Rolandt

Long COVID

This paper mentions things which appear to make Long COVID worse, and one of them is inadequate rest in the first two weeks.

This (pre-Omicron) paper from the USA says that people who were fully vaccinated and had a breakthrough infection were only 66% as likely to die and 85% as likely to get Long COVID as people who got an infection while unvaccinated.

This report from the USA says that COVID-19 survivors have 2x the risk for lung conditions, and that ~20% COVID-19 patients have some Long COVID symptoms.

Vaccines

This paper from China studied boosting fully vaxxed (with CoronaVac) adults with an orally inhaled version of a viral vector vaccine vs. shots with CoronaVac. The oral-inhalation group had 10x the number of antibodies that the injected group did.

It’s not a great study because they used different vax for injected and inhaled, but either mixing is better than matching or inhaled is better than injected.

This article reports that Pfizer says that a third dose of its toddlervax gives good protection to children under 5, with a vaccine effectiveness of 80%. This is a very very good effectiveness, and I personally would not be surprised if it drops in the real world.

Note that Pfizer had found that 2 shots was good enough for the very youngest kids, but wasn’t good enough for the pre-schoolers.

To compare the two mRNA vaccines across ages:

This Comment from the UK says that vaccine effectiveness with one booster against symptomatic BA.2 and BA.1 is about the same, with effectiveness against BA.2 being ever so slightly better. (The effectiveness against hospitalization for BA.1 with one booster was a better than for BA.2, but the number of people in the study was small and the “with COVID” compared to “from COVID” numbers might have been higher.)

This Letter to the Editor from the USA found that one shot of J&J plus an mRNA booster was comparable in effectiveness symptomatic infection as three shots of mRNA.

This article reports on a study which found that getting a flu shot dropped the risk of COVID-19 in health care workers in Qatar in 2020 (before COVID-19 vaccines were available). It found that a flu shot was 29.7% effective against COVID-19 infection and 88.9% against severe illness.

Pathology

This paper found COVID-19 nucleotide antigens in the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) of 89% of people with active COVID-19 cases. The antigen level correlated with levels of inflammatory markers.

This preprint says that BA.1 is milder than BA.2.

This report from the US CDC says that sometimes people with COVID-19 get better and then worse again, “rebounding”. I had heard of this only with Paxlovid, but they say it can happen without Paxlovid also.

This article reports on a study which found that areas with higher levels of pollution had more severe COVID cases. For every 25% increase in small particles, the risk of hospitalization went up 6% and risk of ICU of 9%. For every 25% increase in ozone levels, the risk of hospitalization went up 15%, ICU went up 30%, and death went up 18%.

Oddly, particles didn’t seem to increase the risk of death; neither did NO2 levels.

If I understand it correctly, this article talks about a paper which says that it has found that peptides (fragments of the spike protein) in spike proteins which can theoretically glom onto each other and thus form microclots (which do bad things).

This seems unlikely to me, since the Novavax vaccine literally dumps a ton of spike proteins into the lymph system. You’d think that if spikes were a problem, they would have seen increased mortality in the clinical trials. Or maybe spikes are only a problem if they get into the blood?

Treatments

This paper confirms that both Paxlovid and Molnupiravir reduce mortality, with Paxlovid being more effective than Molnupiravir.

This preprint says that Paxlovid works better than Molnupiravir.

This paper says that baricitinib and dexamethasone work about equally well for hospitalized patients, but dexamethasone has a bit more bad side effects.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of “rebound” with Paxlovid: a patient takes Paxlovid for five days, gets better, stops taking it, gets worse. This article discusses Paxlovid rebound.

Transmission

This article says that Omicron spreads faster per unit time than measles. While Omicron has a lower R0 (7 to 14) than measles (12 to 18) Omicron spreads faster, with a generation time of 4-5 days compared to 12 days for measles.

This paper says that people breathe out 132 times more aerosols during maximal exertion than when at rest. Trained endurance athletes expelled more aerosols than novices.

This report has this interesting picture of the relative communicability of later variants compared to COVID Classic. I kind of knew that Omicron was a lot more contagious, but it was another things to see it on this picture.

Recommended Reading

This article talks about how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the overall virus transmission landscape. Tl;dr: because we were all hiding, we weren’t exposed to the “normal” bugs for a while, and that’s making things… wonky.

There are many views that one can have of the world. Some of these are entirely original; some are niche. Some form the default, unquestioned operating system that forms the bedrock of our collective understanding.

One way of thinking about views we hold individually and collectively is what W.V. Quine described as as a ‘web of beliefs’ That is to say, we hold some beliefs as more central to who we are and how we understand the world. That your spouse loves you, for example, would for most people be a more central belief than believing that Tirana is the capital of Albania. We have some beliefs that we hold lightly, and some that we would do battle over.

One’s repertoire of beliefs changes in nearly every waking moment. The merest chirp of a bird or chug of a passing motor, when recognized as such, adds a belief to our fluctuating store. These are trivial beliefs, quickly acquired and as quickly dropped, crowded out, forgotten. Other beliefs endure: the belief that Hannibal crossed the Alps, the belief that Neptune is a planet. Some of one’s beliefs are at length surrendered not through just being crowded out and forgotten, but through being found to conflict with other beliefs, new ones perhaps, whose credentials seem superior.

(W.V. Quine)

Some beliefs are handed down to us by parents or guardians. Some are in the air and form part of the milieu of a society at particular times in their history. There are some things that everyone does, and therefore we believe that it is the right thing for us to do as well. Sometimes we do not challenge these beliefs because to do so would set us up for conflict.

Choosing to eat differently to other people, for example by not eating meat, is an example of this. Refusing to recognise the monarchy as a legitimate institution is another example. Preferring to use Free Software tools rather than corporate apps, yet another.

But there are some practices that are seen as uncontroversial, encoded as ‘common sense’, as harmless, and are unthinkingly replicated without question. The problem is that, if we scratch the surface, some of these practices do not perhaps support the beliefs we think they do.

As long as a belief whose causes are undetected is not challenged by other persons, and engenders no conflict that would prompt us to wonder about it ourselves, we are apt to go on holding it without thought of evidence. This practice is often reasonable, time being limited. But it remains important to keep in mind that cause is commonly quite another thing than evidence. One obvious test of evidence is this: would it still be taken to support the belief if we stripped away all motives for wanting the belief to be true?

(W.V. Quine)

Let’s say that you’re told that being on LinkedIn is an important thing to do for your career. There appears to be evidence to suggest that this is the case. It’s certainly a ‘professional network’ compared to other social networks around. People are talking about work-related things. It seems ‘Serious’ (with a capital ‘S’).

