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Facebook Cares

"You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth. The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay. And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people."
—Mark Zuckerberg, Vox interview

Of course Facebook cares about you, just like a slaughterhouse cares about the cows driven up to the ramp. If they could reach more cows, they would, even if those cows couldn't pay to drive themselves to the slaughterhouse.

New Phone Who Dis?

Dealing with my aging iPhone 6 and iOS 10, and even older iPad 3, was getting on my nerves, so I got a new "space gray" iPhone 8+, 256GB.

I considered the iPhone X, but after doing some maintenance on my apps, I loathe coding around the notch, and I loathe the way it looks. Chris Pirillo had some thoughts and followup that echo mine. Chris has since gone to Android, which to me is like eating only Soylent Green because you once got an undercooked meatloaf; overreaction isn't always wrong, though.

I would prefer the SE form factor, but I don't like a years-old hardware platform. And if this is going to be my only iOS device, I should get the biggest one possible so I can use it as a phablet. It's not like I ever hold a phone up to my ear anyway, it's either on speaker or headphones (dual speakers in the iPhone 8+! But USB-C headphone dongles ?).

The device arrives, and I go to set up, and immediately hit a roadblock: I can't access my iTunes backups. I've used them to recover before, but now I have no idea what the password is, and it's not any of my previous device passwords. Well, now I'm boned. Had to upgrade iCloud and backup to iCloud, which doesn't preserve on-device logins or the actual apps. Many hours later (slow asymmetric bandwidth), it's done.

Restoring the phone from that backup wasn't bad, but now I have a blank phone with placeholders for every single app, which I have to tap on, wait for it to spin and decide "keep/delete" if it's not 64-bit, or paradoxically tell me to buy the app if the app is no longer for sale. And then for every app, go in and restore purchases if it has any, login if necessary, etc. I didn't set Downcast to archive all podcasts, so it had to sit there for hours downloading the last 2 eps of dozens of podcasts.

At this point, let me say: Going 64-bit only is the most user-hostile, art-destroying thing Apple has ever done, and it SUCKS. All of Llamasoft's and CAVE's games are gone from the App Store, and were 32-bit. So I can still play them on old dying devices, but that's it. I miss Gridrunner and Deathsmiles. Atari Greatest Hits is still updated, and works perfectly; Activision Anthology is not, so no Pitfall! Midway Arcade is gone. Lost Treasures of Infocom is lost.

Apple's actually fucked up in 3 ways here, by not supporting 32-bit with an optional API download, by not providing legacy download of apps, and by making the App Store a toxic race for the bottom by EA and other literal motherfucking mega-studios, so no independent developer can make money except the 1 in a billion jackpots. I'm not advocating leaving for Google Play, because that's even less profitable, it's just open theft. I'm advocating burning down the entire system and starting over. But for now I'll take my Big Brother-issued gruel and pretend to enjoy it.

That was most of day 1 before I could do anything with the phone at all.

iBooks is a special level of Hell. It's the shittiest-written app Apple's ever released, syncing barely works at all, downloading is flaky and eats the main UI thread. So I'd go Purchased > Books > Not on this iPhone > All Books, which actually shows maybe 20 books and then stops listing them, then click the download arrow for the 5-6 items visible, then the UI would lock up and I'd have to wait for 5-15 minutes for it to finish. Then once I had all my books, they weren't organized correctly anymore, which is I guess my fault for having slightly different setups on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. So I went full-on librarian. Protip: Disable 3D touch in Settings, because the 3D touch in iBooks is useless and makes it impossible to move books. I spent a good 15 minutes struggling with this before I learned. So here goes most of day 2.

ibooks-hell-1 ibooks-hell-2
ibooks-hell-3 ibooks-hell-4

Taking those screenshots reveals a new screenshot UI, which PISSES ME OFF: iPhone demands that I triage or edit every screenshot immediately, sitting in the corner of the screen like a Jony Ive dog turd. I don't see any way to turn this bullshit feature off.

Additional stress comes from my entertainments: The ESO Jester's Festival was all weekend, which I grind for items worth a lot of gold, but had to spend most of a day tapping thru my phone and then looking back to the game.

And at the same time, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has two events running, a Mario anniversary crafting thing, and a gardening event. Happily I can still clear these in bed, in the bathroom, or while out, but having my phone be busy downloading books interferes with that.

