Among things recognized hilariously late in life. One would think they knew, but they also know their flaws. 

Only relevant for holdouts like me, but El Cap Notes don’t reliably sync with iCloud. They seem too, but I think there are issues with rich text notes and shared notes (of course you can’t see which are shared or unshared in El Cap). There’s also something odd with sync of those that do work, I had to toggle Notes on/off in iCloud to force a sync update.

If you’re on El Cap you need to use iCloud Notes via a browser.

Bend the knee. Apple has won for now. 

If you are not a geek, as of years ago, you have only one somewhat safe choice. It would be better if Apple hadn’t screwed backups, but your best choice is current iOS. On Apple hardware of course. 

In a year maybe Windows S on Microsoft hardware. Eventually Android “S” on Google hardware, but Google missed the boat. Arrogance I suppose. 

Chromebook – if Google backpedals on Chrome/Android integration. 

Dangerous is macOS run as non-admin on, of course, Apple hardware. One version behind is fine. 

Very dangerous Windows 10 with constant updates. 

Insane the rest.

Eventually devices will deactivate when their OS is unsupported.

We cannot believe we chose Mussolini to rule us. We say it, but do not mean it. Pride I suppose. 

Annoyed me for years, finally looked at SQL output of advanced queries. No wonder they don’t work as expected! Had to fix by hand. 

I want pointers to my Outlook Contacts to be nodes.

… there’s nothing to do. It can’t find a document I can see is there, but there’s nothing fixable.

Basic feature missing.

For a book project I had to review the current state of password generators, including the Schneier vs. GRC vs. XKCD/diceware wars.

Bah. Humbug. The memorable vs. random debate is obsolete. The real criteria is tappable. A password needs to be tappable on a twee iPhone virtual keyboard that shows only one character at time (Yes, I use 1Password. I still find lots of times I have to type and tap.) I can’t tap a long random string. I even have a hard time tapping an 8 word string — and I don’t have the patience for it.

I think the obscure and much maligned Apple keychain ‘Memorable’ password generator strikes the right balance. A mixture of (pseudo) randomly (I hope) selected pronounceable strings with some extra characters. I usually tweak the words to be less English (but still memorable) and I toss in “extra characters” that don’t require too much keyboard shift/swap. I generally stop at around 16 characters.

It’s too bad Apple’s password generator is so hard to access. On OS X I use an ancient and now vanished app called “Password Assistant” (2006, codepoetry – don’t try the domain, it was lost long ago) that invokes it. I can’t believe nobody has put something like this on the Mac App store. On iOS there’s no easy way to access it, you only see it when entering a password on a web form (again, why no app to invoke it? Too bad Siri can’t access it.)

Sure, the NSA could crack these too short and too englishy passwords in a few hours. But a serious hacker team wants my stuff, much less US border security, I’m screwed anyway. For most criminals I just need to be have something well above average. That’s not hard …

PS. I think Atwood came close to me in his 2015 essay: “passphrases … are exceptionally painful to enter via touchscreen in our brave new world of mobile – and that is an increasingly critical flaw.” Alas, he seemed to have forgotten this in his 2017 essay.

I think. My big tube carbon and aluminum bikes seem to amplify small clicks and rubs. A quite bike is worth a lb or two to me.

Emily observation. 20y ago sick people knew their temperature – especially the kids. Now nobody does. They don’t have a thermometer or it doesn’t work for them.

Toaster problem? Devices too complex? Something else?

The GOP is a cognitive wasteland. 

via Politico: “Speaking of new administration staffers: John Fleming, the former member of the House of Representatives and new deputy assistant secretary for medical technology, had some interesting views on drugs and addiction, BuzzFeed reports. In a 2006 book, Fleming speculated that tattoos might lead to drug use, and called opioids potential proof of the existence of a higher power. “Only a higher power and intellect could have created a world in which substances like opiates grow naturally,” he wrote.”

The most braindead blunder in a long string of Apple screwups. Unforgivable.

Everyone dies but few die cheaply. 

At a gathering of graduates of “elite” private schools I met a woman who counsels upper class teens on college applications. 

She teaches and revised essays. Structures good works to craft an appealing history. Advises classes and direct applications. 

All necessary, she says, in the new world. 

It sounds like a less democratic version of the Korean cram school. 

I think, at root, like Trump, it is about AI,  what DeLong calls “Peak human”, and I call “mass disability”. A fear that is not understood but is real. Scrambling for lifeboats on a sinking ship. 

Do this while driving in bright light. 

1.  Have music playing.
2. Swipe up from bottom to show Bluetooth etc panel. 
3. Swipe to swap to sound but accidentally move brightness to nothing. 

Phone is useless. Display is too dim to see in daylight. Reboot won’t help. Siri won’t adjust brightness. 

Need to find dark bathroom at gas station to enter passcode and adjust.  

I think I might also have had some iOS “night shift” state confusion and a miscalibrated auto-brightness that made things worse.

Would be good to have a fix of some kind…

Russia’s fate felt ominous to me.

Not in the User Guide or any Apple source I can find. Weird.

(The UI is also weird. You can only share location by using an existing message thread, you can’t share location on a new thread.)

Buildings full of paper-filers and typists…

Phone scanner apps don’t know target dimensions. So auto scan to fill sensor. If want render normally place on 8×11 plain white sheet on dark background. App will scan sheet and everything will size as expected. 

