Desire for a Story Arc

Being on vacation in not always healthy. Take me for example, I decided to binge watch both seasons of Star Trek Picard.

I didn’t come into this from nothing. I did watch a few episodes from the first season before giving up. I was not really sure why but I simply stopped at one point. But idle hands and all that made me finally watch it all. And yes, I still find that Star Trek Picard is a bad series and a sad chapter for Jean Luc Picard.

There are many things wrong with it. And I don’t think a desire to get as many old familiar faces into the show, whether it fits a previously established narrative or not (e.g., Guinan and Dr. Soong being the leading example) is the main fault. It definitely doesn’t help but I think I could live with it.

I belive the main driver for my dislake of the show is mostly connected to show’s desire to have a story arc spanning a season. This makes writers focus on highly unrealistic scenarios just to keep excitement up. And yes, I do understand irony that complaining about unrealistic things in SciFi show might raise. God knows my favorite TNG had many those moments. But they were easier to swallow as they were fleeting and not pushed into viewer’s face.

Here things went from bad to worse in the season two. While one could half-heartedly claim that future is just how it is, decision to have a second season in the year 2024 only served to expose problem more. It’s just freaking two years into the future and you cannot just introduce “database of their entire life history” as a convinient plot point or have borg queen eat lead-acid battery to get Lithum (to name just two of many nonsenses).

I know, it might just be my age catching up to me and I simply don’t understand why Picard is much better than anything else in the Star Trek universe. Be it as it may, I will continue my vacation with TNG decontamination. Good knows I need my Captain.

Attending Conference in the Time of Covid

Working from home is saving a lot of time. No commute, no lunch break, no interruptions. So it seemed like a good idea to attend an online conference - especially since I got one ticket for free. While signing up it asked for my work email and phone. As often before I gave my real information. I always did so for many conferences without any issues. Topic didn’t interest me much but I saw no downside in “attending” it. Worse case scenario, I’ll just have it on in background while doing some work.

But it’s like universe wanted to teach me a lesson…

As soon as conference has finished, I started getting emails from vendors. And phone calls. Many phone calls. During “physical” conference times I occasionally did get into touch with interesting people. However, it was only when I found their product interesting and of my own volition. Never before I had conference share my phone number with sponsors. I guess this is a new normal.

I pretty much had every company present at the conference give me a call by now. I must say that most of them were pleasant and understanding when I told them I was not interested / had no use for their product, but surprising number of them were as close as you can get to a spam call.

Companies we never worked with claimed to be calling from “our” account team. There was a lot of persuasion to connect them to somebody higher up. And a lot of trouble hanging up. You see, I am used to “no” meaning no. And I expect the other person to accept it so we can end the conversation on a pleasant note. I’m old fashioned that way.

Pretty much each unpleasant caller had the same tactic. Ignore “no” and pepper me with questions about company I work for. As I refuse to answer a question, ask why and immediately pop another. Damn it, I had spammers that were more pleasant callers than these.

Well, lesson learned…

For Your Protection

I rarely game these days but I do occasionally join my kids in play. Sometimes it’s Starcraft, sometimes Unreal Tournament, sometimes good old Minecraft.

But sometime they want to play something else online. Like when my son asked me to play Hypixel with him. And I joined. Only to be banned 2 seconds after - before even being able to do anything. Fortunately there is an appeal process and surprisingly it works fast. I had a response to my appeal within an hour. And that’s where the good news stops.

First they force you to go through the process of changing Minecraft password for no reason whatsoever. Instead of telling why you got banned, they will just point to generic list of reasons why you could get banned without any specifics on which of those reasons was the one for banning me. Although that did shed a bit of light as one of the reasons might be a VPN usage.

On my computer I have VPN turned on by default and I believe any sane person should do the same. While not bullet-proof, VPN does increase both privacy and security. However, looking over at Hypixel’s forum, getting banned for using VPN is quite common. Excuse is tracking cheaters but that doesn’t pass smell test for me. You are already using Minecraft account for this - and that costs money. Isn’t blocking Minecraft account actually more painful than indiscriminately blocking the whole IP range? Those wanting to cheat will simply use range you haven’t insta-banned.

