Rubenerd

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

Earlier this month Glyn Moody wrote a great post on how Google could be a force for good again, in particular by reversing the trends in their definition of open, in Android, with OpenStreetMap, the principal behind Google Books, and with patents. I'd add greater privacy controls in Chrome rather than just retorting that smart people use Chromium, bringing DoubleClick under control, and paying taxes.

I used to have great respect and admiration for Google (as you can tell by reading my old material here!) and I still hold them in higher regard than most companies, but cynicism regarding their do not be evil mantra set in around 2009. Unlike some though, I have every confidence they can reverse the trend.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

S18 from Central to Bardwell Park

Cleanliness: Good

Our government funded ABC News delivering the important stuff, the same organisation that started Chasergate.

Update: This comment on the subject was too good to pass up!

To all those who are complaining about the hype, the media saturation [..] taking up half the news bulletins and entire sections of newspapers [..] would it annoy you, that something so pointless and irrelevant to you was given blanket coverage and that everyone you knew was really, really into it? Well, that’s how I feel about football.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

M33 from Bardwell Park to Central

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

xmonad: Hardcore Window Management | Jupiter Broadcasting

"We break out our ugly sticks and beat our desktop into an ultimate nerd power-station!"

(categories: podcast linux xmonad x11 haskell video)

Ad campaigns are the last resort of failed lobbyists « Drag0nista's Blog

"Advertising is the lobbyist’s last resort because it’s effectively an admission of defeat by those running the campaign."

(categories: news australia lobbyists politics)

Real IRA vows to oppose Queen's visit : World News Australia on SBS

"An Irish Republican Army splinter group has vowed to oppose next month's visit to Ireland by Queen Elizabeth II and to keep killing Northern Ireland police officers – particularly those recruited from its own Catholic heartlands."

(categories: news ireland uk politics)

When attempting to bookmark a page this afternoon, instead of the regular login screen and tagging interface I was presented with a notice that del.icio.us had been bought, and that I have until July to transfer my material. Swinging between nervousness and relief!

Let’s do the Timeline again

The del.icio.us bookmarking service started in 2003 and I got my account the following year, as evidenced by the fact my login credentials are not a Yahoo ID. In 2005 they were bought by Yahoo, and many of us were excited to see what being owned by a company with substantially more cash and talent would do for the service.

Unfortunately, being a PHP shop Yahoo's first move was to port the entire system from Perl to PHP, which allegedly necessitated the complete redesign of the UI from something that was simple and space efficient, to a Web 2.0 Foo Foo site. At the time Frank Nora from The Overnightscape and I lamented this reversal, but begrudgingly still used it because nothing else matched it.

In 2007 my increasingly bed-ridden mum was discovering she could keep up to date with Column 8 in the Sydney Morning Herald from Singapore, do crosswords, read about ancient civilisations and alternative fashion, and shop from her Gentoo laptop which her generous son had provided ;). Her single column of bookmarks in Firefox however was becoming increasingly unmanageable, so I set her up with del.icio.us and less than six months later she'd amassed a collection greater than mine!

In 2008 when rumours started spreading that Yahoo were looking for a suitor and it would most likely be Microsoft, those of us that had used Passport and other Microsoft internet services at the time were terrified that their ownership of the service would result in further degradation, so we began looking for alternatives. Google Bookmarks existed, but was far clumsier to use and harder to share. Ma.gnolia was an alternative I blogged about that even had a del.icio.us import function, but we later learned of its laughably bad uptime and at one point the even deleted all our data by mistake.

The Slide is The Wide… Screen

Since then we've been further scared by that now infamous slide that unceremoniously placed del.icio.us alongside other services for "sunsetting". We didn't know what that meant, but it didn't sound good.

Fortunately, it was! The two people who started YouTube (this fact is mentioned so many times on their sites, in press releases and on the del.icio.us site its almost lost all meaning) have formed AVOS (not to be confused for that iffy looking cosmetics company that recruits people to sell their stuff) and del.icio.us is their first purchase. Ignoring all the yucky marketing speak drivel, their idea sounds interesting:

The YouTube founders plan to work closely with the community over the next few months to develop innovative features to help solve the problem of information overload. “We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type,” said Chen.

This is what I thought del.icio.us had the potential to do from the moment I started using it. It was like DMOZ but people actually contributed to it on a regular basis, it kept my bookmarks syncronised and backed up across multiple machines, and helped me organise all the tabs of content I was rapidly accumulating in Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox and so on.

Now for the worried bit

I'm glad del.icio.us is no longer stagnent and will be given a third shot at life; I just hope these so called "innovative features" will enhance the platform, rather than sacrificing the simplicity that drew their users to the service. For example, I'd love to see image previews for all sites not just Flickr. Tumblr entries of what people are wearing, for example.

We have until July 2011 to agree to have our bookmarks transferred over to the new service. I'm relieved that I never merged my Yahoo and del.icio.us accounts, but here's hoping I can figure out what my late mum's password was for her account before then.

Wait, so our mobile phones know where we’ve been!? This is such a shock!