However, I don’t think having a LinkedIn account does what people think it does. I don’t get particularly useful information from there, the ‘opportunities’ I’ve had could just have easily have come via email, and the endless stream of people LARPing their bullshit jobs for ersatz, meaningless awards is cringe-inducing. So yes, in an extreme case of burying the lede, I have deactivated my LinkedIn account.

What I find particularly insidious is the version of capitalism LinkedIn presents. It’s the face of a seemingly-benign way of structuring the world which venerates (to appropriate Feuerbach) the sign rather than the thing signified, the copy over the original, representation over reality, and appearance over essence. What matters is the performance rather than the work. Just like other algorithm-fuelled networks, this self-replicating pattern then spawns what Guy Debord called ‘the spectacle’, capturing everyone’s attention only for its own purposes.

So, while there’s a lot more I could say on this topic, having titled this post using a quotation from Debord, I’ll end with another from him:

The spectacle erases the dividing line between self and world, in that the self- under siege by the presence/absence of the world, is eventually overwhelmed; it likewise erases the dividing line between true and false, repressing all directly lived truth beneath the real presence of the falsehood maintained by the organization of appearances. The individual, though condemned to the passive acceptance of an alien everyday reality, is thus driven into a form of madness in which, by resorting to magical devices, he entertains the illusion that he is reacting to this fate.

(Guy Debord)

Fly makes it surprisingly easy to configure wildcard DNS, such that anything.your-new-domain.dev is served by a single Fly application (which can include multiple instances in multiple regions with global load-balancing).

Their documentation is at SSL for Custom Domains. Here's how I set it up.

Register the domain

I'm using your-new-domain.dev in this example, which is not a domain I have registered. .dev is interesting here because it requires SSL (or TLS if you want to be pedantic about it).

Create an application with an IPv4 and IPv6 IP address

First, create an application:

fly apps create --name your-wildcard-dns-app

Then create both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address for the application:

fly ips allocate-v4 -a your-wildcard-dns-app
TYPE ADDRESS      REGION CREATED AT 
v4   37.16.10.138 global 7s ago     

fly ips allocate-v6 -a your-wildcard-dns-app
TYPE ADDRESS             REGION CREATED AT 
v6   2a09:8280:1::1:3e99 global 4s ago     

The IPv4 address is so you can serve traffic.

The IPv6 address is needed as part of Fly's scheme to protect against subdomain takeover - see How CDNs Generate Certificates: A Note About a Related Problem for details.

Configuring DNS

Now setup the following DNS records:

your-new-domain.dev   A: 37.16.10.138
your-new-domain.dev   AAAA: 2a09:8280:1::1:3e99
*.your-new-domain.dev CNAME: your-wildcard-dns-app.fly.dev.

That CNAME record does the real magic here.

Issue the certificate

You can ask Fly to issue the certificate (which uses LetsEncrypt under the hood) by running this:

fly certs create "*.your-new-domain.dev" \
  -a your-wildcard-dns-app

Verifying the certificate

There's one last step: you need ta add an additional DNS record to verify the certificate.

Instructions for doing this can be found at:

https://fly.io/apps/your-wildcard-dns-app/certificates

Click to view your unverified certificate and you should get a set of information that includes the extra DNS entry you need to add.

It will look something like this:

_acme-challenge.your-new-domain.dev CNAME your-new-domain.dev.6g0mj.flydns.net.

Add that DNS record, then click the "Check again" button on the certificate screen and your certificate should be verified shortly afterwards.

Deploy an app

With the certificate in place, you can deploy a Fly app (using regular Fly or the new Fly Machines). Traffic to any subdomain of your domain, with or without https://, will be served by your new application.

Configuring ports for your app

One last detail which caught me out: you need to configure your Fly app to accept traffic on both port 80 AND port 443 for this to work.

This is needed even if your app itself only serves on port 80 (or 8000 or whatever). The configuration here tells Fly's routing proxy what to do.

Using fly.toml this means there should be two services.ports sections - here's an example that includes those:

app = "your-wildcard-dns-app"

kill_signal = "SIGINT"
kill_timeout = 5

[[services]]
  internal_port = 8000
  protocol = "tcp"

  [services.concurrency]
    hard_limit = 25
    soft_limit = 20

  [[services.ports]]
    handlers = ["http"]
    port = "80"

  [[services.ports]]
    handlers = ["tls", "http"]
    port = "443"

  [[services.tcp_checks]]
    interval = 10000
    timeout = 2000
    grace_period = "10s"

If you are using Fly Machines you'll need to include the following in the JSON that is used to launch the machine:

    "services": [
      {
        "ports": [
          {
            "port": 80,
            "handlers": [
              "http"
            ]
          },
          {
            "port": 443,
            "handlers": [
              "tls",
              "http"
            ]
          }
        ],
        "protocol": "tcp",
        "internal_port": 8001
      }

slides | transcript (English) | transcripción (Español)

This chart from The New York Times, based on estimates from Our World In Data and World Bank, shows GDP per capita against gun homicide rates. The United States stands alone. Why.

Tags: guns, homicide

When I recently read this article about vulnerabilities to break out of virtual machines, I became aware again of the concept to run virtual machines inside virtual machines. This is also called nested virtualization and it seems most modern Intel and AMD CPUs support this feature. But does it really work ‘just like that and out of the box’ and if so, what’s the performance penalty?

I don’t have a use for this in mind straight away. However, if nested virtualization should ever come in handy, it will be on my bare metal server I rent in the cloud. As described in the 5 episodes on the topic, the server is based on an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor with 6 cores, 12 threads, and 64 GB of RAM. To put this to the test, I spun-up a VM to which I assigned 6 cores and 8 GB of RAM. Inside the VM, I installed KVM in exactly the same way as outside the VM on the bare metal server. Once done, I then created a virtual machine in the virtual machine, assigned it 6 GB of RAM and all 6 processor cores that the outer virtual machine has available. Like on the bare metal server and the first virtual machine, I then installed ‘Ubuntu 20.04 server’ in the nested virtual machine. Worked like a charm!

The nested VM looks and feels like any other virtual machine or bare metal server. But what’s the speed penalty compared to the bare metal server it runs on and to the virtual machine it runs in? I put this to the test by running my ffmpeg video transcoding benchmark and compared it to the the values I got when I ran my benchmark in the “normal” virtual machine a few weeks back. There, my ffmpeg benchmark ran for 5:05 minutes and had a speed-up value of 9,34. In the nested virtual machine, ffmpeg ran for 5:18 minutes, which resulted in a speedup of 9,01. That’s only 4% slower compared to the ‘normal’ VM, which itself is around 10% slower than the bare metal machine.

