Category: Technology

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We got a new IOS and a Speaker of the House

Mikejohnson2 1 3301794256I’m happy about the Speaker because he seems untainted by the rampant corruption in Washington. Time will tell. I do really like the thought of him whipping Congress into working something like real business hours instead of what we’ve been seeing. We’ll never get our money’s worth out of Congress. That’s a given, but maybe this new guy will put an end to Congress sitting around jerking off instead of passing budgets, laws, and finding ways to cut the obscene waste our government finds all too easy to create.

I’ll admit my fingers are crossed that this guy isn’t corrupt. Louisiana has a long and storied history of corruption in politics so I’m taking a “wait & see” position.

I’m hopeful though.

Iphone 15 pro max renderYesterday Apple released a lot of software.

I’m most excited about the new IOS 17.1 release. Because my iPhone and watch having weird glitches was annoying. The weather complications on my watch being blank most of the time, but intermittently working was really annoying.

I spent part of the morning updating everything in the house. Thus far all the goofy crap my watch and phone were doing appears to have been fixed. I’m sure as I move forward with the new IOS I’ll stumble across new bugs. I just hope those new bugs aren’t as plentiful as the bugs I was seeing in IOS 17.0.3.

I’ll admit that the updates went pretty smoothly. You could only appreciate how happy I am about that if you knew how much Apple Iron there is in this house.

While I was waiting for software to download and load, I managed to make a lot of headway on my list of dumb things I have to do. So the time wasn’t wasted.

I used to sit and watch the update process. I don’t anymore. I figure that watching it isn’t going to make it be any more reliable or move along any faster. It’s almost binary now. Either it works or it doesn’t. One path causes me no trouble and I get what I expected. The other path, something has gone horribly wrong and I’ll have to figure out how to fix it.

Either way, there’s little sense in my watching the screen for some cryptic message that won’t mean anything to me or to an ill trained first tier technical support person I reach at Apple.

Sadmac1

I guess that’s me applying the “Don’t worry about it until it happens” philosophy of life.

There is one thing I don’t do. I don’t update everything at exactly the same time. Typically I’ll let the phone finish before I update the iPad, computer, HomePods, AppleTVs, and watch. 

I have this vision in my head that I start the update process on everything at once. Then everything failing and seeing sad Mac faces everywhere. Which would mean I couldn’t even email for assistance.

Remember the Sad Mac?

I had to laugh at myself about the Dynamic Island.

At first I was like “Yeah, So what?” Then yesterday after the updates completed I realized that I’d been seeing the Dynamic Island all along.  True there are only a few apps that I have which make use of the Island while I’m doing other things. But the Dynamic Island is actually there all the time and providing me with useful information. It’s so seamless and honestly I expect useful information to be presented exactly where the Dynamic Island presents it that the island was almost invisible to me.

I have high expectations of software. So I’ll have to say to Apple “Good Job”. 

Now let’s have a look at other apps both Apple and third party to see if Dynamic Island integration can be useful.

I’m also liking having the always on display on the new phone. I didn’t think I’d like it but I do. Now I want to get a magsafe stand for the bedside table. So I can use the whole standby functionality thing. I haven’t had a bedside clock for years. It’s weird that my bedside clock became my phone, wand now my phone is morphing back into a bedside clock. 

Apparently I’m not the only person who’s thinking this way. MagSafe stands, particularly the one from TwelveSouth are backordered all over the place.

Well, off to continue the sorting and tossing of crap out of the house.

I hope everyone has a really nice day.

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I love early morning Heart Attacks!

Digital manufacturingThis morning I got up as usual. I let the dog out, got a cup of coffee, and woke the computer to check email.

Up to this point everything is normal. I’m not feeling all that great, and I was thinking that it would be nice to take the laptop out to the living room where there’s some cuddle space and the dog would likely curl up beside me. 

Before doing that, I checked the backupstatus, because I’ve got the laptop plugged into a hub that provides an ethernet connection. If you disconnect, it makes the next backup have to clean up the files that were interrupted and it doesn’t take that long to let the machine finish its task.

That’s when I discovered that there hadn’t been any backup since yesterday at 4PM. Then, since inquiring minds want to know, I asked why. The computer said there’s no backup disk.

Hmm. I know there is a backup disk so somebody’s got some splaining to do. 