The shock is the jock

I’ve largely refrained from comment on this whole issue until now because everything that could be said probably has. Then again, by definition that’s true for pretty much everything we all blog, and its a lame excuse, so I’m going to write about it anyway ;).

The issue here is the discovery of a location database in iPhone and Android devices, and what privacy concerns it introduces.

Last year the whipping boy in privacy circles was Google for their Street View trucks. After it was uncovered Google engineers had unwittingly captured WiFi data packets from unencrypted WiFi networks on the routes they were photographing, lawmakers demanded Google be reprimanded. In early March I argued the real issue wasn’t that Google was logging data (maliciously or otherwise) but that people were broadcasting their networks without any security, and that it was the fault of networking companies for not making that clear.

In 2011 we have Apple’s logging of phone towers and WiFi locations on people’s iTelephones. Unlike the silly Antennagate issue I do believe Apple does have some real explaining to do and must address these issues, but as usual I also think the mainstream media have blown the story way out of proportion. Its so unlike them ;).

The bad news

First to the bad news. Wait, I already said that. Located on every iTelephone with the iOS 4.0 software or above is a simple, unencrypted, easily readable SQLite database containing the locations of cell towers and WiFi networks that the device has been in proximity to. By using software like iPhoneTracker to visualise it, theses databases paint a chilling picture of where you’ve been.

It gets worse. Unlike Android devices which routinely remove entries from their equivalent location databases over a certain age, it appears the iOS location database… just keeps getting bigger. Privacy experts realise the only thing more dangerous than knowing personally identifiable data is personally identifiable data over a long period of time that can be used to detect trends.

With the increasing sophistication and complexity of these portable devices, its also feasible that at some point an exploit could be developed to download these unencrypted location files from the phone, or from iTunes on the desktop where backups of these location databases are stored.

Lets have a par-tay!

The media have had a field day discussing these real problems, but as with the Google Street View issue their desire for sensationalism to sell their papers blinds them to stark realities.

1. These devices are mobile phones that connect to open (or may as well be with the broken encryption in GSM) wireless networks. These devices are constantly broadcasting their location to phone towers to get the best signal. This is nothing new, which is why those who don’t want to be found don’t carry a mobile phone with them in the first place!

2. If a person also has physical access to your device all bets are off with regards to your privacy, and where you’ve been would be the least of your worries. Encryption would go part of the way to solving this though.

3. Nobody has presented evidence that Apple is remotely downloading data from these devices. We are certain however that Google regularly polls this material from Adrnoid devices, presumably to improve the accuracy of Google Maps but we have no way of knowing for sure. Even if Apple was though, why aren’t the likes of the otherwise awesome Senator Al Franken asking for Google to explain things the way he has with Apple, or Microsoft now that we know Windows Mobile Cell Hand Phone Enterprise Corporate Home Edition Service Pack 7 is doing the same thing.

4. As I eluded to above, this isn’t just an issue with Apple but almost every smartphone maker. It was cute that the media hounded Apple for antenna issues when the same signal degradation could be reproduced on dozens of other phones, but singling out Apple again is getting old. I’d expect this from the Enderle Group and Molly Wood, but not the press in general ;).

5. Perhaps the funniest part of all of this: it’s not a new issue. Forensic analyst Alex Levinson wrote about this in a book months beforehand and already dismissed many of the security concerns that the Mr. Warden and Mr. Allan raised in their O’Reilly presentation. If you have time, his two blog posts about the issue are excellent:

• 3 Major Issues with the Latest iPhone Tracking "Discovery"
• 3 New Thoughts on Mobile Location

Remedies

From where I stand, these would be the four things Apple would need to do to resolve this issue.

• Making encrypted backups the default in iTunes
• Encrypting the location database on the devices
• Limiting their size and scope based on date/time
• Making them opt-in, or giving us a way to disable it

I’m on the side of Andy Inhatko and John Gruber than Daniel Eran Dilger on this… I love you Daniel, but what in the heck was that last post!? Apple isn’t the super evil overlord empire the tech media is [predictably] painting them to be, but they have made a serious mistake here and as users of their devices we deserve an explanation and action. Android users deserve the same.

I hope, just as the Street View saga helped to expose just how pervasive unsecured WiFi networks are, that this issue helps to raise awareness of just how much data our phones are logging about us, and we get some affirmative action out of it.

UPDATE

GigaOm is reporting that Apple has responded to tracking concerns with a combination of clarification and promises of a future patch to fix flaws. I’m not entirely appeased, but they took a step in the right direction and addressed my four bullet points.

As far as I know, Google has yet to address concerns with tracking Android, or Microsoft with Windows Phone 7, though the mainstream media and most bloggers didn’t bat an eyelid when it was uncovered they have similar tracking databases.

If the whole place is filled with Mumas… Who's gonna make the donuts!? I'm the Dream Devourer Merry! Yumekui Merry #08: "Dream Corridor" / "Yume Kairō"

After a forced break from anime watching owing to a number of mitigating factors (aka: life), I'm back in the seat or zone or whatever it is cool people call it, and am ready to talk about such material again! Come to think of it I haven't been sleeping well at all lately, its probably Merry's fault.

