philosophy of ubuntu, which Canonical⁹ indicates means “humanity to others” with a connotation of “I am what I am because of who we all are”.

Ubuntu aims to be secure by default.¹⁰

The mission for Ubuntu is both social and economic. First, we deliver the world’s free software, freely, to everybody on the same terms. Whether you are a student in India or a global bank, you can download and use Ubuntu free of charge. Second, we aim to cut the cost of professional services - support, management, maintenance, operations - for people who use Ubuntu at scale, through a portfolio of services provided by Canonical which ultimately fund the improvement of the platform.¹¹

The Logo: Circles and more circles. Using Ubuntu is like getting a hug from an old friend. You are hesitant at first, and then you feel protected. Ubuntu is the gateway drug of Linux distros. It is safe. The continuity can be seen through their very consistent update schedule. Ubuntu is a friendly and confident, like the colour orange.

Verdict: The year was 2006. I downloaded an ISO and burned it to a CD. I booted from that CD and that was when I stopped using Windows. The Ubuntu logo is just right. It is what we expect from the distro; something safe and friendly to use or recommend to friends. Excellent work.

Gentoo

Gentoo Logo

Description: Gentoo Linux was named after the fast-swimming gentoo penguin. The name was chosen to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization, which is a major feature of Gentoo. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, and flexible. Gentoo describes itself as a meta-distribution because of its adaptability, in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to the system and the applications they use.¹²

The Logo: I guess it depends on the angle you look at it. It is a letter g, but stylised to appear as a squircle or even rounded triangle? And, there is some blue. I suppose it could be a way to convey uniqueness and stability. The blue tinting could also be interpreted as strength and trust.

Verdict: I have never used Gentoo. I might have visited the website once and decided that Gentoo is not for me, and I may have been right. Over on Distrowatch the description for Gentoo tells us that it is “a versatile and fast, completely free Linux distribution geared towards developers and network professionals”. I am neither of those things. This logo does not scream, “I’m friendly, let’s hang out!”. In that sense, it is a good logo. If they had gone with an actual penguin, it would have been too inviting.

Fedora

Fedora Logo

Description: Fedora has a reputation for focusing on innovation, integrating new technologies early on and working closely with upstream Linux communities.

Fedora users can upgrade from version to version without reinstalling.

The default desktop environment in Fedora is GNOME and the default user interface is the GNOME Shell.¹³

The Logo: Lots of blue. A teardrop/squircle. An infinity symbol. Judging Fedora by this alone, we would expect to find a dependable and stable distro, that is inviting but also professional.

Verdict: Linus uses Fedora. Fedora’s website uses words like freedom, innovation, easy, and mentions that it is “created for developers”. I have never used Fedora, but I do like their website. It is clean and professional, and uses white space to keep things focused while not being off-putting for beginners. I think the logo is great and not too pretentious. This makes me want to try the distro. Very good.

Raspberry Pi OS

Description: Raspberry Pi OS is highly optimized for the Raspberry Pi line of compact single-board computers with ARM CPUs. It runs on every Raspberry Pi except the Pico microcontroller. Raspberry Pi OS uses a modified LXDE as its desktop environment with the Openbox stacking window manager, along with a unique theme. The distribution is shipped with a copy of the algebra program Wolfram Mathematica and Minecraft: Pi Edition, as well as a lightweight version of the Chromium web browser.¹⁴

The Logo: It is a raspberry. No surprise. Red, green, some circular shapes. Even without looking at what the shapes and colours mean, most people would expect something fun with this distro. Something easy, or, at the least, something nice looking. Red for boldness and excitement, green for growth and trust. That inviting organic shape filled with tender circles should mean that most users, certainly beginners, would be at home with the distro.

Verdict: I am writing this this blog on my Raspberry Pi400 and hosting it on an older Raspberry Pi 3B+. It may come as a surprise that I don’t think this logo is suitable for the distro. It is easy to get up and running, it boots directly to the desktop and comes with helpful tools, and it is forgiving; if you mess up, you just have to flash the microSD again. But, it is also lacking. Yes, you can do lots of things with a Pi, but this logo is too bold and the out of the box experience is not entirely exciting. I mean, LXDE, I love it and use it on my other computers, but youthful and exciting it is not (unless you are into ricing). My verdict is is “satisfactory”. The Raspberry Pi Foundation will continue to use a raspberry as a logo, and I hope that as the SBC technology improves, the OS will catch up with the sentiments of the logo.