Note that my benchmark focuses on the CPU, as the input file’s size is only 200 MB, so there’s little IO activity. I’m not sure what kind of performance penalty the simulated disk on the simulated disk creates, perhaps this is something I will chase up in a follow up post.

In any case, a CPU performance penalty of only 4% of the nested VM compared to the ‘normal’ VM sounds like a very good value to me. And a final note: If you rent a VM in the cloud, it’s likely that nested virtualization is disabled in your VM. At least it was in my VMs I rent at Hetzner.

So, let’s come back to the question what nested VMs could be useful for!? I could think of experimenting with Kubernetes that uses a couple of nested VMs in one big VM as master- and worker nodes. Or it could be a nice playground for network configuration and routing tests that involve several servers, all in a single big VM with a simulated network inside that connects the nested VMs, so any network changes on the inside will in no way touch the bare metal server. Hm, I’m beginning to see interesting possibilities here!

Julian Elve writes about capturing notes from various sources, in response to my new little script to capture web articles directly from my feedreader into my markdown notes. I will need to reply to it more later, but to signal I’m continuing the conversation, I want to respond to one thing immediately, specifically to this bit

Hypothes.is (only just starting to play with this, but if I can’t see how I can process what I might capture with the tool, there is no point in starting down this track)
Julian Elve

I follow along with Chris Aldrich’s Hypothesis stream in RSS and it’s highly informative for me to do so. Similar to Julian I have concerns starting to use it myself, if it means adding a silo next to my regular workflow. The type of interaction and annotation I have/do with a source text I normally do locally. Unless it can be a PESOS (Post Elsewhere Syndicate to Own Site) flow, exchanging that current value of processing things locally for merely the potential for interaction and conversation is likely a bad trade-off for my learning.

Hypothesis does have an API, which offers a way forward perhaps. A few weeks ago I added at least tracking who else is annotating my blogposts to my list of things to create. Julian’s nudge maybe means reevaluating that starting point, and aiming higher to also fetch whatever annotation I might make myself (I do have Hypothesis running in my Firefox browser, despite not using it much).

It starts I think with playing with the Hypothes.is API anyway. I have a day off later this week, hopefully I can use part of it to fire up Postman and explore the Hypothes.is API.

Bookmarked A Visual History of Delicious Bookmarks by Sarah Hibner

Surprised to see a capture of my old Delicious profile in this sequence of screen shots. I still think there’s room for a Delicious remake, and I even at some point started sketching out my own approach under the moniker Linqurator (currently way way back beyond the furthest backburner)

After his acquisition of Delicious, Cegłowski made the decision to shut down its functionality while leaving it in read-only mode as of June 15, 2017. He explained that his motivation was to preserve an important piece of internet history, something I agree with and appreciate wholeheartedly.

Sarah Hibner

slides | transcript (English) | transcripción (Español)

To be clear, this isn't anything you can use right now without a lot of knowledge and patience (as the documentation would suggest). Imagine a future world, however, where you can create a web page that uses a function ('create a QR code from user input', say) that sits in the cloud. Here are some samples provided by Digital Ocean.

Apple has released two Pride Edition Apple Watch bands and new dynamic Pride watch faces that coordinate with the colors of the new Pride Edition Sports Loop and Nike Sports Loop bands. The company also announced a new Shot on iPhone Pride campaign.

Apple’s press release explains the design of the Pride Edition Sports Loop:

Members and allies of the LGBTQ+ creative community at Apple were inspired to deliver a new expression of pride through this unique design. Utilizing the comfortable, durable, and adjustable Sport Loop design, Apple used a new technique to remove several of the double-layer nylon-woven textile loops on the band to reveal the word “pride” in a cursive style inspired by the original “hello” greeting — displayed on the first Macintosh in 1984 — giving the word a novel, three-dimensional look and feel.

Regarding the new Nike Pride Sports Loop, the company says:

A new Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop celebrates the full spectrum of the rainbow and features a matching rainbow-colored Nike Bounce face that accompanies the new band. Along with Nike’s Be True collection, the Sport Loop honors individuals who are expanding sport for future generations and inspiring others to feel the joy of being authentically themselves. Be True is part of Nike’s broader commitment to the LGBTQ+ community, which focuses on recognition, advocacy, inspiration, and education.

New this year is a Shot on iPhone campaign that Apple says will honor “present-day queer pioneers in places of historic significance to the LGBTQ+ movement.” The campaign will be featured on the company’s Instagram account and feature:

works from photographers Ryan McGinley at Stonewall Inn in New York; Evan Benally Atwood at Window Rock in Arizona; Meinke Klein at The Homomonument in Amsterdam; Caia Ramalho at Paulista Avenue in São Paulo; Lydia Metral at Plaza de Chueca in Madrid; and Collier Schorr at Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco, featuring Baobei.

The Pride Edition Sports Loop and Nike Pride Sports Loop are available now on apple.com and in the Apple Store app for $49, which is less than last year’s models, which cost $99. The new bands will also be available beginning May 26th in Apple retail stores. The new watch faces are available today on the Apple Watch Series 4 and later, running watchOS 8.6 paired with an iPhone 6s and later running iOS 15.5.

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Oh I remember this. Tourists.

I live on a very accessible island very close to Vancouver and it’s very easy to get here. Unlike other islands in our archipelago, we are mostly a place of full time residents, with a smaller number of summer families that come over. We have A LOT of short term rentals here which are very hard to track because they kind of hide behind a “contact the host for more details” in the VRBO and AirBnb listings, and like everyone living in a tourist spot with big housing affordability and accessibility issues, I have many opinions about that. Some contradictory even!

We have just had our first long weekend of the summer and as usual, there is the litany of complaints about tourists who just can’t seem to figure out the simple things that we all take for granted. It’s fun to share some stories I suppose, but it is disturbing to see friends and neighbours openly describing how hostile they were, yelling at groups of people or impatiently chewing out people who weren’t able to figure out our – to the untrained eye – totally mystifying ferry marshalling system.

