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Someone I work with shared a tweet claiming that Log4j, the logging library with the remote code execution vulnerability that was discovered late last week, is maintained by two unpaid developers. I cannot confirm the claim that the maintainers were unpaid (although I can believe it), but looking at the commit log, the claim about the project being maintained by only two people looks plausible.
I really feel for these two. It must be difficult to be one of these maintainers, working on a project, possibly on your own time, that is used by some of the richest companies in the world, and seeing little contribution in return. And now they have to respond to this vulnerability.
Maybe it’s time we reconsider how to approach open source projects before we start using them. Open source is a great thing in our industry, but it feels a little unfair to those volunteering their time to work on such critical libraries. They see very little of the upsides from that which is created using their work, but they have to deal with any issues that crop up from it.
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My new Pixel 6 phone arrive yesterday, a full 40 days before the estimated delivery date. I’m now in the process of slowly setting it up.
Most of the apps I used were migrated over without any issues. Many of those that didn’t make it were apps I wrote for myself and have not published to the Play Store. That’s fine, I’ll just install them again using Android Studios.
But one app that didn’t migrate fully was the one I use to get onto my work’s VPN. I’m still working from home at the moment so until I go back to the office, I’ll have to keep the old phone around to login for work.
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I tend to be indecisive, and during the last few days, a choice that I have to make at work has brought me to a standstill. I only just now resolve it by acknowledging what it was that was preventing me from making a choice. In this case, it was just that I didn’t know enough about the options. Deciding to go forward by learning more about them has bought be back on track.
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A quote from Gruber about Spotify Wrapped:
Me, personally, I still wouldn’t care a whit about it. My music taste is old and boring — I neither need to be reminded of what I liked this year, nor want to share it.
Yep, I feel exactly the same way.
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Follow up from yesterday’s post on the film crew working around my house, I found another notice from them in my letter-box. The production they’re working on is Of An Age. From the notice:
Summer, 1999. An unexpected and intense twenty-four-hour romance blossoms between a seventeen-year-old Serbian ballroom dancer and his best friend’s older brother. A decade later the pair meet for a bittersweet reunion.
Check it out to get some shots of north-eastern Greater Melbourne. 🙂
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For the last couple a weeks, a production crew have been filming around my place. I wish I noted down the production they’re working on. It was on the notice they sent to everyone, and I forgot to record it before I threw the notice away (this is what a journal is for 🤦).
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Giving the email newsletter feature a try. I don’t have many long form posts so I’m going with weekly-emails-with-all-posts setting. Looking forward to seeing how these will turn out (I’ll have to wait until tomorrow, when the first email is sent).
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I bought a new desk lamp over the weekend. After trying it last night, I’m not super happy with it.
For one thing, the light is way too cool for my liking. Too cool, and too bright. The old desk lamp, which was a halogen type lamp, had a bit of shade which helped keep the light out of my eyes. This new one is shorter and has no such shade, making it difficult to positing the lamp without producing glare.
Another thing is that the switch is so far down the cord it’s almost closer to the plug than the lamp. Turning it on would involve pulling the cord up to get to the switch. My desk is against a wall and there’s a rats nest of other cables down there which makes this annoying to do. I’ve actually got it on a smart outlet so that I don’t need to use the switch at all.
I’m generally dislike shopping for things like this, and it’s these sorts of events which are the reason why. I probably should have done more research for available options — although that is difficult to do with the crummy websites from brick-and-mortar lighting shops — but the need to get something quickly was strong. In any case, I guess the job of looking for a new desk lamp continues.
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On Treating Users As If They're Just There To Buy Stuff
Ars Technica has published a third post about the annoying user experience of Microsoft Edge in as many days. Today’s was about a notice that appears when the user tries to use Edge to download Chrome. These are notices that are displayed by the browser itself whenever the user opens up the Chrome download page.
Now, setting aside the fact that these notices shouldn’t be shown to the user at all, what got up my goat was the copy that appears in one of them:
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Tip for anyone with an email newsletter: please include a link to the post online, or a link to the newsletter sign-up page somewhere in the email. This makes it easy for people to link to your stuff so they can give you credit for the work you do.
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🔗 Write 5x more but write 5x less (via The Daily Graph)
This post itself is interesting but what made me want to link to it here is that this is one of those blogs where you can easily fall down a rabbit hole by following every link on the page (in a good way).
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It’s a bit of the shame that the best technique for projecting an iPad onto a monitor, for the purpose of sharing it in video-conferences, continues to be starting a movie recording in QuickTime Player and just not pressing record.
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🔗 Users revolt as Microsoft bolts a short-term financing app onto Edge
Oh, Microsoft. You spend all this time and effort trying to win back users to your browser, with some success. Then you disrespect them with a move like this? Not great.
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I used MacOS dark mode for the first time last night. An inoperable desk lamp has left my workspace quite dim in the evening, causing eye strain due to the contrast. Switching to dark mode improved things greatly. I guess I’ll be staying in dark mode until I get a new desk lamp.
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Weekend In Mansfield
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to spend some time with my parents who were staying in Mansfield, in regional Victoria. We were staying in a small cottage located on a hill, which meant some pretty stunning views, especially in the evening light.
We didn’t do a heap during our trip, although we did manage to do the The Paps trail on Saturday, which involved a 700 metre climb.
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Saved once again by Google Pay. I was almost at the cafe this morning, on my way to get some breakfast, when I realised that I walked out of the house without my wallet. I would’ve had to walk back to get it if I didn’t have my phone. Not a long walk, but would’ve been a hassle.
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FastMail’s spam filter has been a bit aggressive lately. I’ve seen a few emails show up in the Spam folder these last few weeks that were legitimate. I guess I’ll have to check it more often than I have been.
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One of the hosts of a podcast I listen to mentioned buying a product from the company I work at, and briefly talk about using it on the show. This was a new experience for me, and although I had nothing to do with the thing they bought, it felt pretty good.
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I’m looking forward to the day when I can type
pythonin any command line on any OS, and it will launch Python 3, rather than invoke some crazy dice-roll between two major versions of Python. -
Went out for breakfast again today. Wondered how long I could use my iPad without turning on my mobile hotspot. Lasted pretty well with just cached webpages and NetNewsWire, but had to succumb during my second coffee when I wanted to follow a link.
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A podcast I was listening to mentioned a book that sounded interesting, so I checked the Kindle bookstore to see if I could buy it. Well, not only did I already buy it ages ago, it has been sitting in my library all this time and I barely started reading it.
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Pro-tip for anyone using Vivaldi: you can unbind the “Cmd-Q” keyboard shortcut within Preferences so you don’t accidentally close all your browser windows with a single keystroke, like I just did. 🤦
(A confirmation prompt would be nice, Vivaldi).
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Cookie Disclosure Popups Should be Handled by the Browser
I really dislike the cookie disclosure popups that appear on websites. Ideally I shouldn’t be seeing them at all — I know that the EU requires it, but I’m not a citizen of the EU so the regulation should not apply to me. But I’m pragmatic enough to know that not every web developer can or will selectively show this disclosure popup based on the geographic region of the visitor.
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You know those journals you see in movies where the writer is working on something, and they write down every single thing they do? I’m wondering if I need to start one. There are things I know I’ve done recently when dealing with a problem, but I can never remember the details.
