Month: March 2016

"Untitled 022816" with David Knutson and Philip Thompson

Posted on by Paul Jones

“Untitled 022816” is a recording that my friends and I did in my basement last week. Philip Thompson owns the drums on this snippet from a much larger jam session, David Knutson plays the lead guitar, and I provide the rhythm guitar. Steven Quinn and I split the work of being the audio technician and production, and Steve did the mastering. The track is what I imagine very, very, very early jam sessions of Explosions in the Sky might have been like, with ethereal leads that crescendo into heavy rhythmic chords.

 

France wants to fine encryption

Posted on by Paul Jones

France’s lower house of parliament yesterday passed an amendment that would levy penalties against technology companies that do not provide access to encrypted data during terrorism investigations. The amendment, which has the support of right-wing politicians but is opposed by the socialist government of President François Hollande, was approved as part of a broader bill aimed at combatting terrorism and organized crime. – The Verge

If I were a French citizen I would be outraged that the government would use a national tragedy as emotional leverage to attempt to expand surveillance. I don’t think France’s problem is security, it’s economic inequality and racism.

Florida congressman wants to ban government iPhones

Posted on by Paul Jones

A Florida congressman has introduced a new bill that would forbid federal agencies from purchasing Apple products until the company cooperates with the federal court order to assist the unlocking of a seized iPhone 5C associated with the San Bernardino terrorist attack. – ArsTechnica

How childish. To propose that the government shouldn’t use a company’s products because that company refuses to compromise the product’s security is short-sighted and dumb. If anything, the uncompromising security should be a selling point to government agencies lacking transparency.

Apple won't bid for NFL streaming

Posted on by Paul Jones

Apple has decided it will not bid on the digital rights to stream the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” package next season, according to Re/code.

The streaming rights to the NFL’s Thursday evening games could have helped set the Apple TV apart from competing streaming boxes, but Apple reportedly felt the package “isn’t enough to pull that off.” – MacRumors

Perhaps they’re not doing it because it doesn’t make business sense, but I hope they’re not doing it at least in part because it isn’t moral. Until the NFL change the rules surrounding collision and contact, any money earned from professional football is blood money.

Mitt Romney on Donald Trump

Posted on by Paul Jones

In a surprisingly honest speech delivered to the University of Utah, Mitt Romney muses on the present presidential candidate race. The whole thing warrants reading, here’s a particularly prescient snippet:

For the last three decades, the Clintons have lived at the intersection of money and politics, trading their political influence to enrich their personal finances. They embody the term “crony capitalism.” It disgusts the American people and causes them to lose faith in our political process.

A person so untrustworthy and dishonest as Hillary Clinton must not become president. But a Trump nomination enables her victory. The audio and video of the infamous Tapper-Trump exchange on the Ku Klux Klan will play a hundred thousand times on cable and who knows how many million times on social media.

I’m glad the Republican establishment knows that Trump stands no real chance in the general election against a vetted careerist like Clinton. When Romney ran, I supported and voted for Obama, but given the present political circus, a Romney candidacy would be a welcome sanity.

The reason that the current crop of candidates besides Trump are so weak is that they’re playing his game, on his terms. No one can “out Donald the Donald”, because he’s been slinging insults and schmoozing audiences his whole life. Even with Romney’s speech, all it takes for The Donald to deflect it is to say something to the effect of, “Who? Romney? What that loser is telling me how to win?”

The Republican establishment has fallen prey to Rule 19 of the Internet:

The more you hate it, the stronger it gets.

NFL to sell streaming rights

Posted on by Paul Jones

This month, the pro football league intends to sell digital rights to the same games, and it should be nearing a decision shortly on which company will buy them. The NFL’s annual owners meeting starts in Florida on March 20, and sources say the league would like to have deals wrapped up by then. – The Verge

With the current rules and culture, considering the risk of injury to the players, this is blood money.

Fiat to Apple: Wait until the feeling passes

Posted on by Paul Jones

“If [Apple] have any urges to make a car, I’d advise them to lie down and wait until the feeling passes,” Marchionne told journalists. “Illnesses like this come and go, you will recover from them, they’re not lethal.” – Reuters via John Gruber

The auto-industry establishment recommends that Apple do what they do: nothing. I imagine Fiat are worried about Silicon Valley competing with them, and have done plenty of lying down in hopes that the feeling will pass. We’ll have to wait and see if this is recoverable or lethal, but history tells us that Palm and Blackberry underestimated Cupertino and the results were not good.

