Rubenerd

Happy Sunday! I’ve done my own silly, sporadic podcast for the last fifteen years or so, and all my favourite shows are done by independent producers. I love that I hear people’s personalities and thoughts, not a PR department or an over-produced commercial radio show with laser sounds and bumpers. With one notable exception, they’ve all turned out to be great people too, some of whom I’ve had the pleasure and honour of meeting in person years later in the US.

So when I heard that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had done a satirical self-help video about why you shouldn’t start a podcast back in May, I smiled at their irrelevancy and moved on. But I saw it in my bookmarks yesterday and decided why not?

Good heavens! I’m sure it wasn’t supposed to be a patronising ramble of incoherent nonsense, but here we are. It opens with black and white shots of whom are I assume are various Australian celebrities among ABC staff. The setup for the joke dragged like a conference call on a late Friday afternoon, but eventually they get to the point:

Don’t start a podcast. Just… don’t do it. You might feel like it’s a productive use of your time right now. You probably already got a USB mic and a spare room ready to go. And your mate Dave’s got some interesting opinions. But we’re here to tell you, he doesn’t. He really doesn’t. He’s a fuckwit.

Australians take the piss like it’s a national sport, but what’s this gate-keeping nonsense? Was watching this video a productive use of our time? And so what if Dave, isolated from friends and family, finds solace in having a chat and publishing it for people to share and comment on? Where do we sign up to gain approval from you fine people?

I’ve never understood this attitude. It’s the open web; if you don’t like something, don’t listen to it!

We don’t need your “true crime exclusive” which is just you reading Wikipedia articles to your housemates. We don’t need your minute by minute breakdown of every episode of Parks and Rec.

The edgiest stuff they could sling was a show that aired half a decade ago, and a Wikipedia reference comedians were using in the 2000s. Okay fine they’re out of touch, but I couldn’t help but notice a few of these people started their own podcasts this year, some of which deal with TV! I… what?!

These people need a mirror… for me to break over the heads to ensure them seven years of bad luck. Is that how that works?

What are you going to do, send everyone in your contact list a newsletter? And force them to mark you as spam instead of unsubscribing? Because they’re scared to hurt your feelings? We’re in the middle of a pandemic!

Okay I’m taking the mirror back, we don’t need the projection!

🌲 🌲 🌲

Until this point it’d been funny, in a Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes to the face way. But then things take a sinister turn:

Look, it’s pretty straight forward. Just don’t star a podcast. Make some pasta from scratch, like everyone else, and shut up. The greatest gift you can give your fellow human beings right now, is to shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Come on. Do it. Don’t start a podcast.

That sent a chill up my spine. Having a government-owned broadcaster tell you repeatedly with monochromatic video and haunting piano music to sit down, cook, and “shut the fuck up” would be some next-level Orwell meets Menzies if their lack of self-awareness and piss-weak delivery weren’t so unintentionally hilarious.

But let’s take a step back, being careful to avoid the shards of glass and the tatters of their dignity and self-respect. Wow, I’m not pulling punches today! My interest in videos like this isn’t to critique bad acting or failed punchlines; I want to understand the rationale behind them. What was the ABC’s objective here?

Occam’s Razor would suggest it’s merely a failed comedy sketch to drum up interest in the ABC, given the quality of the source material and the delivery. But there’s a subtext here, and it’s the same one the newspapers peddled about the Internet in the 1990s, and the RIAA about independent music. The unwashed masses are producing their own material which, thanks to modern computer equipment and streaming platforms, is competitive on content, quality, and/or reach. They can’t respond by upping their game, so they delegitimise independent media instead, stereotyping it as the “[un]interesting” ramblings of “your mate Dave”.

It reminds me of mid 2010s trolls who’d say awful or stupid things, then laugh and say it was a joke when being called out for it. Eventually Poe’s Law takes effect and you wonder whether they really are joking, or if they’re using it as cover. Most of these actors and TV anchors are so clueless I suspect they had no idea they were being used in this way for this surreal video. But I’ll bet at least some of them did. Sit down, shut up, and become the passive consumers we tell you to be!

Am I over-analysing what was just a failed joke? Yes. Does that mean I’m equally lacking in self-awareness? Probably! But I’m not claiming to be the ultimate arbiter of interest and taste. I want you to write, start a podcast, paint, draw, code, make music, do what you love. Don’t let these, to use their term, “fuckwits”, guilt you away from it, especially during these pandemic times. Art is one of the things saving us right now.

