Around the Twitter-verse – Monday Edition

Adding an important one…

European 21st Century Dictators

or The European Union — either title fits. This morning 9 to 5 Mac posted a story about the standards that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video will have to meet in order to be able to function in the European economy.

Streaming video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video will soon have to ensure that at least 30% of the programming offered in Europe is produced in EU countries …

via 9 to 5 Mac

The rules and regulations they create are enormous and ridiculous. If we are lucky, Netflix will throw its hands up and say that it is monetarily not worth the effort and pull out of Europe. That is my hope.

Labor Day!

Most folks celebrate Labor Day by not working. For the last several years, our company has had to work on Labor Day.

Not this year.

I get the opportunity to be off and write scathing articles about whatever the fonk I want. I started a short story about a young boy versus the universe and a cookie jar. Perhaps, I’ll finish the first draft.

Saturday, I ripped out all of the cabling in the office and re-ran everything. I ended up with a boxful of cabling that I obviously didn’t need. I probably should have done that years ago. I was most happy to resurrect the Heineken sign that I’ve had for about seven years.

Heineken LED Lamp circa 2011
Office after excessive cable removal

It is YOU

I’m happy that the author of this article is annoyed and my only regret is that I can make her MORE annoyed. Her annoyance is annoying to me.

Poor…poor…snowflake.

And for the record, I’m pretty sure that it isn’t driving EVERYONE crazy. I am not. Therefore, the EVERYONE argument is null and void.

Apple’s iOS 12 beta is driving everyone crazy
We would if we could, Apple.

It’s not the end of the world, of course — a quick tap on “close” and the notification disappears — but it sure is annoying, and doesn’t really fill anyone with great hopes for a smooth roll out when the update becomes available generally.

via Engadget

Random Twitter

Some things I found interesting on Twitter this morning…

Golden Rules of Parenting

  1. Teach your children to NOT be victims.
  2. Teach your children to be fiercely independent/interdependent.
  3. Allow them to discover their own spirtuality.
  4. Teach your children to be responsible for their own actions.

If you do those three things, your child will grow up to be an exceptional person.

Update: The last entry was suggested to me by a co-worker so I added it to the list. I think my original thought process was to assume that this dovetailed into number 2. She did not agree and looking back at it, she is probably correct.

Weekend Crap

It has been a sad weekend.

  1. John McCain died.
  2. Neil Simon died.
  3. The show “The Big Bang Theory” is finally ending and the folks at The Guardian couldn’t be happier.

The US network CBS has announced that the 12th series of The Big Bang Theory will be the last, apparently because Jim Parsons was finally ready to leave the show. Producers have promised an “epic creative close” when the series ends in May. After that, The Big Bang Theory will be dead, and nobody will be sad.

via The Guardian


The Socialist Country formally known as Australia!

Australia is proposing a new law that would put you in jail for ten years for refusing to unlock your phone.

The Australian government wants to force companies to help it get at suspected criminals’ data. If they can’t, it would jail people for up to a decade if they refuse to unlock their phones. The country’s Assistance and Access Bill, introduced this week for public consultation, strengthens the penalties for people who refuse to unlock their phones for the police. Under Australia’s existing Crimes Act, judges could jail a person for two years for not handing over their data. The proposed Bill extends that to up to ten years, arguing that the existing penalty wasn’t strong enough…

via Slashdot

I think the existing two year penalty is bad enough.

China or Australia…starting to look like the same country to me.

However, Australian women are gorgeous so there’s that.

New iMac 27″ and HomePod

This morning I ordered a new iMac 27″ to replace my aging 2011 iMac. The reason I wanted to upgrade the old one was simply because of software upgrades. I cannot upgrade my iMac to Mojave and for me — being able to upgrade your OS is of paramount importance, especially for a developer.

2018 iMac 27″

In addition to that, I also added a HomePod. The reasoning is that since I am already spending a gazillion dollars (actually $3000) on a new computer, I might as well go ahead and make it worse by adding a HomePod for a Gajillion more dollars (actually $350). Neither of these two things are as important as what my old iMac will do.

Update: I’m adding a snapshot of what the configuration consists of.

via Apple

I am selling it to someone with a computer that is five years older than my old iMac. For him, this will be an upgrade and since he is an older gentleman — the bigger screen will help his vision problems. That is what makes all of this worth it to me. I do like helping folks when it comes to computers.

If history is any indication, my review will probably be something like “Wow. This is cool.” I know. I am a deep person. Don’t judge me.

Update: 08.21.2018 – HomePod arrived today. Sounds incredible!

Using Do Not Disturb to Curb Telemarketers

Anyone who knows me knows that I loathe telemarketers. In fact, I recently wrote about it here.

I’m not sure what made me think of it but yesterday, I reached an epiphany. It made me look a little deeper into the feature in iOS called Do Not Disturb.

Do Not Disturb in iOS 12

What I found interesting was the Allow Calls From and how it lets you decide who can call you while this feature is active. I got a call from a friend this morning so that tells me that this is working perfectly. I am allowing calls from my contact list which is exactly what I want. I won’t really know until this afternoon when telemarketing calls are abundant whether it outright blocks the calls or if they still “ring.” I’d rather them just be sent to voicemail. Maybe that feature will be in a future version? Hopefully.

I’ll keep you posted.

Battlefront II Imbalances

I don’t expect everyone who reads this website to understand how Battlefront II works. With that being said, I intend to rant about something that I believe is important to good gameplay. Balance.

