Rubenerd

Smartphones have up-ended so many industries and business models, and I’m now wondering if it’ll do the same thing to credit cards.

Credit and charge cards were originally physical tokens of exclusivity. People flashing their Diners Club messaged to the world that they had connections to be invited or register, that they could service the fees, and that they frequented expensive places to make use of it. Receiving an itemised bill each month was far more convenient than paying with physical cash and bothering with coins, but I’m sure their cachet was just as important.

That veneer rubbed off slightly with the ubiquity of charge cards that ended up being the likes of JCB, Mastercard, and Visa. Even those without a line of credit could use them in place of Singapore’s NETS or Australia’s EFTPOS networks by the 2000s, with debit card options tied to bank accounts. We’ve even seen one-time gift cards, vouchers, and travel cards make use of these networks, to the point where most of us consider them utilitarian.

Certain payment processors and banks still go out of their way to cultivate that exclusive image. I’ve seen marketing material refer to credit cards with such euphemisms as passports, tickets, or keys to a better life. Companies like Amex went as far as to introduce their limitless Black card in response to urban legend.

But much of this is predicated on having that physical card. I’m sure half the reason people service gold or platinum card fees is to have the card to impress people; or at least, to feel like you’re part of an exclusive club. It’s not an accident that certain card companies call it your membership instead of an account.

Contactless payments were the first inkling I saw of that shifting. No longer did you need to present your card to someone, or even slot it into a card terminal yourself. You could merely wave your wallet in the direction of a PayPass-style card reader and have it register. Suddenly, you could have an ultra-exclusive, luxury card with free yacht trips in it, or a Discover. Who would know?

Phones take it one step further by abstracting the card away entirely behind their own payment systems. Apple Pay, Google Pay, or one of the dozens of new Chinese payment processors are what we use to pay for things now; the credit card itself is just the source of funds. This has lead to the rise of “pay later” services that eschew (gesundheit!) cards entirely.

Point hackers, businesses, or those who have practical reasons for having specific cards will continue to apply for and use them, but I wonder if this abstraction will eventually lead to these cards falling out of favour, like they have from so many wallets?

I’ve used XML::XPath whenever I need to process XML, including RSS, OPML, Apache configuration, sitemaps, and such. There are dedicated parsers for these I should certainly be using instead, but I find it easier just to use the one tool and build my own data structure around it. Is that a folly? Almost certainly yes! Is it robust? So far, yes.

I’ve seen people recommend XML::LibXML on sites like PerlMonks and mailing lists, so I thought I’d give it a try for a new personal project. It’s mostly a drop-in replacement, with familiar syntax:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
	
use strict;
use warnings;
use URI;
use XML::LibXML;	
	
my $rss = URI->new('http://showfeed.rubenerd.com');	
my $xml = XML::LibXML->load_xml(location => $rss);	
	
foreach my $title ($xml->findnodes('//item/title')) {
    print $title->to_literal(). "\n";
}
	
==> Rubenerd Show 414: The thingy stuff episode
==> Rubenerd Show 413: The Wheaty 2021 episode
==> Rubenerd Show 412: The wandering mug episode
==> Rubenerd Show 411: The FreeBSD cat(1) episode
==> Rubenerd Show 410: The apothecary coffee episode
==> [..]

The load_xml method can accept a location such as a URL, a string, or IO in the form of a Perl file handle. Like XML::XPath though, you need to use an external module like LWP or LWP::Simple if you need to interface with HTTPS, then pass it as a string:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
	
use strict;
use warnings;
use URI;
use LWP::Simple;
use XML::LibXML;
	
my $rss = URI->new('https://the.geekorium.com.au/index.xml');
my $content = get($rss);
my $xml = XML::LibXML->load_xml(string => $content);
	
print $xml->findnodes('/rss/channel/title')->to_literal(). "\n";
	
==> The Geekorium

And finally, here we are using it with a local file:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
	
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::LibXML;
	
my $file = 'feeds.opml';
open(my $filehandle, '<', $file) or die "Could not open, $!";
$xml = XML::LibXML->load_xml(IO => $filehandle);
	
print $xml->findnodes('/opml/head/docs')->to_literal(). "\n";
	
close($filehandle);
	
==> http://dev.opml.org/spec2.html

There’s a script in my lunchbox for those want to tinker. But the best resource I’ve found is Grant McClean’s Perl XML::LibXML by Example. Check out the links to the packages to read their docs on MetaCPAN.

Deutsche Welle reported this about the Bundesliga yesterday:

Cologne spared themselves the ignominy of relegation after overturning a first-leg deficit in the relegation play-off against Kiel. Facing projected eight-figure losses, retaining their Bundesliga status was imperative.

I’m going to start using that.

I’ll likely be sticking with iOS for now. It’s still the closest thing we have to a nice platform, now that webOS no longer exists. It runs the software I need, and I don’t feel like I need to upgrade the XR I’m using now.

But a few things are starting to give me pause. Syncing iPhones is one of the last things keeping me on the Mac platform, which is only becoming more difficult with each macOS release (the M1 also throws a spanner in the works for how I use my machines). The iPhone 12 has no LCD option, which signals Apple is shifting away from supporting OLED-sensitive people like me. And the prices are harder for me to justify.

