Twitter: @ewenmcneill -- May 2020
Thu Apr 30 23:15:45 +0000 2020 (#)
#Covid19 courier delivery challenges: 16 calendar days (11 business days), and counting, to get something from Christchurch to Wellington (counting from Goods picked up scan).
Apparently took over a week to get to Wellington, then over a week (and counting) across Wellington š¬
Thu Apr 30 23:23:58 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @hroethgar
āWe didnāt deliver it promptly and then things unexpectedly happened so we had to delay it some more weeksā? š
Sorry to hear youāve been waiting 2 months :-(
Thu Apr 30 23:50:40 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @hroethgar
Yes, my order is now overtaken by āI bought locally when I could againā last week. Itāll still be useful when the delivery arrives... and maybe itāll even arrive before I need to decide if I buy more locally :-)
āExactly onceā isnāt the thing to optimize for at present š
Fri May 01 04:00:25 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @tveastman
Nope, not laptop battery. That was replaced Easter Saturday from stock The Apple Guy had on hand (Iād not have sent it otherwise). New battery seems fine the last couple of weeks.
The delayed order is groceries related, from distributor for things that were out of stock locally.
Fri May 01 04:02:17 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @hroethgar
Yes in several cases recently Iāve been very glad to have an abundant pile of āmight be useful againā stuff around!
Underused hardware is resiliency :-)
Fri May 01 04:04:36 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @tveastman
Apparently that (grocery item) distributor has had a month of not being very happy with the Wellington branch of their chosen courier company. (It sounded like the branches in some other cities were somewhat better.)
Fri May 01 20:40:28 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ktemkin
Yes, for me a small face cam (and/or desk cam where relevant to the project) in a corner is very useful context to āwhatās happening nowā especially eg āoh, theyāre thinking about the next stepā or āconnecting things upā. Not essential, but I find I miss it if itās not there.
Fri May 01 23:27:30 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @Claude1079: I consider now the MIPI CSI-2 TX on an FPGA to Raspberry Pi as fully functional. This thread is meant as summary. First offā¦
Sat May 02 02:20:56 +0000 2020 (#)
#Covid19 NZ Level 3 day 5: the (primary) school near me now has two āBubble Entryā gates, separated by 30-40m. And the playground equipment is very out of bounds! (I assume this is to support children of people back at on site work in level 3; definitely new this week.)
Sat May 02 02:26:50 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
#Covid19 NZ Level 3 day 5: the play equipment on the adjacent public playground is closed too, but less obviously so.
And roadworks seem to be back in fashion now (even on Saturday).
Sat May 02 02:30:45 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
#Covid19 NZ Level 3 day 5: I wonder how that āSnapper earlybirdā trial coped with having most of its trial weeks being statistically unusual travel weeks...? š¤
(Does anyone use an earlybird fare if most are working from home and/or buses are free all day?)
Sat May 02 02:33:52 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
:-)
Email from my bank implied that some branches of at least some banks were open for in person transactions for limited hours throughout level 4. No idea which/what hours, but maybe thatās enough.
Sat May 02 02:35:39 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
As a matter of legal interpretation Iād have expected a judge to accept āwould normally have been open but for Level 4ā (ie, not weekend, public holiday) unless the circumstances required a different interpretation...
Sat May 02 02:37:33 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
And TBH the āAuckland and Wellingtonā bit interests me most: that implies neither Auckland Anniversary Day nor Wellington Anniversary Day count, which may or may not have been intended.
For all of this, like all legal interpretation, āit depends on the contextā.
Sat May 02 02:47:22 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
Also FWIW that ābusiness dayā definition (days banks are open) is so common that itās basically a term of art meaning āyāknow, a normal business dayā (but not one of those ā7 days a week shoppingā business days...).
āBanking dayā is similarly basically a term of art.
Sat May 02 04:02:32 +0000 2020 (#)
#Covid19 NZ Level 3 day 5: PBTech are having a sale (~30% off) on the very tool sets which would have been invaluable to me during the level 4 lockdown, but were impossible to buy for love nor money then.... š https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1245929280439119876
Sat May 02 04:10:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
#Covid19 NZ Level 3 day 5: Iāve ordered both sets including the P5 bit, and theyāll supposedly be available for pickup on Monday.
(My company policy now requires having tools to open owned devices on site before theyāre needed; JIT purchasing is no longer good enough :-( )
Sat May 02 04:14:03 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @GeoscienceAus: An #Earthobservation scientistās trash is a multimedia artistās treasure!šš°ļø While #DigitalEarthAU removes ānoiseā likeā¦
Sat May 02 07:20:45 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @GeePawHill: I shipped a word processor that formatted the hard drive every 1024 saves. https://twitter.com/ElleArmageddon/status/1255870742727585792
Sat May 02 21:23:20 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @pjf: Anyway, life with #ADHD is mostly tricking my brain into thinking that each step is "wafer thin", so it doesn't realise that I'm aā¦
Sun May 03 01:21:11 +0000 2020 (#)
Looks like the last of my regular yearly in person events ā the NZIFF ā has (unsurprisingly) confirmed theyāre going to be an online only event (and a week shorter than usual š¢).
At least thereāll be less rush to book a good seat š
https://www.nziff.co.nz/2020/news/bringing-the-arthouse-to-your-house/ #Covid19 #NZIFF https://twitter.com/nzff/status/1255622735008534531
Sun May 03 06:02:55 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Package ādeliveredā this afternoon (Sunday) AFAICT, where delivered is ādropped on the ground just inside my gateā in the rain, rather on the sheltered front porch 5m away....
Fortunately while the outside of the box is pretty wet, everything inside seems to be dry/usable. Phew.
Sun May 03 06:09:08 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @__fincham
Yes the Sunday delivery was totally unexpected. Guess theyāre trying to catch up.
I only noticed because tomorrow morning is rubbish collection so I was taking that out while there was a gap in the rain.
Lucky checking for both of us!
Sun May 03 06:11:30 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @heysarahpaz: Hands down this is still and always will be one of my fave stickers! I love it so much I don't think I'll ever stick it onā¦
Sun May 03 06:44:57 +0000 2020 (#)
The impact of those recent SaltStack CVEs is pretty big: remote root RCE.
F-Secureās advisory of the bugs they found came out late last week, and didnāt include exploits. But clearly theyāre right itās trivial to create an exploit. https://labs.f-secure.com/advisories/saltstack-authorization-bypass https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/releases/3000.2.html https://twitter.com/LineageAndroid/status/1256821056100163584
Sun May 03 06:45:40 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @mjg59: Maintaining the infrastructure for secure development and distribution of an OS is hard. Not dunking on LineageOS here (theirā¦
Sun May 03 09:21:24 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @minxdragon and @pjf
Day beds were totally a thing! Especially in the previous centuries. But they seem to be for sale now too, from a quick search :-)
Sun May 03 09:29:12 +0000 2020 (#)
āThe Trouble with Harryā, from 1955, was an entertaining tale, with much 1950s intrigue!
Not quite the Alfred Hitchcock film I had expected, but an enjoyable Sunday evening viewing.
Thanks for the suggestion .@WgtnFilmSoc š https://twitter.com/WgtnFilmSoc/status/1256850404828082179
Sun May 03 09:33:28 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @eugenolteanu
Yes, one of the worrying things in that advisory is how many TCP/4505 and TCP/4506 ports they found openly reachable. Itās bad enough as an internal lateral movement / privilege escalation, without being openly exposed to the outside world.
Firewall your config management!
Sun May 03 21:07:44 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @censysio: We found over 5,000 Saltstack servers exposed publicly on the Internet and potentially vulnerable to CVE-2020-11651 and CVE-2ā¦
Mon May 04 00:12:38 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @arkadiyt: Wow, one of the Certificate Transparency logs (CT2, operated by Digicert) had its signing key compromised via this Salt RCE:ā¦
Mon May 04 01:40:04 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @minxdragon
Ah marketing stealing all the good words!
A regular bed you use only during the day, which is not a āday bedā, seems a totally valid thing which apparently needs its own new name now...
(I suspect this is a very modern distinction :-) )
Thanks for clarifying!
Mon May 04 01:45:21 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @EvelynRusli and @minxdragon
It feels like a liminal space to me. (Very useful word a friend taught me years ago.)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liminal
Mon May 04 06:22:06 +0000 2020 (#)
It seems like one of the main things Iāve learnt during the NZ #Covid19 lockdown is a variety of ways to improvise grip equipment out of things found lying around the house: books, bookends, rubber bands, etc, all to get the camera / screen at the right angle for various uses š¤
Mon May 04 06:23:45 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
I know there are professional grip solutions for all of this. But itās yet another thing that wasnāt on the āessentialā list of things one could buy during lockdown... š¢
Mon May 04 07:22:26 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @RadioFreeTom: This is how Americans now interpret freedom: Not as a political condition in a democratic society, but as a constant chanā¦
Mon May 04 08:07:09 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @doctorow: The apps that we call "contact tracing" apps don't do contact tracing - they do "exposure notification." Exposure notificatioā¦
Tue May 05 00:21:33 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Narrator: they were not in fact available for pickup on Monday.
(Website still says āpickingā and āawaiting stockā despite them being shown as in stock at the pickup store when I ordered. But apparently not any more š¢ Fortunately not currently urgent.)
Tue May 05 00:34:09 +0000 2020 (#)
The irony is that the Return of the ESC key (tm) is actually a ticklist feature that they can market to me.
(Still unsure if Iād buy another Apple laptop; but I definitely wouldnāt buy any laptop without a commonly used key in my finger learnt position. Keyboards matter!) https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1257290574622670855
Tue May 05 00:45:35 +0000 2020 (#)
Looks like Zoom are having a one month transition (approx May 2020) from old Zoom to Zoom 5.0 with new encryption (and the new encryption will be mandatory by default from 2020-05-30 onwards).
Thatās one way to encourage upgrades! https://zoom.us/docs/en-us/zoom-v5-0.html https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/27/its-here-5-things-to-know-about-zoom-5-0/
Tue May 05 00:50:10 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
It also looks like āprivate chatā probably wonāt work for guests (ie no Zoom account/another organisation) any more.