In any case, my appeal was accepted. So permanent ban was changed into 30-day temporary ban in order “give you enough time to properly secure your account.” Their server, their rules I guess. However, suggesting that using VPN is somehow not “properly securing my account” is next-level of nonsense responses. Are they really training kids (and yes, most of their audience are kids) that VPN=not secure? I guess those advertisements really need you location that badly. :)

I Pronounce You Hausband And Wife

In order to prove my marriage to US government I had to obtain a marriage certificate from my home country - Croatia. Instead of getting standard certificate and translating it myself, I decided to get a fancy international one.

As it was agreed way back in 1976, its format leaves a lot to be desired. The front side is written in Croatian (official Croatian language) with French right below it. What makes it international is fact there are a few more languages, including English, on the other side included as the legend. On the front side you have numbered fields and in legend on the back you see what that field corresponds to in multiple languages.

While I would personally expect any computerized office to simply print the marriage certificate in any language directly on the front page, I guess legend on the back is not the worst solution out there. And I’m sure there is some obscure legal reason behind why the French language that almost nobody in Croatia speaks gets the front page treatment instead of German or English. But that’s not what pisses me off about this form.

The most annoying thing there is number of errors visible on the first glance.

Let’s start with the first field. This one has name of the country written in Croatian, French, German, English, Spanish, etc. All fields following it have their corresponding meaning printed in German, English, Spanish, etc. Notice what’s missing? Yes - other fields have no Croatian or French description as those are already written on the front page. But the first field gets to be inconsistent.

And no, this minor issue is not where the fun stops.

Second fields has English translation of “Extract from the marriage registratica n°.” This field is generous enough to give us two mistakes, the first one being decidedly non-English (or probably any language) word registratica. Second error is n° abbreviation. In English it can be written as №, Nº, N° (for non-Unicode folks), No., no., and probably many more forms. But it’s almost never written in the French “n°” style. Yep, English translation of this field offers an unique mix between non-existent word and abbreviation in the wrong language.

And I will finish with my favorite error.

Field 5 has its English translation listed as “Hausband”. Since field following it has translation “Wife”, I can only assume it was meant to say “Husband” rather than something that could be interpreted as German house band. How the heck you can have word husband misspelled in the country where 97% kids in 2014 were supposedly taught English? While I don’t have stats for my generation, I doubt it was lower than 75% even in 2K days.

And don’t tell me that was just an accident - the same darn mistake is also on the front page as part of a smaller legend translated as “Death of the hausband” - which does sound like a good band name when I think about it.

Croatia has been an independent country for 28 years now. I am not sure when exactly international marriage certificate was introduced but it has been present for at least 10 years now, if not since the very beginning. I can imagine semi-valid excuses for the first person doing the translation - maybe it was simply some clerk who wasn’t aware how bad his English was.

However, persisting these errors through god-knows how many reprints is something that cannot be excused.

PS: And no, I didn’t check all fields nor I bothered with other languages. However, since English translation is this butchered, I can only imagine all the levels of wrongness for other languages.

PPS: If you want to see both front and back page for yourself you can download example form from Croatian government website.

PPPS: If you want to see better translated marriage certificate there is one from the Macedonian government.

Things That Irk Me With Android Devices

After going exclusively for a while with the iSide of mobile phones, I decided to get back with Android. It felt like greeting an old friend again. However, I found some things that annoy the heck out of me with Android devices these days.

The first one is darn “silent switch” - you have it on the side of every iPhone ever. An easy way to check or adjust whether your phone is silenced or not without looking at it. And no, fiddling with volume buttons in your pocket doesn’t count as “normal” Android behavior is to share media and ringtone volume. And reversing silencing also means guessing your ring volume every time. Or simply giving up and using it in either silent or max volume mode. And don’t blame Apple patents for this as there are (rare) Android manufacturers that have it - like OnePlus.

The most curious thing about this physical switch is that I didn’t miss it before I went to Apple. I was OK with volume buttons and got used to their quirks. However, coming back to Android, I gave up on damn volume buttons for anything except volume control. While getting used to silent switch took no time, getting used to life without it takes eternity.

And frankly I could stop here as all other things together don’t annoy me as that simple switch. However, I will mention a few more issues. :)

Lack of headphone jack on new devices might be OK for some but I find it really limiting. Apple successfully removed it first and then everybody just had to follow. I have a feeling if Apple sold a polished turd, other manufacturers would start rubbing their’s too. Yes, I do know Bluetooth exists and I actually have reasonably good wireless headphones. But they are also pricier, have batteries, and I even sometime forget to bring them with me. You know what I always have? Pair or two of cheap 3.5mm headphones that need nothing. I can use them for rare sessions in (non-Pokemon) gym, driving a bike, or while walking through woods. If I lose them - so what?

