Dan Jones

Professor of philosophy Daniel DeNicola on the right of people to believe what they want to believe.

Unfortunately, many people today seem to take great licence with the right to believe, flouting their responsibility. The wilful ignorance and false knowledge that are commonly defended by the assertion ‘I have a right to my belief’ do not meet James’s requirements. Consider those who believe that the lunar landings or the Sandy Hook school shooting were unreal, government-created dramas; that Barack Obama is Muslim; that the Earth is flat; or that climate change is a hoax. In such cases, the right to believe is proclaimed as a negative right; that is, its intent is to foreclose dialogue, to deflect all challenges; to enjoin others from interfering with one’s belief-commitment. The mind is closed, not open for learning. They might be ‘true believers’, but they are not believers in the truth.

DeNicola is the author of the recent book Understanding Ignorance.

Marcel Freinbichler:

Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads removed. The site seemed very fast, so I did a performance audit. How fast the internet could be without all the junk! 5.2MB → 500KB

They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds, from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than 500 requests to 34.

The privacy implications of all the JavaScript that gets loaded for user-tracking is alarming enough, but practically speaking the bigger problem is that it makes the web slow. Web developers, generally speaking, are terrible at their craft. 124 JavaScript files and over 500 HTTP requests for a single goddamn web page is just shameful.

Again I say: the web would be better off if browsers had never added support for scripting.

They must not have an acoustic guitar because I know for certain I would pull out a stringed woodboy and play it if the power went out.

Bell Telephone Company released this short instructional film to teach people how to use a dial telephone when they first came out in 1927

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Here’s a bit of numerology for you. Today marks 17 years, one month, and 29 days since Mac OS X 10.0 was released on March 24, 2001. That’s a strangely odd number — 6269 days — but it also happens to be the exact length of time between January 24, 1984 (the launch of the original Macintosh) and March 24, 2001.

As Jason notes, it’s a bit mushy, given that Mac OS X had been out for a while in beta form prior to 10.0 being released, and perhaps more importantly, a majority of Mac users were relying on Mac OS 9 for several years after Mac OS X was released — including yours truly. But, still, a notable milestone. Classic Mac OS being anything other than a very fond memory feels like a long time ago.

Everyday Arcade, which is responsible for The GOP Arcade (sample game titles include The Voter Suppression Trail and Thoughts & Prayers: The Game!), has designed a new game called MTA Country. Based on the SNES title Donkey Kong Country, the goal of MTA Country is to guide Andrew Cuomo, Bill de Blasio, and celebrity straphanger Gregg Turkin past hazards like track fires and stalled trains to their destination. That ending though… Hmm…

Every now and then, you come across a special project. You know the sort, where some business user decides that they know exactly what they need and exactly how it should be built. They get the buy-in of some C-level shmoe by making sure that their lips have intimate knowledge of said C-level butt. Once they have funding, they have people hired and begin to bark orders.

About 8 years ago, I had the privilege experience of being on such a project. When we were given the phase-I specs, all the senior tech people immediately said that there was no way to perform a sane daily backup and data-roll for the next day. The response was "We're not going to worry about backups and daily book-rolls until later". We all just cringed, made like good little HPCs and followed our orders to march onward.

Fast forward about 10 months and the project had a sufficient amount of infrastructure that the business user had no choice but to start thinking about how to close the books each day, and roll things forward for the next day. The solution he came up with was as follows:

   1. Shut down all application servers and the DB
   2. Remove PK/FK relationships and rename all the tables in the database from: xxx to: xxx.yyyymmdd
   3. Create all new empty tables in the database (named: xxx)
   4. Create all the PK/FK relationships, indices, triggers, etc.
   5. Prime the new: xxx tables with data from the: xxx.<prev-business-date> tables
   6. Run a job to mirror the whole thing to offsite DB servers
   7. Run the nightly backups (to tape)
   8. Fire up the DB and application servers

Naturally, all the tech people groaned, mentioning things like history tables, wasted time regenerating indices, nightmares if errors occurred while renaming tables, etc., but they were ignored.

Then it happened. As is usually the case when non-technical people try to do technical designs, the business user found himself designed into a corner.

The legitimate business-need came up to make adjustments to transactions for the current business day after the table-roll to the next business day had completed.