Itās not clear, but I think āprivate chatā in the release notes refers to the in meeting text chat (often a useful backchannel in a VC). https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203650445-In-Meeting-Chat
Tue May 05 01:32:23 +0000 2020 (#)
āDeserted Island DevOps Postmortemā via #ComfyConAU Discord.
ā[...] I predicted that it wouldnāt be possible to put together a successful virtual event in a month. Iām willing to admit at this point that I was wrong on that one [...]ā š https://aparker.io/posts/deserted-island-devops/
Tue May 05 01:36:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @hroethgar
I suspect the private chat limits are to address āunsolicited messages that the host canāt see during the meetingā which could have problematic content in larger VCs.
(Itās not clear they are going to stop recording the āprivateā chat, and Iād expected it to be recorded anyway.)
Tue May 05 01:41:03 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @minxdragon: Oh my goodness. Please tell me I can buy these in bulk somewhere! https://twitter.com/heysarahpaz/status/1256732232745725953
Tue May 05 01:42:21 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @minxdragon
FYI downthread they were trying to figure out getting more of them made. I think theyād sell a bunch if they could make/ship them... :-)
Tue May 05 07:39:31 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @BR3NDA
FWIW my billable hours for the entire month of April was about 42 hours. An average of 10 hours a week. Thatās... very low even for April (which tends to have a bunch of public holidays and ānew financial yearā unbillable overhead).
April 2020 was Unusual Circumstances (tm)!
Tue May 05 09:32:33 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
If you want to watch the Deserted Island DevOps talks, thereās a playlist on YouTube now (link from the end of the Postmortem post).
Lots of overlap in how the virtual con was run with what #ComfyConAU did: clearly Zoom in/streaming out + text chat works! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb4jg06e_Vk&list=PLVUQjiv8GtwL-B9AJJ-rNdiDtcU2wo7Gy
Tue May 05 09:36:56 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @NatDudley: The fastest way to ensure I wonāt download a contact tracing app is for Palantir to be involved https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/415835/us-tech-firm-palantir-held-talks-with-privacy-commissioner
Wed May 06 02:34:51 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @pjf
Give them the phone number and tell them itāll answer all their questions? š
Wed May 06 02:35:16 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: Microsoft is launching a datacentre region in New Zealand! This is awesome news - it means that New Zealand organisations migā¦
Wed May 06 10:39:18 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @RealSexyCyborg: Good overview of how we used apps to get where we are now: http://dangrover.com/blog/2020/04/05/covid-in-ui.html
Wed May 06 10:41:17 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @RealSexyCyborg: Again, this is a solved problem. Commuters book a departure time online via app. They have a ten minute window to showā¦
Wed May 06 10:44:40 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @minxdragon
Typically I worry sooner after hitting send, and have to check. But I could totally see ādays afterā happening with someone I corresponded with infrequently :-)
Wed May 06 11:11:40 +0000 2020 (#)
LCA2022 = LCA2021 LCA2021 = LCAOnline
So that avoids having to try to make a difficult decision in the next few months about potential Jan 2021 international travel (ie, decide in time to propose something or not).
Good to have a clear early decision š https://twitter.com/linuxaustralia/status/1257941337799897093
Thu May 07 02:59:48 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ #Covid19 details on ālevel 2ā were posted today (and now saved at the Internet Archive; yāall will have to be faster if you want the āFirst Archiveā badge š)
Looks like theyāll decide Monday 2020-05-11 if we go to Level 2 soon. https://covid19.govt.nz/latest-updates/new-alert-level-2-information-released/ https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/
Thu May 07 03:05:01 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Looks like NZ #Covid19 level 2 will require contact tracing for at business premises interactions (doesnāt specify a type so far, just that you need one). And max 100 people (+staff?!) at events, with 1m physical distancing.
Specific guidance for hairdressers to come š
Thu May 07 03:11:26 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Iām assuming thatāll mean that the Wellington Film Society wonāt be screening films in person any time soon (usually 150+ attendees at films in the past year). Presumably not until we get back to Level 1, which Iād guess is still months away.
NZ #Covid19 https://filmsocietywellington.net.nz/schedule.htm
Thu May 07 09:34:02 +0000 2020 (#)
TIL that Windows network interfaces, of many smarter NICs, donāt let you packet capture Ethernet frames with the original VLAN tag included, at least not without magic registry settings and reboots.
Unfortunately we really needed the VLAN frame headers š¢ https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/VLAN#Windows
Thu May 07 20:48:22 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @textfiles: The 1977 source code for ZORK has been recovered from MIT tapes and released on github. I cloned the repository at https://tā¦
Fri May 08 02:16:23 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @pjf and @QEDunham
That ā¬ļø is a beautiful āhelp someone else at no risk to yourselfā gesture. Thank you for sharing it!
šššā¤ļø
Fri May 08 02:16:33 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @pjf: The other week @QEDunham sent me a number of handmade masks.
Today I made a small note to go with them, and dropped some off at tā¦
Fri May 08 02:19:43 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ktemkin
Parallelism: theyāre actually many pigeons in a trench coat!
Fri May 08 02:26:56 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ExcitedLeigh
NL separated records of unspecified ASCII superset still pretty much works for many pipelines, but āwhite space separated fieldsā didnāt really survive the test of time (especially the last 20 years where so many things insist on embedding spaces in filenames?!).
Fri May 08 02:30:43 +0000 2020 (#)
Missed opportunity: embedded spaces in filenames could have been silently converted to non-breaking spaces at point of entry.
Itās a different code point so wouldnāt break historical Unix conventions and itās peopleās intention of spaces in filenames, ie not to break on them. https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1258584136622596098
Fri May 08 05:15:38 +0000 2020 (#)
This week in Enterprise IT: three vendor support tickets (2x networking, 1x storage), three āZoom is RDP with voice chatā sessions, and the storage ticket has turned into two new bug reports āescalated to engineeringā.
Production go live, unsurprisingly, got pushed back. Again.
Fri May 08 05:17:14 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @JeneeTibshraeny: Transparency š! A huge proactive release: I'll be grateful and refrain from complaining about the timing... https://ā¦
Fri May 08 05:19:18 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @RealSexyCyborg: Thermometer and QR check at entrance to McDonald's Shenzhen. Table flag blocking off about 1/3 of the seating to maintaā¦
Fri May 08 08:05:41 +0000 2020 (#)
Interesting talk on reversing code from smaller ARM CPUs, especially those using the Thumb 16 bit instruction set.
Turns out Thumb instructions have the LSB of PC/address pointer set so you can distinguish them from ARM instruction addresses and data pointers (which donāt). https://twitter.com/BSidesKnoxville/status/1257150278228480001
Fri May 08 09:04:08 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @SwiftOnSecurity: One of the best videos on YouTube, lays out why moon landing was real, because faking it was actually impossible. Weā¦
Fri May 08 09:44:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Thread from a few weeks back about privacy/consent issues in #Covid19 tracking mobile apps. Written in the context of the UK app, but the model statute protections discussed seems broadly applicable to other countries/apps.
https://mobile.twitter.com/lilianedwards/status/1249719258155712513 https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/yc6xu/
Sat May 09 03:27:28 +0000 2020 (#)
#Covid19 NZ Level 3 day 12 (Saturday): feels like people have decided weāve already moved to level 2 (or below). One neighbour has had multiple visitors for extended visits. Two other neighbours have been out most of the day (eg, car usually in driveway gone, saw them leave).
Sat May 09 03:29:46 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
#Covid19 NZ Level 3 day 12: itās a bit concerning that if we do end up going back to level 3 or 4 later, NZers might be a bit too āyeah, nahā about it....
Sat May 09 06:35:18 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @TProphet: Really not getting all the snark over Zoom buying Keybase. Zoom was beaten up relentlessly for not having full E2E. Key managā¦
Sat May 09 09:31:02 +0000 2020 (#)
āPrehistories of the Personalā, a talk (from 2020-04-10) about the social background that made personal microcomputers possible, and set the early culture of personal computing. Roughly up to the early months of the Altair and Microsoft.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zUTM6HM40fM&feature=youtu.be https://twitter.com/Sierra_OffLine/status/1252736648313528320
Sat May 09 19:50:49 +0000 2020 (#)
A fascinating article about how bit slice computing works, and how ECL (Emitter Coupled Logic) works.
As usual read the footnotes (including how carry generate/propagate pregeneration works and avoids carry ripple delay); the comments are a treasure too.
http://www.righto.com/2020/04/inside-am2901-amds-1970s-bit-slice.html?m=1 https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1251544912153083904
Sat May 09 20:04:17 +0000 2020 (#)
āThe Half of Itā (Netflix Original IIRC) was charming and very nicely done. Well worth watching if you can.
Iād have been very happy seeing it in a film festival, but I guess ādirect to streamingā is the option that reaches the most audience now, given current world events.... https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1259112343985778690
Sat May 09 20:06:45 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
And itās great to hear that itās pretty authentic and well received by some of those represented.
https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1259112346531721217
Sun May 10 05:02:14 +0000 2020 (#)
The Amp Hour: an Interview with Craig J Bishop (from December 2019).
Itās a really fascinating discussion about large FPGA bring up, and tiny (micron) silicon interconnects with vision systems to compensate for die features being slightly out of place. https://theamphour.com/469-an-interview-with-craig-j-bishop/
Sun May 10 05:18:15 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @jillrouleau and @mattcen
That (ā¬ļø) was exactly my thought too: co-working spaces were precisely invented to be āwork on your own projects, around other peopleā (and several hackerspaces do that as a āpays the billsā daytime sideline).
Sun May 10 05:29:31 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @FiloSottile: It's ready! š„ https://github.com/FiloSottile/yubikey-agent
yubikey-agent is a seamless ssh-agent for YubiKeys. š Written in Go, it takes one cā¦
Sun May 10 07:04:14 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @jillrouleau and @mattcen
Totally agree. The small locally run co-working spaces can be friendly/welcoming. The big corporate ones are just Disrupting Renting Offices (tm) without any real āhanging out with friendsā vibe.
Mon May 11 05:05:01 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ will move to #Covid19 Level 2, just before Thu 2020-05-14 in NZ.
I really hope people are careful enough we donāt have the typical pandemic āround twoā outbreak. Including āup to 10 people, up to 2 hoursā rules for gatherings. https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/ https://covid19.govt.nz/latest-updates/new-zealand-will-be-at-alert-level-2-from-thursday-14-may/
Mon May 11 05:09:49 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Interestingly it looks like gatherings at your house donāt need records for contact tracing, but gatherings outside your house do.
