Ianforrester

Docker & Tiny Tiny RSS sorted finally

I have had on my task list for a long time to fix two problems with my Tiny Tiny RSS setup.

Fix the problem I’m having connecting to TTRSS in a browser since a upgrade
Sort out a decent RSS reader for Ubuntu

Originally it was working fine then a upgrade broke the web interface for me and many others. The confusing and joyful thing for me, was any application which talked to the API was unaffected. Meaning my Android clients were fine including the one on my eink tablet. However all the RSS clients on Ubuntu would either not connect to ttrss, were generally rubbish or wouldn’t work in later versions of Ubuntu (like RSS Owl). The advice seemed to point to using a browser extention.

The first problem was something to do with the PHP which seemed pretty easy to fix but all the solutions assumed you were running it all on a standard webserver and had control over everything. Of course I was running it within Docker and had no idea where config.php was or even where docker had installed anything.

After actually sitting down and looking around my server as a sudo not myself (its the first time I actually dedicated time to do), I found the Docker install and learned what docker was actually doing. My ttrss docker image is actually located under /var/lib/docker/aufs/mnt/{random hash}/var/www/ttrss/.

Under that I could find the config.php file and make changes so it was only accessible over my Vpn connection – yeah, I thought this was very clever but maybe obvious to everyone else. So the only way to hit the web front end of my ttrss install is via my Vpn but API calls are done without the Vpn.

As I found the root of ttrss, I was also able to finally install feedreader which is hightly rated by many. The problem I’ve always had is feedreader complained that it needed a certain plugin installed under ttrss’s plugin directory, which previously I couldn’t find to install. Of course now I know where it is and could copy it there, I was very pleased with myself. Next stop brunch at Ezra & Gil and wait for Feedreader to pull down full text for 8500+ items.

https://twitter.com/cubicgarden/status/929712805053435904

Mozilla Glass Room exhibition

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/37629846464/i

I talked about the Glass Room in a previous blog.

I can’t really give it justice but I did take some pictures which are good starting points. Theres a nice summary of all the exhibits here. Here are the ones which stuck out in my mind.

The Alphabet Empire

All the different sub-companies which fit under the Alphabet (Google) megacorp, there’s so many you needed a magnify glass to see them all.

Apple Towers

This physical infographic compared the amount of money Apple accumulated in offshore accounts against the amount of money the UK and EU governments spent on various things in 2016. Really interesting to see the BBC’s total budget of £4.8bn totally eclipsed by Apples tax bill.

The Data Detox kits

These paper kits are whats meant to help you clean up and take more control over your personal data. As previously said, I found them interesting as they are simple and effective like a Ikea manual and I’ll be interesting to hear how my sister got on with her data detoxing.

How Long Does It Take to Read Amazon Kindle’s Terms and Conditions?

Australian consumer advocacy group Choice hired an actor to read all 73,198 words of Amazon Kindle’s Terms and Conditions. It took just shy of 9 hours and the video of all that time illustrates exactly how much time you would give up to fully understand what you are agreeing to. The other interesting point is the frustration and doubts the actor has while reading it aloud, especially later in the agreement.

Data Production Labour

By the Institute of Human Obsolescence, this is what I blogged about previously. I found it fascinating to see it working. Basically you put your phone down in front of a camera and scan through your facebook timeline. As I don’t have Facebook on my phone, I scanned through my Twitter friends timeline which I hardly ever do. After 2 mins, the results of your activity are fed back to you in a receipt print out. I think of it like clickclickclick but there is something quite powerful about using your own phone and something you might do all the time.

Smell Dating

That whole of idea of smell based dating will never die and this exhibit was oddly placed but I wanted to give it a try as it was causing a bit of a fuss. It would be good to see the results over the course of a day or week, but even watching the woman and man before me had some very different results from me.

A data-day in London

Good little summary of all the points when we have to make a decision to agree with their terms and conditions, during a typical day in London. Really interesting to read through.