More seriously, tourism is a mixed blessing for communities like ours. Day visitors do provide an massive injection of revenue for the businesses we love that can’t always make it through a dark wet winter on local trade alone. But day trippers can create huge impacts on the land here, and recently the artist who created the lovely piece of public art pictured above which was hidden away in the forest, removed it because too many people were wandering around on private land trying to find it and it was contributing to a lot of erosion and a heightened fire danger. (Also it was a piece about extinction and the fact that it is gone now is a poignant denouement)

Having people come and stay for longer stretches was always a goal we tried to pursue when I was on our Economic Development Committee. We wanted people to sink into the place, come for retreats and be hosted here. I myself have hosted hundreds of people here at our retreat centres at Xenia, Rivendell, the Lodge at the Old Dorm and the Bowen Island Lodge. The advantage of this is that as hosts we get to help people visit here by giving them some local advice and knowledge to help deepen their experience of the place, and also help them understand our local culture. This is a beautiful and special place and it works it’s magic on you if you are hosted into it well. When you are visitor in another place it helps to have a sense of the context in which you are temporarily living.

In the last 10 years however, like almost everywhere, Instagram and AirBnB/VRBO have created a situation where people are coming to this place to have context-free experiences and that creates a lot of issues including environmental impact, fire danger, unsafe situations on the roads, loud stuff happening in quiet places, conflict, and a litany of smaller irritations that make daily living here harder during a busy weekend. Our grocery stores sometimes run out of staples. Local staff are treated horribly at local eateries as they cope to deal with HUGE numbers while simultaneously getting slagged for slow service. Visitors then experience long waits for their food and leave shitty reviews on yelp. It really can be a nightmare.

There is no curing this, really. We try hard to give some fleeting context to visitors who are rushing to find the perfect Instagram spot or the woodfired pizza they heard so much about. Instagram in particular creates a kind of weird cult of personal branding that casts all experiences as a good time, without maybe explaining how you spent the day tramping through a local’s backyard to find the mastadon, irritating dozens of people along the way, getting frustrated and annoyed when people wouldn’t tell you exactly where it was. Instead,a perfect phot of a majestic creature perched atop a bluff. Instagram promotes outcomes based tourism. If that is your approach, save your energy and just steal my photo of it. The thing is gone now.

So what to do? Well, I try the remember that I’m a tourist every time I leave this little island. I have travelled extensively for work and pleasure and I’m aware that I do so many dumb things when I visit other places with a complete lack of awareness of my own impact. I have no idea what places the locals consider “theirs” or how different local cultures work. And of course it’s even worse when I find a lovely little spot off the beaten path, which is full of the delightful locals you won’t meet in the regular tourist haunts. I make sure to share my experiences with friends and family on social media. (I know this sweet little restaurant in southern Estonia run by a Seto family who will comp you food and drink if you start a singing session of folk songs. And they will bring out the good liquor too!) But I have no idea whether they enjoy me renting a little house in their neighbourhood or not. I can’t read Estonian, so I’m not sure what firestorm we have stirred up on the local Facebook page, but I know I must have at some point! I’ve certainly been yelled at by people who assure me that the path DOES NOT GO THROUGH THERE even when it OBVIOUSLY does, and given dirty looks and audible eyerolls as I spend 10 minutes in front of a ticket dispenser on the Frankfurt or Tokyo metros trying to figure out the simple act of buying a ticket from a machine, a task which requires extensive implicit knowledge and is different in every city. (And eventually out of sheer impatience, someone steps up to help, but sometimes not)

In as much as we need to help visitors understand their impact on our little place, we have long been a draw for weekend and summer visitors and living with tourists fumbling through our community is nothing new. I try to be that “friendly helpful local” that gives them some insight into what it’s like to live here. And if I’m feeling riled up or likely to be driven to anger or frustration, I avoid our village on busy weekends unless I manage to prepare myself to meet people acting like I do when I trample through lovely little Mexican villages and Scottish Islands and Hawaiian farming settlements.

All I can offer is a heuristic: assume good intentions and try to be kind. And if you come over to Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island, give me a call beforehand and I’ll let you know how the ferry marshalling works.

(ETA: Nancy has written a nice post that links to this one, and I want acknowledge her wisdom and nuance on the use of the phrase “assume good intentions.” That works in this context and is advice for me to use when meeting tourists who may be unaware of their impact. It is wise not to use this as advice for others to take, especially in contexts of injustice,oppression and trauma. I’ll leave my original wording in, but my practice is to use that heuristic personally.)

Ultra-short-throw (UST) projectors are often marketed as TV replacements because they can deliver a massive image from a very short distance and have a footprint smaller than any TV. It’s hard not to be intrigued by the idea of swapping out a burdensome big-screen TV for a small box and still getting a 100-inch image. But the truth is, these are still projectors, and expensive ones at that. After testing four UST projectors at varying prices and performance levels, we’ve concluded that the vast majority of people are better off getting either a large TV or a traditional projector. You’ll either get better performance or spend less—oftentimes both.

My father had this uncanny ability to take broken things, figure them out, despite knowing nothing of them, and fix them. I saw him do it with lawnmowers, tractors, shavers, radios, MP3 players. He was indefatigable.

We four boys, his sons, have each inherited some of this quality. Not at Dad’s high level. But we’ll tread into realms we know nothing of, and bang away until we find a solution.

One of the delightful side-effects of dating L. is that she has a camper by the shore, meaning that, for the first time in 29 summers on the Island, I’ll have a summer place.

Campers are a completely foreign realm for me: we had various tent trailers when I was growing up that Mom and Dad knew the ins and outs of, and some of that must have rubbed off. But this is a camper of a completely different scale, with a dishwasher and a shower and an outside kitchen.

Despite its sophistication, the camper’s Achilles heel, or at least a significant point of possible failure, is its 12 volt battery, a deep-cycle battery in its “basement” that’s responsible for running the lights, the “slide out” hydraulic pumps, the refrigerator, and the ignition system for the furnace. Because the camper is designed to be, well, mobile, it’s designed to be able to exist off-the-grid, and so although it will happily plug into the Maritime Electric mains, the 12 volt system is integral to its operation.

When we arrived at the camper this spring to open it up for the season, the 12 volt battery was dead (the multimeter is a required piece of the standard issue Rukavina-boy repair kit). It was dead enough that it needed replacing, so I pulled it out, hefted it to town, and near-$300 later at PEI Home & RV Centre, and a trip out to the camper, we were back in business.

Until the next week, when we returned to find the battery half-drained and none of the mission-critical systems operating.

Fortunately the online forum for the RV has copious owner-written documentation, including an electrical system troubleshooting guide. 

And so I learned that upstream from the battery is a “converter,” a box that converts mains electricity to 12 volts, charging the battery.

Exactly where the converter was proved something of a Saturday afternoon mystery (the owners manual is frustratingly missing such helpful details); I eventually located it behind a wall in the basement, under the stairs. I put my multimeter on it: dead. I pulled it out and took it to town.

Another trip to the parts department this morning: they generously tested it and confirmed that it was dead. And then sold me a replacement for near-$600.