Except public venues (including restaurants, cafes, bars) donāt seem to have a contact tracing requirement?! (Just groups of 10 kept 1m apart.)
Mon May 11 05:17:33 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Businesses can have customers on site if ā1m apart plus contact tracingā, or 2m and no records. Hairdressers guidance still āavailable soonā.
I get the strong impression these NZ #Covid19 level 2 rules are going to keep being tweaked for the next few weeks.
Mon May 11 19:55:32 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @mandylibrary: @NZPrivacy This will absolutely keep happening. This plan for everyone to hand over their contact details isn't safe, parā¦
Mon May 11 19:56:14 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @9ftnina: @NZPrivacy Well here goes me giving false contact info. Along with every woman who has been harassed, stalked, or abused. (Soā¦
Mon May 11 20:04:59 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ajdlinux and @merxplat
The update on the NZ Covid19 site uses the word āatā, which implies to me āupon reachingā rather than āafterā.
It also confusingly leads with āfrom Thursdayā in the headline/URL.
So 23:59:00.000 to 23:59:59.999 (NZST) is definitely a bit of a grey area! https://covid19.govt.nz/latest-updates/new-zealand-will-be-at-alert-level-2-from-thursday-14-may/
Mon May 11 20:09:10 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ajdlinux and @merxplat
In general I think it depends on context (at/after/...) if 23:59:00 or 23:59:59 is implied (and here itās a bit fuzzy).
Iām left wondering why they didnāt just say āfrom 00:01 Thursdayā (or 12:01am if they must) and avoid the date confusion š¤
(From == upon reaching, IMHO)
Mon May 11 20:12:19 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @pjf: Fun fact! Regular expressions are just finite state machines in compact form.
š³š·(ššš¹)* https://twitter.com/happyautomata/status/1259875929196642310
Mon May 11 21:23:56 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @YellowAfterlife: Hello! I made a new tool! It takes pixel font "tilesets" and converts them into actual TTF fonts! https://t.co/qrHfOdqā¦
Mon May 11 22:07:34 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @textfiles: We had a surge in donations to @internetarchive and plowed it into increasing bandwidth, from 30Gbits/sec last year to 62Gbiā¦
Mon May 11 22:50:34 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Called it: the NZ #Covid19 Level 2 rules are still in flux.
The 2 hour limit on āin your own houseā gatherings is now gone (possibly changed 2020-05-11 22:48:03 NZST?).
I think we need revision control! https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200511045843/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200511223839/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/
Mon May 11 22:50:58 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: I'd like to see more conversation about how we keep track of the close contact we have with other people that isn't brokeredā¦
Mon May 11 22:53:54 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
Detailed appointment diary, on paper, carefully completed by fountain pen, every night?
Tempted. I have fountain pens within arms reach... š¤
Mon May 11 22:55:11 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @CivilLibertyNZ: We have sent our feedback on the draft Covid-19 Public Health Response Bill. Obviously 16 hours wasn't sufficient timeā¦
Mon May 11 22:59:34 +0000 2020 (#)
TBH Iād prefer not to be gaslight by the official government site detailing the rules for āLevel 2ā.
āLevel 2ā has already meant three things. About 24 hours ago āLevel 2ā allowed gatherings of 100. Now 10/100 depending on venue. https://web.archive.org/web/20200510075423/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/ https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1259979238905540608
Mon May 11 23:03:15 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Iād really like to see diffs, with commit logs, or at least previous revisions available, not just snapshots made externally. And stop reusing Level N to mean substantially different things.
Constantly changing rules is not the way to run a ārule of lawā society.
#Covid19 NZ
Mon May 11 23:14:10 +0000 2020 (#)
@textfiles Is there any way that the Internet Archive web crawler could more regularly archive the NZ Government Covid19 site, including pages within it?
Theyāre changing frequently, in non-trivial ways; itād be nice to capture those revisions.
Thanks! https://covid19.govt.nz
Mon May 11 23:16:32 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @textfiles
FTR Iāve snapshotted a bunch of the pages by hand, over the last 6 weeks, which caught some revisions. But I donāt think it got all of them. So itād be nice if it could be more automated.
(I also emailed IA main contact a month ago about this, but everyone was busy then š)
Tue May 12 01:10:55 +0000 2020 (#)
Chaotic Lawful interpretation of NZ #Covid19 Level 2: a person may visit as many people as they like, for as long as they like, providing it is in the other peopleās houses and max(10, num_who_live_there) people are present at any one time.
Hopefully that isnāt what happens š
Tue May 12 01:12:41 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Prediction: travel chaos this weekends as everyone visits everyone š
(Personally Iām still going to try to stick to max 10 unique people per day, probably max 10 unique people per week.)
Tue May 12 01:13:09 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @textfiles
Thanks so much!
š
Tue May 12 01:13:18 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @textfiles: @ewenmcneill Passed it to the Wayback team, hopefully they'll jump on it.
Tue May 12 07:48:26 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @RealSexyCyborg: Doing it way bigš https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1260050233033179137
Tue May 12 21:08:55 +0000 2020 (#)
Deleted tweet about the phishing spam, once I figured out where the super local super accurate details came from: the Greymouth iSite has someone with that name working there, and is also at 164 Mackay Street (ie the Railway Station).
Tue May 12 21:14:04 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
The phone numbers arenāt the public iSite numbers, and the from email addresses are random (stolen?) addresses elsewhere.
But it looks like someone got a business card with DDIs and used the details verbatim. Hence deleting the original tweet.
Tue May 12 21:16:42 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Being New Zealand, I believe Iām two degrees of separation from the person being impersonated (and even have a good idea who the person in the middle step is), so Iāll try to get word to them :-)
Tue May 12 21:38:17 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Looks like two spam runs from the same client, via two separate mail relays. Which explains why I got two about 8 minutes apart from different addresses. Time zones in the messages imply US origin injected via owned UK windows client.
Both have Reply-To: mfe0059 at Gmail š
Tue May 12 22:42:17 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: If you need to politely decline weekend plan suggestions, I have made a virtual postcard for you
Tue May 12 23:01:50 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @radionz: Police conducted a trial of controversial facial recognition software without consulting their own bosses or the Privacy Commiā¦
Wed May 13 02:17:27 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
FTR the Greymouth iSite staff confirmed they knew about this impersonation, but said those were not their phone numbers (they are Greymouth exchange numbers though, possibly made up separately?!).
They, like me, are baffled by what the phishers hoped to achieve š¤
Wed May 13 02:21:39 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
FTR I have now been able to collect one of the two sets, which apparently was in stock. The ETA on the other is still unknown. So in theory I can open more hardware now.
(I had to ask when they were due before I found out / got to have the order split up.)
Wed May 13 02:23:56 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
I guess the moral of online ordering at present is to order every unique item as itās own separate order, unless there are strong financial incentives to combine orders (or itās really impossible to use the items separately at all and you donāt want some of it early).
Wed May 13 02:28:21 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ #Covid19 Level 3 day 16: with the new Level 2 starting at 23:59 tonight it seems like things are getting back to normal in the CBD.
Street parking is paid parking again. CommonSense Wellington are moving next week (to Tory St, open there Wed 2020-05-20).
Wed May 13 02:36:11 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
NZ #Covid19 Level 3 day 16: āClick and Collectā orders seem to now be āmain shop entranceā collection booths, but otherwise pretty normal. Some shop staff wearing masks, others not. Feels like people are more relaxed.
Yet highway sign said āstill at level 3ā! Not much longer š
Wed May 13 02:38:37 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @kendra_c__: This time last year we didn't have: a trial of armed Police, a trial of facial recognition technology used by Police, or thā¦
Wed May 13 03:48:08 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @tveastman: Love it when Police do an end-run around civil-rights protections.
Sure does make me trust the police, when we give them exā¦
Wed May 13 03:57:20 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
NZ #Covid19 Level 3 day 16: I spent actual cash (coins) today, for the first time in about 8 weeks (to pay for parking).
It was nice to pay for something without all my details ending up in someoneās database.
Wed May 13 04:01:07 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
NZ #Covid19 Level 3 day 16: Supermarket self checkout machines still voice prompt to insert cash, even though it hasnāt been a menu option for months, and there are signs saying āno cashā. I guess itās really impossible to change those voice prompts!
Wed May 13 09:25:29 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @amyherself and @BR3NDA
From memory you typically pay income tax on currency exchange if youāre ātradingā in currency (buying/selling trying to make a profit), and usually donāt if itās a one off exchange rather than ātradingā. (And donāt pay GST as itās a financial service.)
Wed May 13 09:29:49 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @amyherself and @BR3NDA
IIRC IRD have specific rules around around cryptocurrency taxation now which might help. AFAICR from glancing at them a while ago, theyāre similar to anything else you might trade in (eg, shares) or buy for other reasons (eg long term): ie the set of actions decide taxation.
Wed May 13 19:15:58 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May version) day 1: it is at least a pretty start to the day, even if in practice not much changes in my day to day routine.
Wed May 13 19:24:44 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @geekygirlsarah: I've been using NoScript, a browser extension that disables all JavaScript and lets you enable them on a server-by-servā¦
Wed May 13 19:26:28 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @theavalkyrie: Pointers are like signposts
Telling you where to go
But watch out for the void pointer
It shows the way to the abyssā¦
Wed May 13 19:31:17 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @joelaberger: @pjf "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, using mutable data. You step onto the code, and if you don't keep your feet, thereā¦
Wed May 13 20:25:46 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @k8em0: Data abuse, even if the app itself were āsecureā is still a huge security & privacy risk. As a person who has had to take out reā¦
Wed May 13 23:50:05 +0000 2020 (#)
Interesting: recycling collection resumed Tuesday (ie 2 days ago); and thereās a special ācatch upā recycling collection on Saturday (16th) for those of us that usually have Monday collection... which Iām assuming is this past Mondayās collection. #Covid19 https://twitter.com/WgtnCC/status/1260704209026113540
Wed May 13 23:52:24 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
The Wellington Council recycling calendar doesnāt know about this special collection on the 16th. But its idea of the next regular collection (Monday 18th) matches my theory that the Saturday collection is this past Mondayās recycling (ie Glass for me).
