Enjoy the Internet while you can
This has been in the cards for a long time, but ICANN, the Los Angeles-based organization that has its fingers in many aspects of how the Web operates, will no longer be managed by the United States, but – according to this article in the Washington Post – by “an international body made up of technologists, businesses, governments and public interest advocates.”
This is a mistake. While I don’t have an inherent problem with a nebulous international body overseeing the continued development of the operation of the Web, what I DO have a problem with is that this will allow oppressive regimes who have no interest in freedom of expression or the open standards and ideas that the Web is built upon, and they could very well turn back the Internet clock, as it were.
I’m not being facetious when I say this could change the way the Web works forever. It could cease being the glorious, anachronistic Wild West that it always has been, and instead be regulated according to the demands of those who wish to stifle it and the free exchange of information it represents. Some governments, who have expended huge amounts of money and effort to limit what their citizens can see on the Internet, have been salivating over this moment for decades; we can all imagine why.
You’ll notice on page six of the transition assessment (.pdf here) states “This model encourages all parties—including businesses, technical experts, civil society, and governments—to participate and to reach consensus through a bottom-up process.” The problem is, governments will have ultimate decision-making capabilities and will overrule other stakeholders. I’m astounded there is not more attention being paid to this, or that the news isn’t covering it and, frankly, that people aren’t rioting. If they’re so willing to riot over the G20, which is *also* a multinational gathering – why not this? We should be very careful about who has influence over the future growth of the Web.
So enjoy the Web while you can, it could be changing soon.
Designer Prosthetics
Everyone who knows me knows I’m big on design, a proponent of the interdependence of form and function. Strict utilitarianism just doesn’t move me, or anyone else for that matter. Working well and looking good are not mutually exclusive, and if something achieves both goals then that’s a triumph of both form and function.
Now, we’re seeing design principles applied to the development of prosthetics, and it absolutely beautiful. The latest example I’d like to present is form a company called Open Bionics, who is making prosthetics that are not only especially functional, but easy on the eyes as well.
We can even bypass the neat prosthetics they make for kids that are modeled after superheroes or movie characters. You can see in the image below they have designs from Iron Man, Disney’s Frozen, and Star Wars. What’s really significant about designs like these is not that the designs themselves or even that they can be applied in such an interesting way, but that kids who are missing a limb are no longer the target of teasing or ridicule because of their condition, but rather a source of interest and awe, perhaps even some envy of the other kids. How the times have changed!
The 191 Spring student showcase
So what have I been doing since my last post? Well I’ll tell you.
I taught a 2-quarter capstone course, 191, in which students formed groups and were partnered with a sponsor company or organization that needed something technical done. For the next twenty weeks, the groups would meet both with each other and their partner companies, strategize, hash out details, technical specs, scope, time, and everything else involved in a project.
I should also say they did fantastic work. From a project that streams live data from sensors attached to industrial equipment through the cloud to a mobile app, to a project creating a VR marketplace, to a project that connects isolated seniors with volunteers, and many others, they all did outstanding work. I told them many times how impressed I was with their progress and how proud I was of their overcoming challenges and obstacles to create great projects, and I meant it. Here are the teams and what they did (Obviously I’m leaving out individual names, but they know who they are!):
Better change your passwords
Seriously. I’m not just telling you this because it’s World Password Day (it is, though, and I don’t know what Betty White has to do with anything). I’m saying it because it has come out that a security pro at Hold Security discovered an absolutely massive theft of usernames and passwords from Russia’s largest email provider, mail.ru, about 275 million stolen records. Not only that, there was a significant amount of credentials stolen from Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo account holders as well. Incidentally, many reports are saying ‘Microsoft’ instead of ‘Hotmail,’ which is a Microsoft property, but they also have Outlook which hasn’t, as far as I can figure out, been hit.
Most surprising of all, even more than the fact this is one of the largest theft of electronic records in history, is that the teenage hacker who acquired them was willing to sell the whole multi-hundreds-of-millions record lot for the grand sum of $1. But wait, there’s more! The hacker was discovered via his bragging of the theft in an online hacking forum, and when the Hold Security employee who engaged offered to leave positive feedback for the hacker, the price was dropped to free. That’s right, free for the mere quid pro quo of a positive review.
Off topic, but that touches on the concept of what is known as the reputation economy, in which someone’s actual worth depends on what others say about them in public and think about them in private. You can read more about it here.
It’s no secret people use bad passwords all the time, and reuse them over and over for multiple functions and sites. Don’t do that! Use a passphrase – in class just today, my students suggested ‘sheturnedmeintoanewt,’ a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which turns out to be a perfect passphrase. It’s long, complex, yet easy to remember. Plus, it would take 16 BILLION years to crack! How do I know? Because we plugged it into howsecureismypassword.net, and that was its estimate. Even if it’s off by a billion years or so, that’s still pretty good. If we capitalize just one letter, the ‘n’ in newt, it jumps up to 17 quadrillion years. This isn’t the be-all end-all for accurately determining password strength, but it’s a good estimator.