Why ring for calls from people on the bypass list (favorites, contacts) but not ping for texts?

If delusional he is technically insane. 

Bored I played with Tips.app. I learned things! There is always more. 

On my 6 there were @17 base tips. My work 6s had a few more – for force touch. 

Surprise was to find “collections” at the end, including a “genius” set. 

Yeah, I read manuals too. 

This is not good.

I’ll be visiting my father in Canada this weekend. The safest thing is to leave my laptop behind and use an adapter to put my i6 SIM into a sterile 4s from our emergency phone bin. Which would be an interesting digital detox experience.

Or I could try to clean my i6. I could change passwords on my primary Google and Twitter accounts then remove them from my phone. That’s troublesome though.

I think the sterile 4s is the best bet. I can put music on it then use one of my dormant iCloud accounts for email. I’ll have to bring my dSLR.

I am annoyed by those who say “things will be alright”. They are already not alright.

Anyone on my contacts list rings. All else to voice mail.

WTF? Daughter’s phone. How is that possible?

It occurs to us.

“Office 365 Personal … $69.99”. This has been a terrific value. The right way to do subscription software.

My posts always defaulted to post format “status”. To revert default back to standard I had to delete and reinstall. 

AT&T has one setting for roaming, Verizon separates voice from data.

Editing.

#1 son tells me that turning on automatic downloads in iTunes and App Stores defeats the restriction setting that requires a password for free downloads.

I’ve yet to validate this — no time tonight. Even if it doesn’t work the way he thinks, the auto download is a restriction gap when an iTunes password is shared by family members (old school method, predates family accounts – iCloud and iTunes credentials can differ). If anyone with the shared iTunes account downloads an app it will be downloaded automatically even to phones where the password requirement is set.

Remember when we thought bin Laden’s swerve to the medieval was quixotic?

Reflecting on China’s massive Foxconn incentives it is important to consider the alternative. 

If China did not subsidize Foxconn, and thus the iPhone, Apple would still make them. 

They would be designed for robotic assembly so they’d look different. They wouldn’t change as often. They would probably be the same price. 

The big effect of China’s subsidies is to keep automation away. It is an employment intervention. 

An example worth considering. 

In its own way Russia’s far right success is as startling as the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

In a very short period of time history is changing. 

Russia pushed on a locked door and discovering the hinges had rotted out. In the US the GOP’s voter driven spiral into fact and value free hate and attack broke more than we knew. An aspect of a process that is much bigger; the stress of globalization and technology and culture transformations. 

It is all so cartoonish, too preposterous to credit. The villains carry “Dr. Evil” cards, they can’t be taken seriously. So we don’t take them seriously.

Now would be a good time to start taking them seriously.

Not quite counterfeit, but almost.

The product description includes the word ‘compatible’, but it also says ‘by Sears Craftsman’. Didn’t actually work, return fee, no return postage, etc.

I remember when Amazon was less scuzzy than eBay.

We got everything set and you f*cked it up. Pray your deity protects you.

In a society where both genders are educated and mate selection is internalized will cognitive spread inevitably increase?

That is, will the base of the curve spread out? Has this already happened?

Google has relaunched “wallet”. It requires a debit card for use — credit cards not accepted, bank accounts not supported, no way to create “Google Cash” for the account.

I don’t think I have a debit card; I use a non-debit ATM card.

Blogger doesn’t support https for blogger users with custom domains. Google has severely deprecated search indexing for non-http domains.

So people who use blogger with a custom domain are kind of screwed.

My old Google Custom Search engines no longer find posts of mine I’m looking for.

Was always an incompatible mess. With 2010 effectively replaced by long span appt (date/time at each end). Google and Outlook represent these same way. 

I’d tested earlier and got the useless 9.x “add events” behavior when tapping on our special hockey calendar feed:

webcal://www.mnspecialhockey.org/ical_feed?tags=1768556%2C2152725%2C2838825

Today from iMessage I got “subscribe to calendar”. Added as new subscription source to Calendar.app. 

Feed probably needs webcal prefix, may not work in all settings. 

There are options to tweak feed:

In Outlook you can flag an email for followup on send. In macOS Mail.app you only flag received messages.

SMB gets closer to AFP parity.

There are several historic approaches to creating work for people that the market economy does not want. 

One is supported employment for people who meet traditional criteria for cognitive disability. 

Another is public works, from Egyptian pyramids to Roosevelt’s PWA. 

A third is the US military and civilian organizations that favor veterans, such as the US postal service and Veterans Hospital Association. 

The last is the dominant method of creating socially acceptable non-college employment. The techniques used in the vast industry could be the basis for future synthetic employment. 

Easier to run iOS on a touchbar laptop. 

In August of 2001 Americans felt pretty secure. We thought our Maginot line was strong.

In August of 2015 we thought we had defenses. Yeah, we knew newspapers were weak, but we had constitutional checks and balances. We had the power of the wealthy, the powerful, and the incorporated to balance the fear and despair of the credulous.

We were wrong. Our constitution has loopholes; it’s only paper after all. The business model that built the Adnet was a weapon hiding in plain sight. A few crazed billionaires had great power.

Now we have nutters running large swathes of government, not least the presidency.

Where else are we weak?

Oddly comforting. Will outlive me. Maybe will bug the AIs. 

It is vulnerable.