Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

Thinking of leaving GMail

I am thinking seriously about leaving GMail, despite how the email service itself has been extremely valuable to me. This is because of the following:

1) Irritating interface changes

GMail now has two interfaces. There is a maddening ‘modern’ interface that is full of elements that change shapes and sizes annoyingly. Anywhere you might enter text is likely to annoy you with pop-up ‘autocomplete’ suggestions and the chat system built into GMail has been rendered too annoying to use by integrating it into a left sidebar where elements change shape and size for no good reason.

The ‘Invite a friend’ element in the left toolbar breaks all the rules of good design. It’s a button that serves the purposes of Google, not the user. It is prominently placed even though it is never used. Worst of all, it moves and changes shape when you put the cursor near it. I wish I had some kind of supernatural geekish power to blast it out of existence, and yet it is always there annoying me, taking up space, and being a source of distraction.

I want an interface where things stay still! And where I am not being constantly distracted from the thinking I am trying to do.

There is still a ‘basic HTML’ interface, but some of its behaviours are even more annoying. It will still autocomplete email addresses, for instance, but it doesn’t use my whole contact list. It seems to be a random subset of the much-lesser-used contacts within that list. It is also very awkward to file emails into labels using the basic interface, and to deal with archiving messages.

2) Pimping Google+

I hate Google+ and I will never join. Despite that, Google is constantly trying to force me to join or trick me into joining. In the top left corner of both the GMail web interface and the mobile interface there is always a link to join Google+. I frequently click it accidentally, and that simple accidental act has sometimes caused Google to actually create a Google+ account for me, which I then had to delete.

I wish there was a ‘Never tell me about Google+ again’ button somewhere within Google’s settings. I could click it once and stop being annoyed several times a day by solicitations from the unwanted service.

3) I trust Google less and less with my data

I have written before about how sensitive some of the data held by Google is. “Don’t be evil” is a basic standard they need to meet – not a lofty goal for which they should be praised.

It’s not especially clear to me that Google is living up to its own standards. Even if they are, telecommunications law in Canada and the United States seems to have developed rather perversely in recent years, with governments submitting illegal requests to perform unwarranted searches on personal information and large telecommunication companies complying in secret.

Google probably isn’t unusual in terms of the degree to which it complies with such requests, but it is unusual in terms of the vastness of the dataset they have on users. Potentially, this includes everything from their physical location history (Google Latitude) to their web search history to every email they have sent or received since joining GMail.

Using Google’s services involves putting a lot of sensitive eggs into a basket that may not be especially well protected.

Alfa AWUS036H external WiFi adapter

Since I am dependent on WiFi for internet access at the moment, I ordered a Alfa AWUS036H external WiFi adapter. It should get better reception than the internal antenna in my iMac. It also runs on openly documented drivers, so it can be used with some software that Apple WiFi hardware cannot.

I will post a review once I have had the chance to use it for a while.

Suggest a thesis source

As with my M.Phil thesis, I plan on using various technological tools to help with the creation of my doctoral thesis.

Here’s a simple one I am trying: a web form that allows people to suggest thesis sources.

If you come across something that you think would be interesting and useful to me, please put the details in the form and submit it. Google Docs will automatically compile the responses into a spreadsheet for me.

If you have suggestions about how the form could be improved, let me know through the ‘Notes’ field or leave a comment here.

Software defined radio

Software defined radio (SDR) is one of the things I am most curious about. There is just so much data being exchanged via radio these days. It’s strange to think about the constant complex pattern of broadcasting happening all around us.

This video gives a bit of a taste of what is happening in one part of the world and across a fairly narrow range of frequencies:

It’s pretty cool that he is able to identify and analyze Chinese over-the-horizon RADAR. It shows some of the possibilities SDR opens up for hobbyists.

Much of the hardware required to seriously experiment with SDR is expensive. Interestingly, though, someone has figured out how to do the job for the 64-1700MHz frequency band using an $11 digital TV tuner chip.

You could do some very cool stuff with this: set up your own infrastructure independent computer networks, explore what sort of communication is happening around you, conduct intrusion detection (looking for interception devices broadcasting), and experiment with the security of your hardware, such as the Bluetooth chips in your phone and laptop.

Open thread: smartphone security

There are masses of important recent news stories on the topic of smartphone security. I have been filing them below posts like this one, this one, and this one, but they really deserve a spot of their own.

First news story: Micro Systemation makes software that allows people to bypass the 4-digit lock code on an iPhone in seconds. This could be important for people crossing borders, people who get arrested at political protests, etc.

Using rsync to backup local folders to DreamHost’s backup accounts

One awesome thing about DreamHost is that they provide all hosting customers with 50GB of free online backup space. It can be accessed using ftp, sftp, and rsync.

I am trying to use it to make a backup of my USB key. I am always moving between computers, so documents that I am actively working on tend to follow me on the key. Having a backup would be useful in case it got lost or damaged.