I know, "do something useful, Mark", but really, games are supposed to be what recharge me, not extra stress.

I still haven't loaded my music onto the phone. I have enough space now for a good portion of my music library, instead of only the highest-rated curated lists. Yes, I still have a music library, so when I'm away from wifi, I can listen to music without burning thru my data cap. Ha ha suck it streaming-only kiddies. But I could also just take my iPod classic out, which has everything, but Apple doesn't want you to have nice things like that anymore.

As for the hardware:

The size is preposterous. 158.4mm x 78.1mm x 7.5mm, 202g. The old Palm III was 119mm x 81mm x 18mm, 160g, and the LifeDrive aka iPod touch 5 years before the iPod touch, was 121mm x 73mm x 19mm, 190g. I thought the Palm devices were almost too big for a pocket, but this is a big goddamned thing.

The screen's nice, bright, and rectangular. No fucking around with maybe-unusable areas at the bottom and top, just a big canvas for software to draw on. I can see the time, battery, AND phone signal at once. I can't really use it one-handed all the time. If I cradle it at the base of my fingers in my left hand, I can barely reach the other side of the screen with my thumb. I treat it more like the iPad already, set it down on a table or my leg and work on it.

The glossy case is irresponsible vanity. It should have a matte, grippable back, not be a perfectly-smooth, sliding-onto-concrete frictionless surface. FUCK Jony Ive and his obsession with things that look like nothing, and suck to actually use. I guess I need to find a new sticker-backing or very thin case for this. I don't want to add bulk.

Home button has a VERY satisfying haptic click, it really feels like the entire front of the device is pivoting down about 1mm, even tho it's solid glass. I do use TouchID when I'm somewhere safe, tho I'd disable that if I was travelling; I don't want the pigs to force me to unlock my device.

I haven't done any real photography with this phone yet, but the giant 2-camera hunchback is supposed to be quite nice.

Current setup, which will probably change again soon. Elric covers were just convenient, but the text under the icons doesn't look good, so I have to change that soon. You know what I want? Custom wallpaper per desktop, like we have on Mac OS X.

iphone-2018apr-1
iphone-2018apr-2
iphone-2018apr-3

He Is Risen!

I obviously don't celebrate the one who died and was risen again, Osiris and his detachable penis, nor Ostara the goddess of the dawn, any more than I do christian syncretic myths (super NSFW, but you're not working now so go read all of Ghastly for the weekend).

It's a pseudo-random weekend in spring, because an obsolete lunar calendar doesn't match up with modern calendars. Hoboes dressing up as bunnies handing out eggs and candy aren't a holy celebration, just training kids to be furries (not that there's anything wrong with that). A fairy-tale rabbi (not rabbit) not attested to by contemporary historians didn't come back from lawful execution by magic, and won't be coming back again to take you to rock candy mountain while us sinners burn. Cocoa is a New World plant, so chocolate bunnies or penises or whatever are obviously heretical new additions to any mythology. Tasty, tasty heresy.

Also, merry pranksmas.

Anyway, I was raised from the dead too early, going back to bed. Try not to form any religions about me while I'm out.

How to Recover from the Ready Player One movie

  • There is a Youtube app for Playstation, presumably other consoles. Go in, hit Music, then a genre like '80s Pop. MTV is back, baby! Minus the cool bumpers. I just watched A-Ha's "Take On Me", Police's "Every Breath You Take", and Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" as if it was 1984.
  • Get out Atari Classics or MAME and play thru every game.
  • Get Blu-ray, DVD, downloadable video, or preferably VHS of good movies, like The Last Starfighter (tonight's entertainment), Real Genius, WarGames, Ghostbusters, etc.
  • Reread the book, and pretend a good filmmaker or game developer will adapt it decently in 20 years.

  • Drink a lot. Working on that.