The story is really getting more involved now, so much so that I felt like I needed to watch the previous episode again to refresh my memory. Turns out that was this series' obligatory beach episode though, so I didn't and just tried to make sense of what was going on. That's the great thing about manga, you can just go back a few pages after leaving it for a while!

Leaving the realm of dreams for a while, Yumeji's cute housemate (for want of a better word!) Isana deals with more real world problems, specifically what she wants to do when she leaves high school. I can remember those career interviews with teachers, I know they have your best interests at heart but pressuring kids at that age always seemed kinda… weird? Needless to say after much fumbling and worrying, she admits she wants to draw. Designers ^_^.

In the meantime, the sprained ankle Yumeji picks up from their beach trip last episode has got worse, so naturally he walks with Merry to get it checked out by their local doctor. Wouldn't you want to get a lift or have someone come over if you had a sprained ankle? Would you be able to maintain such swagger in that condition? Perhaps the ability to see the colour of people's dreams also affords you some pretty gosh darn high pain tolerance.

Speaking of tolerance, after lamenting the lack of doughnut related gags for a while, we finally get another one. Wait, what did that have to do with tolerance? Tolerating a lack of doughnutness? Never mind.

Merry was super adorable in the second episode when she tastes her first doughnut and sets the ball rolling (I was going to make a bad pun joke there, but decided to just roll with it) with this newfound obsession of hers, and in this episode while walking to the clinic they naturally walk past a doughnut shop. After swearing to walk alongside Yumeji to make sure he didn't injure himself further on the way there (presumably) he leaves her there to gorge (presumably) while he continued by himself. He's a good friend ;).

With a country of over 120 million people, coincidences in anime set in Japan sure are commonplace! In this case while getting his sprained ankle checked out by the doc, it turns out his granddaughter is Yui, the girl from the shopping centre he and Merry met back in episode 5. Of course!

IT REALLY WAS THAT BAD! After ingesting some of her well meaning but awful tasting tea (straw!), Yui lets the Engi dream daemon use her as a host and explains what the heck has been going on. Startled, he drops and breaks a perfectly good Japanese tea cup, but makes up for it by having a chat with her on a stereotypically green field overlooking the city. Remembering he left Merry at the doughnut shop he rushes back to arrange a dialogue… I think!

What happens next reminded me of that episode of Star Trek Voyager when the minds of the senior officers are trapped in this mind control computer with clowns, darn it which episode was that again? When I saw it I was only a kid and had nightmares about it! Anyway this daydream was weird, right down to the array of geometric shapes across the floor and circus themed scaryness. Yes I'm sorry this stuff scares me, Cirque du Soleil has been the only circus so far that hasn't royally creeped me out! French Canadians.

One of the patrons of the same doughnut shop who was working on one of those awesome maze placemats turns out to be a vessel for a daemon of his own who's single eye and weird build made him look like a villein from Commander Keen. His name is Landsborough, and its his scary circus world they're transported to, along with Yui who seems just as surprised to be there herself as Yumeji and Merry are. Argh circuses! Turns out he has a connection to Hercules, the dream entity not the graphics card or cheesy nineties television series based on the Greek God of the same name.

Soon the world will be filled with Mumas, leaving nobody to make doughnuts!

I'm sorry no, that's Merry! See what I did there?

Compared to previous episodes most of the fanservice this time around consisted of showing us Merry in awe of doughnuts, which I'll admit I thought was simply adorable. Insert holier-than-though rant about how scenes like this are killing the anime industry. There were also only a couple of the obligitory so-called "Merry Navel" shots which would have no doubt disappointed a large part of the fanbase. Oh well I guess every Star Trek Voyager needs its 7 of 9 :P

I didn't mention it in the notes for the previous episode, but I thought it highly amusing that the only episode where we didn't get shots like this was the beach episode where the other girls were wearing bikinis, the blokes were in their trunks, and she was wearing sukumizu… go figure! The studio making fun of a certain percentage of their viewers perhaps? But I digress!

What I will say though is… does this pose look like movie poster material or does this pose look like movie poster material. Let's ask Isana!

Now that I think of it, I'd wager there was almost as much Isana in this episode as Merry or Yumeji, which if I recall from the manga wasn't really the case. I love her hair, though I imagine that colour (while being most fetching) would be terribly difficult to maintain.

It could just be because I hadn't watched the series for a month or so, but it did seem as though that while inconsistent across the episode, overall the pacing is starting to pick up again, especially after the last one. The graphics and art in the daydream world scared me a little I'll admit (hey, shaddup!) but was well executed. I'm genuinely interested in what happens next, and hope they keep it up… must refrain from reading anime sites owing to the fact I'm several months behind now and the series has long since finished!

For a while in March when uni and work were under control, I was watching an episode and reporting on them every second day or so. Wonder if I can keep that up for a while again? Probably not, but worth a try. Rambling, pointless reviews don't actually take too long to write when you're not concerned with quality, as is evidently the case here! ^^;;;;.