I am trying to figure out what the correct terminal command would be to synchronize a folder from Mac OS X to DreamHost using rsync. I think it should be something like:

rsync -aP --protocol=29 /Volumes/USBKEYNAME/* BACKUPUSERACCOUNT@BACKUPUSERSERVER.dreamhost.com::keybackup

Is that right? If any rsync gurus are out there, I would really appreciate their input on what options and syntax to use.

The Starbucks archipelago

For a person on the move, the world’s countless Starbucks locations provide a lot of very useful infrastructure. They provide caffeine, wireless internet access (even at night when they are closed), a place to sit, bathrooms, electrical outlets, and tolerable food. Their bagels with cream cheese are affordable, reasonably filling, and not spectacularly unhealthy when consumed in moderation.

Starbucks has been key for me on a great many trips. For instance, when I was in Washington D.C. photographing the Keystone XL protests. It is especially useful and important when I am traveling somewhere where Fido’s data roaming rates are evil. I can orient myself with Google Maps, make calls with Skype, check email, upload images to Flickr, and update websites all through the glory of Starbucks WiFi – and all while keeping my iPhone safely in ‘airplane mode’. And it can all be done with the accompaniment of a half-litre of highly caffeinated brew.

In Oxford, Starbucks locations were part of my meandering reading system. I generally can’t just sit in one place for hours and pay attention to the documents in front of me. I do much better when moving periodically from place to place: from one library to another to a Starbucks and on to a different library. If I do start a PhD, I will probably resume similarly peripatetic habits when dealing with large volumes of reading material.

Just as coaling stations were once essential support infrastructure for coal-fired ocean-going ships, the vast scattering of near-identical Starbucks locations around the world provide the necessities of life for those away from home everywhere. If they just added some coffin hotel style sleeping berths, there would be no real need to rely on any other businesses when visiting a strange city.

Ubiquitous surveillance

We now live in a world where it is highly likely that various web companies, your government, and your internet service provider are tracking your web browsing. Where facial recognition software identifies you at borders, airports, and subway stations. Where your DNA may be sampled if you are arrested. Where new face tracking software gets used with old photo archives and video camera footage. Where data on what you buy and how you repay your debts is sold between companies. Where cameras track your automobile license plate to build up a database of your movements. Where drones may watch you from the sky. Where computers transcribe your speech and handwriting into searchable text. Where you can be identified at a distance by the cards in your wallet. Where your emails, phone calls, and text messages are scanned for keywords, archived forever, and used to build up webs of your known associates. Where governments and private organizations use data mining techniques against you. Where your cell phone can easily be turned into a bug that passes on what you say and type, as well as where you are. Where your Google searches may be used as evidence against you. Where anyone can listen to your cell phone calls. Where the metadata in the photos and videos you make identifies you. Where the DNA of your family members may be used to incriminate you. Where anyone on your wireless network can archive and access all your web traffic, as well as steal website sessions. Where no encryption software you can acquire does much good. Where insecure means of communication are marketed as secure. Where archives containing your sensitive personal data can be broken into (or bought) by those who wish to cause you trouble. And where anything ill-considered you did as a teenager may re-emerge to cause embarrassment or worse decades later.

The appropriate responses to this are not clear. You can simply accept that your life is an open book that anyone who cares to can pretty easily read from. You can opt out of some services (like Facebook) and employ some available countermeasures. You can move to the remote countryside and become a technology-shunning subsistence farmer (which is not to imply that all farmers shun technology, nor manage only to subsist). You can try to drive legislative, regulatory, and technological changes that address some of the issues above. What else can you do?

Hillis Plot on a 13″ MacBook Pro

The Hillis Plot is a beautiful way of displaying the common ancestry of all life on Earth. The Hillis and Bull Lab at the University of Texas has several images of the plot on their website. Included among them is a PDF version with effectively infinite resolution which they say is free for “non-commercial, educational purposes”. The relationships between life forms shown in this plot were determined using rRNA sequences.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts there is a shop called danger!awesome that burns patterns onto materials like wood, metal, and plastic using powerful CO2 infrared lasers.

The PDF of the Hillis Plot is not ideal for burning into an Apple laptop because the circle in the middle is too small. It would go underneath the translucent Apple logo. Thankfully, a very helpful employee named Jesse Ashcraft-Johnson was willing to custom-modify the file so that it would fit around the logo. He also tweaked the text so the whole thing would fit well on the back of my 13″ MacBook Pro. He was also willing to run the laser for more than 30 minutes, and run it in a vector mode where the beam traced each of the lines of descent in the plot. The final result looks awesome.

Media:

danger!awesome is located at 10 Prospect Street. Their phone number is 617-714-5829 and they can be emailed at info@dangerawesome.co

Fun fact: the laser cutters at danger!awesome were first used to burn an animation into pieces of toast for an OK Go video: Last Leaf.