  • The Last Starfighter: CGI 34 years ago was low-poly and glossy or phong shaded, but honestly no worse for storytelling, as long as they didn't try to show living things. And the aliens in latex look FANTASTIC, so much better than the CGI chars in RP1.
    The orchestral soundtrack by Craig Safan is really quite good, it carries the film as much as the CGI does. Like Christopher Franke's Babylon 5 soundtracks, the mood swings from ominous to war to comedy can be a little abrupt.
    Far more character development is given to each of Alex Rogan, Maggie, Centauri, Grig, and even mad, traitorous Xur. I'm not especially a fan of the Beta unit's dating comedy. Short shrift is given to all the dead, maybe interstellar society is just that callous but we're not. But the fate of the Beta unit, the war, and the ending, are much more emotional.
    ★★★★½

Ready Player One

I loved the book of Ready Player One. It plays with deep matters of '80s nerdery, namely original and "Advanced" Dungeons & Dragons and especially S1 Tomb of Horrors, old microcomputer, arcade, and home video games (and the very different kinds of games on them), and Rush's more esoteric albums. It's kind of incomprehensible if you weren't alive in the '70s and '80s and into these specific things. It's pretty brilliant if you were. It's a story of logic puzzles, careful research, and follows much of the story structure of WarGames.
★★★★★

The movie is none of these things. It's a very pretty film, largely CGI inside the OASIS MMO, but replaces the intellectual challenges with a very stupid car race; a very precise and funny adaptation of a cinemaphile but not geek movie which was NOT in the book and very out of Halliday's interests; and a final battle, well adapted in scale and craziness, but the final key being in… is this a spoiler if it's in section 0000 of the book? Adventure for 2600. Well, it's kind of too obvious to even mention, if you're looking for an Easter Egg. Did IQs drop sharply in the Spielberg-verse?

SUPER picky detail (but this is in fact what the book is about, being super picky): In the funeral/contest video, the quarters on James Halliday's eyes in the movie were, if my eyes did not deceive me, from 1972. Book says:

"High-resolution scrutiny reveals that both quarters were minted in 1984."

Why change it? Because either they didn't care, or because Spielberg is literally older than dirt, older than rocks, older than "Steven Spielberg is old" jokes, so old that he thinks 1972 is "better" than 1984 (it is not). Everything else about the funeral video is wrong, too, but that's beside my point here about picky detail.

Ogden appears like a Willy Wonka at the end, in a fairly crappy, formulaic ending. It's fucking Spielberg, so you know it's going to be schmaltzy and fall apart at the end, but the extent of the failure is almost epic. The hobbits^W corporate research drones cheering Wade at the end is nonsense filmmaking.

The music varies from great '80s pop music, sometimes in appropriate places; a few pieces of '80s soundtrack music in exactly the right place; to poorly-timed, almost counterproductive incidental music. I loathe Saturday Night Fever, as previously mentioned, and having another dance scene based on it is annoying; the book does mention "Travoltra"[sic] dancing software, but you don't have to see or hear it. I felt nothing from the incidental music. Did Spielberg go deaf in his extreme old age? His old films at least had good scores, but this was vapid.

The final "rule" of disabling the OASIS, the global center of business, education, and entertainment, on Tuesday and Thursday is so stupid only a very stupid old filmmaker could conceive of it.

There is no Ferris scene after the credits, which would have been a great place to at least leave us smiling, instead of "huh, that was not good".

It lacks the brains, heart, and music of a classic '80s film. Go watch TRON or WarGames instead.

★★½☆☆ only because it is so very pretty, ★☆☆☆☆ for plot. Validates my movie policy that book adaptations are always worse than the book, and adds a new one: Don't watch anything by Steven Spielberg. Will some kind nursing home attendant not just put a pillow over his face and end our suffering?

Post-Facebook Microblogging

So, you've deleted your Facebook, Twitter, and Google accounts and all of their apps, right? Where do you social?

First, I'm the most technical boy in town, but you don't have to be for any of what I'm going to tell you. This is all fairly easy, even for a normal Human.

Second, you will have to learn things. You'll need to set aside a day or two to read, make decisions, go look terms up. I know learning is hard and scary, but go look at a motivational poster and do the thing:

I am a tiny cactus and I believe in you. You can do the thing!
original

Third, I'm on Mac and iOS; I have complaints with current Apple, but it's still the slowest-sinking ship. That said, you may be using Windows, BSD, Linux, or Android. Most of this is completely platform-independent, and there are some apps for other platforms.