I drove out to the shore this morning with tools aplenty, and carefully followed the instructions for installing the new converter (a process punctuated by a call to the helpful techs at the home office in Marshall, Michigan to confirm some finer points).

Once it was installed and the power turned back on, presto, the camper sprang back to life. Light! Ice! Hot water! Furnace!

I was 100% channelling Dad through this entire adventure: I know next to nothing about RVs and batteries and electrical systems and converters. Or at least I used to know next to nothing. Now I know quite a lot.

What I learned from Dad, most of all, was how to learn: it was a a great gift.

Podcasting was a nice thing we all had, an open media way to share audio content. But we're not allowed to have nice things in 2022. "One of the recent shifts in podcasting has been the introduction of paywalls and exclusive content. It has since become a standard feature of the medium," writes John Sullivan. "As companies like Spotify, Amazon, NPR, SiriusXM and iHeartMedia aggressively monetize and market exclusive podcast content on their platforms, they've positioned themselves as the new gatekeepers." This includes things like proprietary syndication formats, ad tech, and integration into live radio and music services. But... they may have purchased all the RSS-based podcast clients, but they can't eliminate RSS and people can keep creating new clients. So real podcasting will continue. "But grassroots podcasting will find itself competing with the professionalized, platform-dominated version of the medium that's hit-driven and slickly produced, with cross-media tie-ins and big budgets." (p.s. my Ed Radio podcast has run uninterrupted since, I don't know, 2003 or so. Here's the RSS. Here's the page. Here's the archived OG Ed Radio).

Anker is back once again with plenty of deals on various items, including cables, chargers, portable chargers and speakers.

Below is a roundup of what you can currently score:

• Anker USB C Charger for $54.00 (save $5)
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Source: Amazon Canada

The general manager of Lenovo Mobile has teased an upcoming flagship device on China-based social network Weibo, according to SamMobile.

The handset is rumoured to be called the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra, a smartphone that will likely receive an exclusive China launch. However, what's important about this device is that it's expected to feature Samsung's new 200-megapixel camera sensor, the 'ISOCELL HP1.' The teaser also says that the smartphone will off "a new benchmark for image experience."

The 200-megapixel sensor features 0.64µm pixels and supports 2x2 pixel binning in order to produce 50-megapixel images with a large 1.28µm pixel sensor. Additionally, the phone is rumoured to feature a 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 12-megapixel telephoto, with a 60-megapixel selfie shooter on the front.

Additionally, the phone is rumoured to feature a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, 6.7-inch Full HD+ OLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, 4,500mAh battery and 125W fast charging.

Source: SamMobile

mkalus shared this story from bellingcat.

Fascist fashion items can help promote and provide funds for extremist groups. In some instances, it appears, their sale relies upon key services provided by prominent businesses that have policies against promoting racist organisations and hateful content.

An investigation by Bellingcat has found that a number of far-right and neo-Nazi online stores are openly utilising the infrastructure provided by major payment processors, commercial content management systems and web domain registrars.

Bellingcat was also able to establish that some far-right web stores appeared to be purchasing garments from wholesale manufacturers, whose charters celebrate diversity and equality, before embossing their own hateful messaging onto the clothing and selling it at a profit.

Some of the far-right sites could even be seen using mainstream social media platforms to promote links to their own online shops and those of their far-right allies.

Illustration: Ann Kiernan

Several groups studied by Bellingcat maintained Instagram pages that were carefully curated to stay within the boundaries of the platform’s rules. However, some of these accounts linked out to Telegram channels and web stores where the same groups were promoting and selling fashion items that depict Nazi and racist symbols.

Other items of clothing visible in far-right online stores showed more subtle or coded references to fascism and Nazism, such as the coordinates of a castle used by prominent Nazis during World War II.

T-shirts sold by the European Brotherhood. On the right, the coordinates point to Wewelsburg castle, a spot considered important by many neo-Nazis.

The above T-shirts, for example, were being sold on a site that was hosted by GoDaddy, which has previously spoken out against racism and homophobia. 

Other far-right websites, meanwhile, appeared to offer  buyers the opportunity to pay for goods using payment processing platforms such as Payops, Nets Easy, MolliePayments, Bungeecolud and Paysera.

A screen grab from Whois.com which shows European Brotherhood website hosted by GoDaddy.

Numerous far-right and neo-Nazi organisations have taken to raising cash and spreading each other’s brand names by hawking a variety of clothing and merchandise in recent years.

According to Dr. Hans Jakob-Schindler from the international policy organisation, Counter Extremism Project, far-right webshops are “one of a range of methods by which the overall movement is financing itself.” 

Such operations have two distinct advantages, he added. “They allow easy cross border sales, as you do not have to have a physical shop in the jurisdiction of your customer base, and they can easily [be] adapted to changing circumstances” if, for example, a crackdown occurs in one country or area. 

But it’s not just about being a potential source of finance. As others have noted, including professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss in her book, “Hate in the Homeland”, these stores can help connect the global far-right discourse, strengthen ideologies and help the far-right see itself as part of a broader, global movement.

International Brothers in Harm

Far-right clothing and items have previously been reported as being sold in mainstream online stores. But the likes of Amazon, Google and Wish have taken steps to remove obscene material  in recent years. 

This has led some far-right groups to seek other means of promoting and selling their products.

While the Telegram instant messaging service has become a place where many far-right groups promote themselves and communicate with others, the platform’s interface and architecture means it is not somewhere that items can be easily bought and sold. 

Far-right traders therefore generally have to operate their own online stores if they wish to hawk their wares. 

Many of those that do also take to advertising a variety of other products on top of their own lines of clothing. These include mixed martial arts sportswear, far-right music, as well as the flares and smoke bombs commonly used by ultras football groups. 

Cross promotion by far-right and neo-Nazi groups for online stores in other countries also appears common. Such collaboration helps boost awareness within international networks, spreads racist messaging and widens the potential market for the niche products on sale. 

For example a post on the Telegram page of European Brotherhood – a group of self-styled European nationalists that could be seen selling T-shirts that depict several Nazi symbols – detailed dozens of “WLM” or White Lives Matter stores across Europe.

A message promoting far-right and neo-Nazi stores throughout Europe and the US, shared by the European Brotherhood in it’s Telegram channel. Bellingcat has censored part of the names to reduce amplification.

Pride France, meanwhile, is a brand that mixes martial arts with some white supremacist and neo-Nazi lifestyle clothing and is sold through a French language website called 2yt4u (which stands for “too white for you”). 

A look at the 2yt4u website confirms it also promotes products from other far-right stores such as ‘Svastone’ from Ukraine and the Russian ‘White Rex’ online shop.