I go check on the NAS device in the closet. It’s running, but the drive indications are all wrong. There’s no error or warning per se, but the NAS is hammering on 2 drives and not responding to commands. The NAS is also not appearing at the address that it’s supposed to for me to access its control interface. 

I try a “soft” power down the NAS appears to accept that command but never completes the execution of the command. I do a hard power down. Knowing full well that whatever is going on is probably bad.

I power the NAS back up and now I’m greeted with all the drives being normal but there’s a little flashing status light. That light is usually solid. I go back to the computer and find that the NAS is still not at the address it’s supposed to be, nor is it broadcasting that it’s available. After scanning a bit I found an IP address that appeared to be the NAS. I logged in to the control console only to find that the NAS thought I’d moved drives from another NAS, and that I would have to update the NAS software to accomplish this.

Ahh I’m beginning to see the likely problem. The NAS tried to update its software and the update went horribly wrong. I guess I’m lucky that the machine still had some clue what it was, but what about my 10TB of data? What about the Porn?!?

Well there’s no path around, I must go forward. I tell the NAS that the 5 drives contain data and they are to be preserved. Then I tell the NAS it can update to the latest version of software. I didn’t want to do this… I’ve been holding off on updating to the latest (read that as completely redesigned) version of the NAS software because I just didn’t feel like working my way through the headache.

I’ve got data from the other half on that NAS that I’m still sorting through and there is no need to complicate matters with a completely different NAS operating system where I’ll have to rework permissions, connections, and applications.

My plan was to do this update when I was done with the other halfs business. 

However, since I have no choice, I click “Proceed” 

The next screen from the NAS says, “Formatting system volume” OH SHIT!!!!!

Does that mean the area that the NAS uses to store the OS, OR did I just flush all my data?

Well the helpful countdown to completion said I’d know in 9 minutes.

For the next 9 very long minutes I used the time honored prayer of IT workers everywhere.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK!”

After 10 minutes the NAS came back online with a brand new OS and as an added bonus all the user accounts and been wiped. Yea! But the data appears to have remained intact.

So apparently my IT Prayer was heard, and answered, by a benevolent AI somewhere.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I get to reconfigure the NAS and work my way through a new operating system where everything is moved and some features are gone entirely.

Yea! 

I’ve fired up a set of utilities designed to ensure drive integrity to make sure my data is in good shape. I’ll have to configure around the utilities doing their job to reconnect my NonAdmin account to the data. Oh look, the User Accounts, Groups, and Permissions controls are all different… Greeaaattt!

I have a headache that would stop Godzilla, I think I’ve got some sinus thing happening and I really may not have the patience for this…

 

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I dropped the hammer

Iphone 15 pro max renderI bought an iPhone 15 Pro to replace my iPhone 12 Pro. I traded in my iPhone 12 Pro so the price of the new phone wasn’t as insane as it could have been. 

I also get to rid myself of a potential fire hazard. I need to go through the house and collect up all the older stuff and return it all to Apple for recycling. A chore for another day I think.

Thus far it’s a nice machine even with the goofy things going on in IOS 17.

It’s not much different than the iPhone 12 Pro size wise. It’s obviously faster, and the camera is much better. Having the battery last is nice!

I haven’t seen enough of the Dynamic Island to know if I like it or not. Apple Music makes use of it while I’m doing something else. The flashlight app displays an icon there, when it’s on.

That’s about it, I suppose I don’t have any apps that make use of it. Or the way I use apps is different than the “Norm”

IMG 2894I don’t have that many apps on my phone. Part of that is about security and part of it is about not really seeing anything that I would call mind bogglingly useful given the way I live.

That being said, I wanted the new phone for several reasons. I wanted USB-C on all my devices so I now have “one cable to rule them all!” I wanted the upgraded cameras, and I like the always on display. I like the “Action Button” better than the little mute switch that I was always flipping accidentally. 

I’m looking forward to Apple getting the OS straightened out and exploring new features. 

I wasn’t going to do this. But with the issues starting at T-Mobile I decided I wanted to get a new phone before making any decisions about switching carriers. The new iPhone is supposed to support 2 phone numbers active at the same time so it makes things easier if I want to try out carriers before committing. (I actually used this feature in the iPhone 12 Pro but it was not as seamless as advertised.) I think that might have been an issue with the IOS version I was using and the newness of eSim. I’ll perhaps do some research and experimentation, I don’t know why I’d need to have two phone lines on my phone, but depending on how my life changes, moving forward it might be useful.