Check out Fireside.fm if you’d like to start your own podcast. Dan Benjamin is a gentleman, and it looks like a great service.

It just occurred to me that the Acronym Finder’s logo is an initialism, not an acronym. Unless we say it as Ahf, or Arf. Wait, those are pronounced the same way. This post is base AF.

You know what AF couldn’t stand for? Bagel crisp. You know what it could stand for? Bagel crisp, if you misspelled it. Wikipedia describes these culinary masterpieces as:

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Bagel crisp in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.

It’s this kind of insightful commentary I’m sure everyone comes here to read. Comments in response to this post will be ignored.

Earlier this week I wrote about the discomfort of sharing ideas I agree with, from people I otherwise don’t. It’s part of a broader thought I’ve been trying to reconcile that I can’t and won’t ever understand all of someone’s intentions or circumstances, but that it doesn’t change the fact they’re abusive to me or do things I take moral issue with.

Then Merlin Mann dropped this truth bomb on the latest episode:

When I try to image why somebody is the way they are, I’m projecting my best idea as to why they are the way they are. In the most blinkered way we think about these things we say, to quote the Renoir film, “the terrible thing in life is everyone has their reasons”. Just because we all agree that everyone we disagree with aren’t nuts, doesn’t mean we agree on any part of why that is.

So when people like me go “aw man, what must it be like to be Rudy Giuliani?” [..] I don’t know. But the truth is, I can’t know. And more’s the pity. Because as much as I try to analyse—as in, break into pieces and make sense of—I don’t know how much closer I am to understanding another person if I’m mostly using the model of me and the people around me to try and understand why they are the way they are.

I would like to think—I have to think—that’s a big problem with our various disconnects. It’s not just the president assuming everyone’s like him, in as much as he’s the most special boy in the world, it’s also because we’re always trying to discover why someone does that nefarious thing based on what their “disability” is. What’s their model for psychosis?

Many, many times this. I’ve been writing about my own struggle to understand intentions for a while. I can’t find the other post, but I mentioned a couple of years ago that I wanted to spend more time assuming good intentions, or at least not ascribing the worst. Rationally, we don’t know people’s circumstances; someone being rude in public could be a dick, or just lost their job. But being empathetic is hard when the other actor either doesn’t care to reciprocate, or worse, is threatening you or people you care about.

I also realised I spend so much of my mental energy making excuses for people and trying to understand them which, even if based in good intentions myself, are unknowable. Or at least to me in that moment in time.

Reconcilable Differences is a fantastic show. If you’re new to podcasts or burned out by the current crop, please consider it.

I overheard this at the coffee shop I’m sitting at this morning:

Person A: It’s not that people don’t want kids, it’s that they can’t.

Person 2: Having three kids in Sydney is the ultimate flex. Especially if they’re in private school, what must that be, 100k a year? Each?

Person Γ: I’d love kids, but forget about it on both our salaries.

I don’t know how people afford kids in Singapore, either. Clara and I are DINKS and obsessively track our spending, and it still seems crazy to think about.

Posts on this blog wouldn’t be complete without a litany of spelling mistakes. Here was my post on video conference fatigue:

I get that people think video calls make them more personal and engaging, and I’ll bet certain bosses think they’re a great way to micromanage and make sure they’re employees are paying attention. But it’s counterproductive, at least most of the time.

They are employees are paying attention? Isn’t English great?

The BBC’s technology news site (RSS feed here) ran a story about insecure doorbells being sold on large, trusted websites:

The watchdog tested 11 devices which were purchased from popular online marketplaces in the UK. Brands included Qihoo, Ctronics and Victure. It found that among the most common flaws were weak password policies, and a lack of data encryption. Two of the devices in the test could be manipulated to steal network passwords and then hack other smart devices within the home.

Once again I’m compelled to quote FreeBSD maintainer and author George Neville-Neil: the S in IoT stands for Security. We in the industry had the chance to introduce a new market segment where security and trust were foundational to its design, and we didn’t. We won’t for the next class of devices either, because business priorities simply don’t align with data privacy and security.

The other overarching issue here is the blazé attitude about smart devices like this. People acknowledge that these things need secure passwords, but so what if someone gains access? It’s just a smart lightbulb, or a doorbell. I don’t even fault the general public for this; these devices are sold with the words “encryption”, “secure”, and most dangerous of all: “simple”.

