Geek

We all know the evils of Social Media. It’s reactive, it’s explosive, and folks usually post stuff on Social Media just to get attention. Back in the early days of Social Media I was excited about the idea; it was like a message board one would find on AOL back in the ’90s or an expansion of the “blog” concept that had been around, at the time, for a decade or so.

I guess I didn’t see Social Media replacing blogs. And obviously, I haven’t gotten that memo.

Today I am doing everything I can to get away from Social Media; I’ve removed the apps from my iPhone, I make it hard for me to log into the various platforms, etc. The issue is, so many of my friends and family members are dependent on the platforms as their prime channel of communication. Aunt Lulu could drop dead and I wouldn’t get a phone call, just a post on Facebook. It’s gamble as to the timeliness of the news due to algorithms and the like.

I don’t have an Aunt Lulu, by the way, but I did picture Lulu from “Hee-Haw” when I typed that sentence.

Another thing I’ve noticed about Social Media, and specifically Facebook, is that it throws the natural progression of friendships and acquaintances askew. For example, let’s say that back in 2005 I started a new job and worked with a guy named Dirk. Dirk and I became work friends and then had a few beers outside the office and when Facebook started up, we both joined the platform and became friends. 2010 comes along and I have moved onto a new job, Dirk did the same and we haven’t really seen each other in person since our time together at our common employer. Dirk is a nice guy and has moved on to getting married and raising a family and the like, and his new job took him across the country. Dirk and I were never really that close, we just got along well at work, shared some common interests, and connected via Social Media because it was there. I doubt that since it’s been well over a decade since I’ve last seen Dirk, I won’t see Dirk again, unless Earl and I travel to that part of the country or something, but then I feel like I’d be imposing.

By the way, there isn’t really a Dirk.

So, Dirk and I had a good friendship at work and when we both moved onto other places, in the days before Social Media our friendship/acquaintance would have come to its natural conclusion. But connecting on Facebook skewed all that; we’re still connected well past the natural shelf date, neither of us want to “unfriend” the other because of niceties, and honestly, Dirk is using bandwidth I don’t have for information consumption when I scroll through Facebook and see that he’s painting his kitchen or something.

A similar phenomenon happens when one connects with an acquaintance you met at a party years ago, and you met just that one time, and now you’re connected for life through Social Media. Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m just not wired to have a million and five friends scattered all over the planet and I’m trying hard to be too nice to not break connections because I don’t want to be the rude one.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some great people online, but most of the folks I consider friends I met in the pre-Social Media days, whether through AOL message boards around Macs, or through this blog thingee, or something like that. There are several people I know on social media that I met before social media and I enjoy what they share, but they’re usually like me and trying to get away from Social Media (hello London, hello Arkansas, hello Houston).

I should just do what I want to do and start breaking connections to those folks that would have come to a natural, friendly, mutual ending years ago. Maybe our Social Media connections shouldn’t be called friendships, but subscriptions instead.

Or maybe I should just go with the original plan to move away from Social Media altogether.

My mother often sends me screenshots of emails and text messages without explanation. I know it’s her way of asking if whatever she’s sent me is spam or real. 99% of the time it’s a spam message.

At work the Cyber Security department often sends out trick emails to test the userbase on their knowledge of rejecting spam. If one clicks a link in the fake spam email, we’re taken to a website with the link “youregonnalovetraining.com” or something like that, and our supervisor is notified. This hasn’t tripped me up in a couple of years.

This morning I received notification that my payment for our Amazon Prime membership had been rejected. Since my husband and I had just had a conversation about our membership, I had to take a few extra beats to determine if the message was real or not. It wasn’t, however, my use of Apple devices makes that rather hard to determine for the average user.

On my iPhone, at first sight it looks like this message did come from Amazon. “Undisclosed-recipients” should be a clue that something is amiss, because logically something about my credit card would come directly to me, not to a bunch of people. However, because Apple likes to hide things, you have to tap the arrow to the right of the “From” field, then expand it and try to open a contact card to see the actual address.

In MacOS the behavior is much like that in iOS. However, Apple is kind enough to show the “From” email address on the first click instead of just burying it in a contact card.

