With the ever-growing list of the source of the content we consume not being physical and buying things or adding things to lists in digital form, I am finding a disturbing trend. I first noticed this with music tracks on Spotify and Apple Music. But I ran across audiobooks and have seen stories of digital purchases being blocked after someone has paid for them and not being refunded as the extreme end of this.
When you have a music track and add it to a playlist, you expect the same track to be there the next time you play the list. I noticed that people would put out a cover or remix of a song, name the song differently, have a different artist, and be part of a different album, but your track on the list and what was downloaded to your device would change. I first saw this on Spotify, but since switching to Apple Music, I see it there too.
As a software developer, I would have expected these systems to function as I would build them. Each track, no matter the title, artist, or other metadata, would have a unique ID for the track. That unique ID would be the thing stored on the list. This should never change; even if there were reasons preventing the user from playing the track for geopolitical reasons, the ID should be kept. Play the track the user wanted or just tell them its unavailable.
I know that with Amazon Kindle, authors can update the book for errors but replacing it with a new version is unacceptable. Wouldn’t it make more marketing sense to have a second version closer to a movie or TV show? The real fans may buy both versions. Movies have “Director Cut” or “Extended Version,” and I have paid extra for them in the case of Aliens. But in the case of Foundation, this is purely used for advertising Apple TV. And Apple TV is one of the worst of the plethora of “Plus” subscriptions.
The final example of digital content change problems was a movie people “purchased,” but the video was removed because of some copyright dispute. The hosting companies will side with any copyright claims and wash their hands of it as though it’s not their problem. The problem was the person who “purchased” was led to believe they owned the digital copy of the movie. The reality is we own nothing these days. Tucked away in pages of “terms of service,” these companies are lying with the “purchase.” They are only giving you a “license” to use the music, movie, software, and information as long as YOU comply with their rules, and they can change the rules and remove the access at any time.
This deceptive practice runs into physical goods such as cars, money, housing, and more. When the World Economic Forum said, “You will own nothing, and be happy,” they meant the OWN NOTHING part, and as long as people are entertained enough, they will think they are happy if they comply.
Well, I am not dead. And I don’t know anything not already public about the Clintons so I should be ok in small aircraft and hot tubs for a while. This may be the last post for WebLuke.net on WordPress or I may lose interest and not do anything to build a blog/site using ASP.Net Core 6 as a way to learn how to build more things I use for work.
I don’t post here much because https://noagendasocial.com is a thing and they have lots of memes to reshare. Last year was a lot of working, moving and then more working. I didn’t have much of a reason to come to the site.
I can say that Starlink is kind of cool. My new house is out in the country and ~25Mbps wireless internet was not to my standards. At the time my house was in a Cell Starlink wasn’t full of users yet, so 1 month after ordering I was set up. I have an average of 200Mbps download speed from space so not too bad. Ping times are around 70ms in games (35ms just in the air, the rest is going through the net). This was much better than Spectrum Cable with 100Mbps and pings around 100ms.
But with the local power coop that runs a fiber internet provider for the area getting a few million dollar grant, I noticed they are starting to put the ducts in to send the fiber up my road. I also talked with the guys who survived my electric pole who said I should have fiber up to my pole within the year. So 1Gbps fiber is coming soon and I am ready for that.
Wish me luck on the conversion of the site and that I actually do it.
On election night, on Nov. 3, an assortment of anomalies were observed, followed by a large number of specific allegations of election fraud. As the integrity of the election continued to be questioned and evidence continued to emerge, most mainstream media stuck to a one-sided narrative by calling the 2020 election the most secure in American history, and sought to silence opposing voices.
This is a great documentary of the investigation of the 2020 election fraud. Hosted by The Epoch Times, NTD, and Crossroads with Josh Philipp who goes through the sequence on election night, and the widespread reports from witnesses of the fraud. He then goes through the ties of voting systems to China and their plans to destroy America and shows the ties the democrats and Biden’s have to China. Closing with a call to ensure the elections are true and fair.
In the past few months, Microsoft updated security settings by default that breaks the ability for users of Office 365 to use the feature of forwarding their emails to another external account. This was done with good intentions to help stop hackers from logging into an account and forwarding emails to their account so they could get the password reset messages without staying logged into the vulnerable account.
But there are real reasons people use forwarding of their mail to other addresses, and the security setting can be changed. It would be best if you questioned the users who do forward their email about it as they should keep their emails for the organization in that organization.
