Twitter Decries India Intimidation, Will Press for Changes – Bloomberg

The social network reiterated its commitment to India as a vital market, but signaled its growing concern about the government’s recent actions and potential threats to freedom of expression that may result. The company also joined other international businesses and organizations in criticizing new IT rules and regulations that it said “inhibit free, open public conversation.”

Source: Twitter Decries India Intimidation, Will Press for Changes – Bloomberg

It is, perhaps, a little rich for Twitter to be complaining about inhibition of “free, open public conversation” after throwing conservatives off their platform after the last election, in fact, as part of a larger move, along with Facebook and Amazon, to simply cancel them from them from the internet entirely. You may or may not agree with the decision to do so, but you have to admit that the hypocrisy of complaining about pressure to do the same thing by a foreign government is a little too on-the-nose. The Indian government just wants some of the same social engineering and control that the political Left in America literally just demonstrated.

Either social media companies are common carriers, and free of any censorship (where affected parties can always sue for any and all illegal speech), or they are, by default, a platform in support and service of censorship, and fair game to be manipulated by anyone with the legal or financial pressure to do so on their behalf. You cannot have it both ways.

#MSBuild a Non-Starter

I’m back on Twitter. Dang it. But it’s cracking me up that Microsoft’s (virtual) developer conference #MSBuild is getting so little attention on the platform.

Compare and contrast this with Apple’s WWDC. There’s more activity with the #WWDC tag right now, and that isn’t for another couple of weeks.

I made a post about the lack of excitement around Microsoft’s conference.

Twitter bubbled that up from my no-name, 2-day-old account to some other rando who responded (nicely). I replied that this basically proved my point, and then THAT response got retweeted by some .NET-oriented bot.

Look, I don’t really like Microsoft, because of their long history in abusing their monopoly position, but their platform has enabled about half of my career, so I still want them to announce cool new stuff, but there’s really nothing going on. They’ve gone to the mattresses to get Visual Studio Code, Windows Services for Linux, and their rewritten terminal accepted by the developers of the world over the past few years. And, sure, there are plenty of fanboys of this development environment, but I just don’t get it.

VSCode is a heavy editor/light IDE, and I don’t want that product. Sublime Text is a blazingly-fast, lightweight text editor, with all the features I need for editing Rails applications. WSL2 is just a Linux virtual machine with hard-coded defaults. I’d rather install VMware or VirtualBox, and take total control of the setup. I get the feeling that the primary users of Microsoft’s latest toys are Javascript developers who are constrained to use Windows because of corporate policies, and, sure, that’s a non-insignificant number of developers in this world.

So far, this seems to be the highlight of MSBuild 2021: Quake mode for Windows Terminal. You know, that gimmicky little feature that popped up in Guake on Linux… <checks Google> 14 years ago? Look, I know it’s supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but “HUGE EARTH-SHAKING?” LOL. No.

Unfortunately, while I was able to install Windows Terminal on my work laptop, the preview build doesn’t install. I don’t know if that’s because of corporate policy or the fact that I’ve got the wrong build of Windows. The company, surprisingly, just updated the build corporate-wide, but I wonder if this requires a preview build. On the other hand, I don’t care enough to sort this out.

About the only thing I want to see from Microsoft is a cross-platform UI widget set that you could use from .NET Core to write native apps across Windows, Linux, and Mac. But people have been clamoring for that for 20 years, and there’s not even a hint that this will ever happen, for a lot of very understandable technical reasons. However, I suppose it’s primarily a function of the age-old scavenging problem. Everyone wants this, but this would open the door for a lot of companies to choose not-Windows for desktops, and Microsoft can’t give up that revenue.

iOS 15 Could Include New Food Tracking Feature – MacRumors

Bloomberg in April also said that there will be notification updates that will allow users to set notification preferences based on current status, which Jewiss says he can confirm. As outlined by Bloomberg, users will, for example, be able to tweak how notifications are delivered when they’re awake, working, sleeping, and more.