And whoever mentions headphone dongle first can stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Notches are my enemy too. Like in the carrot measuring contest (what? you don’t do those?) all manufacturers are trying to have screen to body ratio as high as possible. So they notch the hell out their phones. The more expensive phone the uglier notch (or two) it has to have. Yes, I know, people say you get used to it. Well, I can get also get used to having a screen without notch in the first place. :)

Of course I will complain also about the fingerprint sensor on the back. Not only this allows me to fiddle my phone for an uncomfortable minute before hitting it just right but it also means I need to physically move phone to get under it. Too much work for just a quick glance toward notification.

To continue with “get of my lawn” old man gripes, I find even such inconvenient fingerprint sensor strongly preferred to face unlock. Not only face unlock gives you the same drawback of having to pick up phone to unlock it, but you also cannot share your face with other people (unless you’re Nicholas Cage).

For example my phone at this moment has fingerprints for me, my wife, and both of my kids. My wife’s phone is likewise setup for the whole family. My kids’ phone have my wife and me added as secondary fingerprints as they don’t trust each other. :) And stop yelling privacy concerns as (a) they’re kids, and (b) I don’t actually snoop through their messages nor they snoop over mine (as far as I know :)).

Shared logins are awesome if you play some game together (e.g. Pokemon Go - yes, still) and one of you is not there - no worries, just use your own fingerprint and play on their phone. Or for the admin in the family - i.e. me - when I go over each phone to either setup new app or I need to test something during night and I don’t want to wake everybody up just for login. Yes, I could track their PINs and patterns in password manager but that’s not as friction-free as the good old fingerprint.

I have great hopes for come back of the fingerprint with the new under-the-screen technology but it might be that for the next phone my whole family will have to wear the same mask. :)

PS: And yes, I know that not all these are necessarily just Android faults but general industry trends - especially the damn notch race - but I’m not gonna change title now. :) Maybe some time later I’ll write what I love about Android and why I came back to it to bring balance to the universe.

Fair Use

Well, it was good while it lasted; today I got information from Comcast that they’ll start to enforce 1 TB usage limit starting November 1st.

Explanation given for this is standard “fair use” sermon - those who use more should pay more. Given human notion of fairness and the fact 1 TB is quite high it is easy to agree with their words. However, this is all bullshit. It is just another word for $50 price hike.

You see, in order to keep unlimited bandwidth you just need to add $50 extra to your current $100+ cost. If you don’t and you accidentally go overboard, you pay $200 more. So, for $150 (to take the cheapest plan) you have no worries you might pay $300. It sounds more like a racket than fairness to me - pay me money to prevent something bad happening to you.

If fairness in the compensation for traffic was the primary goal, and Comcast is stating $50 extra would cover unlimited portion, then the fair thing would be to charge those $50 only to users that go over 1 TB. Auto-upgrade them for that month and that’s it. And, while you are at it, if user spends only 100 GB return him $50. I mean, it is only fair that ones that use less pay less.

Guess what, an option to pay less is not in Comcast’s plan. Not there is any option of rollover of “unused” data from previous month. And no, you cannot actually verify Comcast’s usage meter for accuracy. I know that my own router shows difference of 15% as compared to the Comcast’s meter. Guess in which direction. ;)

And yes, this might sound like a bickering when I have a huge 1 TB allocation that I generally don’t reach anyhow. But 100 GB seemed as a huge amount too in the times before Netflix. Considering video goes 4K and that more and more services are up on the Internet, a year or two from now, 1 TB will be easily reachable. Heck, if you backup stuff on the Internet (e.g. SpiderOak), you are essentially one crash away from it.

Of course, by that time, everybody will be on the new unlimited plan, paying $50 of the “protection money”. At some point that plan will have enough people on it that old “limited” plan will be retired. However, some users will use more data then the others so a new limit of 5 TB will be instituted with an option to pay $100 to make it unlimited… History repeating itself at its best.

The Best Western Twitter Experience

A month ago I went to visit some of the Washington state islands; San Juan, Whidbey, Fidalgo, and lot. As we don’t live in the immediate neighborhood and there are quite a few islands to visit, my family and I decided to book a hotel in Mt. Vernon. Best Western it is.