If you’d like to use a different password for each site or service, but are worried about keeping track of them all, you can use a password manager like KeyPass to manage them all. Some password managers even enter the passwords for you. I don’t know how I feel about that personally, but it is easier. Beware, password managers often have a master password and if you lose or forget that, you are screwed – you’ll be resetting passwords forever.
Everyone knows I hate passwords and especially the policies that go along with them, and I hope the scourge of passwords is one we can raze from this earth in the very near future, replaced with something more robust – but not 100% foolproof – like biometrics (fingerprint scanners, for example). Until then, just remember: It’s only a flesh wound.
My experience with the HTC Vive so far
(Crossposted to theexperiencebar.com)
As anyone who reads this blog, or knows me, knows, I went nuts for VR when I tried out the HTC Vive last year. Now, I’ve had my very own Vive for about a week and can offer some opinions regarding where VR is, and where I believe it will be going.
The first thing I should mention is that just getting it was an experience. I received my original confirmation email 14 minutes after ordering, but it didn’t arrive until April 14th. Of course, I was in class that day and missed it, and since it required a signature from me (they couldn’t leave it at the front office like usual, HTC paid extra to ensure my specific signature), I had to go pick it up from the FedEx office.
Finally I got it home, a single big box, and was ready to unpack.
The end of a Vegas institution?
Back around 2012, at UNLV, I taught a course titled “The Business and Technology of the Video Game Industry.” It covered a whole lot of history, from early board games played by ancient civilizations (Go, Royal Game of Ur, Mancala, Senet), as well as the history of digital gaming from Willie Higginbotham’s Tennis for Two at Brookhaven National Laboratory, to Atari and the forming of Activision, through to today.
We also talked about pinball. We talked about its image as something rebellious, highlighted by it being the anchor of the Who’s epic movie, Tommy, and its portrayal in popular media as the cause of all evil, to the implosion of the industry against the competition of home video game systems.
On the last day of the class, we took a field trip to the Pinball Hall of Fame and Museum, a stalwart icon of Vegas, and a non-profit museum that donates hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to good causes. You could even intern there to learn the art of repairing and maintaining pinball machines. I gave everyone one dollar to be sure they could try at least one machine, but of course they were welcome to spend their life savings if they so wished. It is Vegas, after all.
The museum is a wonderful place. Sometimes dark and quiet, but often ringing with the glorious electronic sounds of pinball as well as the familiar noises of classic arcade machines, from Pac-Man to Asteroids and beyond. There’s even air hockey and some dancing puppet machines.
And a couple of days ago, I learned it may be closing for good. Owner Tim Arnold, who has repaired some of my own pinball machines including the very difficult to maintain Bride of Pinbot suffered a heart attack a few years ago and is now looking for osmeone to take over. But there are caveats, hoo boy are there caveats – you have to be able to repair the machines, and because it’s a non-profit you have to work for free.
If you were paying a million dollars a year you’d still have trouble finding someone with the skillset to repair those machines; their electro-mechanical nature and the fact that neither they nor their parts are manufactured anymore makes them very challenging to maintain.
If this closes, it will be an immeasurable loss. It is often identified as one of the best off-strip things to do in Las Vegas, and it isn’t that far away from the flashing lights, and anyway, it provides its own. Pinball itself is fast becoming a lost craft, although some companies like Stern still kick out themed machines.
If you have the opportunity, please visit before it’s gone forever. They’re hard to find, but they’re unforgettable to experience. And if by some grace of G-d you’re skilled in pinball repair and willing to work for free, well you should stop by in that case too.
Internet is capitalized!
I always hammer home to my students that the term ‘Internet’ is capitalized if you are referring to the global network we all know and love. One of my students sent me an email earlier today asking if that was still necessary, since apparently the Associated Press Stylebook will no longer make that requirement, as announced in a tweet (which is not capitalized. At least, not yet).
We will lowercase internet effective June 1, when the 2016 Stylebook launches. #ACES2016 pic.twitter.com/nGz63zc5YP
— APStylebook (@APStylebook) April 2, 2016
They are wrong. Internet is a contraction of the terms ‘interconnected’ and ‘network;’ you can have *an* internet, or you can be talking about *the* Internet. The latter is a proper noun, distinguished from other internets, and should be capitalized. It’s disheartening to see that a well-regarded guide like this is being so misguided.
Of course, they also use ‘lowercase’ as a verb, so I think it’s time to find another style guide.
And while we’re at it, ‘GIF’ is pronouned with a hard ‘G!’ It’s not peanut butter.
Installing VirtualBox and Windows 10 on a Mac
Instructional video time!
I have created a video that walks you through the process of setting up Oracle’s VirtualBox hypervisor on a Mac, and using it to run Windows 10. In a window. On your Mac.
It sounds complicated, but it’s not. I explain it all in the video, however a hypervisor simply allows you to set up logical machines, each of which can run an operating system and act as a separate PC! You can have a machine running Windows, a machine running Linux, and even multiple machines each running a version of an OS (On my Mac, I have a machine running Windows 10, a machine running Windows 7, and a machine running Linux Mint, as you will see).