MegaPixels

Visually querying yourself was interesting but didn’t do a good job on me at all. A friend thought it would pick up photos of myself but it didn’t happen. Instead I got a lot of low results for Kanye West. It seemed to work much better for others.

Other notable exhibits were Tor Access Point, Facebook Algorithmic Factory, The listener and Unfit bits.

Unfortuanlly by the time you read this, it would have closed its doors but I look forward to seeing more of this type of exhibit.

Dead pebble…?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/24449307698/

On my leui half day, I decided to hit the Spa – keep me away from work stuff. Knowing the Pebble is waterproof I was kept an eye on how much time I was spending in the Steam room. To be honest I’ve used in many spas and swimming pools no problem but today it was stuck on the preference screen. I held the left button in and it felt weird and then collapsed in on its self. unfortunately (or stupidly) I did this while in the jacuzzi. It wasn’t in the water but I got the feeling my wet finger might have caused some water to go inside.

Later I tried to start it up after leaving it in the locker with ventilation, but it didn’t help as its now totally dead. Although I haven’t tried the bag of rice water damage trick.

It feels like my arm is naked right now and having to look at my phone to see the actual time or why its buzzing is almost as weird. I had thought about buying another pebble 2, now they are not being made. Looks like I’ll be doing that now, just hoping it will reach me before I go to Madeira. I guess thats the point of Amazon Prime?

Update – The next day

So I hooked up my dead pebble to the charger and it kicked into action. After a long time and looking up the pebble SOS site with a bunch of searching the pebble forums; I was able to get it repaired with my phone again and usable again. I say usable but its never going to be waterproof again.

I also noticed the rubber seal which I assume protects the inners of the watch is coming loose; plus the battery is depleating far quicker than usual. After half a day the battery was down to 50%. I’m assuming it might be the bluetooth discovery trying to connect to my phone killing the battery but I wouldn’t be suprised if it was down to the water damage in someway.

Pebble 2 comes back to life but certainly not water proof anymore. pic.twitter.com/rfBF02mECB

— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) November 11, 2017

Right now its usable but the back button doesn’t work at all, even pushing the microswitch inside does nothing anymore. This means any sub menus can’t be reversed. I actually found the only way to get back to the clock, is to open the pebble app on my phone and switch the clockface. Not ideal but this means it can work enough for a short while, as notifications and messages automatically switch to the clock after a while.

It could be worst I guess…?

Urban legend says facebook is listening

There so much talk about Facebook and other west coast megacorps (the 5 stacks) listening in on our conversations. To be fair its part of the reason why I don’t like Whatsapp who own and can do what ever they like to the metadata of your conversations. It’s all become a bit of an urban legend, but to be fair the megacorps are doing an incredibly bad job explaining how things are happening (little to no transparency, but to be fair it’s not fitting with their business model).

Even a recent episode of Reply All tackled this field – #109 Is Facebook spying on you.

You can look & listen to the rising concern the public have around their privacy; and the increasing number of stories. I you can’t help but think maybe there is a change coming? Or at least I’d like to think so… but its clear there is a lack of understanding of data by the general public.

For example

“One of the things that Facebook can do is if you like something, it can advertise that thing to your friends. So the brother-in-law obviously signaled to Facebook that he was into white supremacy somehow, and Charles’ friend was liking a lot of the guy’s posts, and they were friends on Facebook, so Facebook was like, “Alright, well, why don’t I advertise this white supremacist stuff to you.”

If you actually read the Facebook EULA, it actually says this but certainly not in such clear human readable words (its been a long while since I skimmed the FB eula, so may have changed – but doubt it). In my own experience, it’s also very hard for people to envision scenarios where the links matter, hence it may not be the actual data but the links between the data which suddenly make people worry and care; the data taken out of context. Most have no idea how many categories of data Facebook alone are sorting us all into.

This is hard to show and demonstrate without going; without going all black mirror or someones eyes glazing over. In my experience when talking about data most people shrug and say things like, “nothing to hide.”

