Rubenerd

John ended a comment on a Gizmodo tablet review with the following line.

As to who is right, Cranz uses at least 12 exclamation marks in this review, which I’d wager speaks to her taste.

… whoops! I think exclamation marks render text more friendly, but I guess that’s just me. I use them liberally.

For those who don’t remember, Gizmodo was the outfit that stole a prototype iPhone, then got precious when they were called out on it. They also used a photo of me and asked if their readers were willing to look as stupid. When I called them out for being rude, and for violating my Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence, they didn’t even apologise.

As far as I’m concerned, Gizmodo and their ilk are gutter journalism.

I love wandering around Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Here’s a 1960s photo of passengers and crew abord a Scandanavian Airlines flight; everything about this is amazing. Thanks to SAS for making this available:

Here’s the Parliament of Georgia by the VOA; I love its bright and airy feel. It took me a few moments to realise the impressions on the front wall are that of the Georgian Flag.

I got those images by reading their respective articles, but this photo of a Norwegian Elkhound by Dmitry Guskov was from hitting the Random Article link. We’re two out of three for Scandanavian photos!

What a delightful dog. Who’s a good dog? Who’s a good dog? I bet you are! Yes you are!

In our continuing series of things you already know unless you don’t, we take a look at deleting directories in your *nix shell. Generally you would do this:

# rm -r folder

The -r flag tells rm to recursively delete subdirectories and files, like the DOS deltree of yore. If you don’t do this, you’re told:

==> rm: folder/: is a directory

Little known—or at least unsung—is the rmdir command. It only works on empty directories, but like its mkdir counterpart you can specify -p to delete each empty subfolder in a tree:

# rmdir -p folder/subfolder/bird-is-the-word/です/

A marble surface would be a fancy counter part. Or the cupboards that make up the structural component. But getting back to rmdir, from the FreeBSD and Darwin manpage(1):

The rmdir utility removes the directory entry specified by each directory argument, provided it is empty.

I thought perhaps rmdir predated rm, like del predated deltree. But from the same manpage(1):

A rm command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

I had one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had since entering IT a decade ago. I was trying to SSH into a FreeBSD box, like a gentleman:

$ ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

I ran SSH with the -vvvv verbosity flag, but it just terminated with the same line. Logs in /var/log didn’t show anything.

What proceeded was a fruitless, head scratching debug process. The firewall for the box was set to accept my IPs. ps aux showed the daemon was running, and netstat showed it was on the correct port. The target drive had sufficient space. My pubkeys were in the right place, and all had the correct permissions. But weirdest of all, identical sshd_config files and pubkeys on other boxes worked.

The accepted wisdom at this stage is to run OpenSSH without daemonising, so you can see debug output. I ran this with a high port on the server:

$ /usr/sbin/sshd -Ddp 22223

Then tried connecting:

$ ssh <server hostname> -p 22223

Back on the server, I got this:

==> /usr/sbin/sshd: Undefined symbol "Fssh_get_remote_port"

Now we’re getting somewhere. undefied symbol almost always means a version mismatch with the system. OpenSSH comes with base instead of the ports system, so I checked my uname, and it was running FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE, even though everywhere else it referenced 11.2. So the issue was an incomplete freebsd-upgrade.

To resolve, I cleared existing downloads:

# rm -rf /var/db/freebsd-update

Then forced FreeBSD update to upgrade, and supplied the version of the system:

# freebsd-update -F -r 12.0-RELEASE \
    --currently-running 11.1-RELEASE upgrade
# freebsd-update install

I restarted the machine, and I had FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE, and SSH access.

This is already a week old, but it’s incredible. The Australian government’s Home Affairs Minister told Sky News:

Peter Dutton says he has always seen ‘parliament as a disadvantage for sitting governments’, following the final Newspoll for 2018 which had the coalition trailing Labor 55-45 on a two-party preferred basis.

He’s not wrong; holding votes and being held accountable must be a hindrance for advancing any agenda, especially when the public is against you and you’ve lost your majority.

I’m positively relishing the idea of voting these muppets out next year.

