Rubenerd

Our collective ambivilence to government metadata retention may be understandable now; people are okay doing it to their ones. Melissa Davey wrote this for The Guardian:

Almost half of young Australians believe tracking their partner by going through their computer or phone, or by installing phone and computer tracking software, is acceptable.

This was one of the findings from a nationally representative survey of 1923 people aged between 16 and 24 about their attitudes towards violence against women. The results were launched by VicHealth in Melbourne on Thursday.

Although 84% agreed tracking a partner by electronic means without her consent was serious, 46% said it was acceptable to some degree.

Talk about a lack of respect. Unfortunately, that's not the scariest observation:

And 20% of those surveyed said women often said “no” to sexual activity when they meant “yes”, and 18% agreed if a woman was raped while affected by alcohol or drugs she was partly responsible.

Do kindly sod off.

The title is from this Sydney Morning Herald article.

The new iPhone is out, which means two things. One, there are people lining up to get one. Two, trolls revel in calling them out out, using some variation of “sheeple” or whatver insipid portmanteau they get off on now.

They’re predictable comments. It’s fascinating how lining up for a concert or sportsball match is kosher, but a technology fan queuing for a gadget is a target for ridicule. Fortunately, they don’t care/need your approval.

(Though I do get a bit of satisfaction seeing people waste their time talking about how people are wasting their time, seemingly oblivious to the irony of their comments).

I say this as someone who's never queued for a phone.

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38:49 – A trip home to start a server, and a data centre trip to install a hard drive and buy crisps! Also coffee power indicators, the six of clubs, exploding computer monitor stands, taking the stairs, ipchicken.com, WiFi, data centres looking like Star Trek corridors, vending machines, Solo, loud fans, and free earplugs.

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

Released September 2015 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.

Today I needed to convert an OVA to a raw disk for Xen. OVAs are original video animations that are usually released after a popular anime series, as well as being a bundle for Open Virtual Appliances.

OVAs are just tars, so you can extract them as such:

# tar xvf target.ova

From there, you can convert the resulting images to raw. I wrote how to do for vmdks exactly one year ago. Scary timing.

Let’s give my new newsletter–unsubscribe score card a spin! Today we have ZDNet, and the newsletters I started receiving after creating an account.

I tried unsubscribing by clicking the link in their latest email, which took me to a confirmation page. I didn't provide an answer, and just clicked Submit. It should have unsubscribed me, becuase providing a reason is usually (and should be) optional. Instead:

[Why are you unsubscribing?] Empty Mandatory Attribute
[Your Reason] Empty Mandatory Attribute

Please click your browser's back button, fix the above errors and re-submit your details. Thank you.

So I left them with this reason:

Not allowing people to unsubscribe without providing a reason.

They get 40/100.

[ ] Newsletter was opt-in in the first place 
[x] Unsubscribe link exists in newsletter
[ ] No need to confirm unsubscribe 
[x] No need to login to unsubscribe
[x] No need to find "email preferences"
[x] Reasonable time to unsubscribe (> 48 hours)

The ease (or lack thereof) of unsubscribing from email newsletters has become a recurring theme here for almost ten years. It came to a head last year, when the phenomena of abusing customer email lists became the norm.

So for future reference, I’ll be grading sites based on the following criteria:

[ ] Newsletter was opt-in in the first place
[ ] Unsubscribe link exists in newsletter
[ ] No need to confirm unsubscribe
[ ] No need to login to unsubscribe
[ ] No need to find “email preferences”
[ ] Reasonable time to unsubscribe (< 48 hours)

A site needs all six to get 100%. One unticked box deducts 50%, then 10% for each subsequent box. As far as I’m concerned, slipping on two or more of these represents a failure.

I blogged about then-opposition leader Tony Abbott winning his party’s leadership from Malcolm Turnbull in 2010. Now in 2015, we find ourselves with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, after he successfully lead a spill motion against Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott made great political theater over Gillard and Rudd's issues (the spill, then Rudd returning), which I also blogged about at the time.

TL;DR: Australia has a new Prime Minister, because Tony Abbott was polling poorly. He also didn't do us many favours internationally, as John Oliver so embarrasingly pointed out.

Tired and unsure

This spill happened over a week ago, and barring a brief mention on a recent podcast episode, I haven’t commented. I wish it were due to me being one of those cool, aloof people who dismiss all politicians as corrupt, thereby giving them cover to be.

Instead, I’m unsure. For one, I'm loving the optimistic (if buzzword-laden) language instead of the character-assassinating, mud slinging of the last few years. Transcript from The Guardian:

The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative. We can’t be defensive, we can’t future proof ourselves. We have to recognise that the disruption that we see driven by technology, the volatility in change is our friend if we are agile and smart enough to take advantage of it.

There has never been a more exciting time to be alive than today and there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.

Mr Turnbull has also reintroduced the Science portfolio, albeit one headed by Christopher Pine and part of Industry. There are now five women in cabinet positions, up from one before. He’s hinted at scrapping university deregulation, albeit in the context of an “obstructionist” senate. No more knights and dames. Copyright has been moved from the Attorney General’s office to that of the Communications Minister. He’s angered the shock jocks.

Still, we have reason to be cautious. With the exception of Mr Abbott and former treasurer Mr Hockey, the cabinet consists of the same people who delivered all the flawed policy of the last two years. We’re still getting Fibre to the Node, despite cost blowouts and coppery obsolescence. Even if he is more progressive, Mr Turnbull will have to play to the party who only gave him victory over Abbott with a few votes. He also needs to keep the Nationals happy.

During his debate with Andrew Bolt, Greens leader Richard di Natale refused to be drawn into a left-wing/right-wing debate, preferring to comment on the merits of policy. I admired that, and will be trying it with this new mob myself.

Now to see what happens.

I use homebrew-cask to install my Mac application bundles. Once installed, it means you can either script this or run from the shell:

$ brew update
$ brew cask install seamonkey

Unlike software from other *nix package managers, Mac applications usually update themselves once installed. Sparkle is the nicest way to do this, but Mozilla, LibreOffice and others bundle their own updaters. Regardless, it means the version homebrew-cask installed may not match the version you're currently running, which leads to this:

$ brew list | grep seamonkey
==> seamonkey
$ brew cask remove seamonkey
==> Error: seamonkey is not installed

I encountered this late at night the first time, and thought I was going crazy. The jury is still out on that, but the force command will allow its removal:

$ brew cask remove --force seamonkey
==> Removing App symlink: '/Users/ruben/Applications/SeaMonkey.app'

There’s a closed bug report on GitHub about this.

The Overnightscape Central is a fun weekly podcast hosted by the illustrious PQ Ribber. Hosts and listeners of The Overnightscape Underground participate in a topic each week, and you’re welcome to join.

02:10:54 – Frank Edward Nora!! Clara Tse!! Jimbo!! Rubenerd!! Four ONSUG stalwarts join PQ Ribber in this unknown collaboratorium!!

You can view this episode on the Underground, listen to it here, and subscribe with this feed in your podcast client.

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34:16 – An OfficeWorks trip, evolution of Apple headphones (earbuds, earpods) mismatched swimwear advertising, cabin fever, walking to improve mood (taking buses one stop, hikikomoris not wanting to), drivers who don't indicate, getting back into The Who (Highlander TV series, CSI, Need For Speed Most Wanted, how older music can still sound contemporary), Cheveron Spaghetti, new logos (marketing departments, pixel art, Onsug, this show), Sydney Olympics in 2000, and beings communicating through a poorly formed virtual train carriage.

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

Released September 2015 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.