I hated spending the money. But at least this way, If I change carriers all my devices are less than one year old. That’s been a thorn in my side for a while. I tend to have more or less current technology. The other half would use technology until it literally fell apart in his hands.

 

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Sometimes the bugs just jump out at me…

IMG 2867Other times they don’t!

I had my attention drawn to a post from a while ago, where I’d copied and pasted some information directly from a source so that I didn’t misquote them.

Because I copied and pasted I didn’t think much about it, and therefore didn’t look at the pasted material very closely. After all why should I? It’s supposed to be exactly what I highlighted and copied… Right?

Apparently not!

I think the problem originated in a difference between my default code page and the source code page. Although it could have been something in translating character sets, between their source font to my destination font.

If I was still employed, or indeed employable to companies in the fools-gold state of California, I might care enough to figure out what exactly happened. Since I’m (I Assume, since no one will talk to me,) ALL Wrong to be worthy to have a job here. I’m not interested enough to figure out the puzzle.

It was interesting, because randomly throughout the pasted material were very strange letter substitutions and in some cases the entire character was dropped from a word, as if the character had no equivalent. I’d have expected to see this if the two fonts were from different languages, but the text was written in English, originating on a computer in England.

I went back to the source and everything looked fine, I copied and pasted the material and the text was screwed up. It was magic…

It also made that blog post look like I was a moron! I’ll have to be more watchful for that kind of stuff in the future.

I’ve been working on a theory that software is going to start failing more. The basis of this theory is that generally speaking software is far more complex than it used to be. Additionally, more and more programmers are relying on pre-written standard modules.

This too is expected, and reasonable. It’s why structured programming and standardized modules exist. In the bad old days, programmers often had to write everything from scratch. Oh there were standardized math modules, even standard IO modules, but the hardware pretty much completely changed every 18 months or less. So the programming staff was always scrambling to write code to control new hardware.

Compilers didn’t have all the nice features they have today. Apple Xcode (Apple’s Development Environment / Compiler) does things that some of my colleagues would have sold their soul to Satan himself to have 30 years ago.

At some point I theorize the standard modules (Math & IO Functions for example), will become black boxes that only 1 or 2 people in the world will actually understand. With the rapid advancement on AI, it’s possible that soon there won’t be any human who understands the internal code or how these modules work. 

Once we pass that threshold, and I believe we’re approaching it now, bugs in software could become unresolvable. If the bug originated from within a functional module that no-on but an AI understands, then it becomes a question of explaining the defect to the AI in such a way that the AI can fix the problem.

The AI is a logic based entity, humans on the other hand are not. How do you tell an AI that for the humans to work with the software the AI has to “corrupt” the software to do something illogical?

LighteningA simple example would be the AI deciding to present information on a display that was dark gray on a black screen for the sake of saving energy. Think of an OLED screen where you might only need to turn on the elements in use instead of firing up every element in the display. Keeping the used elements very dim would really be saving energy.

The AI could interpret humans inability to see the active elements in dark gray as a deficiency that was the human’s problem. As far as the AI was concerned, the displayed information was completely correct and legible.

Imagine trying to explain to an AI that didn’t really give a crap about humans that this I/O function was broken. I have to admit, I’d love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.

“The Imperfection is yours. Filthy Human!” So said the central control AI of Earth moments before all humanity was wiped out.

HPServers.jpgAutomated testing is great, but eliminates the human element. That means, that human things like information on a display can be overlooked in testing, and yet the automated tests passed with flying colors.

This is especially true with virtualized testing environments. A rack of servers, typically won’t have a display connected to every server, all the time. You switch to a server, connecting the keyboard, mouse, and display when you need to interact with the server, otherwise, the server is crunching away, sending test results to a log, probably on another server entirely.

A human inspects the log looking for reported errors.

That’s how a bug like the one currently appearing on Apple Watches where the weather complications show nothing, make it into wide distribution.

I suspect that we’ll end up like we did during the Y2K crises. All the sudden, COBOL and FORTRAN programmers were being pulled out of retirement because it was cheaper to pay them obscene amounts of money than to update the computer systems and software to something that understood the year 2000.