Thu May 14 01:49:04 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @aurynn
āOpen to aussiesā makes me wonder how theyāre going to get their RealMe Verified Identity, which seems to need a NZ Passport/NZ birth certificate/NZ immigration details.
Did the āmust have RealMe Verified to use this serviceā requirement go away? š¤
https://www.realme.govt.nz/how-apply/
Thu May 14 01:51:50 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @aurynn
FTR Iām genuinely interested in whether RealMe Verified is still required; that was a deal breaker requirement for me and seemed like it was going to be mandatory based on discussion a year or so back. But I canāt find RealMe in the http://cloudisland.nz T&C or Privacy Policy.
Thu May 14 01:55:22 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @aurynn
Thanks for the quick reply!
If RealMe Verified is added later will it then be the mandatory only identity proof choice at that time? Or just one of several / optional to get access to specific features?
(Best guess is fine; predictions are difficult, especially in 2020 :-) )
Thu May 14 01:59:39 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @aurynn
Awesome!
Optional as a strong identity proof Iām comfortable with; it was the āthis Government verified ID (potentially in someoneās dead name) is mandatoryā bit that put me off a year(ish) ago.
Thu May 14 02:14:19 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @aurynn
Yes, human review of signups definitely slows down automated trolling š
As I suspect should Patreon account and $N/Month per account, no refunds!
Thu May 14 19:48:27 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @SamSykesSwears: You, an idiot: "It's crucial that people use their twitter platforms responsibly for the betterment of society." Me, aā¦
Fri May 15 02:53:52 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: For those curious: I caught http://simpletrace.nz, http://guesthub.net, http://digi-safe.nz, https://t.co/6U6Lv2qXAā¦
Fri May 15 02:58:08 +0000 2020 (#)
Iām... not looking forward to having to decide whether or not to visit a shop based in which random ācontact tracing techniqueā theyāve chosen to make a condition of entry.
(Kind of glad I did my shopping on Wednesday, under the more reasonable Level 3 rules: click and collect.) https://twitter.com/merxplat/status/1261090955341393920
Fri May 15 03:00:43 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
Do give them unique email addresses. Iāve done this for years with online signups/retailers who insisted on email to send something (eg, invoice).
Thereās a lot of reuse of āhey we have your email nowā even when you opt out of spam at the time of providing the address.
Fri May 15 03:10:13 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
As near as I can tell everyone eventually assumes āwe have your address therefore you agreed we can email you whenever we wantā. Itās just a question of how many careless database merges or sociopathic marketing people are involved for how quickly it happens š¢
Fri May 15 04:21:39 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @nzkarit and @tveastman
Someone I know had the theory glass would get recycled (apparently thereās a NZ recycler of glass, and itās pretty easily heat treated/power washed), but other things might end up in the landfill until they had new processes.
So Iām planning on putting glass out tomorrow.
Fri May 15 04:24:33 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @kiwibrew
Yes, the data collection impact analysis is much easier if thereās a single (Government) app/data collection process.
NZ seems to have done the ābusinesses have to do something to collect contact data, itās up to them what, we might ask laterā thing, unfortunately š¢
Fri May 15 04:45:49 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @golrizghahraman: My concerns are laid out here, together with other experts: What the Police did goes so far beyond anything within theā¦
Fri May 15 04:58:07 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @cd_hooks: 25 years into online journalism, we still don't have an easy to pay a buck to read an article at a site we wouldnt otherwiseā¦
Fri May 15 05:27:25 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @carrickdb
Itās quite possible to delete that quoted message text. People typically donāt. Because people.
Ironically including the whole previous email (recursively š¤¦š»āāļø) only became a thing after email clients supported walking up/down threads locally (approx late 1990s).
Fri May 15 05:33:29 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @carrickdb
Late 1980s and early/mid 1990s email culture, before good threading in MUAs, was to quote relevant excerpts, inline with replies. With a heavy emphasis on relevant excerpts.
Somehow people forgot how to excerpt when given āunlimitedā bandwidth/screen size, and threading š¢
Fri May 15 06:43:32 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @zeynep: I've written about this for years and am always given reasons why it can't happen. I keep wanting to pay to read, but there isā¦
Fri May 15 06:54:26 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @Pinboard: @zeynep @BeijingPalmer In practice, this means any pooled system for small payments is captured by the intermediaries and onlā¦
Fri May 15 06:54:30 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @Pinboard: @zeynep @BeijingPalmer The pathologies at how this problem was addressed in the music business are worth looking at. The fundā¦
Fri May 15 07:59:49 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Ironically the current NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) rules say that retailers do not need to keep contact tracing records (just keep customers 2m apart) Yet apparently lots of retailers are collecting data with ad hoc systems for unknown purposes š¤
https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/
Fri May 15 08:05:18 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
It seems only āclose contactā services (eg hairdressers), need to keep contact tracing records, and can have customers 1m apart.
So itās unclear what those random systems at various retailers @merxplat saw were collecting for.
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) https://web.archive.org/web/20200515075155/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/
Fri May 15 08:08:38 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
I had a look at the NZ #Covid19 Level 2 rules, and it seems only close services (eg, hairdressers), which canāt maintain 2m distance, need to keep contact tracing records. Unclear when that changes, as NZ Government doesnāt seem to keep change logs :-(
https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1261204627011145729
Fri May 15 08:20:54 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
Best I can say is it has changed since 2020-05-13 06:25:00 (UTC I think, so Wed evening) and 2020-05-15 07:51:55 (UTC, ie my capture this evening), as those are the Wayback Machine captures.
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) https://web.archive.org/web/20200513062500/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200515075155/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/m
Fri May 15 08:24:27 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Possibly Level 2 advice was changed Thursday 2020-05-14 or morning of Friday 2020-05-15 in NZ depending on what timestamp you believe.
Yet today there were non close services retailers collecting data... NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May)
Fri May 15 08:27:38 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @nzgizmoguy
Yes, level 3 was easier to understand and the rules didnāt keep changing in unnotified ways š
FYI, it looks like your employer might not need to do contact tracing recording at all now if they can maintain 2m distances between people...
https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1261206845219209219
Fri May 15 08:36:18 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @nzgizmoguy
I too am likely to mostly just keep up my previous weeks routine of working from home and only going out for walks / grocery shopping, until it all settles down to more stable/coherent rules.
I suspect we wonāt be alone in doing that :-)
Fri May 15 08:47:06 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @nzgizmoguy
š®
The http://covid19.govt.nz just cheerfully says āsafeā and āphysical distancingā for tertiary providers (tonight anyway š). Nothing about tracking. So Iād assumed āuse every second seat/rowā and āqueue carefullyā was what they were aiming at... apparently not!
Fri May 15 08:52:03 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @nzgizmoguy
Checking in/out of building, room, lecture theatre, down to individual seat, seems like a lot of bureaucracy. And unlikely to help anyone feel safe/relaxed/ready to teach/learn.
Iām not surprised youāre opting to keep on working from home for now! š
Fri May 15 09:13:05 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @nzgizmoguy
Yes I expect MBIE or MinEdu spoke to each major tertiary provider directly. And possibly ādetailed contact trackingā was being suggested earlier (last month/week/day) as āa good ideaā.
There seem to have been multiple huge changes in rules of āLevel 2ā just in the last 4 days š
Fri May 15 22:06:54 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @isomer and @nzgizmoguy
The NZ āLevel 2ā rules definitely changed between Monday evening (May rules) and Tuesday morning (different May rules). And again later this week (Wed evening, Thursday or Friday morning). And at least one other time (Funeral/Tangi person limit).
Fri May 15 22:09:27 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @isomer and @nzgizmoguy
Unfortunately thereās no change log, no details when things changed (other than funeral limit which got an Update post), and no archives pretty much other than the screenshots/Wayback archives I made, so... could easily have changed within half an hour, unnoticed š
Fri May 15 22:12:46 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @isomer and @nzgizmoguy
TBH I suspect they should have used code names, maybe after named after birds or something. With a new bird/code name for each change.
āWeāre now at Kaka levelā š
(Or at least numbered the levels like BASIC programmers: 10, 20, 30, etc. Then you can have a 25 and look clever!)
Fri May 15 23:22:25 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @QuinnyPig: Facebook Tracking Pixels now larger, funnier. https://twitter.com/GIPHY/status/1261305532230635523
Sat May 16 00:01:05 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @timnicholas
š
It wasnāt that well advertised unfortunately.
(I was really glad I accidentally found out about it: my first bin load of glass was collected half an hour ago, so now the glass bin has only about a week of glass in it ā the overflow that didnāt fit before!)
Sat May 16 00:01:52 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @chrisjrn: For $400M, Facebook have bought embed space on thousands of forums, corporate slacks, and piles of other places where they'dā¦
Sat May 16 04:24:36 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @SoniaCuff: Hot off the camera, zero post-production editing - here are my #speakercraft tips for the human skill of presenting to a colā¦
Sat May 16 05:07:13 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @SoniaCuff: Hey @jsnover here's that blog post I mentioned - speaking to a cold, hard, plastic camera is a VERY different skill! https:ā¦
Sat May 16 06:53:40 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
For potential future reference, another easy āno sewingā home made mask, this time a pleated design. It has a similar attachment approach (bands, friction), but different folds, and starts with a smaller piece of cloth (eg, handkerchief).
https://blog.japanesecreations.com/no-sew-face-mask-with-handkerchief-and-hair-tie
Sun May 17 01:19:54 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @mattcen
NZ was requiring that (contact tracing records) for almost everything for a couple of days (less so now: restaurants, public venues, and close contact service but not general retail). 1/2
https://twitter.com/merxplat/status/1261088828908949504 https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1261128706422009856 https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1261204627011145729
Sun May 17 01:23:34 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @mattcen
The result seems to have been N different data collection systems, most written in a rush, at least one of which was apparently literally a Google Form (see threads linked above).
With little to no thought for Privacy Policy, data deletion, etc. Youāre right to be concerned! 2/2
Sun May 17 01:24:18 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @mattcen: "Venues will be required to take the contact details of every customer to assist in rapid contact tracing."
And how will thatā¦
Sun May 17 01:30:37 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @mattcen
Iāve pretty much assumed that data retention will implicitly be āforeverā and the Privacy Policy will implicitly be āwe can do anything we like with the data you provideā, forever.
