Let’s Call It “Verda’s Law Of Internet Usernames”!

I can’t remember why I started reading all the comments on the article titled “Over a decade later, climate scientist prevails in libel case” (on Ars Technica). But there was a pearl to be found there, so I’m glad I did read on. There it was: a suggestion concerning a certain category of Internet usernames, stating that “Usernames indicating a participant’s predilection towards exercising careful thought, valid reasoning, or sound judgement, are reliable warning signs that their actual contributions will prove to be otherwise.“

It remains to be seen whether this law can only be applied to discussion forum names, or if it as more generally applicable. And perhaps it might need a bit of rephrasing to be 100% exact ;-) But I can say that it appears to be true in many languages, not just in English.

Anyway, I propose to call this law “Verda’s Law of Internet User Names“. Thank you for your insight, Bernardo!

PS. Albert Einstein is suposed to have said: “Common sense is the sum of all prejudices that we acquire up to out 18th year“. Meaning that there is no real knowledge in common sense, right?

Why Pay Spotify, Indeed?

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:

Don’t pay for disinformation!

Snow And Sun In January

January 2024 was a somewhat exceptional month in this region. It had been a while (years!) since we had real snow here, and last month did bring snow, especially in the south of Belgium.

After three consecutive months with substantially less than average sunshine, I’m happy to report that January 2024 did a lot better. In fact, never since 2017 did we get that much sun on our solar panels than the previous month! For the time being, our solar energy production numbers look promising for the new year. I know of course that a single number does not define the rest of the year, statistics being what they are: I will make no predictions for the future.

But How Secure Is It ?

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.

Sample picture from the Alfred Camera website.

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?

Happy Birthday, Matt!

As requested by Matt Mullenweg on Jan 1st: happy blog-reading birthday!

PS. There should be enough reading material on this blog – I have been writing here for more than 24 years ;-)

Or should we we say: “Happy Blogday” ?

RIP Mister Pascal

Slashdot informed me that Niklaus Wirth died on January 1st, 2024. Wirth takes a special place in my programming life, because he invented the Pascal language. With my first “home computers”, in the early 1980’s, I dabbled in Basic – just like most of the computer nerds of that era. Then I got a BBC Computer Model B, and added a second processor module next to it, in order to study the Pascal programming language. I still have some of his books, by the way:

Thanks to that study I eventually started my professional career in IT, where Pascal remained the main programming language for the development of banking applications for more than a decade. I even wrote some DOS commandline tools in Modula-2.

The man may have died, but I’m pretty sure his name and memory will live on – he was an important figure in the development world, even if few youngsters know his name today.

Bluesky Invites Available

If you’re really desperate, or if you really want to hop on to one of Twitters successors, or if you’re a big fan of Neil Gaiman: I do have a couple of invitations to open a Bluesky account to give away ;-)

You know how to reach me by email, no?

State Of The Sun In 2023

Sunshine here in Belgium during December 2023 was even rarer than in November: our solar panels only registered 65% of what we expected on average for that month. No wonder then: the overal total for the year 2023 is quite low as well (only 2021 was worse).

Looking at the seasonal number, all the way at the bottom of the statistics page, you can see that Spring 2023 was pretty dark compared to other years. And October, November and December all produced well below average – without a relatively sunny September even Fall 2023 would have shown a record low number.

Let’s hope 2024 brings more sun, literally and figuratively speaking ;-)

Happy 2024 !

WordPress State Of The Word

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:

Not Just Anyone’s BMW R1100S, Take 2

Here’s a sunnier photo of my bike in 2014. That picture reminds me that the sun still should be around somewhere – we just haven’t seen much of it these last few weeks here in Belgium!

My BMW R1100S on April 5, 2014

Not Just Anyone’s BMW R1100S ;-)

While starting the cleanup of the all the digital pictures I have, scattered over multiple computers and devices, I found a few more nice photos of my BMW R1100S. Here’s one from 2013, probably on one of my first rides of that year (the picture was taken with my smartphone in March).

My BMW R1100S on March 30, 2013

November 2023: Dark And Wet

According to the official Belgian meteorologists the past month was (very) wet and dark: we haven’t seen a lot of sunshine, just lots of rain. Our solar panels confirm the “dark” part of that analysis: they made just 74% of what we expected on average. But combined with September and October, the “Autumn” numbers for this year are more or less average…

Super App, Or Too-Late App?

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?

Black Friday: Why?