Conclusions

When I began writing this I thought I would be writing more negative comments. Globally, the Linux logos (at least the ones here) match up very well, sometimes extremely well, with the proposed theories of shapes and colours. Whether by accident or not, they are examples of good design. Further analysis (e.g. looking at which fonts and typefaces are used) would be required to fully determine which distribution’s visuals are the best. I know I have left out many excellent logos and distributions, but I am pretty sure you can analyse by yourselves. Whether it be the unique styling and calmness inspired by elementary or the hexagonal dependability of Zorin, it is good to know that people are putting effort into these projects.

Well done, and thanks to all the logo creators and icon makers out there for keeping our desktops looking good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppermint_OS ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSUSE ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_Linux ↩︎
https://voidlinux.org/ ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjaro ↩︎
a UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu ↩︎
https://ubuntu.com/about ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(operating_system) ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS ↩︎

The Show Must Go On: Making Slides with Markdown and Pandoc

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Notes on PowerPoint

This is not about being anti-Microsoft. I have nothing against them. They did something amazing: getting people to pay for an operating system at a time when the average person could not justify owning a personal computer. This is not really being about anti-PowerPoint. PowerPoint has been around since the late 80s for a reason: there was and still is a need for that software. What this is about is the fact that I have had it with PowerPoint.

I was definitely using PowerPoint before 2002, but for the sake of this blog let’s say I became a heavy user around September 2002. This was because I started university at that time. All university students know (well, at least those at my university in Canada do) that if you are studying anything in the arts you will be giving a lot of presentations. By my count I made at least one PowerPoint slide show per week of university (minus, obviously, exam weeks, reading weeks, etc.).

My PowerPoint skills grew and grew. I became aware of the deepest secrets of the apps. I willingly helped others, shared my knowledge, and worked with them to craft awesome slides. It was a passion, some might say. But, my skills reached their limits with a presentation for a French class about Raoul Duguay and L’Infonie. The PPT file was about 80MB. The sound files were embedded. The slides were timed to advance without any user input, which made the presentation of the song lyrics all the better. The colours were carefully selected. It was magnificent. I guesstimate that I spent about 5 hours putting just the slides together, not counting the research and practice. Who knows, maybe I put 10 hours into that monster. It didn’t matter at the time. It was all about those grades and being a difficult act to follow.

That was the peak of my skills. It was around 2006.

Since then, I have stopped trying. It isn’t worth it. I am talking about the medium, not the content of course.

This is not a guide for students

Originally, I wanted to write a guide for students on making PowerPoints. In particular, I wanted to show students how to use Masters in order to make nice slides and save time. Other tips were about white space, using (or not using) bullets, different notions like staying under 25 words per slide. All that stuff we have been hearing for years. I am positive that someone would find it helpful, but lots of students would not bother.

The alternatives to PowerPoint today are varied. I myself have used the following software to make slides over the years:

Microsoft PowerPoint
OpenOffice
LibreOffice
Scribus
Inkscape
Prezi
Google Slides
Office365
…I feel like there is one missing…

Why Bother With Beamer?

Why make slides, at all, is a better question. I love whiteboards. I like it when students take notes. Most of what I teach is very introductory and general. I know for a fact that using computer-based slides is less helpful for student learning than, say, writing on a board, or having a discussion in class. Alas, post-secondary education and slide shows are two things that go together and I must bow to the wishes of my directors and managers. Nearly every class I teach has a slide show to go along with it. That wouldn’t be so bad except all of the classes that I teach are 3 hours long.

3 hours is too long, but who will listen to the professors?

I have a work-provided Windows laptop. It comes with PowerPoint. I could use that. I also have LibreOffice Impress, which does the trick too. Who in their right mind would even fathom recreating all of their slides in another format? Especially since I have already done it twice! Once, when I stopped using Dropbox and switched to Google Drive and remade all of my slides in that format (not as bad as it sounds). Then again when I quit Google and began the switch back to LibreOffice. I will answer the question with another question: What is important in a slide? The only answer is, the content. After the content comes a very short list of requirements.