Once the horse is out of the barn, and AI has moved software 1000 years beyond human comprehension and it’s not working for humanity anymore. Then corporations will find all us ancient fossils, offer us obscene amounts of money, and ask us to un-fuck the situation.

Oh, we will… and we’ll smile, and tell the executives “Fuck You Very Much,” as we take their money. Just like the COBOL and FORTRAN programmers did during Y2K.

It was amusing watching executives begging lowly programmers to come back after having laid them off, and forcing them to train their replacements so they got a severance package.

General iOS 17 Feature Orange PurpleHmm another defect just popped out at me.

If you’re playing music from your iPhone to your HomePods there’s a situation where the music stops playing, the iPhone still thinks the music is playing but the music playtime indication is not moving.

The HomePods are still lit up like they’re playing.

And here’s where it gets interesting…

You can’t switch back to the phone speakers because the selection is not available. You also can’t play another track, you can’t pause, or much of anything.

I was able to kill the Music application and restart it.

This is yet another bug I’ve stumbled across.

There’s a similar one in the Apple Podcast application. This one is easy to replicate. Play a podcast on your HomePod or pods. Pause the playback. Go outside to play with the dog, or leave the house to go do something in the front yard. Come back after 30 minutes or so and press play in the Podcast app on your iPhone.

The HomePod or Pods will light up like they’re gonna play, but they NEVER RESUME playing the paused Podcast. You can select another podcast and it will play fine, but reselecting the podcast you paused, will never play through your HomePods. 

You Can play it through the iPhone speakers, or through your AirPods, but HomePods???? That is forbidden!

Apple event 1It may sound like I”m bashing on Apple. I’m not intentionally.

I simply have an Apple household (iPhone, iPad, Watch, & Computer,) So since I use the products a lot, and I spent most of my professional life testing software or repairing machines, I tend to notice these things.

In the past 4 weeks I’ve seen, new defects in the Apple Music application, and on the Apple Watch. The Podcast bug has been around for at least two full generations of IOS. 

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T-Mobile’s Conversion to the Dark side is complete!

T-Mobile is dead, long live T-Mobile.

Okay, some background.

1) T-Mobile purchased Sprint
Sprint had become a terrible company to deal with.
2) There was a 3 year moratorium on price hikes after T-Mobile purchased Sprint. That moratorium is now expiring.
3) It’s become widely known that T-Mobile will begin sending out notifications of plan changes on 10/17/2023.
4) Being someone that prefers to have a plan. I reached out to T-Mobile on 10/16/2023 intending to compare the plan that I am on, with the plan that I’m going to be migrated to. The migration destination is already widely known and being reported in various media all over the internet.

You’d think this would be simple…

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA! You’d be so fucking wrong!

Due to T-Mobile’s security being less secure than the drunk ugly girl’s virginity at prom, they have implemented double super secret security.

They require a PIN code even though you’re calling on their network, from a phone they know and they issued the SIM for, and the phone number is a number they know is assigned to them. Plus they are talking to a human being who can provide other relevant information.

BUUUUUTTT!

If they don’t have a PIN code, and try to send a PIN to your phone but it doesn’t show up… Guess What? T-Mobile doesn’t want to actually do business. They’ll tell you, “You’ll have to go to a physical location”

I’m more than a little frustrated with T-Mobile right now.

Last week I was out and about and got an email from them saying that my iPad had blown through all my data for the month. Except that I didn’t have my iPad with me, it was home happily plugged in, and chatting with my home WiFi. There’s no reason for it to have blown through my cellular data.

“Hmm… I better call T-Mobile,” I think. So I call them and manage to get to someone without this damn PIN code because they verified me with the last 4 of my social security # and Billing information. But after explaining the issue and listening to the Indian Woman go on and on about her iPad data and how important is was for her to have data with her children.

None of which I asked, or cared about. I just wanted a simple answer as to why, according to T-Mobile did my iPad just blow through all my data? The Indian woman couldn’t answer the question. But instead of telling me that, she chose to keep blathering on until I was fully annoyed.

Eventually I terminated the call and she called back 3 times even after me telling her that I was no longer interested in speaking to T-Mobile.