Iām definitely expecting one or more places to use it for marketing, and that to be āallowedā š¢
Sun May 17 05:37:33 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @heulangel: Happy with this design! Managed to get rid of darts but still provide for movement. I think the increased fabric also helpsā¦
Sun May 17 07:36:06 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @JoelMacManus: Wellington has officially marked one month without a new confirmed case of Covid-19. There are no active cases in the Capā¦
Sun May 17 07:58:32 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @developerjack: āVenues will be required to take the contact details of every customer to assist in rapid contact tracing.ā
Look I getā¦
Sun May 17 08:31:38 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @Sausage_Spirit: @clapifyoulikeme have some more!
Sun May 17 08:47:19 +0000 2020 (#)
āColossus - The Greatest Secret in the History of Computingā, a talk by Chris Shore, published earlier this month, about the other secret machine at Bletchley Park, designed to break Tunny (rather than Enigma broken by the bombes, which is well known). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g2tMcMQqSbA
Sun May 17 22:31:10 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @tveastman
Itād have been a lot more on brand if youād said āunlike or unretweet if...ā š
Mon May 18 05:13:35 +0000 2020 (#)
Achievement of the day: noticed PB Tech listed stock of a couple of Logitech webcam models, for the first time in two months, so ordered one to give myself more choices than āwhere can I balance a tabletā.
(Looks like they have a couple of dozen of each of two models.)
Mon May 18 05:16:21 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Most other online retailers still seem to be out of stock of most reasonable webcams, so my guess is PB Tech made a special order.
(Also looks like the second set of tools, which I ordered a few weeks ago as āin stockā, might have arrived; Iāve contacted PB Tech to confirm.)
Mon May 18 06:02:54 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @lcsnz: for people who've been wondering: Dr Bloomfield said at today's press conference the last case they couldn't link to another knoā¦
Mon May 18 07:24:38 +0000 2020 (#)
āA Full Break of Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAsā talk by Maik Ender, given at the http://Hardwear.io Virtual Conference 2020-04-30, about the attack from April (slides & Usenix article).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ta_sIolWLmc https://hardwear.io/virtual-con-2020/presentations/Starbleed.pptx https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec20fall_ender_prepub.pdf
Mon May 18 07:34:31 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @whitequark: lots of people knocking the quality of joints in replies to this, but what i see is an iron hot enough it'd delaminate theā¦
Mon May 18 20:20:53 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @OregonZoo: Nacho and Goat went hiking
Mon May 18 23:15:19 +0000 2020 (#)
Hey @vodafoneNZ, the load balancer in front of your MyVodafone website is failing 3 of 4 XHR address lookups, so I canāt change my billing address. Itās been broken for at least a month; fails to save address even if manually entered.
Can you get someone to look at it please?
Mon May 18 23:25:38 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @vodafoneNZ
FTR, billing address update fails (500 - Internal Server Error) even on the times the address lookup works:
āupdateBillNotification process failedā.
Fails in two browsers (Firefox 68ESR, Safari 13.1). Been like that for several weeks. Stays stuck āSavingā but never does š
Mon May 18 23:38:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @vodafoneNZ
Also FTR it fails the same way in the āMy Vodafoneā app on my phone, both on WiFi and on 4G. Ie, hardly ever shows address to pick, and gets stuck āSaving...ā forever.
Almost certainly because that uses the same broken load balancer/web backend.
Tue May 19 03:18:34 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @vodafoneNZ
Thanks for the reply.
As noted further down the thread updating the postal address via the My Vodafone app fails in the same way (āSaving...ā forever, no change ever made).
Iāll send a DM with the update details. Thanks!
https://mobile.twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1262527942690607105
Tue May 19 03:35:41 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @stephenrwalli: Microsoft: we were wrong about open source https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262103/microsoft-open-source-linux-history-wrong-statement (I have no words.)
Tue May 19 22:57:34 +0000 2020 (#)
The Vodafone NZ address update still fails to save, both on website and in My Vodafone app.
Unfortunately the update made by the Vodafone NZ team left it with just city, area code; now post wonāt work at all.
Iāve sent them another DM; hope the details get corrected this time. https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1262522182497742848
Tue May 19 23:49:27 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
FTR Vodafone NZ support say it looks correct at their end. So maybe thereās also a display bug in the Vodafone NZ website/My Vodafone app postal address details too.
Crossing my fingers the next invoice even arrives, because I canāt fix it myself, due to the broken website š
Tue May 19 23:54:11 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Looks like the Vodafone NZ backend protocol is passing:
addressType: PO Box boxNumber: null city: Wellington country: New Zealand postCode: 6140
So maybe the fetch/set of the post box number is broken in their backend. #psychicdebugging
Wed May 20 00:18:45 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @lawgeeknz: @andrewtychen @PrivacyFdn_NZ Since it is voluntary, my assumption is that the contact tracing register rules will continue tā¦
Wed May 20 00:18:52 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: The Govt COVID-19 contact tracing support app is probably safe to use. We can argue about efficacy, but I've studied theā¦
Wed May 20 00:19:04 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: The sign-up process starts with the privacy statement. Personal information is requested (to help the contact tracers finā¦
Wed May 20 00:25:57 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: Full privacy policy here: https://tracing.covid19.govt.nz/help/privacypolicy
Wed May 20 00:26:36 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: It is NOT proximity tracking, it is not the Bluetooth thing that many other countries are exploring/using. Right now, itā¦
Wed May 20 00:26:54 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: In terms of keeping track of where you have been... TBH you can achieve a very similar goal by just taking a photo of eacā¦
Wed May 20 00:28:50 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: Privacy Impact Assesment for the app is now available here: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-health-advice-general-public/contact-tracing-covid-19/nz-covid-tracer-app/nz-covid-tracer-app-questions-and-answers
Wed May 20 00:29:21 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: PIA: "The app will not record any location information automatically." Consumers have to scan QR codes with the app, theyā¦
Wed May 20 00:34:30 +0000 2020 (#)
Awesome, detailed thread on the NZ Government #Covid19 tracing application. From reading this thread, it seems to do two things: 1. Register identity/contact details with Government, 2. Allow you to scan QR codes to ānote downā where you have been with date/time. https://twitter.com/andrewtychen/status/1262639539962576896
Wed May 20 00:37:48 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
As an approach that seems pretty reasonable.
Itās unfortunate that itās arrived a week into NZ #Covid19 Level 2, and requires business/location uptake to use (generate/display QR codes to scan). And thus is competing with N other tracking systems businesses have created already.
Wed May 20 05:20:02 +0000 2020 (#)
Lazyweb: is there a list somewhere of which #Wellington, #NZ retailers require which #Covid19 tracing application in order to enter?
There seem to be 3+ apps required by different retailers, only announced at the entry (by signs you canāt easily see in/before queueing š)
Wed May 20 05:24:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
āRandom app required, by sign only at retailer entryā still seems to be happening in Wellington this afternoon (Wednesday 2020-05-20) despite retailers not being required to keep contact tracing records since at least Friday 2020-05-15 evening, or earlier....
NZ #Covid19 level 2
Wed May 20 21:35:40 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @textfiles: For two months, @iFixit has been gathering thousands of medical device manuals to put online. They are doing so with a fullā¦
Wed May 20 22:53:38 +0000 2020 (#)
Life in 2020: I have a text file on my desktop called āordersā and every morning I check the tracking links saved in it, to see if maybe anything has moved in the last 24 hours.
Wed May 20 22:56:08 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Not much movement in the last week.
Deliveries last week (ordered during NZ #Covid19 Level 3) were very quick (same week).
Nothing ordered in the past week (NZ #Covid19 Level 2, May edition) has got past āpicked upā/āprocessingā.
Wed May 20 22:58:28 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Stock levels at retailers are much improved in this past week though: itās actually possible to order things as āin stockā which were out of stock the past 6-8 weeks.
So I think the couriers just got swamped again by people ordering things they could finally buy again.
Wed May 20 23:00:26 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
FTR nothing Iāve ordered for delivery is essential to have this week, and I was expecting 5+ days for āovernightā delivery anyway.
Iām just ordering things Iāve wanted/needed for weeks that can finally be ordered again; guess everyone else is too š
Thu May 21 00:20:30 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @__fincham
Iām not terribly keen on āmystery meatā online services at the best of timesš
Thanks for the suggestions, but so far the ācutānāpasteā tracking URL method is working for the small number of packages actually in the courier system.
Iām just amused by the days of āno movementā!
Thu May 21 00:22:46 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @kiwibrew
Ironically I went with the textfile on desktop approach after seeing someone mention in a video they had an entire Google Doc with order tracking details :-)
I like text files, theyāre very compatible with the Unix workflow :-)
Thu May 21 00:49:01 +0000 2020 (#)
I have replaced myself with a small shell script š
cat ~/Desktop/orders | sed ā/^āāāā/,$dā | awk āhttps?:/ {print $1;}ā | gxargs -r open
(And linked that into Alfred, my command launcher, to make it even easier in the morning!) https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1263263933391007744
Thu May 21 01:04:00 +0000 2020 (#)
Iām particularly impressed this work is licensed CC-BY 4.0, and has an editable version (docx) available.
Good on the Ministry of Health for encouraging collaboration š
NZ #Covid19 https://web.archive.org/web/20200521005307/https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/hiso-100852020-covid-19-contact-tracing-data-standard https://web.archive.org/web/20200521005444/https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/covid-19_contact_tracing_qr_code_specification_21_may_2020_0.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20200521005737/https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/covid-19_contact_tracing_integration_platform_specification_21_may_2020_0.pdf https://twitter.com/andrewtychen/status/1263255922001891328
Thu May 21 06:32:44 +0000 2020 (#)
It took a couple of hours, and I did it with vi, but ā as an exercise to see how hard it would be ā I think I have a nearly complete, to nearest 15 minutes, list of everywhere Iāve been/who Iāve been in physical proximity with since the start of March 2020. https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1259980077950832640
Thu May 21 06:36:10 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Based on:
- iCal records (date/time)
- payment receipts (date/time)
- text messages (date/time), including courier delivery notifications
- some phone call records to establish date/time
Plus my memory of events that happened around those waypoints.