You may find that if you send an email to someone who uses the forwarding settings, Office 365 email sends you back a message with the following error.
Remote Server returned ‘550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding. Please contact your administrator for further assistance. AS(7555)’
On the left menu, select Threat management > Policy
On the page under Policies, click on the Anti-spam link
On the next page, click the drop-down the Outbound spam filter policy (always ON), then click Edit Policy
On the pop-over, expand Automatic forwarding and chose from the drop-down On – Forwarding is enabled, then click Save
You can now close that pop over, and the settings can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 24 hours.
I hope this helps. Keep in mind it may be better to change the user’s behavior to increase security, than change this setting.
I have also planned to document more of these fixes to problems as I figure them out with the rest of the Internet, so this may be one of a lot more to come of these help style posts.
Wow, that is a title! This story starts a few years ago when I was studying Computer Science, and I was reminded of it from some random thing in the news today about a group suing a school district because they were collecting toys for kids for Christmas and they were atheists, so it made them sad that others were having fun without them. Our story is about the removal of thousands of college lectures that were on YouTube because a group sued the school in California because these free videos had no subtitles.
So, this school in California was doing the cool thing at the time of recording lectures and putting them online so people who could not get to the school or afford it would be able to learn the same information. It sounds like a super progressive thing to do. I got into Computer Science because of the free videos produced by CS50 of Harvard explaining programming basics. In my school, we had teachers who would show these videos from more prominent schools. Some would play a new one every lecture, which did cause students to bring the issue that they were paying to learn this stuff but would watch YouTube videos instead.
Well, progressives are never happy. All those free videos were unedited and just uploaded to playlists on the school’s YouTube page. The cost of recording them was already something, but it was seen as a good cause. But a group found that there were laws in California that stated the schools must provide accessibility of all the school’s resources. Probably another good meaning progressive rule to make sure people could learn things while in school. But this new group used it to force the school to either remove all the videos or add sub-titles in something like a month.
The school figured it was easier and much less costly to delete all the videos than comply. It may have been out of spite. I think they were trying to help people, and the group comes in and craps all over their work. I found this bad that they would delete it, as that does not help anyone, only hurts people.
I found a news story about the removal of all that information and posted it to our CS group chat. Many people thought it was a bad idea to remove the content as they agreed that it was more important to provide the information to the many than cater to the few. It was also pointed out they could allow the people of the internet to help create the subtitles because people like to do that for fun. Then comes a progressive teacher who I was friends with until 2016. He would not see that the information was more beneficial to society, even if it was not perfect for everyone. He argued that it must also benefit the few no matter what.
Looking back, this is what makes progressives so bad. They want to help people so much that even if it hurts people along the way, they find it to be acceptable because they think they are helping a small portion of society, which they have deemed to be important. In this case, the videos were free. They existed to help people, and the judge who ruled over the case should have grandfathered all the existing content but required that the school have at least a good faith effort to add the additional subtitles in future videos. It should have also been set that the school should organize systems for others to add the subtitles. But because the court was not informed, the progressives did not care about everyone. The world lost a lot of information.
There was a guy Jeremy Kauffman who found this to be ridiculous that they would delete the videos. He set out to build an archive of the videos using blockchain so no one could technically delete them. I do not know precisely how it works, but now you can use the platform to host videos and view videos called LBRY.tv. The newer site is called Odysee, and they are trying to take on YouTube to prevent censorship. Anyway, check it out. We know progressives hurt everyone because they think they are always right, and the only way they can be taught is to never give in to their ridiculous demands. I did not know how to finish this and was getting sidetracked.
Well, it looks like Apple did what they were saying they would, by announcing new MAC computers with their own processer they announced at their developer conference. This is basically their own ARM processer similar to the processer used in the iPad and iPhone, but with more memory directly attached to the chip.
Apple M1 Chip with 5-nanometer process and 16 billion transistors, also shows the memory on the CPU package.
While this is an announcement of the chip, it is more about how they have compiled MAC OS to run on the new chip and APIs to access the additional features such as neural engines and built-in GPU. With so much of the system now in one chip, you will see speed improvements mostly because of the code optimization and memory being on-chip. They also put controllers for hardware into the chip to improve performance. This also reduces the battery drain and adding more space for bigger batteries in the devices.
