Posted in Apple & Macintosh, Software on 05/05/2024| Leave a Comment »
I used to have a small Finder extension on my Macs called “cd2me” (I think), but since I can’t find that anymore I switched to OpenInTerminal. I don’t need it that often, but it does save a bit of mousing and typing when I do ;-) As a nice touch, you can choose which terminal editor you want to open; you’re not limited to the standard terminal.
Posted in Content Management, Software on 31/03/2024| Leave a Comment »
Yes, it’s a video made by/for WordPress-the-company, so it’s biased. No, the video does not succeed in recreating the NYT frontpage in all its detail and finesses.
But, and this is a big but: it does succeed in showing the awesome power of WordPress as a tool for creating and maintaining a website! Just have a look at the video in their blog post of March 14, 2024: “Re-Creating The New York Times’ Website in Under 30 Minutes Using WordPress.com“
No wonder so many sites all over the world are powered by WordPress (including this site ;-)).
Posted in Society, Software on 24/03/2024| Leave a Comment »
Just to be sure I looked up the meaning of the word “gaslighting”: “to manipulate (someone) using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning“. That definition makes the verb a lot stronger than what I had in mind ;-)
Anyway, here’s what I wanted you to look at: “Marta Peirano: Gaslighting AI” (at the conference (Un)real Data – Real Effects last February). This journalist is not the best storyteller, but the talk is worth listening to! She gives a series of examples of how AI can get derailed, including getting Grok to call Elon Musk “the Oprah of censorship”…
The ease with which some of the LLM’s can be gaslighted confirms my disdain for the “I” in “AI”…
It’s bad enough that we get blasted with spam and lies in our mailboxes – at least most mail providers do not sponsor the writers of that spam (well, at least I hope that Google and Microsoft do not do that). I do not have a Spotify account, but I fully appreciate the reasoning of this Mastodon user:
Posted in Mobile Computing, Privacy and Security, Software on 12/01/2024|
AlfredCamera is a software solution that can turn a smartphone – with a camera, of course – into a surveillance camera. It is easy to use, and yes, it does work fine – I tested it with a Samsung Galaxy S7 as my “security camera”. The application unerringly detected me when I entered the room and created a time-stamped photo in the log.
But is it really secure? The website does not really address this issue. I do worry about the privacy of my video stream. Where exactly are the images and the corresponding data stored? Are the images encrypted on their way to the AlfredCamera website? Can I be certain that I’m the only one to access those data?
I hesitate to use this solution as a webcam in our house during our holidays because of a lack of answers to these and other questions. Does anyone have more information on the matter? Do you have any experience with Alfred?
Posted in Content Management, Software on 26/12/2023|
Now that I am working more and more with/in WordPress, it’s only appropriate that I listen to Matt Mullenweg giving his “state of the word” speech in Barcelona two weeks ago. You can see and hear him on Youtube:
Posted in Mobile Computing, Software on 27/11/2023|
There’s an interesting report on the MIT Technology Review website: “This Chinese map app wants to be a super app for everything outdoors“.
I find it interesting, not because of what it tells us about the state of “super apps” in China, but also because of what that might mean for Twitter (sorry: X).
“The app ecosystem in China is often guided by this monopolistic notion that every app, no matter how niche it is, can and should become a platform for other barely related services. The result is that every app becomes a dense pile of trivial functions, most of which end up as nothing but a waste of storage space“.
MIT Technology Review – Zeyi Yang
I have seen something similar in some of the Belgian banking apps. They want(ed?) to include many services you have to pay for, even though these services have nothing to do with banks: public transport, car parks, telecom, concert tickets, and more. In the end, the application becomes difficult to navigate – sometimes even basic banking tasks are hard to find!
“The dream of the super-app isn’t unique to China; Elon Musk is still supposedly working on transforming X into the all-in-one app for the West. But Chinese tech companies are already much further ahead. Unfortunately, their success has also revealed the risks that come with the super app—like the tight control they can have on freedom of speech, which I wrote about last year.”
MIT Technology Review – Zeyi Yang
That’s another important thing to remember, of course: not just the impact on free speech, but also the fact that using such a super app means giving all your data to a single company – are you ready and willing to relinquish that much control to a single entity (regardless who or what that is) ?
I get the impression that the window of opportunity for such super apps is already behind is (sorry, Elon). More: even if one were to appear in the future, I doubt that I would install it, let alone use it. My smartphone display is my “super” app: I can choose the functions (apps) I want to see there, and arrange them as I like it – why make it harder than that?
Posted in Knowledge Management, Software, Technology on 30/10/2023|
From “Emergent Mind finally went viral“:
[…] it seems like Google’s responsibility to figure out how to identify and exclude false information from Quick Answers.
Posted in Society, Software, Technology on 20/10/2023|
What can I say, other than that I’m very reticent to recommend AI as a general solution for any kind of problem? Just read this case (and this not the first one, oh no): “I’m banned for life from advertising on Meta. Because I teach Python.”