During Mozfest this year I got the chance to walk around the Glass Room on Charing Cross Road, with the people at the ingenious bar giving out data detox kits. The kits are interesting because it’s aimed at a mass audience and the advice although simple is generally useful. I also found some of the installations good, especially the one where you are swiping through your facebook timeline (it was twitter for me) and 2 mins later, given a printed receipt of your work. (Funny enough, it felt like a lot longer than 2mins but then again, its not really the thing I do regularlly)

We certainly need more of this!

Hopefully more of these public interjections will start to move the discussion on from urban legends to a proper informed discussion about ethical data use. I believe FB and others are capitalising on the general public ignorance and its got to stop.

Sleepless in Sarajevo the mix

While on my work trips places, I do love getting out my Pacemaker device and doing a mix. Sometimes I even record the mixes, like this one which I recorded while on the plane from Sarajevo to the UK via Germany. It not the best but fun to do regardless. There was a mix I did start to do which was more tech trance with lots of deep dark beats, but it got cut short due to the plane landing. Expect that to be redone on my next flight to Portugal.

Its sums up the intense amount of work we did in Sarajevo and the huge lack of sleep I had getting up at 6:30am almost every day; but it was so worth it.

Here is the playlist and you hear the whole thing on mixcloud.

Air – Paul Echo
Delores – Indecent Noise
Brush Strokes – Simon Patterson
Grotesque (Alex MORPH and RAM mix) – RAM
Voema – Ferry Corsten
Valhalla (Tonerush remix) – OneBeat
Black is the colour (Coco and Green Remix) – Cara Dillion vs 2 Devine
Super Human – Andrew Bayer feat. Asbjrn
Running up that hill (extended mix) – Markus Schulz presents Dakota
Megalodon – Dash Berlin
Sweet Little Girl (Voolgarizm Remix) – Mario Piu
Shadow World – Thomas Bronzwaer
Labyrinth (Paul Keyen remix) – Lee Cassells
Time (dub mix) – Paul webster feat. Angelic Amanda
Nebula One – WarrenK
No Fear (Phil Dinner remix) – Chapter XJ
Higher State – Genix
Impossible Love Story (R-Edit) – Marvin Gahan Feat. Jane Pick
Seven cities (V-one’s living cities remix) – Solar Stone
Unchained – Diego Morrill

Why the future of online dating is a bigger deal than you think

https://twitter.com/sitdowncomedian/status/924676036494798850

Mozilla Festival 2017 was great and I’m hoping to write up details as usual, but I wanted to give another pointer to Evan Prodromou for giving the session about dating on the open web.

I realize it seems trivial to people thinking only of press freedom, but romance and sexuality are a huge part of human existence. Almost all major dating sites are owned by a single company (Match.com). It’s an area that requires privacy and gradual disclosure. Open dating systems are fascinating — posting one or more profiles on the open web in a way that preserves your privacy but allows gradual disclosure and connection.

Evan’s slides had a lot in it but as there was a lot to cover, there wasn’t enough time for much discussion. On top of that, when talking about personal & sensitive topics, it sometimes takes time for people to warm up and join the discussion.

Almost 24 hours later in the same space (learning forum 2), I talked about the same subject. I started by flicking through Evan’s slides, looking at Tantek’s blog and throwing in my own thoughts about decentralised dating. As Evan said, it seems trivial to most people but it’s having a major effect on our society.

We had more discussion and although it doesn’t seem like it from the photo, had quite a few people joining. It was good to finally have that critical discussion about not just the technical make up of online dating but its good and bad effects on society and the core of our identity.

Another thing Evan started was to submit the problem space of online dating to the W3C as a community interest group. Although I couldn’t find it in the list of submitted, although he did start adding to a etherpad.

Whats that? Peer pressure?

I recently came back from mobile roaming in Sarajevo; its been a while since I’ve been to a county where data roaming wasn’t as straight forward as its become. Even doing the standard replying to the automatic text didn’t work. (Although this isn’t about roaming data, although I have a long history when it comes to international roaming data).