The business user pondered it for a bit and came up with the following:

    1. Shut down all application servers and the DB
    2. Remove PK/FK relationships and rename the post-roll tables of tomorrow from xxx to xxx.tomorrow
    3. Copy SOME of the xxx.yyyymmdd tables from the pre-roll current day back to: xxx
       (leaving the PK's and indices notably absent)
    4. Restart the DB and application servers (with some tables rolled and some not rolled)
    5. Let the users make changes as needed
    6. Shut down the application and DB servers
    7. Manually run ad-hoc SQL to propagate all changes to the xxx.tomorrow table(s)
    8. Rename the: xxx tables to: xxx.yyyymmdd.1 
       (or 2 or 3, depending upon how many times this happened per day)
    9. Rename the xxx.tomorrow tables back to: xxx
   10. Rebuild all the PK/FK relationships, create new indices and re-associate triggers, etc.
   11. Rerun the mirroring and backup scripts
   12. Restart the whole thing

When we pointed out the insanity of all of this, and the extremely high likelihood of any failure in the table-renaming/moving/manual-updating causing an uncorrectable mess that would result in losing the entire day of transactions, we were summarily terminated as our services were no longer required — because they needed people who knew how to get things done.

I'm the first to admit that there are countless things that I do not know, and the older I get, the more that list seems to grow.

I'm also adamant about not making mistakes I know will absolutely blow up in my face - even if it costs me a job. If you need to see inside of a gas tank, throwing a lit match into it will illuminate the inside, but you probably won't like how it works out for you.

Five of us walked out of there, unemployed and laughing hysterically. We went to our favorite watering hole and decided to keep tabs on the place for the inevitable explosion.

Sure enough, 5 weeks after they had junior offshore developers (who didn't have the spine to say "No") build what they wanted, someone goofed in the rollback, and then goofed again while trying to unroll the rollback.

It took them three days to figure out what to restore and in what sequence, then restore it, rebuild everything and manually re-enter all of the transactions since the last backup. During that time, none of their customers got the data files that they were paying for, and had to find alternate sources for the information.

When they finally got everything restored, rebuilt and updated, they went to their customers and said "We're back". In response, the customers told them that they had found other ways of getting the time-sensitive information and no longer required their data product.

Not only weren't the business users fired, but they got big bonuses for handling the disaster that they had created.

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Old Android devices become development powerhouses.

Termux is an Android terminal emulator and Linux environment. What that means in practice is that you can install Termux on most Android devices and do almost anything you would do in a full Linux development environment on that device.

After working mind-numbing warehouse jobs for several years, Jesse was ready for a fresh start in Information Technology. The year 2015 brought him a newly-minted Computer and Networking Systems degree from Totally Legit Technical Institute. It would surely help him find gainful employment, all he had to do was find the right opportunity.

Seeking the right opportunity soon turned in to any opportunity. Jesse came across a posting for an IT Systems Administrator that piqued his interest but the requirements and responsibilities left a lot to be desired. They sought someone with C++ and Microsoft Office experience who would perform "General IT Admin Work" and "Other Duties as assigned". None of those things seemed to fit together, but he applied anyway.

During the interview, it became clear that Jesse and this small company were essentially in the same boat. While he was seeking any IT employment, they were seeking any IT Systems admin. Their lone admin recently departed unexpectedly and barely left any documentation of what he actually did. Despite several red flags about the position, he decided to accept anyway. Jesse was assured of little oversight and freedom to do things his way - an extreme rarity for a young IT professional.

Jesse got to work on his first day determined to map out the minefield he was walking in to. The notepad with all the admin passwords his predecessor left behind was useful for logging in to things. Over the next few days, he prodded through the network topology to uncover all the horrors that lie within. Among them:

• The front-end of their most-used internal application was using Access 97 that interfaced with a SQL Server 2008 machine
• The desktop computers were all using Windows XP (Half of them upgraded from NT 4.0)
• The main file server and domain controller were still running on NT 4.0
• There were two other mystery servers that didn't seem to perform any discernible function. Jesse confirmed this by unplugging them and leaving them off

While sorting through the tangled mess he inherited, Jesse got a high priority email from Ralph, the ancient contracted Networking Admin whom he hadn't yet had the pleasure of meeting. "U need to fix the website. FTP not working." While Ralph wasn't one for details, Jesse did learn something from him - they had a website, it used FTP for something, and it was on him to fix it.

Jesse scanned the magic password notepad and came across something called "Website admin console". He decided to give that a shot, only to be told the password was expired and needed to be reset. Unfortunately the reset email was sent to his predecessor's deactivated account. He replied to Ralph telling him he wasn't able to get to the admin console to fix anything.

All that he got in return was a ticket submitted by a customer explaining the problem and the IP address of the FTP server. It seemed they were expecting to be able to fetch PDF reports from an FTP location and were no longer able to. He went to the FTP server and didn't find anything out of the ordinary, other than the fact that is should really be using SFTP. Despite the lack of security, something was still blocking the client from accessing it.

Jesse suddenly had an idea born of inexperience for how to fix the problem. When he was having connectivity issues on his home WiFi network, all he had to do was reboot the router and it would work! That same logic could surely apply here. After tracking down the router, he found the outlet wasn't easily accessible. So he decided to hit the (factory) Reset button on the back.