Source: iOS 15 Could Include New Food Tracking Feature – MacRumors

I’ve wanted this for 25 years. So much so, that I paid a patent attorney to do a patent search before I was going to try to add this feature to Pidgin on Linux. The lawyer said that IBM was sitting on a large portion of my idea, but couldn’t explain where the wiggle room was, since he was on retainer to them.

I read through the relevant patents, proved to my satisfaction that he was correct, and decided it wasn’t worth my time to pursue. However, I also thought about just going ahead and adding the functionality anyway, and seeing where it all went, but I wimped out on that too.

In any case, I’d still love to have the capability to do this, even 2 decades after I came up with the idea. I don’t understand how this isn’t a thing already. I mean, IBM saw the embryonic concept enough to patent it, years before I ever thought about it. Why has no one ever implemented this yet?

In Apple Antitrust Trial, Judge Signals Interest in Railroad, Credit-Card Monopoly Cases

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide if Apple has operated an illegal monopoly, and she’s already made it clear that she is thinking about how previous precedent-setting cases involving AmEx and a St. Louis railroad apply to the new digital economy.

The question of how to define a market in the case is a central issue. Is the market confined to distributing apps on the iPhone as “Fortnite” videogame creator Epic argues? Or, as Apple contends, is the market just devices on which videogames can be played?

Source: In Apple Antitrust Trial, Judge Signals Interest in Railroad, Credit-Card Monopoly Cases

No, the real central issue is that we’ve now left one of the biggest decisions about how the world economy should work in this modern day in the hands of one poor judge. It should be Congress that is writing laws to govern how this should work, but they no longer do that. The only thing Congress does any more is play with the tax code at the behest of their biggest campaign donors, and then spend that money on those donors’ interests.

The US had a great run. The post-war boom was unprecedented in world history. Except for the continued disgrace of post-Civil-War race relations, the US established an economy and power the world had never seen before. And then we threw it all in the trash, first by the invisible hands of the military-industrial complex and the deep state, and then by very visible hands of modern-day billionaire robber barons.

The party is over now. There’s nothing special about our government anymore. It’s all been captured by the oligarchs, just like every other government. There’s nothing to distinguish the actual result of our form of governance from any other on the face of the earth. The people running the show do whatever they want, whenever they want, and to whomever they want. Whereas big-J journalism used to hold them accountable, and public pressure forced reforms, now big companies in traditional media (and disinfo efforts in social media) smooth everything over and make it all go away.

Did Covid Come From the Lab? Mike Pompeo says Yes. – Common Sense with Bari Weiss

Did the Covid-19 virus come from a lab in Wuhan, China? To ask that question in public was, until recently, to out yourself as a person wearing a tinfoil hat. It was nothing more than a far-right crackpot conspiracy theory, “disinformation” that could get you banned from Twitter, YouTube and Facebook all at once, the kind of thing you only dared discuss in private. Yesterday I asked that question of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. His answer: Yes.

Source: Did Covid Come From the Lab? Mike Pompeo says Yes. – Common Sense with Bari Weiss

To his credit, Eric Raymond said all the signs were there within weeks of the virus escaping China, and becoming international news. Lots of people immediately started countering this insinuation in the news, but given what we know about China’s enormous political machine, this was obviously a State-level effort to stifle this fact.

… Mr. Pompeo explains why he thinks China — which seeks nothing less than to “build an empire”— is by far the gravest threat facing the United States and the West. He explains how the CCP is exercising serious influence over higher education, Hollywood, agriculture, the NBA and even local elections. “The Chinese Communist Party is attending city council meetings all across America,” he says.

To my knowledge, ESR never said anything about it again. He has since gotten embroiled in other divisive political correctness (about the FSF and Richard Stallman), and hasn’t commented much about news lately, unfortunately. I’d love for him to provide more insight now this is recognized as true.

It’s crazy to think that the New York Times wouldn’t publish something possibly critical of China because they don’t want to offend their political apparatchiks, and/or that it might confirm something — anything — that Trump said, but this is the world we’re living in, and the reason why so many on the political Right have so little respect and trust in traditional media today. Leadership at companies like the NYT have only themselves to blame.