Two days later I pulled up my T-Mobile account and found that it was my Phone, not my iPad that blew through the data. I was at the Apple Store resolving another issue and my iPhone got bumped off the Apple WiFi Network. Apparently the Apple Genius told my phone it was okay to use cellular data for software updates… Sigh!

T-Mobile couldn’t tell me accurately in an email what device was sucking up a month’s worth of data, nor could their representative. That sure doesn’t sound like a company or system that is on top of things.

WOW!

I called T-Mobile at 9:00AM wanting to do an Old Plan – New Plan comparison. Depending on the cost increase, and what options the new plan had, I may be interested in changing plans. When I called, T-Mobile was really busy. I asked for a callback via their system.

At 3:30PM T-Mobile finally got around to calling me back and I waited on hold for 30 minutes to speak with a representative. Then when I get the representative she can’t help me without a PIN code, which I don’t have… Because she couldn’t get her system to send me a PIN, she couldn’t open my account. Because she couldn’t open my account, she couldn’t do the comparison.

She was however very interested in how I knew about T-Mobile’s plan to effectively raise their rates. She was also illogically telling me that if I hadn’t received a notification from T-Mobile about changes to my plan that I didn’t have to worry about it.

I pointed out that ALL of the news reports say that the notifications will not start going out until October 17th, and that since it was October 16th her reassurance is completely useless. I can tell her my account meets all the requirements for mandatory plan migration according to the various articles. She wasn’t listening or she was sticking to her script and didn’t mind looking like an idiot.

T-Mobile would have us believe that them forcing a migration from one plan to another plan which implicitly raises the rates is not in fact a rate increase.

Yeah… And pissing on my head is still PISS, Not warm yellow rain! Anyway, even with T-Mobile Pissing on me, I was willing to listen…

However, after having 3 negative experiences with T-Mobile over the past 6 months I’m thinking it’s time to shop for another cellular provider.

Oh, “What’s the third negative?” You ask. That was when T-Mobile decided they didn’t want to deal with credit cards anymore and insisted on linking into my bank account. I’d been using my Apple Card because I got 3% cash back. T-Mobile took that away.

But… I can still use the Apple Card if I purchase merchandise from the T-Mobile website. So which is it T-Mobile? Are you trying to get away from Credit Card Processing fees? OR was it just to fuck with your customers, and collect yet more sensitive information so that when you have another breach (something you seem to do once a quarter,) everyone on your service is REALLY fucked!

While I had this little lady on the phone I asked what would be involved in my changing services and keeping my phone number.

Then it gets complicated! Of Course it does…

I have to start up with the new cellular service, have them give me some code, then I have to call T-Mobile and give them the code. Which of course is problematic if I don’t have a valid PIN to allow a T-Mobile employee open my damn account.

I wonder if I can even cancel my account without the PIN number.

So let’s look at this, I can’t change the parameters of the account without a PIN. I can get a PIN from a physical T-Mobile Location. I must be able to call T-Mobile to get a transfer code of some kind to move my existing phone number to another service.

I’m seriously wondering if I’m going to have to report my debit card stolen just to have T-Mobile cancel my account if it comes to it.

It feels like the Mafia! You think you’re out, and they pull you back in!

It’s possible that I might end up taking the path of least resistance. I might simply find another carrier and then flush my old phone number in favor of a new number just to get away from T-Mobile.

By the way… This is exactly the kind of shit that Sprint was known for.

Customer service that didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Policies and procedures that were so odious that customers would stay with Sprint just to avoid such policies. Sprint considered its customer base as indentured servants and did anything necessary to keep their customers tied up in regulations, excessive charges, and contractually enslaved.

I’d really hoped that Sprint wouldn’t infect T-Mobile. But alas, the cancer that was Sprint has apparently metastasized.

T-Mobile has become Sprint…

As I said to the completely unhelpful lady when I terminated the call, “This is one hell of a way for you to end a 15 year relationship.”

Perhaps I’ll look at AT&T, Verizon, and / or some of the independent carriers that rent bandwidth on the big threes towers.

If I change phone numbers because I can’t keep my old phone number, I’ll maybe change the number to whatever State I believe I’m going to end up in. Perhaps changing the number now will save me annoyances down the road…

Goodbye T-Mobile. I enjoyed your service. I was even planning on keeping you when I moved. But frankly, if you’ve become Sprint I can’t stay with you.