Upon returning to his desk, he was greeted by nearly every user in their small office. Nobody's computer worked any more. After turning a deep shade of red, Jesse assured everyone he would fix it. He remembered something from TL Tech Institute called DNS that was supposed to let computers talk to each other. He went around and set everyone's DNS server to 192.168.1.0, the address they always used in school. It didn't help.

Jesse put in a call to Ralph and explained the situation. All he got was a lecture from the gravelly-voiced elder on the other end, "You darn kids! Why don't ye just leave things alone! I've been working networks since before there were networks! Give me a bit, I'll clean up yer dang mess!" Within minutes, Ralph managed to restore connectivity to the office. Jesse checked his DNS settings out of curiosity to find that the proper setting was 2.2.2.0.

The whole router mishap made him completely forget about the original issue - the client's FTP. Before he could start looking at it again, Ralph forwarded him an email from the customer thanking them for getting their reports back. Jesse had no idea how or why that was working now, but he was willing to accept the praise. He solved his first problem, but the fun was just beginning...

To be continued...

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I’ve been thinking about Trump’s presidency in terms of a coup to come, but Rebecca Solnit makes a compelling case for that event already being in our rear view mirror.

A lot of people are waiting for something dramatic to happen, some line to be crossed, an epic event like the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller III that will allow them to say that now we have had a coup and now we are ready to do something about it.

We already had the coup.

It happened on November 8, 2016, when an unqualified candidate won a minority victory in a corrupted election thanks in part to foreign intervention. Any time is the right time to pour into the streets and demand that it all grinds to a halt and the country change direction. The evidence that the candidate and his goons were aided by and enthusiastically collaborating with a foreign power was pretty clear before that election, and at this point, they are so entangled there isn’t really a reason to regard the born-again alt-right Republican Party and the Putin Regime as separate entities.

Update: A site called No Package Deals argues that the coup took place earlier than the 2016 election and began with the obstruction by Senate Republicans in not seating any judges, including Scalia’s replacement to the Supreme Court.

In February of 2016, after the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Mitch McConnell announced that the President no longer had the power to appoint justices to the Supreme Court, period. For some years now the President has not had the power to appoint judges, but nobody much noticed because it wasn’t the Supreme Court. The Republicans just said, Nope. Not seating your judges. End of discussion.

When McConnell said, Nope, not seating your Supreme Court justice either, we’ve already told you we’re not seating your judges, most people noticed. President Obama nominated someone anyway. McConnell stood firm: Mr. President, we have stripped that power from you. You are not going to seat any judges. Nobody did anything. The coup stood.

There’s also this little tidbit concerning Iran:

On March 9th of that same year 47 Republican members of the Senate wrote a letter denying in plain terms the President’s power to negotiate with a specific foreign power. They sent their letter to the government of Iran. Paraphrased they said, Don’t make any deals with our President, because we’ll weasel out of them as soon as he’s not looking. Iran took a chance and made the deal with the President. We will see how it comes out.

Well, it turned out pretty much like No Package Deals expected. (via @heatherhollick)

At the bottom of Google’s AI Blog announcement of Duplex (“An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone”), they included a photo of two Duplex engineers eat a meal, with the following caption:

Yaniv Leviathan, Google Duplex lead, and Matan Kalman, engineering manager on the project, enjoying a meal booked through a call from Duplex.

As suspicions around this announcement deepen, I got to wondering if we could identify this restaurant. If we could identify the restaurant, we could ask them if they had been told in advance they would be speaking to Google Duplex, among other interesting questions.

The image is cropped somewhat tightly, but they’re clearly eating Chinese food, the bench style and wall color are distinctive, and there’s a large picture hanging over their heads. So, I did the laziest thing I could possibly do: I asked my Twitter followers if any of them recognized it.

22 minutes later, we had the answer from DF reader Jay P: Hong’s Gourmet, in Saratoga, CA. This image on Yelp shows the same bench, same wall, and same picture on the wall. Next door to Hong’s Gourmet is Masu Sushi, whose sign is legibly reflected in the glass of the picture behind the Google engineers.¹

My thanks to Jay P and everyone else who contributed to the thread on Twitter. Jay deserves the credit for cracking this, by going backwards from the Masu Sushi sign in the reflection.² All I did was ask. The fact that I had an answer to my question in just 22 minutes shows that having a large follower count on Twitter is a bit of a super power. I honestly can’t think of another way to answer this question without Google PR’s help. I suppose, without Twitter, I could have just posted the question on Daring Fireball, and I might have gotten the same answer. But the threaded, public, instant nature of Twitter allowed for multiple people to contribute — we went from “this might be the place” to “this is definitely the place” in just a handful of minutes. Remarkable, really.