Do we really have to wait for the capitalistic mechanism, when applying AI will start to cost companies money, before we work out a few sensible rules about AI? Such as: never let an AI algorithm do its job without human supervision?
Posted in Mobile Computing, Software, Technology on 15/10/2023|
We have a View Breeze weather station at home, branded by TFA Dostmann (aka TFA). We like it, because it’s reasonably correct in its temperature readings and because we can consult it from anywhere in the world (as long as we have an internet connection).
The mobile app we use to consult the measurements is called “TFA View”. It will do nicely, although it is not without its own failings when it comes to the user interface.
The only issue I have with the weather station itself, is that it sometimes “forgets” to connect to the local WiFi network. Using the “Connect WiFi” option in the app menu usually does the trick to reconfigure the WLAN settings.
It was during one of those connection situations that I noticed a link to a La Crosse Technology website. Both La Crosse and TFA sell weather stations (among other devices), and it seems that at least part of their respective catalogues contain the same products, albeit with different branding. The La Crosse devices can also be consulted through a mobile app… and that app looks and feels identical to the TFA View app. In fact, I managed to view the data from my TFA device in the La Crosse app, and I’m pretty certain the reverse will work too.
I do not know which company designed the original product. But I’m glad to see that the apps are not limited to connecting with devices of their respective brand!
Posted in Mobile Computing, Software, Technology on 10/10/2023|
We have a couple of Shelly devices in our holiday house, and I use the Shelly Cloud app to monitor them from time to time. A good week ago or so I started the app on my iPhone, and was surprised to see a message that bluntly stated that the app would soon stop working somewhere in October (if memory serves me well, I did not take a screenshot of the message).
I won’t say I panicked, but I did wonder: how will I continue to manage my devices without the Cloud app? Luckily, it didn’t take a lot of time to find the replacement foreseen by the manufacturer: it’s an app called “Shelly Smart Home”. The new app works more or less in the same way as the old, but will (probably – haven’t tested it) support the newer Bluetooth devices introduced recently by Allterco Robotics.
The new app only requires a login (with your Shelly account, of course) to display whatever it was the old app had configured. So changing from old to new was pretty simple. In case you hadn’t spotted it already: the new app icon sports a subtle cloud image. Nice touch ;-)
While the switch was easy, I did have to figure out how to do it myself. That took a bit of googling (and as a beginner in their universe I discovered that there is no company called Shelly…). I would recommend Allterco Robotics to pay more attention to user interface matters. I can see the need to completely replace an old app by something new. But I’m sure many users would appreciate a bit of guidance on how to make the switch, rather than a very short message saying the app you are currently using will stop working in a few days or weeks. I surely wasn’t the only one who thought for a few minutes that my devices would be rendered unmanageable!
Posted in Android, Mobile Computing, Software on 26/09/2023|
Yesterday my Note 10+ received another software update. Basically it’s just another Android security patch update, bringing the system up to the August 1 level. Too bad the machine is still on Android 12, of course :-(
Posted in Internet, Privacy and Security, Software on 12/09/2023|
Sometimes it’s handy to have multiple browsers open at the same time, especially when you’re a web developer ;-) And until now, Google Chrome was often my choice number one – on Windows, that is. Given the current state of affairs, I’m lucky to have nothing but Macintosh and Linux machines at home, so the new so-called “privacy sandbox” won’t bother me too much. You don’t know what that sandbox is? Read up on Ars Technica: “Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome“.
Just to be sure, I did already follow the instructions in that article on my Mac:
Just go to the Chrome Settings, then “Privacy and Security,” then “Ad privacy” (alternatively, paste “chrome://settings/adPrivacy” into the address bar). From there, you can click through to each of the three individual pages and turn off the top checkbox, and in a mere six clicks, you can presumably turn off the ad platform.
So if I fire Chrome up in the future, I will be a bit protected from ad targeting (or so I hope).
Posted in Android, Mobile Computing, Software on 05/08/2023|
Two days ago, Samsung sent out another Android update for the Galaxy Note 10+. As was to be expected, it is essentially a security update, bringing the Android security patch level up to July 1st.
Since my previous post about this subject I did manage to create my new Telenet profile – it took a lot of attempts, but in the end it worked, sort of.
But the error messages keep coming! The company is aware of the situation, since they post a message on the main profile page saying the migration to the new IT system is not going “without problems”. That message is not new, by the way: I already saw it many weeks (months?) ago.
In my career I have seen some long and difficult software migrations as well, but we do everything we can NOT to have that situation in a production environment! It seems Telenet is using a Saleforce-based solution – but I can’t imagine that the Saleforce platform is the cause of the problem (or is it?).
The good news is that our TV and internet connection are working fine; the problems seem to be limited to the customer website and customer apps. Still, if I were CEO of the company I wouldn’t dare to apply significant price hikes in a period where customer service is not well at all !
NUKLEOS weblog 
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