The Walking Dead S06E11: "Knots Untie" Review

Posted on by Paul Jones

Spoilers ahead. I wholeheartedly enjoyed “Knots Untie” because, despite the show’s modus operandi, everyone was mostly okay this episode. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I don’t actually like watching it, as it’s the story of the end of the world where people get eaten or worse, but I do find it fascinating. The reason I liked this episode so much was it focused less on getting “eaten or worse” and more on the fascination of relationships, and more importantly, politics. Let’s go over a few plot points:

Abraham and Sasha and Rosita

Admittedly, I totally forgot that Abraham and Rosita were still an item, I assumed that it fizzled out when he started patrolling with Sasha (or something). I thought Abraham was going to die when he was getting all philosophical with Sasha before discovering the rocket launcher, yet he remains and continues to find out more about himself. I haven’t figured out the meaning of his necklace, in part because I don’t care too much. I worry that TWD is going to suffer in the later season for the same reason FRIENDS did: babies.

Jesus and Hilltop

On the whole ride to Hilltop, I couldn’t help but not trust Jesus. He seems too idealistic and care-free for what the world has become. This trepidation reached a climax when they encountered the wrecked car on the way there, and when he was handcuffed and left with Maggie, I was sure he was going to pull some stunt. But eventually trusting him paid off, at least in the sense that the gang made it to Hilltop. Here’s Nick Statt from the Verge describing this sequence:

“Your world is about to get a whole lot bigger,” says Jesus before this episode’s opening credits roll. I have to admit, the scene gave me goosebumps. This was a moment when the show finally acknowledged its own potential — there are more communities of survivors, and there may be a huge conflict threatening the rebuilding of a real and lasting society.

This is absolutely right: where TWD needs to go is beyond man-vs-himself (Rick in the first seasons), beyond man-vs-nature (the zombie after the first seasons), and beyond man-vs-man (the various villains we’ve encountered since the prison): it’s time for group-vs-group and the inevitable politics that ensues. I love the idea that trade and cooperation (or not) could occur between multiple groups, and I look forward to an expanded universe in TWD.

Maggie’s negotiation

The group from Alexandra and the Saviors aren’t so different: they’re both ruthless murderers and take whatever they want from Hilltop. In fact, Maggie used the promise of future violence from Negan to negotiate half of their stuff from them. Matt Fowler makes this point at IGN:

And let’s hear it for Maggie this week too. Her mostly offscreen job as leader/planner/stay-behinder wound up paying off this week during her back-and-forths with Gregory. He batted her around like a ball of yarn for most of the episode, but then she came back strong after he realized just how powerless he was against Negan’s ever-increasing greed. So good on her. And good on the show for giving her a powerful scene outside of worrying about Glenn.

The hunger of those 50 or so hungry people at Alexandria and the knowledge of Hilltop is going to make for some tense negotiation.

Negan and the future

I thought that the leader of Hilltop may actually have been Negan because I know nothing about the comics, but it looks like the truth is far more interesting. Here’s Zack Holden from A.V. Club:

This is going to be a disaster, if not now than by the end of the season at least. This a story, and stories where characters say, “Yeah, we totally have this under control,” and then they do, don’t tend to be all that interesting. But at least no one’s behaving stupidly so far—or if they’re being stupid, their stupidity makes sense.

Certainly, a bloodbath is on the horizon. The hungry and desperate group from Alexandria is set to face off with well-equipped and savage Saviors, and it seems that they think it’s totally going to be easy. Whoever Negan is, he’s going to be livid that six-or-so of his men were taken out by Daryl, and if Negan is willing to take out a 16 year-old to “prove a point”, there’s no doubt that what he does to exact revenge will be far worse. The food from Hilltop is going to come at a great cost. (Which could have been avoided if Jesus and Daryl and Rick hadn’t been so childish with the truck, but never mind.)

Eric Schmidt working with Pentagon

Posted on by Paul Jones

I prefer Apple to Google. My preferences side with Apple because their hardware is superb, their OS is a lovely shiny UI and ecosystem atop a solid UNIX foundation, and their interests align with mine: they make hardware, I buy hardware, we both win.

There’s no denying the centrality of Google to digital life, however. If you want to find more information something, see a video of something, or communicate with colleagues, chances are you’ll use a Google service. And for some weird reason to do with our perceived value of non-tangible objects, we refuse to pay for this central fact-of-life, and so Google has found ways to monetize that aren’t directly inline with my interests.

For instance, Andrea Shalal reporting for Reuters via John Gruber:

Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive officer of Google, will head a new Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing Silicon Valley innovation and best practices to the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday. Carter unveiled the new Defense Innovation Advisory Board with Schmidt during the annual RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco, saying it would give the Pentagon access to “the brightest technical minds focused on innovation.”

Makes perfect sense: software is a munition, after all, so why shouldn’t Google be a defense contractor? I hope this relationship truly is about innovation within the military which ultimately brings good to world instead of increased spying on citizens, or worse, more effective destruction.