You can use VirtualBox on any OS, so you don’t have to use it just on a Mac. If you’ve always wanted to experiment with Linux and find out what the deal is, you can set up a VM and have at it! It’s insanely useful, not terribly difficult to set up, and free, so I encourage you to give it a try.
Links shown in video:
VirtualBox and extensions: https://www.virtualbox.org/
Download Windows 10: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
Not easy to watch, but important
It might even be NSFW, but not for the reasons you think. I’m honestly not sure of a way to introduce this gently, so I’ll just tell you what it is.
Here at UCI, I receive via email a daily digest entitled “UCI in the NEWS.” Whenever a UCI member is cited in a news source, whether local, regional, national, scientific, or other, they are added to the digest and we can find out all the ways the expertise here is being shared with the world. Usually I skim through it, sometimes clicking the summary link to find out more information.
The one I received today had a a story titled “UC Irvine doctor is live-streaming his colonoscopy.” How could I not watch that? Maybe get a pizza for the experience. Unfortunately, it happened at 8am the same day I received the email, so it was all over.
But you’re in luck! The page on which it was done is still up, and you can still watch the video. and while I’ve had a somewhat snarky attitude towards it thus far in this post, as the page explains it was all done for a very good cause. It provides some statistics about colorectal cancer, the importance of early detection (it can be treated *if* it’s found early), and for people who will need to be having the procedure done on themselves or a loved one soon, it might give you an idea of what to expect. You probably don’t want to know this, but I’ve been through it myself, and as I approach 50 it’s something I will need to be more aware of. It’s not a very pleasant thing, but it is absolutely an important thing, perhaps even a life-saving thing.
I’ve embedded the video below, and it *is* educational and a novel use of livestreaming, but I also really encourage you to visit the page and read about the importance of the procedure. Hopefully it helps some people get more comfortable with what will be an inevitable medical procedure eventually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpfICwm-ZUU
A small update to the site’s functionality (and learn some PHP!)
There has been so much to write about, however I have been beyond busy especially with the quarter drawing to a close. There is a showcase to plan and schedule for, and industry people will be there so I want my students to shine. From what I’ve seen, they will. On top of that I’m mentoring a group for a business competition and of course there’s the regular teaching, grading, meetings and other stuff that goes on.
Nevertheless, it had been nagging at me that the site’s comment functionality never worked quite right. I’ve been made aware of it before, so why it started to gnaw at me two weeks ago I’m not certain, but it did. What I wanted it to do was give visitors an option of commenting via WordPress login, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media accounts they may prefer rather than having to sign up specifically with WordPress. Normally on a WordPress site there is an option for this, however for whatever reason – and I never understand why WP themes do this – my theme overrode this, forcing visitors to log in through WordPress if they wanted to comment (hence one of the reasons for the dearth of comments). You can see how it should look in the header image. Luckily, the fix was beyond easy, but shows the lengths the theme designer went through to ensure a broken commenting system.
Here’s what I had to do to fix it. You aren’t going to believe it, but here we go:
WordPress uses a file called ‘comments.php’ to provide comment functionality. Here’s what my original comment.php file looked like:
<?php if ( post_password_required() ) { ?>
<p><?php _e( ‘This post is password protected. Enter the password to view any comments.’, ‘themater’ ); ?></p>
<?php return; } ?>
<?php if ( have_comments() ) { ?>
<div id=”comments”>
<h3 id=”comments-title”><?php
printf( _n( ‘One Response to %2$s’, ‘%1$s Responses to %2$s’, get_comments_number(), ‘themater’ ),
number_format_i18n( get_comments_number() ), ‘<em>’ . get_the_title() . ‘</em>’ );
?></h3>
<ol class=”commentlist”>
<?php wp_list_comments(); ?>
</ol>
<?php if ( get_comment_pages_count() > 1 ) { ?>
<div class=”navigation clearfix”>
<div class=”alignleft”><?php previous_comments_link( __( ‘<span class=”meta-nav”>←</span> Older Comments’, ‘themater’ ) ); ?></div>
<div class=”alignright”><?php next_comments_link( __( ‘Newer Comments <span class=”meta-nav”>→</span>’, ‘themater’ ) ); ?></div>
</div><!– .navigation .clearfix –>
<?php } ?>
</div><!– #comments –>
<?php } ?>
<?php comment_form(); ?>
A lot there, yes? You may be wondering if the comments functionality needs all that PHP, and the answer is no. Actually, it’s because it was all there that the comment functionality was broken in the first place. In fact, to INCREASE the functionality of the comment system and allow people to comment using any social media login they prefer, I had to make the following changes. Be sure to pay very close attention, because the change is subtle and hard to notice; see if you can see it in the new code:
<?php comment_form(); ?>
Did you see it? You may want to read through it again to be sure. I’ll wait.
So there you have it. By deleting the entirety of what was there before and only leaving the final line, full functionality was restored, the attempts at subverting the proper order of things was thwarted, and all is right with the world. Now, anyone who wants to leave a comment can do so in a way that is quick and easy, just like the code that allows it.