Some of the clothing sold on 2YT4U, featuring nazi and white supremacist symbols.

The 2yt4u website also features the logos of several other neo-Nazi groups on its website header image. Among them is the ‘Rise Above Movement’, an American white supremacist gang previously investigated by Bellingcat. 

Some groups even appeared to be selling the same un-branded products at a significant markup. Bellingcat found an item, described as “police gloves” on one far-right store, was also being sold on several others.

Results of a reverse image search of a pair of gloves sold on one far-right web store leads to matches on other sites.

A reverse image search of the gloves and table of their specifications lead investigators to several more far-right websites with the same product offering.

Interestingly, however, the same reverse image search revealed that an army goods store that appeared to have no affiliation to any far-right brands or groups was selling the same gloves for close to half the price.

The same gloves product sold on a far-right web store was found being sold at a cheaper price on more mainstream sites.

It was not possible to find who the original producer of the gloves was, but the fact that the same product was being sold in various far-right stores suggests similar learnings or tactics were being employed by the outlets – some of whom even advertised each other’s products.

Still, other far-right outlets appeared to piggyback off of more mainstream services to get their name and products noticed.

Social Status

Some of the stores identified by Bellingcat could be seen either using or attempting to use mainstream social media sites. 

However, most appeared to tone down their messaging to avoid contravening rules around hateful content.

Many far-right websites often displayed both Facebook and Instagram links on their stores and pages. More often than not, however, the Facebook pages were defunct, indicating that if they ever did exist they had been taken down. 

Yet maintaining a presence on Instagram seemed to pose less of a problem for a select group of stores. When banned, some appeared to have renamed themselves and returned to the platform under a different guise.

A message shared on the Telegram channel of European Brotherhood advertising an account on Instagram.

The groups that used Instagram, and managed to avoid censors by staying inside the platform’s guidelines, generally included a link to either an online store or Telegram page in their bios where far more extreme content would be visible.

The Ukrainian ‘Schutzenbrand’ appears to have pursued this strategy, advertising relatively innocent T-shirts on Instagram under the name Schutzen.product to over 1,800 followers.

But a link in their Instagram bio led to a Telegram channel, where a whole new group of T-shirts appeared. Some of these depicted sonnenrads, white power logos, glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and teddy bears adorned with swatiskas.

An image from the Telegram channel of Schutzen.brand. “Rahowa” is an abbreviation of “Racial Holy War” and is widely used by neo-Nazi groups.

Other stores with pages on Instagram even appeared able to upload posts that openly depicted far-right symbols. Ruswear, a Russian store with an official website in its bio, advertised sweaters and T-shirts that appeared to be clearly emblazoned with swastikas.

A screen grab from the Ruswear Instagram page.

On Ruswear’s official website, where plenty of clothing without Nazi or hateful symbols can also be purchased, this design is described as being a traditional Slavic and Russian pattern. 

But other clothing advertised on their Telegram channel appears overtly fascsist. 

One T-shirt depicts a German eagle over a black sun (or sonnenrad), a neo-Nazi symbol. A version of this image appeared on the cover of the ‘Steel Eagles’ album by the neo-Nazi Russian band, Russkiy Styag. Several of the group’s songs from this album were branded extremist by Russia’s Ministry of Justice (MOJ) in 2015.

A T-shirt with a German eagle over a black sun (or sonnenrad) advertised on the Ruswear Telegram channel.

Another store promoted by far-right vendors on Telegram is ‘Sturm Store’ (usually abbreviated to SS and seemingly another hat-tip to neo-Nazi lore). This store also advertised white supremacist merchandise openly on Instagram itself. The Sturm Store Instagram bio consisted of a link to the group’s Telegram channel, which has nearly 1,000 subscribers.

A screen grab shows clothing promoted by Sturm Store on Instagram.

Bellingcat sought to ask Instagram about the details in this report. A spokesperson for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, said it had taken down several of the accounts flagged by Bellingcat and that they employ various technologies and 350 counterterrorism specialists to try and keep up with evolving trends. 

They added : “We ban people and groups involved in organised hate or violence from Facebook and Instagram. We take down any content that praises, supports or represents them, including symbols like the swastika or sonnenrad, and when accounts repeatedly break these rules, we’ll disable them completely. But this is an adversarial space, and we know people will try to find different ways to share this content.”

The accounts of the European Brotherhood and Ruswear detailed in this article did appear to have been removed at time of publication. But while the initial Sturm Store channel appears to have been taken down at some point over the last few months, an account with a near identical name appears to have replaced it – linking out to the same Telegram channel selling white power and neo-Nazi merchandise. Another account advertising what appeared to be Ruswear clothing also remained on the platform. One picture on this channel displayed a T-shirt that contained a Swastika and other symbols that have been adopted by neo-Nazi groups. The same schutzen.product account appears to remain on Instagram but the link to its Telegram channel is no longer in its bio.

Hate-Filled Threads

The far right groups who sell these items don’t manufacture the materials themselves.

The garments, as well as other accessories, usually come from wholesale suppliers who most likely have no idea how their products are later adapted and used.

The designs depicted so far in this investigation seem to have been applied to generic clothing on a DIY basis before being sold on to consumers.

For example, the website of one online store, Martelentete, which sells neo-Nazi clothing from brands with seemingly openly racist names like “Keep it White” and “Ubermensch” also sells a sweatshirt featuring a death rune (another pagan symbol coopted by neo-Nazis). 

The product description for this sweatshirt includes a link to a product spec sheet which in turn points to the website of russelleurope.com. 

A sweater decorated with the logo of the Belgian ‘hate-core’ band Les Eburons, a ‘death rune’ symbol that has been coopted by Nazi’s, and the text ‘nuclear winter’.

Russell is a subsidiary of Fruit of the Loom and a major business-to-business garment producer. 

It must be noted that neither Russell nor Fruit of the Loom will have much knowledge of how their product has come to be used in this way. Their clothing items are sold to a variety of customers and suppliers at various stages of the value chain, each of which could be the vendor that knowingly or unknowingly sells the materials to the far-right brands or the individuals representing them. 

A spokesperson for Fruit of the Loom told Bellingcat that respect for people is one of the company’s core values. They added: “We in no way condone hate speech or any actions by groups or individuals that are contrary to our values. As our products are sold through wholesale distribution, we cannot identify or control the final sale of our product. 

“However, we will thoroughly investigate this situation and take appropriate action to stop any association with our brands or use of our products in the future.”

Bellingcat also found that garments from B&C Collection were also featured on the Martelentete website. The image below shows a T-shirt with a vegvisir symbol that has been co-opted from Norse mythology by some far-right groups and figures.