It was kinda weird the assumption that everyone would be on Whatsapp. I understand the limitations of text messages and the greed of the mobile operators in the past around MMS and EMS, has crippled its use. Especially at 50p per message when internationally roaming on EE.

My colleagues ask over and over again, why am I not on Whatsapp? To be fair many others have asked the same question. So here’s some of my reasons.

I simply don’t trust Facebook (owners of Whatsapp); I removed FB from my mobile devices and only put the lite version of messenger with all its permissions removed (inlcuding contact access)
I read the Whatsapp End User Licence Agreement, a few years ago and then didn’t agree with the terms especially around who they share the metadata with. I assume its changed but I don’t see a compelling reason to do it again.
I don’t trust Whatsapp’s security implentation of Signals end to end message encryption; and is it all mute if Whatsapp is sharing the metadata anyway?
This isn’t just because its FB; I don’t use Googe Allo either. I use certain systems for certain things. I get for most people Whatsapp is their ICQ but the benefit isn’t enough to make me use it.
I don’t like the net neutrality issue, with certain mobile operators giving it priority over other services.

End of the day, everyone needs to make their own decision based on real information; not on social & peer pressure. Happy for you to be on Whatsapp but I won’t be joining you.

I bought a Google Pixel 2 and its bloody fast

After my Google Nexus 5x died a few weeks ago, I switched back to my very old Nexus 5 with the broken screen. It was painful, especially with no fingerprint and of course the pixel filled screen. Knowing I would be switching, I put the bear minimum amount of apps on it and played the wait game with my google authenticator.

In the end I pre-ordered the Pixel 2 (which keep calling the Nexus 2) from Carphone Warehouse (mainly because I needed to guarantee I could get it at a certain day, before heading away)

It costed so much my credit card company rejected the transaction and I didn’t get the ability to say it was me before they rejected it. Yes the cost was eye watering but mainly because I’m use to the Nexus lines of £200 ish. Yes I considered other phones but I liked having pure google and the reviews of the Pixel2 were good (I didn’t get the XL version with the odd colour screen). The alternative colour ones were going take too long so stuck with pure black.

When I finally got my hands on it (Thursday) I was surprised how smooth, silky and solid it was. Compared to my Nexus 5x, it was quite a different feeling. You can feel the quality of design and build compared to the Nexus range.

There are a lot of reviews of the in-depth Pixel 2 reviews so I won’t try and do that. But some surprises I had.

The speed of the fingerprint is out of control now, my nexus 5x was fast but this is like warp speed. The general speed of Oreo is zippy, especially compared to my dead Nexus 5x which got the upgrade soon before it died. I had some problems with the wifi but a reboot seems to have fixed it. Having 128gig of space online is kind of crazy, so finally my Plex life time subscription is making a lot more sense. I’m syncing all my podcasts and a lot of audiobooks. Trying to decide if I should put all my single tunes on it or not?

Moving things over was a bit painful only because I only had my backup Nexus 5 with the basic number of things on it not the Nexus 5x. The USBC to female USB A dongle was pretty handy I have to say, although I have done similar with NFC previously to start the pairing process.

Not having a audio jack isn’t a big pain for me as I’ve been monitoring how often I actually use the audio jack since the iphone jack removal; and it was low to not at all. The USB C jack is included and I also have a number of Bluetooth audio jacks I can use easily enough including on my helmet. Battery life so far seems very good with a whole day of my non-use taking only 38% of the battery. The figure said I had another day and a bit of battery use. I had a problem with the Wifi for a bit, which was only noticeable in things streaming like Yaste and Plex but after its second ever restart its all good now.

The camera is insanely fast and I reduced the resolution down because shooting 12+ mega pixel pictures is not so needed generally, although there is plenty of space. For the first time, I have also reduced my font size down to smallest across the whole of the phone, because the screen dpi is excellent enough for me to read the tiny text comfortability; oh and the Redshift feature finally means I loose twilight.

