Rubenerd

A few technical podcasters I listen to keep using the term problematical. I didn’t think it was a word, but according to WordNet:

Overview of adj problematical

The adj problematical has 2 senses (no senses from tagged texts)

1. debatable, problematic, problematical – (open to doubt or debate; “If you ever get married, which seems to be extremely problematic”)

2. baffling, elusive, knotty, problematic, problematical, tough – (making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve or believe; “a baffling problem”; “I faced the knotty problem of what to have for breakfast”; “a problematic situation at home”)

I’ll stick to problematic, but there you go.

Also, you owe it to yourself to install textproc/wordnet, or WordNet from homebrew. Then you can get a definition overview with:

$ wn problematical -over

Or the “-sensa” option, which returned the following synonyms:

Sense 1
debatable, problematic, problematical
=> questionable (vs. unquestionable)

Sense 2
baffling, elusive, knotty, problematic, problematical, tough
=> difficult (vs. easy), hard

If you’ve been blogging for a reasonable length of time, there’s a fair to strong chance that websites you’ve linked to no longer exist. There’s a wider question about the implications of this, but that’s for a future post.

These unintentional broken link archives have attracted a new, specific type of referral spam. Akin to a spearfishing, the junk mailer attempts to persuade you they’re providing a service in return for trackback links to their site. Here’s an example:

Hi Ruben,

I noticed you’ve shared Frostwire (http://frostwire.com/) on this page https://rubenerd.com/p3768/, as you might be aware, Frostwire announced at the end of September that it would be shutting down.

We’ve put together a guide to the best alternatives. Here’s the link.

Perhaps you could update your page to include a link to our guide so that anyone still interested in Frostwire has an alternative.

I hope this helps.

I was almost tricked the first time because the phrasing seemed plausible. But I get at least one a week now, and it’s clear they’re cookie-cutter templates based on web searches sprayed out to bloggers.

The nail in the coffin was when I received a specific one about the Zune. I had been joking about how bad Microsoft’s iPod killer was back in the day, and unsurprisingly the link to the Microsoft site is now gone. Clearly having never read the article, someone attempted to convince me my great Zune articles need updated links.

Since writing this post, I got a flavour of did you get a chance to review spam, though with the same content pasted again:

I’ve not heard from you, so I’ll take the hint and leave you alone but if you do want to fix the broken link here are the details.

I’ve been using Mac OS X, OS X, macOS, or whatever they’re calling it now, since the original betas. And I don’t think I’ve ever had multiple Finder processes running. I’ve had no Finders many times, and multiple BBEdits back in the day.

More curious is the fact Activity Monitor only lists iTunes Helper as Not Responding. I know how it feels.

Need to connect a series of internal SCSI hardware in your vintage computer, but you don’t want to restrict airflow with a ribbon? PC Pitstop has your covered:

Internal Rounded SCSI Cables: For all 68 pin cables with 3 or more connectors, one connector is reserved for the controller and one for the terminator. You will need a terminator unless you already have one. All Ultra 320 cables are fully backwards compatible with older U160/Ultra2/SE devices.

Not pictured are the rounded SCSI cables themselves, owing to the store being out of stock.

I love this video series by flvio.cc, but tracer experiement 25 is my favourite.

Imagine I’m using my old man voice: back when I was a kid, I used to get so excited going to the Apple website after a new Mac came out! I do to an extent today, but it’s tinged with slight trepidation. What regressive design trend have they introduced, etc?

Today’s journey into cautious optimism was checking if the new MacBook Airs had the same Touch Bar as the new MacBook Pros. It took scrolling about 40% of the way down the page, but fortunately the answer is no! Ignore the ugly colour and check out the top-right corner:

It has Touch ID, which is the only reason any of us want the Touch Bar, but without the gimmicky screeen and awkward Esc key. They still use those problematic butterfly keys, but two steps forward, one step back.

Which reminds me, I need to hurry up and get a 2015 15" MacBook Pro before the last surviving specimens disappear.

Matt Brown wrote this for CRN:

Cisco is launching the SMB track to take advantage of an estimated US$7 billion addressable SMB market that continues to grow, Cisco senior director of Global Partner Program Sandra Flinders said in a recent blog post.

I still read SMB as server message block. Reading addressable SMB sounded more like a DNS entry pointing to a file server somewhere!

This was originally written in early September 2018, but I didn’t post it. I try to keep politics off Rubenerd.com thesedays, but I guess I already wrote about the Victorian opposition leader’s suppository of wisdom, so let’s run with it.

Amy Remeikis summarised our new prime minister’s recent remarks about being the fifth leader of Australia in ten years, and third of his party, emphasis added:

“I think, sadly, over the last 10 years there have been too many of these changes, on both sides of politics and, I don’t think Australians are as shocked by these things as they used to be,” Morrison said. “They are disappointed.”

I own my mistake, b-but someone else made one too! As an American car fan would say to someone with new wheels: nice dodge. But his fellow coalition front-bencher took it one step further:

That continues narrative Christopher Pyne attempted to sell on Monday, where he blamed conditions created by Labor’s previous leadership changes for the latest switch in the Coalition.

It wasn’t our mistake, it was someone else’s! Blaming the oppositon party after you’ve been in charge for a decade. Truly the adults are in charge.

I accept people make mistakes; we’re all fallable humans guided by our emotions and mental chemistry, armed with the best information we have at the time. A big part of the reason why people are jaded with politics isn’t the mistakes or gaffes, it’s the lack of admission.

The screenshot above was from an episode of Da Capo III I was testing some new encoding optimisations on, but it seemed to fit the subject matter so well. The guys at Good Games in Chatswood know what I’m talking about. Scott Morrison and Christopher Pyne likely do not.

Apple have their event tomorrow in New York. This is my personal wish list, which must not be construed as what Apple should do, just what I’d love for them to. Though I’m willing to take a consulting role at the company if they so desire.

A new Mac Mini

I use an iMac now, but I’d swap it in a heartbeat for a Mac Mini and a KVM for my FreeBSD/Ubuntu game desktop to make things cleaner on my desk. I reckon the chances are fair. Result: success! And interesting they’ve embraced how people are using these little boxes rather than just a “bring your own keyboard, display, and mouse.

Mac Pro update

Even just something saying they’re working on it, or they take professional users seriously. I reckon the chances are slim. Result: Nah.

Newer MacBook Pros

Specifically ones that address feedback from the latest generation, such as eschewing (gesundheit) touch bars, including proper keyboards and more ports, and maybe a nice metallic blue finish for fun. I reckon the chances for all of these are equally and intestinally small. That was supposed to be infintestimally small, but I love that autocorrect. Result: Nah.

Reaffirming the Mac’s existance

Newer anything on the desktop or notebook front would be reassuring, given how it seems Apple has lost interest in the market segment for non-iOS devices. Result: Mostly relieved.

If they do update the MacBook Air, I’ll be interested to see how they’re positioned. The 12” MacBook has been their de facto replacement, but I suppose it couldn’t hit the lower price point. Result: I guess they’re not a replacement after all. Pity about the keyboard.