A T-shirt with a vegvisir symbol is sold on the Martelentete website, with the description pointing to the website of B&C Collection.

In response B&C Collections said: “Of course, we do not support extremist messages, nor any types of discrimination based on gender, origin, religion, as stated in our code-of-conduct.”

“Unfortunately, we are in a B2B2B2C market and we do not sell to final users. We sell our boxes of garments to big international European multi-brands wholesalers, that sell to agencies or resellers, that sell to printers, that sell to associations. We have unfortunately no way to control the place where our tees will end-up. We hope you understand that we can not be suspected of any sympathy for these messages but that we can absolutely not control the downstream supply chain.”  

Sites of Interest

Many far-right groups are also making use of prominent processing and web-hosting platforms, Bellingcat’s research found.

In some cases, the technical services required to run far-right stores are clearly mentioned on the websites themselves. 

For example, several extremist websites in Russia, Serbia and Germany state they have been “developed in SmkStyle”. 

Bellingcat found some far-right websites had been developed by SmkStyle.

SmkStyle did not respond to emailed requests for comment as to whether it was aware that its services were being used in this way. Its website, meanwhile, now appears to have shut down and is no longer accessible.

In most cases, far-right websites do not offer such obvious clues as to the provision of these services. Yet a number of easy-to-use online tools can help reveal this information. 

The aforementioned far-right website, 2yt4u.com displays no information about how it was built and designed. But by using the whatcms.org tool (or by ‘inspecting’ and checking website elements) it is possible to see that 2yt4u appears to depend on a service called WIX for its design and web-hosting.

The WhatCMS service shows that the 2yt4u website is built and managed through WIX.

WIX is a prominent Israeli software company which offers an easy to use website building tool and cloud hosting services. The company’s website states that its services are not meant for content which “…may be deemed as defamatory, libellous, obscene, harassing, threatening, incendiary, abusive, racist, offensive…”.

The messaging and T-shirts sold by 2yt4u – such as those featuring notorious SS symbols and slogans or a KKK-figure holding a noose and a torch – would appear to contradict WIX’s policies.

In an emailed response, Wix told Bellingcat that it was opposed to all types of abusive content published on its platform and that “all reports and notifications of abusive and fraudulent websites are taken extremely seriously.”

“When a complaint is received against any content published by one of Wix users, our Policy Team will apply discretion and judgement on the content which is on the website. We work diligently to evaluate every claim and take the relevant actions as soon as they are received, but do not have the capacity to judge what is outside of the website built on Wix. We are continuing to implement measures to ensure safety on the platform and will comply with any order from a law enforcement agency instructing our company to remove the website.”

At time of publication, the 2yt4u website, where T-shirts like the one detailed in the image below have been advertised for sale, remained online.

A T-shirt sold on 2yt4u website.

Major domain registrars and hosting providers also have policies for those that use their services and few, it seems, would be compatible with the messaging or fashion products of the various the far-right groups detailed in this investigation.

By using a site like who.is, which provides a large database of domain names and details, it is possible to see that the European Brotherhood’s domain name is registered with GoDaddy, which has previously taken a stand by kicking neo-Nazi sites off its platform. 

Despite this policy, the anti-LGBT, anti-migrant, and subtle references to Nazism can still be found on the t-shirts that are sold on the European Brotherhood’s website. 

Some of the clothing sold by the European Brotherhood details far-right and anti-LGBT tropes.

For example, the T-shirt on the right (above) depicts a young man with alongside the call: “Time to fight – Join the resistance”. The image of this man comes from an Hitler-Jugend SS postcard (seen in this image) that also contains the message “Auch Du” which translates as “You Too” in English.

GoDaddy’s terms of use forbids anything that “promotes, encourages or engages in terrorism, violence against people, animals, or property”. 

Bellingcat reached out to GoDaddy by phone and email on multiple occasions to ask about European Brotherhood’s use of its platform but did not receive a response before publication.

Making Hate Pay

The services of prominent payment providers also appeared to have been utilised by some of the far-right outlets analysed by Bellingcat.

The Swedish outlet, Midgaardshop, which sells products from the European Brotherhood as well as its own merchandise that promotes positive references to neo-Nazi ideology and white supremacy, states it accepts accepts payments through the likes of Payop, Paysera and Nets Easy.

A T-shirt sold by Midgaardshop featuring an Nazi SS-soldier.

Payop’s own website states that it has forbidden the use of its services to sell “material which incites violence, hatred, racism or which is considered obscene”.

Similarly, Paysera states that it can fine clients for engaging activities which promote “hatred and violence”. Nets Easy also has numerous policies on equality, ethics and diversity on its website.

In an emailed response, Payop said that it has clear terms which “prohibit selling products with such content” and that they were grateful that Bellingcat had “pointed this website out”.

They continued: “Payop would never approve such industry and actively monitor[s] incidents to prevent unauthorised usage. We will investigate internally on how the website might be connected to our infrastructure.”

Payop added that they currently did not see any transactions from this website on its software setup while also pointing out that there were other processors on the Midgaardshop checkout.

Paysera thanked Bellingcat for drawing its attention to the case and said that the seller only had a “current account” and was not able to automatically process online payments. It said that while Paysera had 13,000 e-merchants that use its gateway to sell millions of items around the world, it would do its best to “look closer at this merchant and then an appropriate decision will be made.” 

A spokesperson for Nets said: “Thank you for dragging our attention to this. Meeting all regulatory requirements, being fully compliant on KYC [know your customer] obligations in line with law and upholding our high ethical standards is a top priority for us.”

The spokesperson also added that the account used by Migdaardshop had been terminated after an investigation was conducted in response to Bellingcat’s request for comment.

In another case found by Bellingcat, a payment portal revealed that a web shop with a seemingly far-less offensive clothing range appeared to be somehow involved in sales made by another far-right website. 

Ordering a product from the website of the German far-right group Ansgar Aryan leads to the Bungeecloud payment portal. What was interesting about this transaction was that a message appeared on-screen stating that it was being carried out not with Ansgar Aryan but with an organisation called antagonist.shop.de.

Bellingcat did not complete the transaction.

A screen grab detailing a transaction on the Ansgar Aryan online store.

But the process seems to suggest that the ‘Antagonist’ brand’s store appears to be part of the transaction when items are purchased from Ansgar Aryan. 

Clothing sold on antagonist-shop.de does not include any obscene imagery, nor does its website contain any references to Ansgar Aryan. 

Bellingcat reached out to Antagonist via email to ask about the details in this report. It received a response that stated simply: “FU”.