The reason I bring this up is because I just played a game where one side would never possibly win. The way the game works is that when you accumlate enough battle points by either playing objectives or taking out enemy players you can upgrade your character to something even better and more powerful.

I believe an imbalance occurs when one side achieves a level where they have been able to claim most of the better player slots and the other side is never able to recover. If the light saber welding folks are hard to kill and they can pretty much kill any other player without a light laber, how would the other side ever be able to counteract that?

I’m not complaining just for the sake of complaining. I’ve been on both sides of this. On a team that just couldn’t be beaten and the team that always was. Here is how I would fix the imbalance. I would only allow one light saber weilding player per side per game. Let’s face it, Kylo Ren wasn’t present at Naboo so why should that character be able to play? In most cases other than the clone wars, light saber weilding players were low. There were only a few per side. Why not keep it that way in Battlefront II?

That is why in some cases, one side can never win. It is real jackassery on the part of Electronic Arts if you think about it. They gutted the original layout of the game to begin with and for those of us who were there at the beginning, they offered an olive branch for those who lost points, credits, and crystals and then never allowed anyone to cash it in. Well, you had a time limit but they never told you that. Sorry, I digress.

I love the game and as a veteran, I know that you don’t want your fights to be fair. You want them to be as lopsidded as possible (in your favor, of course). However, this is a game and I still believe one light saber character per side should be good enough for anyone. Especially, if you want to enjoy the game.

Ok. Rant mode off. I understand if I am the only one who understands this drivel. It’s good to have your own website sometimes.

Gutenberg – Day 16

If anything qualifies as “drive by blogging” this post will be it. I am getting used to the new Gutenberg interface and in most of the ways that matter, it is awesome. For those who don’t know, Gutenberg is the new WordPress writing interface. It have not been officially released but you can download a plugin to get started today.

There is one thing I do not like and that is the fact that the categories are not in alphabetical order. I have tons of them and finding the one I am looking for takes a lot of time. Hopefully, they’ll add an ascending or descending sort to it before it goes live.

A Tragedy in Elizabethtown

For anyone who visits my humble website outside of the Lancaster area, this demonstration of violence towards a young child will make you gasp. This is from Lancaster Online (Sorry. It is a subscription website. Sidenote to LNP…that also means that the traffic driven to your website will most likely never pay to read the article.)

Blake’s sudden death came after an altercation on Monday, Aug. 6, in Elizabethtown Borough Park. Authorities said 24-year-old David Mikeal Skalla approached Blake about music that he and his friends were playing and that contained profanities.
After a verbal altercation, witnesses said Skalla hit Blake four times in the face and head. Blake collapsed without trying to defend himself, they said.
The district attorney’s office announced criminal homicide and aggravated assault charges against Skalla about an hour after Blake’s father announced his death on Friday.

via Lancaster Online

This tragedy will end up costing two lives. All because Skalla took the path of violence to solve a problem he could have simply walked away from.

Lower Levels – Castle Nerda

Castle Nerda is a name I created for the place in which I live. It is pretty simple actually. It is a house full of nerds. Therefore, we call it Castle Nerda.

The plan today at Castle Nerda is basement cleaning. I loathe it but alas, it must be done. We were extremely fortunate this time around because most of our valuable equipment (Dish TV cables, Comcast Business Modem, washer and dryer, etc) were all secured above the water line. This lesson we learned from the previous flooding. It had never happened previous to that.

With two floodings in five years, we will probably take things a step further and simply not have anything on the floor. I’ll take some photos and add them towards the end of the day.

Castle Nerda Basement Cleanup – August 2018

Bitcoin – Still a Good Idea?

Ahhh, hell no. As this Yahoo article points out.

While Bitcoin ended the day with a 4 percent decline in its value, Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, plummeted by 13 percent against the US dollar, becoming one of the worst performing major cryptocurrencies alongside NEO.
Tokens recorded the steepest drop in their value on August 11, as most Ethereum-based tokens such as Theta Token, Aion, Pundi X, Aelf, DigixDAO, WanChain, and VeChain recorded a drop of around 14 to 18 percent.

via Yahoo Finance

Today, money has no value unless a government gives it value. The United States is a great example. How much is $5.00 worth? Whatever the United States government says it is. It is not backed by anything. Neither is cryptocurrency. It’s worth is decided by Wall Street traders which makes it even worse than the US government. How much is a bitcoin worth? It depends on what day you ask the question.

What if you buy a fancy crypto wallet and store your digital currency in that? What if you forget the password? Well, this happens.

But not all early cryptocurrency enthusiasts are counting their coins. Instead they might be racking their brains trying to remember their passwords, without which those few Bitcoins they bought as an experiment a few years ago could be locked away forever.


That’s because Bitcoin’s decentralization relies on cryptography, where each transaction is signed with an identifier assigned to the person paying and the person receiving Bitcoin. It’s how the system is able to process large transactions without a central bank, since each exchange is guaranteed by authenticating when money is going from one wallet to another using both public identifiers and private passcodes, and no one can access your Bitcoin wallet without your private password. If someone else somehow had your password and swiped your coins, they’re gone for good. Passwords are used to unlock your bitcoin wallet address, and if you forgot your password, those coins are locked away. There’s no central point of control to help retrieve your Bitcoin or change your password. If there was an easy means of cracking open people’s Bitcoin wallets when a password was lost, the cryptocurrency would be worthless, since the whole point is security without centralization.

via Slate

My two cents: I think that arguing that this is a good idea based on the fact that you are a geek and this is a geek thing has no merit. In the age of hacking, this is a horrible idea.