It’s starting to look like Android is the only viable option moving forward, for people who need to use applications in the real world. Which to get then?

My wishlist would be an LCD, manufactured by a reputable company, a track record of delivering updates, and that I could sync music to locally with FreeBSD. A headphone jack would be spectacular. I wouldn’t mind if it were plastic, as long as I can get a nice, grippy case for it.

@nuintari suggested the Moto G Power as an example. I was always partial to Sony’s engineering and designs, but I have no idea about their phones. For the first time since my Palm Centro, I might have to research phones again.

Ask Ubuntu is a Stack Exchange question and answer site for Ubuntu, surprising though it may seem! But did you know:

The following version of Ubuntu and its derivatives officially reach End of Standard Support on April 30, 2021: Xenial Xerus (16.04)

New questions specific to the above versions of Ubuntu posted on or after the enforcement date may need to be considered offtopic. Old questions (before the end of standard support date) that are still being answered regarding these releases should have a comment included on them about upgrading to a supported release to get continued support for their versions of Ubuntu.

That’s bizarre; forgive me for saying. How many other forums and Q&A sites enforce whether an OS is supported to ask questions? Isn’t the entire point of community sites to solicit feedback and advice outside paid support channels? Posts could easily be tagged legacy and filtered if potential confusion were a concern.

Sure enough, it’s right there in the on topic page:

Support for versions for Ubuntu releases past their “End of Standard Support” or “End of Life” dates (whichever is earlier) — unless the question is asking how to upgrade to a supported release.

The existance of the Ask Ubuntu site always puzzled me, given there’s already a Unix and Linux Stack Exchange with significant expertise and toolchain overlap. I’d be opting for posting in the latter now if I liked the Stack Exchange Q&A format… assuming that site also doesn’t have such a condition.

Michael Sainato reported in The Guardian US on the growing spate of worker abuse:

Some workers at Starbucks have described understaffing at stores, intense workloads, and customers who have changed their ordering habits and become increasingly aggressive and confrontational during the coronavirus pandemic. [..] Starbucks workers around the US have faced several reported incidents of being verbally abused or physically assaulted by customers over coronavirus safety protocols.

Clara and I witnessed this first hand when we went to New York a few years ago. We went to a branch near Battery Park City on the way to the Statue of Liberty ferry, and the line of rich suits hurling abuse at the staff was toe-curling. Whether they were power tripping, coked out from their investment banking jobs, overcompensating for small appendiges, and/or were all-around jerks, we didn’t know. By the time we were at the head of the queue I joked “wow, busy day, I don’t know how you do it” to the woman behind the counter, and the look of relief on her face broke my heart.

To think retail workers over there are enduring even more of this is obscene. That and the fact they’re criminally underpaid for what they do, especially given the toxic environment. Please be kind to people.

I can’t remember what I was searching for yesterday, but I couldn’t get over this search result. If you got bad news, you want to kick them blues… kale? ♫

Wow :’).

The Twitter account for this site was locked. I logged in and got this cheerful message:

We’ve temporarily limited some of your account features.

What happened? In order to make sure Twitter is as safe as possible, sometimes — like now — you may be asked to confirm you’re not a robot. Easy, right? Just complete the following to get back to the Tweets.

What next? For full access, please: [p]ass a Google ReCAPTCHA challenge.

There are a couple of funny things here. I’m sure you picked up that em dashes aren’t supposed to be padded with spaces! This is an affront to typographic style, convention, and taste. What’s next, people using three full stops instead of an ellipsis? Rarely do I ask here for people to think of the children, but I’ve even slipped into passive voice here given how overwhelmed I am at this dashed misapplication. This cannot—and must not—stand. Hey look, em dashes used correctly!

But also, this Twitter profile is fed from an RSS feed, so it isn’t human. Having a human manually tweet each time I write a post would negate the point. I know, they want to know a human owns it and it wasn’t just randomly generated. Still, the fact it’s been around since 2008 and had a human post to it a bunch of times should have demonstrated that.

Thanks to everyone who emailed and tweeted me about this, it should all be good now.

I also need to figure out how to get IFTTT working with Mastodon. I set up a pipeline but I don’t think it’s ever worked.

Anastasia Kapetas published an article last Tuesday for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, quoting Alicia Wanless from the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. That was a lot of words.

[T]here are yawning knowledge gaps on the effects of disinformation countermeasures. For example, said Wanless, there are very few credible studies on the effects of de-platforming disinformation spreaders. Does it help in limiting disinformation? Or do the perpetrators just move underground to more niche platforms, where followers can be further radicalised and exhorted to violence?

It’s at the bizarre stage now where disgraced or discredited people see their standing elevate as a result of being called out. They wear it like a badge of honour to have attracted the critique of doctors or scientists, and their followers are programmed to distrust those voices of authority. It’s almost like a weaponised Streisand Effect, with less duck sauce and more evil.

The very architecture of current social networks also plays right into this:

The other problem for research is that private companies hold most of the relevant data and are unwilling to share it widely. The platforms regard their data as valuable proprietary information and to date have only been willing to share small amounts with handpicked research institutions on particular cases.

I agree with Alicia that social networks themselves must help fund academic research to tackle this problem. As businesses they have a financial incentive to stoke this dissent that is counter to the needs of civil society.