Bungeecloud did not respond to Bellingcat’s request for comment before publication despite being contacted by email and on Discord.

Most other groups investigated by Bellingcat appeared to receive payments from payment processing sites more directly.

Nordic Sun Records, a Hungarian white supremacist store that sells music and clothing states that it accepts payments through a Dutch payment processor called MolliePayments. 

This can be seen by inspecting the source code of the payment portal on the Nordic Sun Records website.

A screen grab shows the source code on the Nordic Sun online store, detailing payment ins accepted via MolliePayments. A separate banner states payment can also be made via CoinPayments.

Or by proceeding with the order till the payment screen.

Another screen grab from the Nordic Sun store states payments are accepted by Mollie.

MolliePayments states on its website that it does not allow products to be sold that are deemed ‘socially unacceptable’, including products that might harm Mollie’s reputation, or encourage political violence.

After asking them about Nordic Sun Records, Mollie Payments responded: “Our policy prohibits businesses that use our payment services from selling products that promote political violence. We launched an internal investigation into Nordic Sun Records and concluded that the firm had breached our terms and conditions. We have discontinued our services with immediate effect.”

As can be seen in the image above, Nordic Sun Records also accepts transactions through ‘Coinpayments’, a crypto platform.

Many cryptocurrencies already have a reputation for being used by neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists due to the anonymity it can provide. 

Nevertheless, that does not mean that crypto platforms don’t have policies that aim to prevent their services being used by far-right or hateful organisations. 

CoinPayments explicitly forbids its use for activities that “incite, threaten, facilitate, promote, or encourage hate, racial intolerance, or violent acts against others”.

CoinPayments thanked Bellingcat for bringing the case of Nordic Sun to its attention. It also said: “This account was found to be in breach of our User Agreement, which clearly defines the types of products and services that we will not support. We have terminated this account and they will no longer be able to use CoinPayments to process crypto payments on their site.”

Stamping out Hate

Bellingcat was only able to fully examine a sample of the far-right shops it found detailed or advertised in many far-right Telegram posts and channels. It is highly likely that further analysis will reveal that far more make use of other payment services, clothing manufacturers and web-based infrastructure. 

In recent months, some stores appear to have added merchandise that celebrates the fight against Russian “bolsheviks” with images of Adolf Hitler.

A web store advertising merchandise related to the war in Ukraine.

It is important to note, though, that many stores appear more like hobbies, with low and limited stock and shabby, outdated websites. 

Others like the European Brotherhood and Midgaard, however, appear more well-established and professional.

But it’s not just about being a potential source of finance for these groups, with many sharing and helping spread the products, memes, labels and ideology of like minded groups in different regions or countries.

The fact that so many large companies in the likes of manufacturing, web technology, social media and payment processing  appear to be unwittingly enabling this trade also raises pertinent questions for each of them.

While some have acted after being notified by Bellingcat, much more likely remains out there waiting to be discovered.

Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Twitter here.

Want to stay up to date with Bellingcat Anti-Equality Monitoring investigations on the far right? Subscribe to our seasonal newsletter, where you’ll receive a selection of our stories, further reading suggestions, insights, information on Bellingcat training sessions and much more!

The post Fascist Fashion: How Mainstream Businesses Enable the Sale of Far-Right Merchandise appeared first on bellingcat.

I recently ran across an old post by @joepolitz, Beginner REPL Stumbles, that records some of the ways he has observed students struggle as they learn to use IDEs with REPLs and files. As I mentioned on Twitter, it struck a chord with me even though I don't teach beginning programmers much these days. My tweets led to a short conversation that I'd like to record, and slightly expoand on, here.

I've noticed the first of the struggles in my junior-level Programming Languages class: students not knowing, or not taking seriously enough, the value of ctrl-up to replay and edit a previous interaction. If students cannot work effectively in the REPL, they will resort to typing all of their code in the definitions pane and repeatedly re-running it. This programming style misses out on the immense value of the REPL as a place to evolve code rapidly, with continual feedback, on the way to becoming a program.

As recommended in the post, I now demonstrate ctrl-up early in the course and note whenever I use it in a demo. If a student finds that their keyboard maps ctrl-up to another behavior, I show them how to define a shortcut in Preferences. This simple affordance can have an inordinate effect on the student's programming experience.

The other observations that Politz describes may be true for my students, too, and I just don't see them. My students are juniors and seniors who already have a year of experience in Python and perhaps a semester using Java. We aren't in the lab together regularly. I usually hear about their struggles with content when they ask questions, and when they do, they don't usually ask about process or tools. Sometimes, they will demo some interaction for me and I'll get to see an unexpected behavior in usage and help them, but that's rare.

(I do recall a student coming into my office once a few years ago and opening up a source file -- in Word. They said they had never gotten comfortable with Dr. Racket and that Word helped them make progress typing and editing code faster. We talked about ways to learn and practice Dr. Racket, but I don't think they ever switched.)

Having read about some of the usage patterns that Politz reports, I think I need to find ways to detect misunderstandings and difficulties with tools sooner. The REPL, and the ability to evolve code from interactions in the REPL into programs in the definitions pane, are powerful tools -- if one groks them and learns to use them effectively. As Politz notes, direct instruction is a necessary antidote to address these struggles. Direct instruction up front may also help my students get off to a better start with the tools.

There is so much room for improvement hidden inside assumptions that are baked into our current tools and languages. Observing learners can expose things we never think about, if we pay attention. I wonder what else I have been missing...

Fortunately, both Joe Politz and Shriram Krishnamurthi encountered my tweets. Krishnamurthi provided helpful context, noting that the PLT Scheme team noticed many of these issues in the early days of Dr. Scheme. They noticed others while running teacher training sessions for @Bootstrapworld. In both cases, instructors were in the lab with learners while they used the tools. In the crush to fix more pressing problems, the interaction issues went unaddressed. In my experience, they are also subtle and hard to appreciate fully without repeated exposure.

Politz provided a link to a workshop paper on Repartee, a tool that explicitly integrates interactive programming and whole-program editing. Very cool. As Krishnamurthi noted to close the conversation, Repartee demonstrates that we may be able to do better than simply teach students to use a REPL more effectively. Perhaps we can make better tools.

I've been learning a lot about CS education research the last few years. It is so much more than the sort of surface-level observations and uncontrolled experiments I saw, and made, at the beginning of my career. This kind of research demands a more serious commitment to science but offers the potential of real improvement in return for the effort. I'm glad to know CS ed researchers are making that commitment. I hope to help where I can.

slides | transcript (English) | transcripción (Español)

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