the future

In the future, all cars will be as stylish and intuitive as my 2004 Toyota Prius. I feel that I owe you all at least a thousand words on the majesty of this car. The universe keeps sending me signs that I need to write this piece about this Citroen DS of the aughts. The last signal was a 2CV on a flatbed truck on the Baltimore Washington Parkway.

Today is not the day for that piece. It's the day for another observation about the future.

My mother died about a week ago. The police entered her home and found that she had passed away in the evening. The police were incredibly helpful and compassionate but they did one thing that surprised me. They found my mother's wallet in her purse and removed her driver's license.

After expressing all of the regular human sentiments about the loss of my mother, the officers added that they would make sure the driver's license made its way back to the MVA without delay. They seemed quite proud of their attention to this detail. I was proud for them.

In the distant future, priests from the Temple of the Great and Mighty Fraternal Order of P'lice will help souls find rest by guiding their Holy Driver's License back to the Shrine of the Motor Vehicle Administration. People who die apart from their License will doom their souls to roam the earth in the back of a taxicab. People who die without ever performing the Sacrament of the License would wind up in Purgatory until their soul could parallel park to a seraph's satisfaction.

Perhaps these souls are among us already. It would explain a great many squeaks in the city's taxi fleet. I rest easy knowing that my mother's soul is at peace somewhere at the Great Drive-In Movie in the beyond. I may park next to her some day.

player one

Elon Musk pegs our odds at not being in a video game as "one in billions". The argument goes something like this: Our nascent AI technology is advancing so fast that it is difficult to imagine that it could not produce a realistic simulation of the universe. Once that happens, the number of virtual universes will outnumber the real.  Mumble mumble recursion mumble.

Here's my counter argument. Any magic AI technology on its way to delivering a credible simulation of the universe will stop and tell the user that it would be cheaper to just create a real universe instead.

amateur hour

I volunteer for a neighborhood organization. I run all the neighborhood business from a dedicated iPad Mini 3 with LTE. An earlier experience with a 'rugged' ZAGG keyboard had me nearly ready to chuck keyboard, iPad, and iOS.

A new keyboard has me hanging on for a bit longer. That keyboard is the awesome Logitech K480. Every surface is hard plastic. Every plastic edge is a bit sharp. The thing weighs in at just over 800 grams. That's 100 grams more than an original iPad! The whole thing seems like it could be an entire 80's 8 bit home computer by itself.

The best part is the Mike Mulligan-esque 'Bing Bang Crash Boom, Louder and Louder, and Faster and Faster' sounds you get when you slap the keys around. The second best part is the serious slot in the back. It will hold an iPad mini in portrait with a smart cover folded behind it. An iPad mini in portrait has almost as much vertical real estate as an Macbook Pro Retina 13.

The K480 keyboard can do one trick more. It has a chunky dial on the side that picks which of three paired devices will receive input. The slot will hold an iPad mini and an iPhone 6 together in portrait.

The K480 is happy to pair as a keyboard with essentially any bluetooth machine. This means that it has an actual physical key with the blessed letters 'e', 's', 'c' silkscreened right on.

I downloaded and installed iOS 9.3 on the iPad mini after yesterday's iPad Pro announcement. I hoped a extra bit of Pro-ness would somehow permeate the iOS line. I hoped that iOS would stop taking virtual acetone to the escape key. No such luck. This Pro operating system still hides the escape key from 'keypress', 'keydown', and 'keyup' events in Javascript. Amateur hour.

With the new iPad Pro 9.7, Apple has caved on a physical keyboard and a stylus for iPad-sized tablets. When will they end their war on escape? I don't need 1024 levels of escape. I don't need to know the angle at which I press escape. I don't need John Lasseter to say that it's the most realistic escape ever. I just want escape.

bargain

I wrote last time about my experience with a bad iPad mini keyboard. I talked a big game about dumping it in the ewaste box but it didn't actually make it there until yesterday. It's not coming back out.

Unfortunately, the matching iOS app 'Prompt' can't actually be physically thrown out so easily. The combination of poor keyboard, poor app, and beautiful iPad left me in actual tears for a moment yesterday. That's when my position on Apple vs. FBI changed totally.