Here are the things that I require in a slide show:

Content
Titles, sections, subsections
Slide numbers
Images
Tables (rarely)
Columns (rarely)
Consistency & Simplicity

I do not need animations, boxes, arrows, embedded media or even emojis. My university has a template that is horrendously busy. I just want to be able to sit down, type a few sentences, press a button and have a slide show. This is possible with Beamer.

BUT…I don’t know LaTeX.

There is, however, Pandoc. Pandoc is a nice little package that converts certain documents to other types of documents. One type that it works well with is Markdown. It is quite likely that you know what Markdown is, but in case you don’t it will be used in an example later on (it is dead simple). So, once you know Markdown, you just have to type. Why bother with Beamer? Because, with Markdown and Pandoc, it is much easier.

RTFM

Pandoc, Beamer, and Markdown have guides and manuals online. I would have saved lots of time had I read them thoroughly. It has taken me several weeks to come to a final decision on how to prepare my slides. I feel as though they are, at least, 96% acceptable for what I am doing. The rest would require me to learn how to make a custom theme and style which I am not going to do unless I come across a nice guide or reread the manual (probably too busy to do that).

The Workflow

I have a 2-step workflow for creating my slides.

Prepare my content in a text editor or IDE (Geany works fine for me and was pre-installed so…why not?) in Markdown.
Build the slide by running a command (in Geany I can just press F8 and it does this for me).

I have shortened it to two steps by making a template file (workslides.md) in my ~/Templates folder with some front matter.

The Front Matter

There are a certain number of options a variables that can be passed to Pandoc from the Markdown file. After a good amount of head-scratching I have settled on including the information required to:

have a title slide with a title, subtitle, my name, the year, my school name, and a graphic;
set the colour, theme, and fonts.

I could also include the table of contents, but that is not always necessary. 13 lines of text (not code, just text) is sufficient. The rest is all content, which is the important part.

The Content

Markdown is easy, so all content can be specified with the following markup:

# Section Heading

## Sub-heading
 
 ### Block (sub-sub-heading)
 
 * list
 * items
 
 1. numbered 
 2. list
 3. items
 
 *italics*
 
 **bold**

![image caption](image source){ height=70% } % that bit sets the image to 70% of the vertical space available, 
    you can use whatever you want but you need those spaces within the braces!

[link text](link)

::::columns
:::column
column content
:::
:::column
column content
:::
::::

+-------+
| TABLE |
+=======+
| blah  |
+-------+

Example

I made a fake set of slides for this example. I didn’t put a lot of effort in. Don’t judge me.

The Title Page

A very busy title slide

Above you can see that the front matter does some of the work for me by setting up a consistent theme for the rest of the slide show. There are different types of themes available and this was one of the details that lead me to remind anyone reading this to read the manual.

There are full themes (called theme in the front matter), inner (innertheme), and outer (outertheme) as well as the colortheme which can be full, inner, or outer. You can see the themes here.

Complete themes are (mostly) named after flying animals: albatross, beetle, dove, fly, monarca, seagull, wolverine, beaver, spruce.
Inner themes are generally named after flowers: lily, orchid, rose.
Outer themes are sea animals: whale, seahorse, dolphin.

There are also presentation themes that take care of most of those details. They are named after cities. After lots of fiddling I decided not to use one because I couldn’t find a nice balance. All of this information can be found in the Beamer Use Guide.

In my example, the colortheme: whale option tells the slide to set the outer colours to blue, along with the block around the title. The outertheme: infolines option gives me the header and footer. The innertheme: rectangles does something not seen in this slide: putting little boxes as bullets for lists.

Tricky Bits

Most of my slides don’t need a lot more detail but I have run into a handful of annoying situations.

CJK Fonts

If I want to write Coca-Cola in Chinese (which I have had to do) I cannot just copy-paste 可口可乐 and be done with it. I needed to add two lines to the front matter to tell Pandoc what to do:

usepackage: xeCJK
CJKmainfont: Noto Sans CJK SC Regular

Pseudo-Animations

Sometimes it is nice to have things appear one-by-one. That is easy. There is more than one way to do this, I do it by added a \pause like this:

yadda \pause

yadda \pause

yadda

The slide will launch with one “yadda” and end with three.

