Posts by Kevin McMurtrie

It's Google

I only had one phone that ate microSD cards. There was firmware a bug where it might be powered off to save battery and then turned back on at the wrong voltage. Oops.

Other than that, it's all Google. They've been slowly adding bugs and changing APIs to ruin non-cloud storage.

https://www.xda-developers.com/android-q-storage-access-framework-scoped-storage/

Not only does this ruin the usefulness, but also slows down random access by something like 10000 times. OsmAnd+ went from interactive map browsing to not finishing launching in a day.

There's a great workaround: Don't use Google Play Store. Apps in F-Droid and other locations can still access the fast filesystem APIs. I have 1TB with 120MB/s reads and 95MB/s writes. Not bad for a phone.

Nobody is that bad

Except Chinese government, Vietnamese government, USA government, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Amazon, Meta, Uber, Samsung, Walmart, and pretty much every web site not covered by the GDPR.

Let the chaos begin

Big corps on Java 6/7 have tons of in-house tooling to modernize the language. Jump forwards to Java 17 and it's modernized already, but not in the same way. 15 years of custom tooling is redundant yet not mix-in compatible.

If you're going to pick a rapidly evolving programming language, you should probably update your compiler every few years.

The target?

When I read the article, I can't help thinking that the target is Cloudflare. If so, their heroic efforts of protection are a lot less impressive. The serve more than just the good and honest web sites and are notorious for turning a deaf ear towards reports about phishing web sites.

The world's tech support channel

"I can unlock my phone without authentication"

Via email and phone tech support: "Let's run through increasingly difficult and time consuming diagnostic steps until you leave us alone or take your own life."

Via public Twitter post: "That's bad, we're checking."

BMW's money to waste

VW has Car-Net. They put that hardware in all their nice cars only for nobody to buy subscriptions. Many of them quit working with the 3G cellular deactivation, causing absolutely no outcry. I didn't even bother with the free trial while it worked.

Vote for anyone?

Someone that makes a lot of money, frequently creeps out the general public while representing the company, has caused numerous lawsuits, and is often a liability to making progress...

Have they tried walking?

Seriously, how hard is it to spot a crime in progress while walking in SF?

Zwhat?

I can't believe I actually avoided a bug by using the Docker ZFS storage driver.

The real problem

Parts and supplies shipped to their datacenters are sent by FedEx Ground.

Abuse contact

Microsoft could find some systems to reallocate if they reactivated their abuse contact. Unfortunately, their public IP addresses might have limited value at this point.

Ride height?

Is it like navigating a canoe in a shallow river? It looks lower to the ground than a speed bump.

I was thinking about a road trip bike trailer with solar panels, batteries, and just enough motor to cancel out the trailer's weight and drag. A bonus would be a tiny dehumidifier to dry hand-washed clothes and produce drinking water.

I'd probably spend thousands building it then decide that I don't like bicycle road trips.

Seen this poo before

It will work just like "opt-out" spam where a marketing category/list/phone is used only once before a new one is invented. Whether you opt out or not makes no difference.

I strike candidates off my ballot when they send me email or SMS spam.

Hot and fast

One crater from impact, the other crater from the projectile spontaneously boiling off into space.

Ouch

The private SpaceX investors aren't going to be happy if they're hearing about Starlink not having exclusive access to it's RF band after they've invested.

If only

# Generate correct IAM resources and references for this application

Bet that doesn't work.

I propose a new law

Anything not covered by warranty doesn't exist. Advertisements and specification sheets for electronics will get a lot shorter.

Moisture exposure turns a dot red and voids the warranty? It's not waterproof. A little bump breaks the glass and it's not covered? It's not a durable phone. 5G not guaranteed to work? It's not a 5G phone.

Not flashy

I'd switch everything to encrypted traffic over IPv6 but such simple solutions never make your blog posts famous. People would rather read about a cleverly complicated global LAN aggregator.