Thu May 21 06:38:46 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Main thing missing is date/time of walks (I know where), but I think I can recover 95% of that timing detail from photo tweets :-)
And a couple of courier deliveries that Iād have to dig out tracking information from emails to confirm date/time.
Thu May 21 06:42:10 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
March 2020 (level 1 & 2, pre lockdown) was by far the most entries.
For April/May I basically only left the house once a week, plus some walks, so I just needed to establish a timeline from known purchases.
And only two visitors: one in Level 3 shared bubble, one this week.
Thu May 21 07:14:45 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ktemkin
Add āBobā or āKevinā or something as a committer in your projects, publically praise them for how well theyāve adopted the āproject styleā, gradually make fewer commits as āKateā, eventually announce youāve handed over maintainership to BobKevin, and silently vanish? š¤
Thu May 21 08:09:54 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @isomer
No, Google probably doesnāt know about my tracking numbers :-)
But Iām not surprised thereās a Google feature to check on tracking numbers š
(Itās more the extended duration theyāre relevant, and thus number to check, plus lack of movement that is new...)
Thu May 21 08:23:00 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @isomer
Yup, when it was 1-2 orders, I just checked on the link occasionally.
Now thereās half a dozen open at a time which is a bit distracting. Hence closing them, and a script to reopen the relevant ones.
Mostly Iām trying to not end up with more ālost for weeksā packages š
Thu May 21 08:28:46 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
Would the real version of āLevel 2ā please stand up?!
(Iāve been submitting the Level N page to the Wayback Machine most days just to try to track whatās changed in āLevel 2ā this time.)
https://mobile.twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1261419279645196288
Thu May 21 08:58:06 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
Even the details on which alert levels were active when is (now?) incomplete (first Level 1, first Level 2, and first Level 3 are missing).
And the definition of āLevel 4ā changed a few times while active, eg around shared bubbles. https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/covid-19-alert-system/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200520034906/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/covid-19-alert-system/
Thu May 21 09:18:08 +0000 2020 (#)
Looks like the screenshot of the NZ #Covid19 Tracing App, on the official website, shows a time traveller who has checked in already on 2020-05-25 09:41, still 4.5 days in my future š¤
(Seems like site auto-redirects to /login, preventing archiving š) https://tracing.covid19.govt.nz
Thu May 21 09:46:16 +0000 2020 (#)
Wow, thereās a lot of double negatives in the Retailers Contact Tracing Register: āyou should not enter unless: you do not... you do not... you have not... you have not...ā !!
Seems to confirm ācustomers do not need to signā š¤
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) https://covid19.govt.nz/assets/resources/posters/L2-resources-for-businesses/COVID-19-AL2-Business-Toolkit-Contact-Tracing-Register-A4-Retail.pdf
Thu May 21 09:52:11 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
All of this via the NZ #Covid19 āContact tracing at your premisesāpage.
And it looks to me like the retailer and non-retailer tracing register sheets are the same except ācustomers do not need to signā on the retailer one. https://covid19.govt.nz/businesses-and-employees/businesses-and-services/contact-tracing-at-your-place-of-business/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200521093137/https://covid19.govt.nz/businesses-and-employees/businesses-and-services/contact-tracing-at-your-place-of-business/
Thu May 21 10:04:14 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
There is some guidance on not using the Contact Tracing Register information for other purposes, but it seems more a suggestion than a legal requirement š¢
Looks like basic Privacy Act āDisclose Usesā rules apply :-(
NZ #Covid19 https://privacy.org.nz/blog/privacy-and-covid-19-hospitality-establishment-guest-registers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200521095700/https://www.privacy.org.nz/further-resources/privacy-and-covid-19/
Thu May 21 10:36:19 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
Semantic versioning :-)
(Although that doesnāt normally go backwards again: 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 š¤)
I do agree the ābig changeā vs āsmall changeā distinction is very useful. But Iām personally dubious about reusing āLevel 2ā to mean substantially different things (eg 100 vs 10).
Thu May 21 10:44:39 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Another NZ Privacy Commissioner page that seems to say āno you canāt use details for mailing listsā but ends in āspecify in your privacy statementā/āallow opt outā. Honestly Iām disappointed reuse is not flat out illegal š¢ #Covid19 https://privacy.org.nz/further-resources/knowledge-base/view/553 https://web.archive.org/web/20200521104050/https://privacy.org.nz/further-resources/knowledge-base/view/553
Thu May 21 21:25:26 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat and @tveastman
Yes, things were definitely more rushed (and panicked) on the first level 2/level 3, without much preparation.
But āweāre incrementally tightening restrictionsā and āweāre carefully loosening restrictionsā are qualitatively different. Using the same names for both is confusing.
Thu May 21 21:38:50 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @mikko: iOS 13.5 for iPhone now has COVID-19 Exposure Notification API functionality built in. Interestingly, iPadOS 13.5 doesnāt seem tā¦
Thu May 21 22:14:05 +0000 2020 (#)
Iām impressed: not only did Post Haste manage to actually get a package from Waikato to Wellington genuinely overnight, in these difficult times, but they even managed to get the required delivery signature from my letterbox š
(I do have the package so that part is great š)
Thu May 21 22:18:53 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
As best I can tell CourierPost Auckland to Wellington is massively backlogged. All my still outstanding deliveries are CourierPost (mostly from Auckland), and the only one I have a ādelivering todayā notification for is a cross Wellington one (dispatched yesterday) š¤ NZ #Covid19
Thu May 21 22:52:17 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
FTR, the CourierPost Wellington to Wellington delivery just arrived, also genuinely overnight.
āSignature requiredā still seems to be contactless delivery, but they did knock on the door and wait for me to arrive before putting the package down š
Thu May 21 23:43:05 +0000 2020 (#)
For future historians, the New Zealand definitions of the NZ #Covid19 response Levels changed URL on the official Government site between its launch (2020-03ā21) and early April (approx 2020-04-07) š¤¦š»āāļø
Youāre welcome :-) https://web.archive.org/web/20200321021737/https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-system/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200407112047/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/covid-19-alert-system/
Thu May 21 23:55:24 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @NolanOBrien: A week ago, @pjf posted a photo to Twitter (left) and ended up with something unexpected (right).
It turns out that manyā¦
Fri May 22 02:19:39 +0000 2020 (#)
Blog post: āWill the real #Covid19 Level 2 please stand up?ā
The meaning of New Zealand āLevel 2ā changed a lot between March/April/early May, and āre-enteringā Level 2 mid May; pre-mid-May and mid-late-May āLevel 2ā are pretty different things.
https://ewen.mcneill.gen.nz/blog/entry/2020-05-22-will-the-real-covid19-level-2-please-stand-up/
Fri May 22 02:23:35 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat and @tveastman
FYI I ended up spending way too much time researching āLevel 2ā and itās changed even more than I thought; I wrote it up in some detail.
Eg, a month ago (2020-04-16) Level 2 meant 100/500 person gatherings; now itās most 10 people. https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1263655737135251457 https://ewen.mcneill.gen.nz/blog/entry/2020-05-22-will-the-real-covid19-level-2-please-stand-up/
Fri May 22 05:14:28 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) day 9: itās pretty windy out there, but seems like itād have been good for powering the wind farms :-)
Fri May 22 07:35:27 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ExcitedLeigh
FYI, a lot of airlines have been trying to do that (around the world). IIRC the rules governing airlines often donāt allow them to do that if they cancelled the flight outright (rather than you).
A bit of research on flyertalk or similar might give you some hints on what to do.
Fri May 22 07:39:53 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @pjf
Based on experiences in NZ, Iād say any tech that supports remote working (good webcam, good microphone, etc) would be a good candidate.
Probably still deliverable in the US, but stocks have been low at this end of the world. (And US typically wonāt ship here right now.)
Fri May 22 07:41:47 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @pjf
It might also be worth seeing if you can order specific things from āin stockā in Australia (maybe to a friend). And if you canāt find them in stock/prices are silly, perhaps order in US to bring with you.
Fri May 22 07:45:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @pjf
Definitely another phone if you donāt have a modern spare. Theyāre turning into ācannot exist in society without a working smart phoneā, and a lot of (almost) required apps are aimed at only the last few years of phones.
Fri May 22 10:22:51 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat and @bootstheory
Iād also say ācharcoalā for the colour, which is basically fashion code for ādark grey, kinda black, but thereās some light reflected back so itās not pitch black you knowā :-)
If pushed to pick between grey and black, Iād say black. Ish. (Itās darker than 18% grey!)
Fri May 22 10:25:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @merxplat
For want of a better word Iād call it a bookcase. Perhaps a modular bookcase, or modular display case, or maybe a modular cabinet (but to me cabinet implies doors, and display cases typically have glass fronts).
Naming things is hard š
Fri May 22 22:19:13 +0000 2020 (#)
āCapturing Mask ROMsā talk by John McMaster given at the Hardwear IO Virtual Conference in April 2020. About reverse engineering from die photos, and how to get good photos to reverse from.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JpA2VScMqHo https://hardwear.io/virtual-con-2020/presentations/John.pptx
Fri May 22 22:21:30 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @MattNippert: I get the sense these recent events are fading from people's memory. They cannot: These were batshit times and we need toā¦
Fri May 22 22:37:05 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @textfiles: In 2017, Microsoft shut down the Photosynth app and site. An enormous amount of data. Archive Team grabbed as much as it couā¦
Fri May 22 23:35:34 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Just received both my longest outstanding CourierPost Auckland to Wellington package (shipped 9 days ago), and another recent CourierPost Auckland to Wellington package (shipped 2 days ago).
Looks like the have a pretty āContactlessā signature-replacement in their app now š
Sat May 23 04:47:14 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @__fincham
Your mail looks like narrow (0.5mm?) flex to āstandardā flex (1mm?). If so where did you order it from?
(I was looking for a cable from Pi Zero to Pi camera, which seems to need that combination, but I couldnāt find a local source...)
Sat May 23 04:50:13 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @__fincham
The load average sky rockets because Linux counts disk IO delays to the load average. Because reasons.