This whole thing is also being reported at the WSJ:

Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a U.S. intelligence report, fueling debate over Covid-19’s origin.

China has repeatedly denied that the virus escaped from one of its labs. On Sunday, China’s foreign ministry cited a WHO-led team’s conclusion, after a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, in February, that a lab leak was extremely unlikely. “The U.S. continues to hype the lab leak theory,” the foreign ministry said in response to a request for comment by The Wall Street Journal. “Is it actually concerned about tracing the source or trying to divert attention?”

Beijing has also asserted that the virus could have originated outside China, including at a lab at the Fort Detrick military base in Maryland, and called for the WHO to investigate early Covid outbreaks in other countries. (EDITOR: Screw you, “Beijing.”)

Source: WSJ News Exclusive | Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin

At this point, it should be obvious to everyone that the WHO is a puppet of the PRC. What’s disconcerting is that so many reputable news organizations in the US have carried their China-absolving water for over a year now.

Epstein guards to skirt jail time in deal with prosecutors

Both officers who were guarding Epstein were working overtime because of staffing shortages. One of the guards, who did not primarily work as a correctional officer, was working a fifth straight day of overtime. The other guard was working mandatory overtime, meaning a second eight-hour shift of the day.

Source: Epstein guards to skirt jail time in deal with prosecutors

The conspiracists said that Epstein’s death, under constant supervision, in a high-security wing of a prison, was orchestrated by the CIA to silence one of their most-valuable intelligence gathering assets. And I have been sympathetic to the notion. I mean, how could two guards, on round-the-clock suicide watch, right outside of his cell, have let this go unnoticed? Surely, they had to be in on the conspiracy, right?

No, the answer to at least this part of the tragedy of letting Epstein wiggle away from justice comes quite neatly back to our privatized prisons, and their colossal misalignment between society’s goals for a penal system, and squeezing as much profit out of the capital investment as possible. In retrospect, this is, of course, the perfectly-predicted answer: terribly overworked “guards,” and a lackadaisical accountability that had to have pervaded the workplace so that people could actually “work” in a place that could demand 16-hour shifts for 5 days straight.

The moral of the story is that, if the CIA actually sent someone in to kill Epstein, they didn’t even need to fool with the guards. Our privatized prison system made them a perfect asset for the plot without even needing to get them on-board, and leave the conspiracy vulnerable to the lowest ranks talking. I’m sure Congress will be holding hearings on our prison system, and demanding strong reforms any day now.

Smart Pipe | Infomercials | Adult Swim – YouTube

Everything in our lives is connected to the internet, so why not our toilets? Take a tour of Smart Pipe, the hot new tech startup that turns your waste into valuable information and fun social connectivity.

This is no longer a joke, proving, once again, that humor is dying, as there is nothing left to parody.

Behold, an actual incarnation of the joke, just 7 years later.

Scientists believe that a new groundbreaking loo, dubbed Smart Toilet, that takes photos of your poo will be a gamechanger for millions and their health.

It will be able to examine your poo with an algorithm and warn your doctor of any problems that could help keep the nation healthy.

Source: Groundbreaking smart toilet takes photos of poo to send to doctors for analysis

I did a double take to check the date, and make sure it wasn’t April 1st. No doubt, the monetization plan for this product is not only to provide a service, but become the de facto monopoly player in poo analysis, and then? I don’t know. Probably put a screen on the back of the toilet, and sell advertising, tied to your stool analysis, as well as everything else. Imagine the investor pitch: “More people have toilets than even have cell phones! The market is truly unlimited!”

SMH.

Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China – DNyuz

Apple still appears to provide far more data to U.S. law enforcement. Over that same period, from 2013 through June 2020, Apple said it turned over the contents of iCloud accounts to U.S. authorities in 10,781 separate cases.

Source: Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China – DNyuz

That’s an average of over 1,500 cases a year.