I had been vaguely pro-Apple in the San Bernardino dust up. I thought that Apple had been too slow to adopt a real secure element and that they would wind up helping the FBI. It would then fall to them to never got caught in that situation again.

My new position is simple. Manufacturers shouldn't be made responsible for the programs or data in computers. Manufacturers should not be compelled to speak -- through programs or through generating non-repudiable signatures for another's programs. A consumer or a court can easily tell if an electronic device is this kind of computer. A computer allows the owner or user to load any program or data they choose without qualification or restriction. Computers have manuals, specifications, or program source codes that describe their operation. Period. iPhones and iPads are not computers.

A compound electronic device may contain a computer available to a user. Examples include computing systems comprising a kernel and user environments where the manufacturer restricts the ability of a user or owner to load new kernel programs or certain user programs. Here, the user environment may be protected. If the vendor restricts the loading of new kernel programs or data through digital signatures, through other technical measures, or through failure to furnish a manual, spec, or source then let them comply with arbitrarily fanciful orders for those portions of the system which are not a protected computer.

An AVR-based Arduino? That's a computer. A Commodore 64? That's a computer. A Thinkpad? That's not a computer. The Libreboot x200 (itself a remanufactured Thinkpad)? A computer! Today's Tivos? Not a computer. Today's smart fridges? Not computers. Essentially everything in the IoT? Throw it all under the bus.

If a company wants to sell you a walled garden -- then let it be known that there will be snakes. A company that actually respects your privacy will sell you a real computer.

Phones and telegraphs have been monitored almost since their invention but the specter of typewriter registration in Ceausescu's Romaina remains morally repugnant almost without reservation. Smartphones with signed firmwares are no different than telegraph lines. Real computers represent the typewriter and freedom.

I dare Congress to pass legislation forcing manufacturers to help with electronic devices. Provide an exception for true computers. Protect the right to build and sell true computers. Allow manufacturers to 'upgrade' devices to true computer status by publishing specifications and keys instead of complying with orders. Then I dare Apple and everyone else to build and sell us those computers.

Richard Stallman has had this part right all along. Who knew that a terrorism investigation, not a DRM lawsuit, would be the best test case in a generation?

reograph: backlog two

Reograph lightning review: ZAGG Rugged Book Case for iPad mini

Do not buy.

Did you get an iPad mini for Christmas instead of a cheap and chunky Chromebook? Don't worry. For only a few dollars more than the cost of the cheapest Chromebook ($99), ZAGG will sell you a poorly made 'rugged' laptop-type keyboard case for your iPad that will have you exchanging homemade candles instead of electronics for Christmas for a decade.

The box claims a year or more of battery life. Good news. The Micro-USB charging jack on mine is so poorly aligned with the rubber surround that I wouldn't want to charge it more than about once a year. The whole thing is a rubbery iPad case, some magnets, and a rubbery iPad keyboard thing that merge into a two-part iPad laptop Voltron deal. We're not talking spaceship Voltron. We're not even talking lion Voltron. We're talking 'Voltron Off Broadway' pantomime horse Voltron. It assembles in a variety of ways.

Mode one is Cheap Laptop Mode: The one key is smaller than the two key. Plus doesn't get its own key. Making a pipe symbol takes three keys. On the other hand, literally, tilde also takes three keys. RSI risk is one thing. This keyboard makes the UNIX gods very angry. You risk their wrath when you bang on this keyboard.

Mode two is 2001: A Space Odyssey Mode: The keyboard folds to cover the screen. The assembly resembles a slightly rubbery monolith. This mode is where the ZAGG Rugged Book Case shines. It appears totally inert. Mine may have sent a bluetooth signal in the direction of Jupiter (or Saturn, if you're _that_ kind of Clarke fan).

Mode three is Reverse Cowgirl Mode: The iPad pops off, turns around, and pops back on facing away from the keyboard. I think some other tablets call this 'tent mode'. I can see that. The difference here is that the keyboard remains fully armed and ready for something to fall on the delete key and eat your entire product review. Most of the other tablets have the decency to shut the keyboard off when they know it makes no sense. The ZAGG could easily have detected the orientation of the iPad and turned the keyboard off. It doesn't.