After a day full of boats and hiking we’ve finally arrived to the Best Western Plus Skagit Valley Inn and Convention Center in Mt. Vernon and were informed there is no water available. Frankly, the first idea at that moment was to cancel and go to another hotel. However, pleasant guy working the reception convinced us to stay - water is going to be available in 30 minutes. So we got our stuff to room regardless, went out for a diner, expecting to have shower after we are back. Yep, you’ve guessed it - no such luck.

But we were again assured water return was imminent. Few hours later we gave up on waiting and went for bed refreshed only by some wet towels my wife fortunately always carries. Yes, morning was water-less too with the same “almost there” statements. So we packed and went onto another day of hiking.

Once I got home and got a shower (finally), I’ve decided to tweet Best Western. And surprisingly got a reply pointing me toward e-mail to contact. And so I did.

It has been more than a month since and still there is no reply from Best Western. Not an apology, not an additional question, not saying I’m expecting too much. Absolutely nothing. Full silence.

And frankly that pisses me off. If they didn’t reply to my tweet, I would be ok with it - just another complaint lost in the sea. What they did was masterpiece: they publicly replied to tweet and then just “forgot” to follow up. They made an impression of solving their customer’s issue while doing no work at all. Even better, if somebody calls them on that, they can claim its other department’s fault. Public relations dream - keep appearance of being active while not fixing anything at all. :)

All said, not much changes for me. I wanted to get the story out and I did. I don’t intend to ask Best Western for anything nor will I accept anything. I don’t even want a refund - what’s payed is payed. I am even going to stay in Best Western again - this was the first major issue after staying in quite a few of them over the years. Hell, I still remember one in Vienna as my second home.

Maybe the only thing that will change is me treating words “we’re going to have it fixed in 30 minutes” as a signal to get away as fast as possible.

[2016-08-03: I did receive partial refund today to the tune $70 out of $150.]

Open Source Peddling

I am fan of free software. Heck, I make quite a few of free programs myself. That is why it pains me to see what is happening last few years with it - malware, malware, everywhere!

For example take CamStudio, once a decent screen recording program. I’ve downloaded my setup from www.camstudio.org and everything seemed legit. Until I was offered was Search Offer powered by Bing during setup - I of course declined. After that I was offered ByteFence (which ironically promises protection against malware) and Yahoo powered search. Yes, the same install offers both Bing and Yahoo powered search. I declined them both. Guess what, it tried to install Search Offer regardless.

I found this slightly unnerving so I removed all traces of it and checked for the source code. I did find it on SourceForge after a bit of googling (camstudio.org doesn’t offer a link toward it). Installer found there was actually without malware (as far as I could see) but it was also unsigned and more than 10 times the size (11 MB vs 1 MB).

So, on one side we have install downloaded from SourceForge, 11 MB in size and unsigned. On other side we have 1 MB setup digitally signed by Path Quality (Alpha Criteria Ltd.). Which one looks more official? Yes, a search for Alpha Criteria Ltd. will show its malware roots but I still find it disturbing that such shady figures actually have a valid digital signature.

There is a real danger in someone taking your installer and making setup with malware. You cannot really do anything about that. But this is not the case here. Not only that camstudio.org is officially looking, with forum and everything, but also you can see that Nick Smith is one registering domain. Going to SourceForge pages, you can also find Nick Smith there as one of the main contributors.

What we have here is one of, possibly rogue, developer intentionally packing malware into product’s setup for profit.

This is something I have noticed for a while now. Freeware programs (regardless if open source or not) have been having more and more aggressive and misleading ads in recent years. Every time I go to download something I need to figure which link is actual download and which ones are “download” links designed to click-bait you into ad. It is a shitty and misleading practice but at least it only wastes your time. Packing malware into what amounts to officially looking software package on the officially looking pages, is another, more devious approach.

Realistically, you will not earn money on freeware. If you expect open source to get you some quick money, you are an idiot. Building open source and/or freeware software is something you should do for enjoyment and because you have an itch to scratch. You might not get money out of it but it will provide great learning experience, it will get your name out there, and possibly you might even get a tangible benefit out of it.

Or go the money route and make application for sale - there is nothing bad with that. For example, developers of Bandicam, also a screen recording program, decided to charge for their software. That is an honest approach.