Generally I’m quite impressed with the Pixel 2 (but the price is still eye watering) but its only its 3rd day. Its super fast on everything including unlocking, switching tasks and taking pictures.

Update – Sunday 12th Nov

I felt like I needed to do a quick update.

I still am impressed with the Pixel 2 but every once in a while, the phone will just turn off (its happened 4 times so far). It always happens when using the Bluetooth headphones; I’ll be walking along and it will suddenly go silent like its lost the bluetooth connection, but my headphones doesn’t say its lost the connection. When I pull out my phone its blank and needs to be reset. Only then does the headphones say its lost the siginal. Its weird and I’ve done everything except reinstalling the phone

Our team is working on this. For the latest updates, check out this discussion in our community forum: https://t.co/FI5cOGg8BV

— Made by Google (@madebygoogle) October 27, 2017

Besides this the phone is pretty solid and reliable. The Battery is still excellent and most of the time its only used 15-25% over the course of a day. I seen Google are rolling out updates for the Pixel 2 XL screen problem hopefully this will be high on their bug list too.

Always trust in new trance, the new pacemaker mix

Its been a while since I uploaded a new pacemaker mix, mainly because I have been so busy and also listening to a bunch of new trance tunes. This was recorded on the way back from York on a train recently.

A mix with all new tunes with a classic reminder of the past… Always trust in new trance

Trust – Ferry Corsten
Down (Francesco Sambero Remix) – Kyau & Albert
Cuckoo – Jon Mangan
Delores – Indecent Noise
No Fear (Phil Dinner Remix) – Chapter XJ
Unchained – Diego Morrill
Running up that hill (Extended mix) – Markus Schulz Presents Dakota Feat Bev Wild
OBE (Extended mix) – Vadim Bonkrashkov
Follow you – Ferry Corsten
Sweet Little Girl (Voolgarizm remix) – Mario Piu
Valhalla (Tonerush Remix) – OneBeat
Impossible Love Story (R-edit) – Marvin Gahan Feat. Jane Pick
Seven Cities (V-One’s living cities remix) – Solar Stone
Valhalla (After future Remix) – OneBeat

Goodbye Nexus 5x?

I left my flat Thursday heading for a train to York. Turning on my bluetooth headphones I noticed my Nexus 5x wasn’t connecting. One look at my phone and I noticed the screen was off. So I turned it back on and noticed the bootloader loop I had heard so much about.

While I made my way to York University, I tried multiple times to turn it on using different methods and it was in the taxi when I could actually type in my code to unlock the storage. Of course once it rebooted, it was back to the loop again. I also remember at some point watching the boot loader animation throw a error message which I wasn’t quick enough to snap. But I do remember it saying the storage was corrupt and it needed servicing?

Bloody heck, Nexus 5x is dead 🙁
Just as they announce the Google Pixel 2

— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) October 12, 2017

By the time I was home again, it was dead. No matter how much I held down the buttons nothing would happen. I charged it up but there was no lights. Luckily I still have my Nexus 5 with the messed up screen, I had also thought about switching to the Google Pixel 2, but at £629 for the 64gig version, I just can’t bring myself to hit order (its a serious load of money especially since my Nexus 5x was £200) especially since I wasn’t sure if I would be in Manchester to actually get it. I had not realised it not actually officially available yet!

Right enough… Google Pixel 2 with 128gig it is. Not going to think about the money, just treat it as a good timely investment

— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) October 13, 2017

In the end after working with my Nexus 5 for a day, I decided to get the Pixel 2 with 128gig and buy it from Carphone warehouse only because I can pick it up from Manchester or London if needed. Just he last 24hours has made realise how much I use my phone for things like Monzo, 2 factor auth and much more. In the meanwhile I’l struggle through with the minimum number of apps on my Nexus 5 & 7.

I may attempt to un-brick my Nexus 5x when I got more time and in our R&D lab with the right tools. But seeing how I was waiting for the Pixel 2, I guess its time really.