Apple M1 chip layout and claims of 3.7x improvements in performance
They claim all kinds of 3-57x increases in this and that, but much of that is just the optimizations to the OS now that they control so much of the system. It is Apple, so you got the unmarked graphs comparing this chip to some other arbitrary chip, but I would expect using one of the new MACs to feel quicker. It has long been a fact that Apple was not using Intel chips properly by not cooling them, which caused performance problems. It may have been part of the plan to sell people on the new chip by having the Intel not perform very well, and the new magic chip fixes it. I also expect because they control the chip and had the engineers already for their other devices, it will save them a lot of money over buying them from Intel.
Apple Mac computers available November 17 2020 that can be configured with the M1 CPU
On to the product releases. They released a MAC Mini similar to the developer model, a MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro 13 inch. The Air has no fan and keeps the thin form factor with an updated screen. It has passive cooling, and that will be interesting to note on the other two systems. The Pro 13 has cooling and a touch bar. They did not mention any significant differences to the screen on the pro, and more marketing 2-5x performance increases bla bla.
Apple MacBook Pro 13 active cooling for sustained performance
The Pro and Mini have cooling fans. They even had an animation showing it helped the performance. Does that mean despite having the same chip, the Pro and Mini will not thermal throttle like the Air, just like the Intel problems? I guess they have looked at the data collected by the OS and found that Air users are really not using the power of the systems and are ok with basically having an iPad with a keyboard and no touch screen to watch videos and social networks. But if you are doing work on the computer, it will need to be cooled.
Apple Universal Apps marketing spank for the M1 CPU
As for program compatibility, they know most things are not going to be compiled for the ARM chip, so they have an emulator called Rosetta 2 that should allow you to use all the old software you own or use. New software or recompiles should be turned into Universal apps with two executables in the app package. It looks like more of the simpler apps will be recompiled and updated quickly as it will help with sales to add marketing spank that is Universal. Finally, the real indication you are just getting an iPad with a keyboard is that iPad and iPhone apps run in MAC OS. Still, I see all kinds of issues as many rely on touch, but I also see if you are a developer, this could be nice for things like note-taking apps as you could focus on the iPad, and it will just be easy to put it for desktop.
So, should you get one? No. These are first-run systems, and they will be implements in the second set of systems released probably next year with an iMAC and MacBook Pro 16 inch most likely. Those improvements will include more cores, more memory, and more GPU to get more work done for people who are using a computer. These three systems feel like they are giving something to developers and low-end users to test the market and abilities of the new systems. I do not see a good reason to jump in until they have an iMac Pro or, even later, the MAC Pro desktop. That ultra-expensive desktop is for industry pros, and they will not want problems with the big-name video and audio software not working even if it performs a little better.
Apple MacBook Pro 13 with M1 CPU memory and storage options that can’t be changed by the user along with the high prices for increasing these from stock.
These new chips only come in 8 and 16GB of RAM built-in, and the GPU also limits the systems. Along with max 2TB, SSD storage is all built onto the single board. You are set in stone what your system specs will be. There was also no listed Gigahertz rating of the chip. Looking deeper into the fine print of the chip’s announcement, they tested against their own systems that ran Intel to get the comparisons of higher performance. Most of these systems, I would not say, are the best comparisons.
Apple MacBook Pro 13 with marketing spank of the power of the CPU for development.
So, if you are an Apple software developer, get one of the new computers to recompile your apps, so they are ready for when more people start getting the M2 or whatever chip. If you are looking for a low power iPad with a keyboard for simple tasks, then the Air will be good enough for most people who do not use their computers’ power to begin with. Me, I run a custom PC desktop, and it is excellent, could use a new graphics card, but if this blogging thing or one of the other projects I am working on takes off and I am drowning in extra money, I will not be getting a MAC with the new chip any time soon.
Due to unintended consequences, America’s broken immigration system leaves a slew of victims in its rudderless wake.”
Namrata Singh Gujral America’s Forgotten Tagline
America’s Forgotten is a documentary following several people affected by the broken illegal immigration systems in the United States. It was started by a Democrat filmmaker who was expecting to produce a film showing there needs to be more illegal immigration. The director began to learn the negative side of illegal immigration and was faced with the decision to follow the facts or hide them by not finishing the film.
She takes you through stories from many walks of life with no political agenda. She shows you the cycle of money, power, and lies used to take people from their home country and put them into the United States. She then shows the consequences of illegal immigration. The truth hurts and is sad on many levels, but more illegal immigration only makes it worse.