Doing the animations bottom-to-top, though, can be a pain because you must do it with LaTex markup like this:

\uncover<3->{yadda}

\uncover<2->{yadda}

\uncover<1->{yadda}

Some Extra Colour

Adding text to a colour is pretty easy, you can use the \alert{text} markup and it will be red. Or you can use \textcolor{colour}{colourful text} and choose a colour for yourself:

\alert{ALTERTED YADDA}

\textcolor{violet}{VIOLET YADDA}

Bigger or Smaller Text

LaTex has some built-in sizes if you need theme. You can get more info on this wiki:

\tiny{yadda}

\scriptsize{yadda}

\footnotesize{yadda}

\small{yadda}

\normalsize{yadda}

\large{yadda}

\Large{yadda}

\LARGE{yadda}

\huge{yadda}

\Huge{yadda}

Finishing Up

Once the content is ready, it is time for the moment of truth: building that slide show.

I am lazy so I have been doing this is Geany. My final front matter has changed a little and I have added some things since we’ve started. I have also set a Build Command in Geany so I can press F8 and the PDF is made for me without going into the command line. I usually leave the PDF open in Zathura so I can check for inconsistencies.

Geany Build Parameters

Either way, when I am ready I run a quick pandoc -t beamer --pdf-engine=xelatex -o output.pdf input.md and I have myself presentation.

~~You can download the Markdown file I have used here and try it for yourself. Or, download the PDF.~~

Limitations and Unanswered Questions

Obviously, there are a few limitations to this method. One being that you need to install Pandoc and some LaTex libraries on the computers that you will use for creating your presentations. Another is you cannot just copy and paste an image from a website like you would with Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress. Perhaps that is a good thing, it will force you to think about whether or not you need that image.

My next quest will be to figure out how to make my own themes and styles. If you know how or have a nice, simple, guide, let me know.

UPDATE: Using pandoc for My Slides: 2023 Update

Conclusions

As I am someone who likes to find reasons to plop myself down in front of a screen, it was normal for me to become attracted to something like this. It is neither too basic nor too complicated. I like markup languages, and a simple one like Markdown is just right for me. This process has lead me to be more focused and conscious of what I am doing and the information I am trying to convey to my students. I have found mistakes too. Many mistakes.

Is this something that other teachers should do? Maybe. If you already have a set of slides, I don’t know if I would recommend that you start converting them one by one. If you are just starting out and plan on teaching anything that requires formulae, then you might want to consider LaTex and Beamer. I have noticed that since switching to this method, more students have downloaded by slides (Moodle tells me that). I also see some of them using their iPads to take notes on the slides. They didn’t do that before!

Everything you have read here can be found in one of the references below. If, however, you have any questions, or comments, let me know over on Fosstodon.

Tips for Students: Report Writing

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 13:59:37 +0000

1 Important Shortcuts (Windows)!

CTRL+B for Bold

CTRL+U for Underlined

CTRL+I for Italic

CTRL+Z for Undo

CTRL+Y for Redo

CTRL+C for Copy

CTRL+X for Cut

CTRL+V for Paste

CTRL+SHIFT+V for Paste Without Formatting

(This shortcut is maybe my most used keybinding. It is useful when borrowing text from online sources because it will erase the formatting and any hyperlinks too.)

CTRL+F for Find

CTRL+W to Close a Window

CTRL+A to Select all

CTRL+RETURN insert a Page Break

1.1 Navigating in the document can be done with just the keyboard as well.

Hold SHIFT and use the arrow keys to select text. Hold SHIFT+CTRL and you can select word-by-word. Hold CTRL and use the arrow keys to move around in the paragraph; CTRL+UP, for example, will take you to the start of the line. Of course, that would mean holding CTRL+SHIFT and using the UP and DOWN keys will let you select text line-by-line.

Now you are almost ready to type something. Just a few minor things to go over first.

2 Outline

You cannot write something like an internship report without an outline. You can begin the outline as soon as you begin your internship. It will help you keep track of important details, avoid repetition, and help with flow.

Buy a cheap paper journal that fits in your pocket so you can jot ideas on the go without the distraction of your phone.