Everything else grinding to a halt has been tackled a few times... but I think thereās still a few too many assumptions all equal sized IO takes an equal amount of time :-(
Sat May 23 05:35:18 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @mr_clark: So - I hope you enjoyed #RedDwarf - as promisedā¦ hereās how the art department did all that. Iāll be doing these tweets in thā¦
Sat May 23 06:56:52 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @BR3NDA
It definitely feels like they optimized for ābetter to have no data (through lack of uptake) than bad dataā š¤
And TBH I have some sympathy for that having dealt with a lot of bad data in my time. I do think itās an unfortunate optimization choice here though :-(
Sat May 23 06:59:23 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @BR3NDA
They could, eg, have had two tiers of location codes: trusted location (via Business Connect QR), and āprobable locationā via DIY generated QR codes (eg print from website driven by just address database).
Then theyād have more data, and could filter appropriately.
Sat May 23 07:02:08 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @KnitMeAThneed: @katjnz @BR3NDA @styler Huge limitation is that you canāt get a QR code for govt app for other places that arenāt Nz busā¦
Sat May 23 07:08:59 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @BR3NDA
As it stands now, people can trivially clone legitimately generated (Business Connect) QR codes, by photographing them, printing them out again, and sticking them up somewhere else.
So the whole RealMe dance is almost āproof the printer worksā as far as ādefinite locationā :-(
Sat May 23 07:24:06 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @nzgizmoguy, @plambrechtsen and @BR3NDA
Iād seen that spec release float past, but havenāt read it (yet).
I assumed the spec still needed the āMBIE allocated location identifierā to put into it before you could make the QR code.
Have you read the spec? Is there an option to identify the address some other way?
Sat May 23 07:29:47 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @nzgizmoguy
But the MBIE Vetted Business Locations only approach also means every other place someone has been is what they can remember N weeks later (or reverse engineer).
It really feels to me like a āwhy not bothā situation, which publicity to encourage vetted location IDs if possible.
Sat May 23 07:33:40 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @nzgizmoguy
I get thatās the easiest to trace data, and I think itās great that itās an option.
It just feels very limiting to only be able to use it for those locations, and fragment tracking data sources into N other apps/databases/etc.
Sat May 23 07:40:08 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @nzgizmoguy
Also FWIW they could crowd source verification of code location/uniqueness for the āuntrustedā ones. Via the app. Tell user āunknown location, please confirm this address is correctā. And ask permission to submit to central database via app (each time).
Sat May 23 07:42:00 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @nzgizmoguy
The number of times a user encounters that could be minimized by periodically (eg, daily) downloading database of known/verified āuntrustedā locations.
And trust could be increased by only calling it known when N users upload as āyes, location is correctā.
Sat May 23 08:12:53 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @nzgizmoguy
Indeed, which is why I suggested it be per user per location per time (all of those) opt in. Some users will agree, some wonāt.
(The app already has phone home features planned, eg to upload data for tracing. So the need is there anyway.)
Sat May 23 08:15:42 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @__fincham
Aha. That explains the miceosoldering picture later :-)
Thanks anyway, Iāll just keep looking occasionally for a suitable adapter cable locally. (I have some āfull sizeā RasPis for the cameras anyway, and my 1m flex for those arrived today.)
Sat May 23 08:20:10 +0000 2020 (#)
This (video in QT) is amazing, especially for the running commentary on how the solution of āno fixed numbersā, āSudoku + Knights Move + Kings Move + No orthagonally adjacent sequential numbersā comes together.
@slyall you might enjoy this one :-) https://twitter.com/benorlin/status/1262097247866683393
Sat May 23 08:23:50 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen and @nzgizmoguy
I agree with you on having an āregister other locationā QR code generator. Hopefully that will happen.
But thereās no guarantee with any of this the relevant poster/QR code goes in the right place. Deliberately or by mistake (eg N locations to put up, didnāt check).
Sat May 23 08:26:18 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen
So having the option to āprovide location accuracy feedbackā via the app seems generally useful if (a) genuinely optional, and (b) infrequent (and maybe āanonymousā).
The cache of ācrowd verifiedā locations helps make it pretty infrequent, at least in practice.
Sat May 23 08:34:07 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @__fincham
- microsoldering
(āTis an interesting typo above that mice-o-soldering :-) )
Sat May 23 08:41:46 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen
Alternative suggestion with no real time phone home: allow user to verified in their own tracing records accuracy of QR location and save that for āupload my recordsā steps. Cache per user, locally, if user has confirmed code location for infrequent/unknown ones.
Sat May 23 08:43:55 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @plambrechtsen
Personally I think āopt in, anonymous, real timeā quality feedback is a better part of the overall system (ie someone can ask for issue to be fixed before it taints all data).
But at least flagging ācertainā/ālikelyā/āpossibleā visits, locally per user, helps triage tracing.
Sat May 23 09:08:36 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @slyall
FYI, thereās also a more recent follow up video (2020-05-17) of a similar puzzle with same rules and a couple of starting numbers.
Iām watching it now. Still great commentary, but without the same level of disbelief itāll be possible :-)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv-48b-KuxI
Sat May 23 09:16:58 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @__fincham
Ah, Iād assumed youād soldered to the micro-SD end. But looking again I see itās the SD sized end. Positively huge :-)
Sun May 24 21:37:51 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @geonet: M5.7 quake causing strong shaking near Levin http://geonet.org.nz/quakes/2020p391429
Mon May 25 03:07:44 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @kbeckmann: Woop! 1920x1080p60 from the ecp5 using the ddrx2 primitives.
Mon May 25 20:25:17 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @rauchg: LaTeX.css š https://latex.now.sh
Mon May 25 22:55:53 +0000 2020 (#)
This morning I received all my outstanding CourierPost packages: 3 of them, all from Auckland to Wellington, sent 8, 6, and 5 days ago respectively.
Iāve now got almost everything I wanted to have prior to the level 4 lockdown back in March... :-) https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1263976830362517504
Mon May 25 22:59:42 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Iāve got one Click and Collect from a āLevel 3ā āin stockā (finally actually available a few days ago) item to collect. And a few items yet to ship, with ship dates revised from āMayā to āJuneā.
But nothing outstanding that Iād consider āessentialā. \o/
Mon May 25 23:44:07 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ExcitedLeigh
With a āhealth barā on the side to show remaining time. Other attendees can optionally gift health to the speaker if they want them to continue (eg for presentation that is genuinely useful to attendees), but only once per N minutes per attendee š¤
Tue May 26 07:26:01 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @pjf
Watch videos of excited birbs until their energy levels reach you by osmosis?!
Tue May 26 07:26:35 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: This is very real. The back-and-forth of natural conversation is moderated through nonverbal cues like eye contact and pausesā¦
Tue May 26 07:26:52 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: Surprise! These will also improve your IRL meetings! Everyone wins!
Tue May 26 07:49:05 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @utunga, @tveastman and @mahelona
Yup, definitely a thing. Including on RDS instances too. Thereās a quite decent initial IOPS token pool (scaled by the VM tier), but once you use those burst tokens up with sustained heavy IO, it only refills your token bucket at (IIRC) 3 IOPS/second added.
Tue May 26 07:52:15 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @utunga, @tveastman and @mahelona
If itās going to be a regular thing you can definitely pre-buy more committed IOPS, so your token bucket refills quicker/has longer bursts.
But as Tom found, I suspect you canāt apply those quickly to get out of a āstuck on disk IOā jam (eg might need to unmount/remount EBS).
Tue May 26 10:06:40 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @tveastman
Yes, this ā¬ļø
I spent the last week of March fighting a PostgreSQL RDS instance suffering from exactly this problem.
I had to optimize a lot of badly (auto-)constructed queries to stop them spilling to disk, to save the IOPS for database things that mattered!
Tue May 26 20:37:10 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @BenKrasnow: New Video: Holograms on chocolate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsDnkrDvkBo
Tue May 26 20:37:18 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @FauthNiklas: Success! I really didn't expect this to work at all š¤Æ Electronics is so amazing <3
Tue May 26 20:41:17 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @matthen2: when an object is pulled out of this magical lake, its reflection comes with it. We can make a 3D fractal through repeatedlyā¦
Tue May 26 21:09:57 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @jduims: We focus on intent a lot because if you did something bad and you meant it, that's worse than if you did something bad withoutā¦
Tue May 26 21:10:21 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @chrisjrn: @jduims I swear that 3/4 of the conflict resolution I do involves pointing out to people how intent is not magic.
(did you kā¦
Wed May 27 00:38:28 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) day 14: both CommonSense and New World Chaffers St have their queueing marks outside still, but no one there to say you can go in. Feels like people are back to āletting themselves inā.
Iām guessing this relates to near zero recent cases in NZ.
Wed May 27 00:40:28 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) day 14: New World Chaffers St has new self checkout terminals (in the last two weeks), which no longer solicit cash (old ones did even when it wasnāt being taken!).
Countdown Johnsonville has barriers between machines; New World currently doesnāt š¤
Wed May 27 00:55:24 +0000 2020 (#)
Iāve not found any list of which retailers are using what.
It seemed like PB Techās QR code was for the MoH #Covid19 app (so their app and Rippl as of now can both scan it in theory). But they didnāt seem to be enforcing āscan in before entryā, and signs are poorly positioned. https://twitter.com/ewenmcneill/status/1262976356406697985
Wed May 27 03:27:13 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @apollo_50th: Cosmic ray radiation is probably the cause of flashing lights seen by Apollo astronauts, first reported by Edwin E. āBuzzāā¦
Wed May 27 06:30:33 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: MÅrena Twitter, can you please do me a favour - if you are out and about today, please reply to this tweet with photos ofā¦
Wed May 27 06:39:05 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @andrewtychen
In case youāre not already aware, from talking to someone I know, who works at another University, it seems like the Universities were told they needed to roll their own on site tracking, more detailed than just āon campusā.
Presumably thatās what the custom QR code is for... š¤
Wed May 27 06:45:10 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @radionz: The only remaining person in hospital with Covid-19 in New Zealand has been discharged.
There are now no people in hospital wā¦
Wed May 27 07:56:06 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @andrewtychen
I suspect a lot of it is relatively quick as you say. It seemed like the concern was shared tutorial rooms, lecture theatres, waiting outside those, etc, all of which could be longer.
Possibly it was just easier to design to āover trackā than try to track exactly those items.
Wed May 27 08:01:46 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @thomasbeagle and @andrewtychen
I also suspect the compliance is low, especially with the āover trackingā attempts. I think some places were, eg, trying to link to door badge security, to reduce user effort required.
