Rubenerd

Speaking of retrospectives, it’s now nine years after Harry McCracken’s nine year Y2K retrospective. Emphasis added:

If ever a decade began dumb, it was this one. When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

Whouda thunk it? It turns out that the world has addressed the Y2K problem remarkably well. Those who predicted widespread starvation, utility failures, medical emergencies, and financial catastrophy probably feel a tad sheepish. And/or disappointed.

That part is routinely overlooked by pundits gleefully remembering how uneventful and overblown Y2K turned out to be. The same reporters who I’m sure were predicting gloom and doom beforehand.

It was a fizzer because those of us in IT did our jobs.

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25:58 – A rare single-topic episode tackling fake foods and beverages! Discussing decaffeinated coffee, non-alcoholic beer, mock meat (including having an Impossible Burger in Los Angeles, and Linda McCartney vegetarian fare in Sydney), sugar-free drinks, grilled plastic cheese slices, and other effective hipster repellent.

Recorded in Sydney, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Released October 2018 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts.

Subscribe with iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast or add this feed to your podcast client.

I’ve got a blog post about Windows 7 tools coming up, but in the interim I learned something about Sysinternals.

I first learned of Mark Russinovich from his sci-fi thriller Zero Day, but I’d been using his tools on Windows for years. Windows hasn’t been one of my daily drivers since XP, but Sysinternals is still among the first things I install on my odd job VMs and my game machine. I’m advocating at work for our Windows Server cloud templates to be bundled with them by default.

Sysinternals were like souped-up Microsoft PowerToys, with utilities for all kinds of neat things. One that I use a lot is Desktops; it exposes the virtual desktop features that have existed since NT 4.0, but Microsoft never created a front-facing UI for. Process Explorer is what Task Manager should have been.

I didn’t know the latter and RootkitRevealer were the tools Mark discovered the now infamous Sony DRM rootkit with in 2005. Robert McMillan wrote an article for IDG at the time, published in PCWorld:

It turns out that Sony is using techniques normally seen only in spyware and computer viruses in order to restrict the unauthorized copying of some of its music CDs. Sony’s software, licensed by Sony from a Banbury, UK, company called First 4 Internet, has become the basis of a dispute that once again pits computer advocates against an entertainment company experimenting with new ways to prevent the unauthorized copying of its products.

Mark released details of the root kit on his Sysinternals blog:

Last week when I was testing the latest version of RootkitRevealer (RKR) I ran a scan on one of my systems and was shocked to see evidence of a rootkit. Rootkits are cloaking technologies that hide files, Registry keys, and other system objects from diagnostic and security software, and they are usually employed by malware attempting to keep their implementation hidden (see my “Unearthing Rootkits” article from thre June issue of Windows IT Pro Magazine for more information on rootkits). The RKR results window reported a hidden directory, several hidden device drivers, and a hidden application.

Sysinternals was long since bought my Microsoft, and Mark’s blog redirected to them. Alas, Microsoft has been desperately trying to remove every useful knowledge base article and blog post it can get its hands on, but fortunately the Internet Archive came to the rescue.

I’m back on Twitter again, against well-informed advice. To make it more pleasant, I’m making my own Twitter policy, linked to in my profile.

If you’re a dick, you’re muted or blocked. I know you’re intelligent enough to understand what that means.

This does not constitute my conceding of any point. I’ve just likely been on Twitter longer than you, and been through the motions enough times to know engaging with you will be draining and counterproductive.

Cheers!

Today we bid adieu to two semi-recent establishments in the northern Sydney suburb of Chatswood that have since ceased to exist, perhaps akin to a certain Pythonian parrot.

Hipsters don’t like the Malay food at PappaRich restaurants, but I thought they were fine. The Chatswood branch had the decor absolutely nailed, even if they hadn’t ever heard of teh tarik and couldn’t make me one.

And the Contageous Computer Store was one of the other surprise departures. They were one of the more delightfully named and fun computer stores I’ve wandered through in an attempt to relive my Sim Lim Square days. They are no more.

The first thing I do on apt systems is install net-tools to get ifconfig back. The reason being that some Linux distros have removed it entirely in lieu of ip. There are a few stated reasons why:

1. ip has been the default and recommended toolchain since at least version 2.4 of the Linux kernel.

2. ifconfig was written for BSD, and was an awkward fit on Linux.

3. ifconfig is horribly broken and/or inefficient.

4. Yeah, don’t do that, or consider to be ridiculed at; the latter reason I’m still trying to parse.

5. ip is easier to search for than ifconfig. Okay that’s a joke, but they would have written that stack in the age of search engines.

These may be true, though I wonder why they couldn’t maintain the interface and either rewrite or extend it?

The first link above tellingly says ip can “can step in for netstat, route, and arp too.” Based on past behavior, we could be forgiven for thinking this is Linux breaking cross-platform *nix behavior again for a kudzu ending in D, which is a shame.

Whatever the case, it still doesn’t take long on a Linux box to make me miss FreeBSD.

I got some feedback from my confirmation shaming post. Steven Dorst:

Ayup. I too am getting annoyed by Confirm Shaming.

And David Demster:

It’s not worth the energy to be annoyed.

Good attitude to have, and one I continue to fail at cultivating.

But I do notice such vendors and will not give them my business. Apparently, they would rather be rude.

Agreed. I already closed tabs when people throw lightboxes at me; this kind of language will guarantee I’ll vote with my wallet.

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36:37 – Another trip down to Melbourne, so coming to you from the airport! Topics include authentic Melbourne/Seattle weather, growing up here, coffee shops versus desks, Stone and Wood, David Letterman, forex, loud friggen buses, some brief anime reviews (Gintama, Kakuriyo, Holmes of Kyoto, Isekaya Nobu, Frankenstein Family, Harukana Receive), puns, and other things unrelated to Melbourne. Prefaced back in Sydney with listener feedback from Chad Bowers. Recorded 9th October 2018.

Recorded in Melbourne, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Released October 2018 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts.

Subscribe with iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast or add this feed to your podcast client.

Remember my rant against cosmetic microbeads? The illustrious @Georgiecel shared this Guardian report by Fiona Harvey and Jonathan Watts:

On average, 20 particles of microplastic were found in each 10g of excreta. Microplastics are defined as particles of less than 5mm, with some created for use in products such as cosmetics but also by the breaking down of larger pieces of plastic, often in the sea.

Based on this study, the authors estimated that “more than 50% of the world population might have microplastics in their stools”, though they stressed the need for larger-scale studies to confirm this.

And earlier this week, Laura Parker reported in National Geographic that 90% of table salts sampled for a global study contained microplastics. One grain in ten. Good grief.

In a breathtaking case of Poe’s Law, would you believe this was among the highest rated Slashdot comments:

Are there any health implications of micro plastics [sic] in salt? That was suspiciously left out of the article for some reason.

Personally, I don’t want to eat plastic. But I guess Georgina and I are old fashioned like that.

Alongside misleading email subjects, newsletter popups are another pervasive, perverse dark pattern. You browse a site, only to have a div take over the screen and demand your email address. Closed Tab; Didn’t Read documents the most egregious examples, and I’ve complained about them a lot here.

Sadly, not only are they more prevalent than ever, they’re evolving passive aggressive language. Simple opt-out links are now routinely tinged with language like no thanks, I don’t want to save money.

My favourite was a pet store pointed out by Confirm Shaming:

Wet food or dry? Free feeding or on a schedule? How much should you feed your cat and when? Get advice on that and more with Caster’s FREE newsletter.

Sign Me Up!
No thanks, I don’t care what my cat eats

The modern web needs a reboot.