3 Prepare Your Document Before You Start Typing

Open your favourite Word Processor. Do not just start typing. Do not worry about fonts, formatting, footers or any of that stuff yet. We are not ready. Several moments of patience will save you some time in the end. You are going to do three things before you start typing:

Set up the page. That means set the margins if you need to.

Margins settings

Set up the page numbers, and make sure that the first page does not have a number on it. (This is in the basic options for footers and page numbering).
- additionally, the preliminary pages should use Roman numerals, the body Arabic numbering
Set the header to a small logo of the school and the title of your report. Set the footer to the page number (see above for more on page numbers).
Set the language for the document. This is important for spell-checking later.

Language settings

Install LanguageTool (we will come back to this later).

Now your Word Processor is ready to go. It knows the language. We do not care about the fonts or the overall appearance yet.

Go ahead and type what you need to type. Remember, no formatting required just yet.

4 What to Write

Here is a list of suggestions for topics to include in your report:

Title Page
- Give your report a title
- Include your name and internship information
Acknowledgement Page
- Include a quick thank-you (teacher, academic advisor, etc.)
Table of Contents Page
- Include the acknowledgements in the ToC
- Also include graphs and charts
Summary Page
- Include a brief summary of your internship. Keep this short and sweet.
The Body
- This is the main part of your report. Include sections like: Introduction, Description of the Internship, Organisation of the Company, Internship activities, Reflections on the Internship, Conclusion, etc.
- Each section of your report needs a title or “heading.”
- Your introduction should expand upon your summary and include facts about your employer.
- You should describe what part of the organisation that you worked for.
- Your responsibilities should be detailed.
- Try and honestly answer the question: What did you learn at this internship?
- You can critique the organization you worked for, but be as fair and neutral as possible.
- Think about how you performed during the internship.
The Bibliography
- Include an APA/MLA/Chicago formatted bibliography (⇐ yes, formatting counts!).
The Appendix (a separate file)
- The appendix section is for journals, published works, photos, recordings, and any other supplemental material you have. The amount of material you have will differ depending on your internship duties. Try to include some material to give the reader a taste of your accomplishments during the internship.
- e.g., if you worked in communications, include press releases, ads, or letters you worked on.
- This is also where you might include an org chart.

5 Set Your Styles

Styles are your Headings, Subtitles, Normal Text and Titles for your document. Why would you bother with styles? Well, for starters, it saves you loads of time. For instance, let’s say you want to change the font or size of all of your headings: if you use styles you can do that in one click. Or, what if you want to insert a table of contents in one click? Styles help you do that do.

Styles settings

(if you are unclear how to use styles, hit up YouTube for some tutorials)

Once you have typed everything that you need to type you can go about choosing fonts and setting up your Title, Subtitle, Headings, and Subheadings.

6 What NOT to do

Include lots of graphics: graphics and pictures of any variety make your document look trashy and immature.
- All visuals should be put in the Appendix
Use poor quality graphics: Do not “screenshot” something you can recreate using Excel (simple bar charts, org charts).
Attempt to cheat by changing your font size from 12 to 12.2 or slightly changing your margins. If your document is a page short, so be it.
Cheat by borrowing from a previous student: all of our documents are scanned using Urkund which compares your document to anything found on the web, including translations, as well as any document any student has ever submitted.
Use clipart, text ornaments or fancy fonts (They are lame!)
Format as you type: it will slow you down.
Wait until the last minute.
Forget to review, spellcheck, and review again!

7 Review and Review Again

Hooray! You have finished a draught of your internship report. Congratulations are in order. Now, save that file, turn off your computer, and go out for a little bit. You need a clear head for reviewing.

7.1 Use the Tools

The first thing you want to do is run your text through LanguageTool (do not use their website, download and install the standalone app or use Google Docs). Make sure you tell LanguageTool which version of English you are using (British, American, etc.) and launch the tool. LanguageTool will highlight possible spelling mistakes as well as grammar, style, and formatting errors (like spacing or punctuation mistakes).

After LanguageTool, you will want to use something like Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker. Using the free version will not tell you where the mistakes are, but it will tell you how many mistakes and if plagiarism is detected.