But āmust check inā can only be relied on if itās verified as done at every entry/exit.
Thu May 28 00:24:21 +0000 2020 (#)
TFW a bunch of your libsyn hosted podcasts turn on TLS, with a redirect, for their RSS feed, and your pod catcher goes ālook, lots of new URLs Iāve never seenā and downloads them all again š¤¦š»āāļø
https://help.libsynsupport.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041847951-Configuring-301-Redirects-New-Feed-URL-Tags-on-Your-Libsyn-Show https://help.libsynsupport.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041220931-Using-SSL-with-Your-RSS-Feeds
Thu May 28 00:27:12 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
I wish Iād realised what was happening earlier in the month when one of the smaller podcast channels did it, rather than today when a channel which lists a several hundred episodes in its RSS changed over š¢
Thu May 28 01:49:47 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @FauthNiklas: I was finally able to fix my new 30 years old tabletop wavesoldering machine using a PID controller and an Arduino.
And sā¦
Thu May 28 01:52:32 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @openpolicynz: Read this article, and then ask:
Why does Parliament use Facebook as its livestream platform?
Why do central & locaā¦
Thu May 28 01:52:52 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @andrewtychen: If you have a pen and paper register in your business, please consider some better ways to protect the privacy of your cuā¦
Thu May 28 08:21:54 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @ExcitedLeigh: This is a brilliant, concise definition. https://twitter.com/Asher_Wolf/status/1265636479478325249
Thu May 28 08:22:54 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @farmgeek: No new cases today - that's zero for 6 days now. One new death has been attributed to Covid-19 taking us to 22 people. Betterā¦
Thu May 28 08:46:01 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @MarieAnnUK: Someone hasn't been wasting their time during lockdown. ššš
Thu May 28 09:24:27 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @ms_mary_mac: Heads up peeps! On behalf of @linuxaustralia I'm so proud to announce that we have just made available AUD$35K worth of grā¦
Thu May 28 09:30:57 +0000 2020 (#)
I love the way this weeks Wintergatan Wednesday episode bounces back and forth between audio science, technology, and music, mixing them into a wonderful fusion.
Special shout out to showing how room acoustics are measured for custom sound treatments š
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CKTa5yHfsxI
Thu May 28 09:34:15 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @svdweerden and @andrewtychen
Do you know if theyāre just tracking ādevice associated with APā, or also tracking āAP heard radio transmission from deviceā? The latter would allow triangulation, and thus more precise positioning, but typically isnāt ābuilt inā/easy to extract.
Thu May 28 09:36:28 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @svdweerden and @andrewtychen
I believe the University my friend works at were doing āassociated APā as one input, plus maybe door security in some places, plus a user triggered check in too (for more room detail).
Associated AP alone relies on active WiFi devices, and positioning is āring nearbyā only.
Thu May 28 09:41:17 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @andrewtychen and @svdweerden
Yes, most larger networks track āusage statsā (aggregated) for load planning (eg where to add more APs). But the āconnected user countā doesnāt directly give IDs.
If users have to log in to get to WiFi (or register device MAC) you can cross correlate though.
Thu May 28 19:46:49 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @SwiftOnSecurity: The most difficult part of incident response isnāt the malware or anything technical, itās organizing groups of peopleā¦
Thu May 28 21:52:42 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @svdweerden, @andrewtychen and @EmersonNZ
Thanks, thatās very informative. Definitely looks like āconnected to APā to me, not triangulation. Which would usually hint to area of building, but will sometimes have people nearby outside the building connected, etc.
Probably accurate enough for contact tracing followup.
Thu May 28 23:13:31 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 day 16: looks like the changes to Level 2 definitions today (noon NZST), allowing groups of 100, reintroduce a requirement for contact tracing records for gatherings in your home (if not everyone knows everyone). https://covid19.govt.nz/latest-updates/alert-level-2-changes-confirmed-for-friday-29-may/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200528225854/https://covid19.govt.nz/latest-updates/alert-level-2-changes-confirmed-for-friday-29-may/
Thu May 28 23:25:32 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 day 16: it looks like there are changes on contact tracing records too, but apparently only applying to ābusinessesā not everyone else who needs to keep records?!
āNot use information for any other purposeā sounds promising, but havenāt found rule change yet.
Thu May 28 23:43:01 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @pjf
Also Windows CAB (cabinet) file. Own your own real life CAB file icon! š
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_(file_format)
Fri May 29 00:15:08 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 day 16: post noon archive of the Level 2 page.
It looks like the gatherings section no longer distinguishes āin homeā / āoutside homeā, so presumably now same rules for both types of gatherings... https://web.archive.org/web/20200529000538/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/
Fri May 29 00:23:13 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 day 16: of note the āLast Modifiedā date didnāt get bumped today, despite the non-trivial changes before/after noon (10 to 100, etc). So thereās even less change tracking than Iād guessed š¢
(Note UTC dates!) https://web.archive.org/web/20200528230521/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200529000538/https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/alert-level-2/
Fri May 29 05:18:00 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ExcitedLeigh
Typically thatās an incomplete mirror sync (and/or unfortunately timed mirror sync that gets half of the update and half not). Itās less common for it to last for ādaysā.
Iād be inclined to try forcing the image to use another mirror and see if the problem persists.
Fri May 29 05:35:29 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @theavalkyrie: This was surprisingly hard because I ran into a weird bug that was really hard to figure out. Let's talk about it!
š§µ httā¦
Fri May 29 07:07:39 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @IanTLS
Being a contactable individual/organisation is required to have a company, society, domain name, other āpublicā record item.
Contact details tend to grow stale, so need to be checked occasionally (eg, Companies Office requires confirmation every year).
1/2
Fri May 29 07:10:20 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @IanTLS
āEmail our a link, click on link to confirm email receivedā is a very common validation method, used frequently.
If not like that, how should they verify contact details work and are current?
FTR, agree there should have been several contact attempts, given age of domain.
2/2
Fri May 29 07:18:42 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @IanTLS
Unfortunately almost everything looks like phishing these days, including things that are many years old practices :-(
I suppose they could follow Companies Office and require yearly payment, and check of contact details in that process. But then people āforget to payā...š¤
Fri May 29 07:21:45 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @IanTLS
Also FWIW my understanding is the domain is not ālostā. Itāll just require some extra less automated steps to re-enable, because automated steps failed.
Thatās certainly inconvenient (especially before a long weekend), but no one else should be able to grab domain just yet.
Fri May 29 22:09:07 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @heatherknight: šŗEmojis are modern hieroglyphs. š¤
Fri May 29 22:13:49 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @laceynwilliams: Do we know of major projects that have renamed the
masterbranch in their repos? What alternate naming conventions arā¦
Fri May 29 23:24:27 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @robholmesnz: Excited(!!!) to confirm that @Rippl_NZ will leave AWS behind on Tuesday and be fully within the @catalyst_cloud (it was soā¦
Sat May 30 07:36:39 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @GPMcAuliffe: Why do cops come out in full force to protect their worst? When a teacher is revealed to be a pedophile, all teachers don'ā¦
Sat May 30 07:41:50 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @kellableeping: Public submissions are open to provide feedback about armed police on our streets. Email haveyoursay@police.govt.nz
htā¦
Sat May 30 07:49:54 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @SallyRepRap: On this day 12 years ago was the first self replication of any RepRap 3D printer.
Happy Birthday RepRap!
Here's a pictuā¦
Sun May 31 03:35:21 +0000 2020 (#)
NZ #Covid19 Level 2 (May) day 18: itās been lovely to have a sunny Queensā Birthday Weekend.
Sun May 31 05:01:07 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @andrewtychen
It turns out the primary school near me is using an app, which apparently now has a #Covid19 checkin feature! (Just spotted a poster today while out walking.)
Primary School, Johnsonville, Wellington.
I think the QR code is to download the app, and checkin is hand entered.
Sun May 31 06:01:35 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @minxdragon: For all of the photographers out there who think it's ok to show the faces of protesters in their photography because theyā¦
Sun May 31 06:03:28 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @lazerwalker: Between Seattle's "announce curfew 5 min after it starts", Chicago's "close down the CTA and aggressively box in protestorā¦
Sun May 31 06:07:50 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @rodollaz_: I think the craziest thing I witnessed today on the frontlines was Black People yelling āWhite Shieldā when the police wereā¦
Sun May 31 06:10:39 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @RealSexyCyborg: Blinding protestors & journalists by aiming projectile weapons directly at their faces is not an accident, it has becomā¦
Sun May 31 06:25:50 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @apollo_50th: "The concept of preflight isolation has been firmly and repeatedly advocated by all specialists in infectious disease whoā¦
Sun May 31 07:27:27 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @tveastman
This ā¬ļø
I think thereās a reasonable argument that they should be thrown off effective from the moment theyāre acting like a police officer in public while covering up their identifing details. So all their actions should be judged as āis it legal for a civilian to do thatā.
Sun May 31 07:54:32 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: Making this place the best it can be isnāt a matter of copying policy from ābetterā countries, or judging ourselves against tā¦
Sun May 31 07:54:35 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @merxplat: Everyone who makes decisions about our society in Aotearoa should be looking at the USA right now and remembering this momentā¦
Sun May 31 08:02:16 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @mattcen, @chrisjrn and @joshsimmons
I have this same question: where can I order one?
Seems like weāre not alone in having this question :-)
(Looks awesome!)
Sun May 31 08:02:48 +0000 2020 (#)
RT @chrisjrn: I have questions, @joshsimmons.
Sun May 31 09:18:58 +0000 2020 (#)
This ā¬ļø: thereās a real āwhen you have a gun, every problem looks like one where you need to use a gunā risk.
Letās not take NZ down this route which has proven so problematic in so many other countries. #ArmsDownNZ https://twitter.com/andreapitzer/status/1266917107754770438
Sun May 31 09:32:19 +0000 2020 (#)
Replying to @ewenmcneill
Based on research out of several USA police forces: ā¬ļø (link to research in quoted tweet).
Obvious way of restricting use of deadly force by NZ police is what weāve had for decades: a specially trained armed offenders squad, used sparingly. #ArmsDownNZ https://twitter.com/rajoyceUCB/status/1266983507709968384