The word virus is such an elegant descriptor to describe attacks, even though we’ve agreed they only describe automated, self-propagating tools. All a disease needs is a foothold, after which it can spread and cause damage. This is precisely why these IoT devices are so dangerous: people think they’re low risk, and they’re connecting them to the same networks that host their computers and phones.

So where do we go from here? How do we advise loved ones and friends in our capacity as nerds from whom they ask advice? I don’t think I got that sentence right.

There are online guides that argue these devices should be run on isolated networks to reduce the impact of issues, such as on a new VLAN or wireless hotspot. They’re important for underscoring why these devices are dangerous, and their advice is practical. But leaving aside the idea that laypeople would even know to search for these guides let alone understand them, they unwittingly pass the buck and responsibility from the businesses selling these devices onto consumers. Where have we all heard that before? And how does that fit with being billed as “easy to install and use”? Caveat emptor is a tough sell for people who aren’t in IT, and where false advertising is so abundant.

I’ve since read there are people who’s quality of life has been dramatically improved by the improvements to accessibility these devices bring. That makes me unreasonably happy, provided they’re installed and maintained properly; the latter of which is a whole other topic about IoT! But I argue the cost simply isn’t worth it for most people. Not until we get some proper protections in place, in whatever form they end up taking.

Heaven help me if a Hololive-themed smart clock or something equally pointless were to ever come out though cough.

Seeing Amelia and Gura tilt their avatars while playing this arm-wrestling mini game made Clara’s and my evening yesterday. Damn it, Hololive EN.

David Gelles summarised the issues with the troubled Boeing jetliner for the New York Times, via Today Online:

As an avalanche of investigations and reporting over the past 20 months made clear, the true cause of the crashes wasn’t faulty software. It was a corporate culture gone horribly wrong.

He detailed the single point of failure design of MCAS, and the corporate motivations for profit that overrode the concerns of engineers. It’s scary, precisely because it’s so believable.

I’ve talked about the journalistic trick of claiming false equivalency to offer a fresh take on what’s a re-baked idea. But the technical issues here, like so many in engineering, science, and IT, really can be explained by people.

It doesn’t seem all that long ago when everyone and their caninies were writing for Medium, the pseudo-blog that anyone could publish on. I chose my words carefully there; you’re a writer for Medium, and it’s not a true blog given you surrender full control and ownership of your writing. This is what sets all major social networks apart from blogs, even if they still present thoughts in a chronological order.

(There’s debate whether sites that aren’t chronoligically ordered can still be classified as a blog, or whether it’s a personal site or wiki. I would have hung my hat on the above definition before, but now I think it’s far more useful to talk about them in the context of control. Which is great: no one company or entity owns the term or its definition).

Dave Winer noticed a trend yesterday, though it’s not a step forwards. Emphasis added:

Very quietly Medium is no longer the online place-of-record, which is good, because as a money-losing tech startup they have no obligation to maintain a record.The bad news is that the new incumbent is yet another tech startup. If we want the net to work, we need some institutions that are not-for-profit. archive.org is a good backstop. But the web imho deserves more.

What Dave implies here is what we’ve see time and time again: sites that absorb all this creative energy from people are shut down at the behest of their owners. Because the owners aren’t us, and their motives lie elsewhere. I don’t worry if Medium will be shut down, I’m counting the days.

But I think it goes even beyond whether something is for profit or not. Look at the major feature that every social network has been pushing hard lately: the idea of the ephemeral story. Snapchat were the first major platform to popularise it, and Twitter have just added it. There’s something almost Bhuddist about the idea of living in the present moment with these works and throwing them away, though I doubt sharing your exploits with the world minute by minute to chase a dopamine hit is! What it’s really doing is conditioning those of us outside traditional media that our material is disposable. We saw the current landscape, and somehow managed to peddle backwards even faster.

I happen to think everyone has something interesting to say, and there’s a larger social good and necessity for records after our time has passed. But in the 2010s and early 2020s we’re stuck in this rut that we need the blessing of a large commercial website to validate and publish what we think. I agree with Dave; the people who make up the web deserve more.

This Twitter meme went by a few days ago. I wrote:

Four (then five) girls have tea and cake, and sometimes play music. Wait, that still sounds aspirational and wonderful. Time for a rewatch, me thinks.

We need them again, now more than ever.