Replicators are a key part of the Star Trek universe. When you have a device that can create almost anything you could want or need, the compulsion to amass material wealth, or flaunt riches, totally vanishes. What’s the point of trying to keep up with the Jonses in a world like that?

I’ve read a lot into the economic and sociological impact 3D printing currently has, and much of it centres around this idea. With the right raw materials, 3D printers will eventually be sophisticated enough to print clothing, furniture, cars, even food.

That’s all fascinating and exciting. But in the short term, a less trumpeted benefit of 3D printing is its environmental impact. Rather than throwing out devices because of a broken component — ancillary or critical — people are replicating replacement parts in 3D printers.

Take this printed ceiling fan knob by amogharadhya on Thingiverse. Or while I’m at it, Medhi’s [printed lamp connector] in an ElectroBOOM! episode. Both of these devices would have likely made a trip to landfill otherwise. And they’re by no means unique.

It’s premature to say 3D printing will wind back on the breathtakingly short-sighted disposable age started in the mid 20th century. The bulk of these replacement parts are also largely being fashioned from petrochemical polymers. But it’s a start.

[printed lamp connector]:

This is the best sentence I’ve written in years:

I’m amazed that for all the dozens – perhaps hundreds – of keys I’ve had over the years, I’ve only had one other one brand new one fail in this way.

This was on my recent dodgy USB key post, since fixed. Either I hadn’t had coffee yet, or too much.

Our Kiwi friends across the pond are subject to a court-ordered suppression order. A certain large tech company let details slip, arguably because they index the stuff we all publish online. But instead of showing contrition, they… well, you can guess.

Toby Manhire wrote an article exploring the dark side of these companies. This paragraph was especially on point, emphasis added:

They preach the open internet on the back of the most opaque machines in big business. They’ve released a wrecking ball into traditional media, and so the public square, and so democracy. They’re brilliant and addictive, and staffed by some of the cleverest people in the world. It’s hard to imagine life without them. And they’ve hoovered up all the revenue and none of the responsibility.

Take a guess to which companies he refers. The fact you know speaks volumes.

I’ve given up most sugar. Which lead me to think whether some of my favourite cocktails could be made without it. Laura Dolson of Very Well Fit gave some history to the drink I didn’t realise:

Whiskey Sours date back to the 1860s and were a common drink among sailors who drank spirits when water was in short supply. Lemons or limes were added to the drink to prevent scurvy, which was common among sailors, and water and sugar were added for taste.

Today, you can buy a premade Whiskey Sour mix. The only problem with these powdered or bottled sour mixes is that they come with a whole lot of sugar. Fortunately, you can swap out the premade drinks and replace them with a delicious sugar-free Whiskey Sour, made all on your own.

She suggests using stevia. Stevia is fine, but now I’m interested if you could make without sweetener at all, or whether it would be too tart.

I rarely drink cocktails. But I love any drink with lemon, lime, and bitters. Not to be confused with the national drink of Australia with that exact name.

I wrote this update to my #AAbill post last week:

Update, Monday 10th December: The Twitters are awash with hot-takers claiming the bill isn’t about breaking encryption. How technological measures can be implemented without back doors or weakened encryption eludes me, but it does highlight further absurdity with how ambiguous and unworkable this hurried legislation is. And can we all please just agree this is a horrid idea without the government dividing and conquering us for your social media karma… again?

Privacy advocate and all around wonderful person @Aral had the best takedown for these people. E2EE is end-to-end encryption:

In an E2EE system you cannot comply with the law. Ergo, to comply with the law your system must not be E2EE. #aabill

And in this tweet, on the practical distinction without a difference of breaking encryption mathematically, versus breaking its implementation in a governement-manded compromised system:

Indeed. And if you have an E2EE system & you get “asked” (access is demanded), you cannot plead ignorance of the law or mathematical impossibility. It is clear at that point that you were in contempt by using an E2EE system when you could have used a compliant system.

It’s to be expected that nerds like us drill into the minutea. But blanket statements like the AABill isn’t about encryption are not helpful at all.