UPDATE 27/07/2021: Thanks to Sarah for suggesting this list of other plagiarism checking websites — LINK

7.2 Your Review

When you review a large document that you wrote yourself, you should start at the end. Print your document (yes, bad for trees) and start reviewing paragraph by paragraph starting at the end. Here are things you are looking for:

Expressions that you do not understand
- Replace them with things you understand
Vocabulary that you do not understand
- Replace with words you do understand
Repetition
Punctuation errors
Capitalisation errors
Run-on sentences
- If it is too long it might be confusing
Paragraphs that are too short
- There is no official rule, but a three-sentence paragraph looks nice
Subheadings, Headings, Titles, Subtitles, Footnotes: does everything look the way you want it to?
When you get back to the start, read it out loud to yourself. If you get stuck there is probably a tiny problem

7.3 3^rd Party Review

Have somebody read over your report. Tell them to check for mistakes but also to see if it all makes sense. Do not be afraid of being judged.

8 External Tools and Websites

Here are some useful (and free) tools:

Deepl Translator

Slightly better than Google Translate

https://www.deepl.com/translator

WordReference

Excellent online Dictionary

http://www.wordreference.com/

GrandDictionnare

For those complicated terms

http://www.granddictionnaire.com/

LanguageTool

Style and Grammar Checker (there is a free stand-alone version for Windows and Mac along with versions for Google Docs and LibreOffice)

https://www.languagetool.org/

Grammarly’s Plagiarism Checker

Will check your document for mistake and plagiarism (the free version will not tell you where they are, but it helps nonetheless)

https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker

UPDATE 27/07/2021: Thanks to Sarah for suggesting this list of other plagiarism checking websites — LINK

9 Finalise Your Document

Before exporting your document to PDF, double-check everything. We tend to forget the easy things, like:

putting our names on the title page,
page numbers,
headers and footers,
formatting the bibliography,
making sure you understand everything in the report,
looking at the instructions one last time to make sure you did not forget anything.

Save your document with a title. Not just “report.docx” and export it to PDF.

Open the PDF file on your computer and your phone to make sure things look the way you want. Pictures and page breaks do not always work.

Listicle: Documentaries, Films, And Series About Information Technology And Its Influence On Humanity

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Below is a list of documentaries, films, and series that have a point in common: They all, in one way or another, address our relationship with technology. In some cases, the the link is not as direct or as obvious as in other cases, but the link is there.

Documentaries make up the better part of this list but there are also some fictional examples that make for decent watching. Regarding the series, you will notice some comedies that play on the tropes surrounding Silicon Valley and the people that work in IT.

For more information, you can look up these films and series on TMDB or TheTVDB.

Documentaries

After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News (2020)
American Selfie: One Nation Shoots Itself (2020)
Bitcoin Big Bang: The Unbelievable Story of Mark Karpeles (2018)
Citizenfour (2014)
Digits (2016)
Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer (2019)
The Great Hack (2019)
HyperNormalisation (2016)
The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)
Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections (2020)
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016)
Nothing to Hide (2017) (Available for free on Vimeo and on Peertube)
The Perfect Weapon (2020)
Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013)
The Social Dilemma (2020)
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard (2013)
We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (2012)

Films

Ex Machina (2015)

Series

Betas (2013)
Black Mirror (2011)
Brave New World (2020)
Devs (2020)
Halt and Catch Fire (2014)
The IT Crowd (2006)
Mr. Robot (2015)
Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (2017)
Silicon Valley (2014)

Stand-alone Episodes

The Amazing World of Gumball - S06E38 - The Web (2019)

Listicle: An Annotated List of Science-Fiction Books

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Where do innovators get those ideas? Sometimes it almost seems like a work of science-fiction. Sometimes that is the case. If you are in an entrepreneurial spirit and you are looking for inspiration, here are 10 of my favourites.

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley (1931)

Themes: Concept of companies that have political sway, complicated entertainment machines that generate both harmless leisure and the high levels of consumption and production, power maintained through technological interventions.

“Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell (1949)

Themes: Loss of freedom, use of surveillance technology.

“The Shockwave Rider” by John Brunner (1975)

Themes: The Internet, everyone on a network.

“True Names” by Vernor Vinge (1981)

Themes: Hackers, NSA, Privacy concerns, VR, social network, “true death" is what we call “doxxing” today.

“Neuromancer” by William Gibson (1984)

Themes: More hackers, VR, augmentations, the word “Cyberspace”.

“Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson (1992)

Themes: Private organisations with lots of power, mandatory reading for Microsoft and MIT, modern online video games (the creator of “Fortnite” was influenced by this book), MMORPG, social networks, Second Life, etc.
Stephenson has worked for NASA, Amazon and Magic Leap. All of his books are excellent.

“Daemon” [Series] by Daniel Suarez (2006,2010)

Themes: Artificial Intelligence runs amock.

“Nexus” [Series] by Ramez Naam (2012, 2013, 2015)

Themes: Nano technology used to link humans (BCI).

“Children of the New World” by Alexander Weinstein (2016)

Themes: Social Media, VR, robotics, dependance on technology.

“Cumulus” by Eliot Peper (2016)

Themes: Tech giant (Social Network) with too much power.

Tips for Students: The Browser

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hello Internets. This is a guide for the average student, particularly students in the first year of post-secondary education. If you are a power user or generally geeky person, nothing here will be of particular interest to you.

0. Introduction

Good day all,

My name is at the top of this blog, but that does not tell you who I am. I am a professor at a business school in France. Over the course of 14 odd years of teaching I have become frustrated with how my students use their computers. This series of blog posts (there will be at least six) will address those frustrations.

So, what frustrates me? Not that much, in fact. It varies from the rather basic things like having loads of icons on your desktop to things that should be straightforward, like how to double-space a Word document and take a screenshot (no, it is not taking a picture of your computer with your phone). I have had several students that don’t know how to do either.

Being a person born in the 80s I have been using computer for roughly 30 years. I experienced the glorious arrival of the web and Wi-Fi and watched as computers became mainstream for students in post-secondary education. In France, this was in contrast to what I had experienced in Canada where most, if not every student, used a computer or laptop while at university (even before the arrival of Wi-Fi and batteries that lasted more than a single lesson).

This experience left me with very general knowledge that I always considered common knowledge, but now I have committed myself to blogging a little and I will share with you at least six sets of recommendations:

using your browser
using your word processor for report writing (link)
making presentations (WIP)
taking notes and being organized (WIP)
using the keyboard (WIP)
recommended software and other sundries (WIP)

Any software used will be free software, but the recommendations and tips can be applied to proprietary software used on Windows, Mac or Linux.

1. The Browser

General Rules

As a student there are a few things we should keep in mind. In order to have a nice workflow I have always been a SOUP enthusiast.

What is SOUP?

Simple: Giant, resource-heavy, complicated software will slow things down. One App; One Purpose: You shouldn’t need several browsers installed, the apps you use should be good at doing that one thing you need them to do. Up-to-date: You should keep all of your software, and operating system, as up-to-date as possible. Pay it forward: You should show your friends how to do things when possible, otherwise you will become the “PowerPoint Guy” or the “Premiere Pro Girl”.

Tabs and Toolbars

If your browser is open right now, at the top of your screen you will see a title bar, an address bar, maybe a bookmarks bar, and a list of open tabs. I don’t want to be too annoying or pedantic, but when I look at a student’s screen and see just how many tabs they have open and hear them complaining about how their computer is slow or their connection is bad, I want to grab them and shake them vigorously.

Of course things are slow! Your browser has over 20 tabs open, and it looks like at least four of them are Facebook.com, I see a Messenger.com, LinkedIn, two Zoom tabs for some reason, Teams, Outlook, Gmail, a Google Doc, and many Google searches, AND Netflix!

I am not an expert, and there are things that I cannot always explain clearly despite being a professor. I have, time and again, tried to get this message across. Yes, your browser can open multiple tabs, but each tab is like opening a new browser. You have several browsers running inside your browser. Each one uses some memory. Websites today require more processing power and memory than some apps.

Let’s look at some numbers.

These screenshots come from a Raspberry Pi which is not a powerful computer

Here is the Task Manager of my browser with one tab open:

Idle Task Manager

The Task Manager and the New Tab use some memory. All of those puzzle piece are extensions, and they eat up a little memory for each tab too.

If we look at my system Task Manager we can see that the browser is using a certain percentage of CPU but also memory (RSS is “the portion of memory occupied by a process that is held in main memory (RAM)” but we don’t need to know that because I’m going to make those numbers go up a bit later). The extensions, too, are using some memory.