Small Chess Playing Dwarf Mode: This is exactly the same as Reverse Cowgirl above. The difference is that you hide behind iPad screen and type messages on the keyboard to the delight and amazement of your audience. The larger iPad Air version of the case probably works better for this mode unless you can really scrunch yourself down.

WTF Mode: Here, the still active keyboard folds behind the iPad. You hold an assembly about four times as thick as a regular iPad. The on-screen keyboard will not appear because you have a paired, active, bluetooth keyboard hidden behind the screen. The power key to turn the keyboard off is also hidden behind the screen.

St. Denis Mode: Here, you rip off the keyboard assembly and chuck it in your bag. Then you pull it back out of your bag when you realize it is still paired. Then you turn it off. Then you chuck it back in your bag. Then the unprotected power key is hit and the rest of the ewaste in your bag presses the delete key and nukes your entire sinful Valentine's Day letter. St. Denis is said to have carried his decapitated head under his arm for a ten kilometer walk while preaching repentance all the way. With the ZAGG, the disembodied keyboard can actually repent for you while you walk. Handy enough.

My ZAGG came in a box packed with the manual, in English and French at least, that was actually for a similar product for Samsung tablets. From what I can make out, only the French portion of that manual actually references St. Denis.

Ewaste Mode: This is fast becoming my favorite. Here it sits in your ewaste box. The unprotected power switch and the non-removeable battery that lasts an entire dog's adolescence means that you had better unpair your iPad or you're in for a up to a year of random keyboard events.

pour over

I filled the carafe of my coffee maker with ten cups of water. I put 60 grams of Finca Mauritania into an unbleached #4 paper filter. Then I poured the carafe of water straight into the hopper of my Mazzer Super Jolly coffee grinder. Oops.

I disassembled most of the machine, dried it, and then put it back together. I ran it for about 20 minutes to dry it out. This was not enough to keep moisture from rusting the upper bearings over the course of the next week.

The District of Columbia offers many things. Large birds are returning to the Anacostia. Organic produce abounds. Chocolate and gin are made in DC mere blocks apart. Beards are omnipresent. Despite this bounty, the District of Columbia remains a bearing desert. I couldn't find a stocking dealer of the necessary 6202-2Z bearings anywhere in the city.

 

Amazon came to the rescue with a pair of suitably Italian SKF bearings. The padded envelope slipped right through my mail slot this afternoon. The grinder was purring an hour later.

I don't know if bearings and fellow travelers can be reintroduced to DC with any less effort than it took to bring ospreys back to the Anacostia. I wonder often if DC can support the kind of specialty retail trade that it takes to support hardware needs beyond the fastener aisle of the local hardware store. I wonder how to start. My current thinking is that DC could certainly support a few arduino/maker/hacker vending machines. I would certainly use them.

your move

Last month brought the new Chromecast Audio. I like mine just fine though not quite enough to displace any of the existing Airport Express devices in my house. Last month also brought Apple's El Capitan to my machine.

With El Capitan's Safari 9, Apple appeared to say 'your move.' to Google and their Cast extension for Chrome by breaking iTunes' 11-year stranglehold on official desktop app support for Airplay. What Apple actually said was 'your mo... oh, dear. i've soiled myself.'

Apple's otherwise great new webkitShowPlaybackTargetPicker() media element method lets web content sling itself to Airplay without obnoxious extensions or API keys. Awesome. The resulting Airplay picker popup -- triggered from an audio element here at reograph labs -- shows
exactly none of the Apple Airport Express devices installed around the house. An old Apple TV and a third-party Airplay server running on a Mac put in an appearance but that's it.

I don't know whose move is next but I'm getting tired of this game. System-level mediated audio made sense in the past when the system actually multiplexed audio streams. Essentially none of my audio today except the terminal bell is routed to a DAC attached to a bus in my computer. How is Apple struggling with a feature that worked with iTunes on my G3 iBook?

Is this perhaps a sign that the old Airtunes-protocol hardware is on the way out? Does the bulky new Apple TV create room for a Chromecast Audio-like Apple TV for the Blind? You heard it here first.