We have a webmail interface on our hosting server for our personal domain, and it gives the opportunity to get to the information by clicking “Headers”, but will standard users know what the means?

And finally, going in full blown geek mode, I often use the application Alpine on my personal Linux server to triage my email throughout the day. Hearkening back to the old school terminal (green screen) days, Alpine gives me a pure text view of my email.

Unsurprisingly, Alpine gives me the information right up front, just like email did 20, 30, hell, 40 years ago. There’s no GUI (Graphical User Interface) magic trying to hide pertinent information to make it look pretty.

I don’t have my accounts set up in the ways of Microsoft Outlook to see how this would have been handled in that arena. However, looking through similar emails on my work provided Windows 10 laptop with Microsoft Outlook, the “From” would have appeared much like it does in Alpine. That’s a good thing, and something Microsoft gets right.

If you ever receive an email and you’re not sure of its validity, tap or click around until you can see the actual address of the sender. That will generally give you a clue as to the authenticity. “Headers” can give you all sorts of information. Unfortunately, this is where Apple products fail the most, with their insistence of hiding as many technical details as possible.

Sometimes the technical details is where the dirt is at.

Last night, Jamie came running upstairs exclaiming “you gotta see this!”. He then talked about a huge shooting star and it was amazing. I walked out on his patio and saw this:

I immediately knew it was a rocket launch, apparently somewhere over California. Space X launched a Falcon 9 rocket last night from Vandenberg Space Force Base last night and living in Southern Arizona gave us the opportunity to witness the event. The rocket was carrying 15 Starlink satellites that will be used in the existing “mesh” network of satellites providing Internet connectivity to rural areas.

The Falcon 9 rocket is designed to return to Earth for reuse after a successful separation in orbit.

Nick at “The Linux Experiment” talks about why he thinks the ad-based Internet is dying.

God, I hope so.

Meta (the company that owns Facebook and Instagram) released a Twitter clone called Threads. Based on your Instagram account, Threads is another social media platform design to bring people closer together through a “global town square” type conversation experience.

Meta also really wants your data. Take a look at the screen shot above at all the data points their app is monitoring on your phone.

While I really want to see Twitter fail under Elon Musk’s leadership, as he’s done everything he can to make it a creep cesspool of awfulness, there are better options out there. Meta’s Threads is cool and millions and millions of people are already using it. People are looking for an alternative to Twitter.

But the data scraping is so cringey.

Earlier this week I mentioned that I was rebuilding my keyboard on the gaming computer with some new keycaps that would provide a more retro feel. Here’s the end result:

I’m quite pleased with the result and the overall feel of typing on this keyboard.

I also mentioned that I have a similar keyboard setup on my work computer. This makes for writing prose and code a delight, except when I’m on conference calls. During these moments I use a Microsoft bluetooth keyboard that tries to mimic the Apple Magic Keyboard experience. It’s close, but not quite there. I still find it enjoyable for the limits runs it provides.

A couple of months ago I purchased new keycaps for the mechanical keyboard I use for work. I’m particular about the keyboards I use, much to the chagrin of my husband. My fussiness around keyboards comes from the fact that I’m a fast touch typist, averaging 100 words a minute and creeping higher on a good day. I’ve also been a touch typist for a long time, and I grew up with electric typewriters and the mechanical computer keyboards of the 1980s. I like to bang along when I’m working, and to keep things calm during my team meetings, I employ a quiet keyboard that I keep to the side when I’m taking notes. I don’t want folks thinking there’s machine gun fire in the office when there’s not.

I’m also particular about keycaps and the aesthetics of the keyboard. When I replaced the keycaps on my mechanical keyboard earlier this year, I went for the retro terminal look of the early 1980s. I have been quite pleased with the results, and the new keycaps provide the exact clackity-clack feel I enjoy on keyboards, especially when I’m writing long presentations, emails, or writing a lot of code.

The folks at Drop.com occasionally have a sale on keycaps sets, so I ordered another set of similarly styled keycaps for the Linux computer used for gaming, flight simulator, and the like. They are slated to arrive this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing how they hold up. I decided to step away from the Dasher terminal blue and went with an orange theme that will compliment the Starfleet accessories I have around the computer.

I’ll be sure to share a photo when I get things set up.