Firefox Running

So, that is a browser doing nothing. Let’s do some stuff, OK? I think I need to open my personal email, my work email, Teams, and why not IMGUR too. Strangely enough, my weak little Pi doesn’t even show one of the tabs that are open, but Teams and Outlook use between 5 and 10x the memory of a page like IMGUR.

Memory Usage

And system-wide you are starting to use up RAM.

System-wide RAM Usage

Well, you are clearly thinking the obvious. This is what computers are meant to do. So, why not, right? I certainly agree with you. Your fairly recent, probably expensive, laptop computer should be able to have many tabs open, but when things start slowing down, it is likely your fault and not because your computer is dying. Let’s hit up Facebook and see how much memory we can use. YouTube can come along for the ride. Screw it, Google Drive and a Google search for “chocolate chip cookies”.

I will be naughty and launch TWO instances of Firefox with TWO tabs each.

Multiple instances

I think you get it. Numbers go up. Your RAM is not infinite. Combine this with perhaps Zoom or even Adobe Acrobat and things start to slow down. You can close some tabs.

But, then I’ll lose my place…

Yes, you will, but there is a super feature in your browser called bookmarking.

The main browsers that people generally use are Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. They all have cousins whose names are Brave, Vivaldi, Chromium, and Opera. Those browsers have bookmark managers. So, bookmark the hell out of the pages you want to keep. You can even make folders! That way things stay organized. Those bookmarks can sync across devices. Now and then, sit down and Marie Kondo your bookmarks. Delete the just, organize the other stuff.

Speaking of bookmarks, you might have a bookmark bar at the top of your browser. This is a nice place to put the links you use daily. One thing that lots of people do, but a few people do not, is set just the icon on their bookmark bar. It is easy. Bookmark a site, set it to the “Bookmarks Toolbar” or whatever it is called on your browser, and delete the name. Done. Just an icon. Yay.

This sparks joy

You can also put folders on that bar. For students, I have seen some good ideas. Some students have a folder for each day of the week. Others for each class. Some students have their personal folder, a school folder, and a work folder, and others have the important links as icons on the toolbar, and a folder for “fun”.

Finally, we get to extensions. I will have a post later on about some recommended extensions that I use. Right now, you just need to apply the same rules to extensions as you do tabs on your browser and apps on your phone. They take up some space and use memory. Not all extensions are good. Some extensions are useful but use a lot of memory. You are allowed to uninstall or disable them. Do not just keep them there out of complacency and laziness.

There are only two extensions that you should have: an adblocker and a password manager. You should never, ever, under any circumstances use the built-in browser password manager. Especially on a computer that you might leave on a table in a library. It is too easy to get passwords. Chrome, if I recall correctly, even has a password export feature. And you can access the passwords within the settings too. I would recommend using uBlock Origin as your adblocker, and Bitwarden for passwords. They are both free. uBlock uses a little less memory and is up-to-date, it also has loads of options we can discuss in another blog post. Bitwarden has desktop applications, mobile phone applications, and an extension. It can also import your Chrome and Firefox passwords.

Conclusion

Keep it SIMPLE: You don’t need lots of tabs or lots of extensions. Use ONE browser: You can uninstall the others. Unless it is Edge. I think you are stuck with that, but I haven’t checked in a long time. UPDATE your browser: This is good for security. You can also update the extensions. PAY IT FORWARD: Give your friends advice when you can.

I hope somewhere, some student finds this useful. If you did, be sure to bookmark the blog. The next instalment is about writing documents and word processors.

Take care.

bbbhltz

Quickly importing events using Khal

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Best of…

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My Best Albums 2023

Honourable Mentions

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On the 2022–2023 School Year

On Debloating Android Phones

Requirements

Removal Decisions

Final words

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Introduction

Review

Installation

APK — Alpine Package Keeper

Use as a desktop

Access to Software

Downsides

Conclusion

On Blogging in 2023

TMI: Sharing your CV on LinkedIn

The Problem

Simple Solutions

TMI

Standing out from the crowd

Don’t blame yourself

Using Pandoc for My Slides: 2023 Update

Adding some colour

Why the quote?

Workflow 2023

The Next Step

Some links