Slack planning voice and video

Posted on by Paul Jones

I strongly dislike Slack: it’s an overhyped and proprietary web wrapper around IRC with history. It works just fine, but it bills itself as a replacement for email, which it isn’t, and so it’s become just another thing I have to check. Having said that, TechCrunch report and iMore paraphrase:

Slack plans to roll out voice and video chat this year, making the popular messaging company even more competitive with incumbents like Microsoft’s Skype and Google’s Hangouts. That’s according to their 2016 product roadmap, presented to customers at a conference today in San Fransisco.

I’m glad, because then I can stop saying that Slack is just an web wrapper around IRC with history, and people can stop telling me that “No! It’s also got zany error messages and GIFs.” I hope that Slack can do a better job than Skype, Hangouts, FaceTime, and all those awful corporate conferencing applications, because it’s a market which could really use improvement.

However everyone should stop using Slack for open source projects. Because it’s proprietary and costs money and is just a web wrapper around IRC. So stop it.

John McAfee on Apple vs. FBI

Posted on by Paul Jones

In an interview given to RT, software legend John McAfee claims that unlocking the iPhone is a “half-hour job.” This part of the interview is just wrong: it may have been the case that passwords were stored in memory in the past, but I don’t believe that’s the case any more. For instance, if I were Apple and I was implementing the iPhone unlock system, I’d encrypt the disk without storing the password, and when the user enters the password I’d attempt to decrypt the disk with that key. I’d then check to see if some known (and non-sensitive) value in memory was correctly decrypted or gibberish.

He does raise an interesting dilemma, however, and that’s that either:

  1. The FBI does not know how to access the iPhone’s information, and they should because there a well-funded federal agency;
  2. The FBI does know how to access the iPhone’s information, and so they’re deceiving the American people.

I find (1) much more likely in this scenario, or rather, that they do not know how to access the iPhone’s information easily, and would prefer that they have a precedent to get Apple to do it in the future. I find this more likely because iPhone’s have zero day exploits: I don’t have one, I wouldn’t know one if I saw one, but it’s a massive user base with a large attack surface area, they undoubtedly exist and the FBI undoubtedly have access to people that can get them. But it’s hard, costly, and the best hackers smoke weed and don’t wear suits.

The first self-driving car accident

Posted on by Paul Jones

As artificial intelligence and machine learning is increasingly commercialized, it’s going to begin challenging our legal and moral notions of agency, blame, and responsibility.

Google’s self-driving car had a very minor accident with a bus, and Reuters had this to report about it:

Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google said on Monday it bears “some responsibility” after one of its self-driving cars struck a municipal bus in a minor crash earlier this month.

The crash may be the first case of one of its autonomous cars hitting another vehicle and the fault of the self-driving car. The Mountain View, California-based Internet search leader said it made changes to its software after the crash to avoid future incidents.

Some stray observations:

  • I’m surprised Google owned up to even “some responsibility”, as I would have thought they were eager to shed all responsibility early in the product’s existence, because while in the long run they’ll be less accidents with robot drivers, I’m uncertain that the first batch will always be so fortunate.
  • I imagine this is 100% the fault of the bus driver, and for purely an unfair reason: as an bike rider, I see how bus drivers in New York City act on the road, and it isn’t always friendly.

Playgrounds get video support

Posted on by Paul Jones

Playgrounds are such a wonderful feature of Xcode and the growing Swift ecosystem: they drastically lower the barrier for entry for learning the language and for experimenting. I have countless “experimental projects” that are just empty view controllers which have some interesting code snippet, and Playgrounds are a much better way of supporting this use case.

Erica Sadun has discovered an exciting new feature in Xcode Beta 5:

What you do is this, you add movie files to the playground’s resources. You can then add specialized playground rich text:

//: ![Alternate text](video width="width" height="height" poster="poster")

You won’t see the video until you render the rich text.

The markdown rendering and rich content embedded in Playgrounds is going to make them great for education. There’s nothing like running code to prove a point, and having educational content sit side-by-side with running code is a brilliant way to learn. I hope the project format for Playgrounds sees adoption on Linux and Windows so that more people can learn from them.

Proofreading software

Posted on by Paul Jones

When a company markets a product as perfect and constantly re-invents it, there will be growing pain. There are some issues that should almost never exist with even a modest QA process however, which includes proofreading, and here’s Stephen Hackett describing a grammar problem in Disk Utility:

  1. The first sentence should read “….destroy all of the data.” It currently transposes “all” and “of.”
  2. “Enter a name, choose a format” is a comma splice. Break it into two sentences or use a semicolon.

Even given Apple’s software woes, this is an unfortunate misstep for a core system utility.