Earning money by incorporating malware into your freeware application is not only dishonest but deserving of its own circle in hell.

Planned Obsolescence Is Not Black&white

I always feel like half a story is told when I hear about the planned obsolescence and how manufacturers are screwing us all. It always start with an example of device breaking apart right after warranty expires and ends with “it was better in the old times”. Is it really that black and white in the world of electronics?

If you compare “good old times” with now, you will see that electronic devices are dirt cheap. Big part of that is economy of scale and cheaper hardware chips. But it is also due to newer, smaller processes enabling manufacturers to fit more chips into the same wafer area which enables them to earn more. And yes, with all chip competition out there, more often than not these savings are passed to consumer.

But smaller process also impacts durability - chip with a foot-wide oxide layer (exaggerating a bit) is definitely going to have more durability than something done in 10 nm process. So yes, that newer, smaller, more power efficient, and undoubtedly better chip will fail sooner than one used in the phones of old. There is no escaping laws of physics.

Another complain I often hear is that nothing can be fixed these days - if something fails you must buy new. And that is bullshit too - almost everything can be fixed. Search on YouTube and you’ll find people playing with BGA level repairs all the times. Real issue is that, while everything can be fixed, it is often not worthy to do so - unless you do it yourself.

Think of the guy doing diagnostics for something as simple as dead capacitor. If he is lucky he can find it fast, if not he might spend hours troubleshooting board that costs $200 to repair. Even if final repair is just a $1, he needs to charge his time. Quite often math ends up being that cost of troubleshooting is simply too high compared to the cost of buying new. It is not that stuff cannot be repaired. It is just that’s not worth the time.

And that is without taking into account time one needs to open the damn device. If we use a phone as example, often you will find excessive amounts of glue without a screw in sight. But that is not (only) manufacturer’s problem. People want nice, curvy designs. People don’t care about the screws when they are buying the phone. I can bet you that 9 out of 10 people will just care that something looks beautiful and that it is cheap. Only time they will care about accessibility of inner hardware is when device fails.

What makes the new devices cheaper all the time is extensive use of plastic, avoiding screws to lower cost of assembly, and removing all parts you can live without. Any manufacturer that would build their devices purely for maintainability and durability would probably be bankrupt within a few years. Partially because its devices would be more expensive but partially just due to time needed to get design just right.

Do we have a problem with devices falling into the obsolescence faster and faster? I would say yes. But manufacturers are not to blame. It is us consumers voting with our wallets. As long as consumers want cheap and beautifully designed devices, repairability will suffer.

Pebble, the Second

Imagine this scenario: you are in the woods, lost, tired, all you need is to find the north. You look at your smartwatch, start compass application and you are saved.

I had lived through this scenario (minus the dramatics) and I’ve tried to use my Pebble. Year ago, with old firmware, this would work. I knew new Pebble Time firmware screwed things by requiring a phone connection in order to swap active application. What I didn’t know is that damn thing now also requires Internet access. Why? Why? WHY?

There are a couple of things I ask of my smartwatch. It has to be water resistant, it has to have battery last for a few days, it has to properly do notifications, and it has to work without phone. Pebble had it all for me until new firmware. Since they started with this Time interface my use cases got screwed up. I am not saying it is a bad interface as such - maybe there are crazies out there who like the fact now they can actually hold only one application in memory. It just became painful for me.

I know Pebble has a new Kickstarter with a bunch of new devices. And I was tempted for a while to actually back it up. However, looking at all of them, there is nothing for me there. I don’t need heart monitor as I am pretty sure my heart is working and that I’ll be the first person to notice when it stops. I don’t need the color screen - wife has one and the only difference is worst readability. And I definitely don’t need Core.

Pebble lately puts a lot of hope into tracking activities but then allows swapping applications only when smartphone (with Internet connection!) is available. It puts a lot into the battery life but then sucks the life out of it if bluetooth connection is not just right. I think their desire to cover all bases is making them produce more devices than they can realistically support. They have five different models already. Kickstarter brings this up to seven. All this brings firmware quality down…

I am not saying I won’t buy another Pebble, who knows, maybe the perfect firmware is out there. I am just saying I’ll wait for my Steel to die first. When that happens I will decide on what to buy next. And frankly, it doesn’t seem likely it will be another Pebble.