The documents also show that Apple is using different encryption technology in China than elsewhere in the world, contradicting what Mr. Cook suggested in a 2018 interview.

The digital keys that can decrypt iCloud data are usually stored on specialized devices, called hardware security modules, that are made by Thales, a French technology company. But China would not approve the use of the Thales devices, according to two employees. So Apple created new devices to store the keys in China.

Makes sense.

Apple has tried to isolate the Chinese servers from the rest of its iCloud network, according to the documents. The Chinese network would be “established, managed, and monitored separately from all other networks, with no means of traversing to other networks out of country.” Two Apple engineers said the measure was to prevent security breaches in China from spreading to the rest of Apple’s data centers.

Apple said that it sequestered the Chinese data centers because they are, in effect, owned by the Chinese government, and Apple keeps all third parties disconnected from its internal network.

They darn well better. I’m quite certain that China’s Ministry of State Security desires personal data on Americans on a level that rivals even that of the NSA.

China has been stealing intellectual property from all across the globe for decades, and now they don’t even have to fool with it any more. Anyone wanting to do business in China has to hand over all the keys to the kingdom, literally and figuratively. No muss; no fuss! You want allowed into their vast, growing, and under-fleeced market? You give China anything it wants, in the form of information and control. That’s the deal; take it or leave it.

And, as it turns out, basically every company on the planet is taking that deal, for the sake of their sales, their share price, and the personal wealth of their officers and board members. What a bargain!

In return, we peasants get labor-subsidized iPhones. They’re already $1,000 computers. Who knows how much they would cost if they weren’t being assembled by people making $5/day. What a deal!

So everyone is getting something from this situation, and there’s no one left to complain. Ergo, it will not change for the foreseeable future.

Safari and Text Rendering

I take font rendering pretty seriously. Back in my 19-year Linux phase, I’ve changed dozens of machines from one Linux distro to another based on nothing more than font rendering on my main machine.

In my current 7-year Mac phase, I use my MBP on an external, 4K monitor, in high-DPI mode. At least, I think that’s what it’s called. It’s where the UI elements are the same size as in high-def, but the fonts are rendered in (technically, almost) “retina” resolution. I’ve had this monitor for several years, but, every once in awhile, I still catch myself thinking, wow, this desktop is beautifully rendered.

Stack Overflow is a site I use basically every working day. Recently, every time I go to the site, I think to myself that the fonts look a lot better, for some reason. I finally dug around a little, and found that they changed their default font to use your system’s default a week ago. On macOS, this default is San Francisco, which I have loved since Apple first introduced it. I’ve even gone so far as to try to put a free version of the font on Windows, but this works about as well as you’d expect, which is to say it’s almost good.

This looks amazing to me. The meta discussion about the change is filled with hate, but I freaking LOVE it. It makes me want to look around for a theme on this site that will render fonts in San Francisco too. (UPDATE: I just switched it back to a theme I had already customized to use it. It looks great on macOS, of course, but it just doesn’t look very good on Windows. Maybe I need to hook my work laptop into the external monitor before I really judge it.)

Looking at the site on my work laptop, I will admit that the fonts don’t look all that great on Windows, under Firefox, or even Edge, so I can understand why all the Windows users are griping, but that’s not Stack Overflow’s fault. I installed Tampermonkey, and the Q+A-linked Roboto+RobotoMono script, and the site looks pretty good now, not that I use it on my other machine much.

It just goes to show how much Windows defaults are terrible. I recall that it would take me many minutes of screwing around with a fresh install of Linux to get things working to taste, but it took hours for Windows. (It takes mere seconds on macOS. There’s, like, 3 things to change: natural scroll direction, double tap clicking, and folders first in Finder.) Some things just don’t change, because they’re not accidental. They are the result of purposeful planning for the benefit of corporate computer fleet owners, instead of end users. Windows users feel this all the time they use the OS, but they hardly ever seem to realize it.

Randomly, since the Roboto font is being referenced, and Mr. Roboto just came up in my music feed, I just want to state for the record that Mr. Roboto is literally one of the top-10 songs ever recorded.