Fourth, some of this costs money, up front for new software, and every month for hosting. As I have previously noted:

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
—Andrew Lewis

  • Search: So, first, set your browser to search with DuckDuckGo. Google is just as bad as Facebook. In Safari, hit Preferences ⌘, > Search tab > dropdown. In Chrome, Preferences > Search engine > dropdown.
    • Now anything you type in the address bar goes thru a search engine that doesn't track you. And there's neat tricks in DDG: Type "!w blog" to see the Wikipedia page on "blog". Type "!g porn" to search Google if DDG's results aren't good enough, tho mostly they are.
  • Blog. I'm using DreamHost managed WordPress, found a nice domain, paid, and was up and running in a few minutes (new domains take a few hours to appear everywhere on the Internet; but while you wait there's plenty of setup and writing to do).
    • There's other options, but whatever you do, make sure you have your own domain name; the WordPress.com free blogs are not bad, but the site is owned by Automattic, not you. Own your own thing, but it's OK to let someone manage it if you can move it somewhere else.
  • Theme: I went with the Twenty Sixteen theme because it looks most traditional blog-like. Twenty Seventeen seems to be more business-oriented. Try both, and other themes, and see what you like.
    • The side menus are a pain to set up: WP Admin > Appearance > Menus, then Appearance > Widgets to create a widget showing that menu. Ask me or someone else with a blog you like, if you need more help; this is all fussy, not technical just annoying.
  • Social: I'm currently using micro.blog (MB) for a social network. Register, choose the "I already have my own microblog." option, the RSS feed is the "Entries RSS" link on your WP blog.
    • Add some WordPress plugins: Micropub, Webmention, Semantic-Linkbacks. These let replies from MB appear as comments under posts, with avatars and names, just like you can see here.
    • You might want to set up WP to "Publicize" to Twitter, and Mastodon Autopost does the same thing for the Fediverse. Alternately, MB can be paid to crosspost to Twitter.
    • I use the MB iOS and Mac apps for posting quick items, or the web site (WP Admin > Posts > Add New) to post here. I'm editing this in the browser, because WP's "classic" editor is OK; I'm scared of the next-gen editor but I'll see if I like it.
    • MarsEdit has a better Mac editor, and posts to all sorts of blogs. But if I'm on the Mac, the web page is fine.
    • I'm still using Fediverse/Mastodon some, and I want that to become bigger and more widespread. But be aware that the site admins have a lot of power, and there's no privacy. I'm likely to set up my own Pleroma instance just for myself so I control my Fediverse activity, and I don't like Gargron's Mastodon tech junkpile/stack.
  • Photos: The MB app does OK at posting photos. Not great, I take photos with Camera+, edit, save, then open the MB app and click the photo button; the share action didn't work when I tried it, but I think that's an iOS 10 issue? Tap tap tap tap stroke tap turn-crank tap tap tap.
    • Sunlit is the other app from Manton Reece (guy behind MB), formerly for App.net (which we all miss), and now a general-purpose photo-blogging tool. I'm not really into it yet, but if I was photo-blogging a lot I would be.
  • Messaging: Facebook can read every message you ever sent thru FB Messenger. Probably not a person (but they can, it's just in a database any FB dev can read), but a program can know everything about you. DELETE THAT SHIT.
    • You can use Email for initial point of contact with people, but realize that's not secure, either. Use iMessage, Telegram, Signal, maybe LINE, maybe WhatsApp (warning: owned by Facebook, so they can still read the metadata of who you're calling), for safe, secure chat; these use end-to-end encryption so nobody, not the company, not the NSA, not a fucking advertiser, can read your messages.
    • Skype, Slack, and Discord are nice for public chat, but realize these are NOT PRIVATE. They have access to everything you send, and of course everything is hosted on their servers. IRC is a complex service, it can be made secure, but any public instance is not secure.
  • Reading: So if someone's on micro.blog, you can just follow them, and see all their posts, and reply/comment on their posts as if it was Twitter.
    • Anyone who hasn't joined MB, you need to find the RSS feed link on their site, and add it to a feed reader. I use FeedBin and think it's worth paying for.
    • Reeder is OK, and runs on iOS and Mac. I like it less than the FeedBin web interface, but YMMV.
    • There used to be a great Mac app called NetNewsWire. It was then acquired, killed, rewritten badly, beaten, chained up, and abandoned to die in a corner with only the rarest bug fixes. I do not recommend the current version in any way, total catastrofuck.
    • Brent Simmons has a new app in development, Evergreen, but the alpha requires High Sierra, and I'm still on Sierra. Still, I expect this to be a good app sometime.

That gets you independent, publishing, and reading posts again, without a scumbag owning everything you do. I'm sure there's a ton of other things you're going to miss, and if you've got questions, ask.