Film maker in India finds the family of a girl who died with her mother trying to illegally enter the US that was used by Democrats to push for more illegal immigration, the family was well off and had land, large homes, and made plenty of money growing rice.
I was made aware of this film through a random video I was watching. After reading some of the director’s quotes, I found the trailer on the films Vimeo page at http://americasforgottenmovie.com/. Many news articles bring up the different groups that use people in other countries who are not suffering but are looking for monetary opportunities in the United States. Most of these trying to get in are not the ones suffering from extreme poverty or religious persecution, but those who can pay up to $50-75 thousand to be smuggled across the world and into the United States with the possibility of death or never finding work.
She shows Americans who have been affected by illegals in the country, many losing family members, veterans who have served and come home with PTSD with no opportunities. She talks to locals in other countries who say they have no interest in leaving their homes and families. When she showed, the Dal Lama explain to a reporter that the rich countries should try and help educate and then send people back to their homes to help their home country, leaving the reporter aghast was great to see.
Democratic Debate of support for giving illegals health care free used by smugglers to trick people looking to make money in the US to pay them to get help getting them in illegally.
This film works hard not to take a political side. But she talks about the benefits of building the border wall with Mexico for blocking illegal immigrants, drugs, and terrorists. She also talks about the dangers of AOC and the Squad’s stance of bringing in anyone with no checks and how their policies hurt Americans and the people coming in illegally. She even shows how the Democrats saying they will give illegals health care helps the smugglers trick people into paying them. She shows how Biden has flipped from protecting the borders to now wanting them gone and how his ideas she cannot vote for.
The film is an hour and a half, costing $10 to buy and $5 to rent. I bought it to support her purely because she chose to seek the truth and not hide in her preconceived bubble. We need more media who are willing to put the truth first and not the ideals. After watching it, I was glad to support her, too, because the film is touching while showing the reality that illegal immigration only helps the smugglers, big corporations, and politicians who support it.
America’s Forgotten Trailers
TITLE: AMERICA’S FORGOTTEN TAGLINE: Due to unintended consequences, America’s broken immigration system leaves a slew of victims in its rudderless wake. SYNOPSIS: Shot around the world in the USA, India, Middle East, Mexico and Central America; America’s Forgotten reveals the staggering human and material cost of illegal immigration, from across the globe to the US. The film focuses on lost American jobs and wages, but especially American lives lost, because of illegal immigration. The documentary, directed by award winning filmmaker Namrata Singh Gujral explores death, torture and hardship surrounding illegal immigration in the U.S., a topic so sensitive, especially in Hollywood, that the film contains the following disclaimer: “Due to the possible political backlash all credits have been voluntarily withheld by the crew of this film.” HOW: Streaming | On Demand *Find list of platforms at www.AmericasForgottenMovie.com (www.America’sForgottenMovie.com) WHERE: USA & Canada WHEN: 16 OCTOBER 2020 Directed by: Namrata Singh Gujral Hashtag: #AmericasForgotten
Well, I messed up and bought the iPhone 11 just weeks before the announcement of the iPhone 12. I knew I should have looked it up, and I would have either saved some money or gotten a better phone for the same price. The “event” is for this year’s iPhone refresh, and in lame CCP Virus style, it was just a pre-produced video very well done using the space ship campus as a set. I looked up the leaks the night before and returned my iPhone 11, and with the friendly Pacific time zone they used meant I could sleep in before the announcement video.
Apple HomePod mini
They started the video with the second of the least exciting product in my mind. The HomePod mini is a HomePod but smaller, around the size of a softball. They claim it has great sound, along with a set of updated voice commands. They spent a reasonable amount of time talking about using it as an intercom between a family with the mini’s around a house and connecting to family members using other Apple products. The option to have two of these in a room for better sound was interesting. If they get the option for the HomePod to switch from different pods as you go from room to room, that would be slick, but it’s not ready yet. With a more reasonable price of $99, I expect many people to pick the mini up for Christmas presents.
iPhone 12
The big star of this show was the iPhone 12 in a few different sizes and features combinations. All of the 12 models will have 5G wireless networking. They brought out Verizon to pimp their network. They claimed “4.0Gbps†using millimeter-wave radios. These 58Ghz radios only work in the open air, and I have had experience working near gear like that technology in the 60Ghz range that gives me headaches. It’s “turning the frogs†type stuff. If they use more frequency bands with better radios, then you should see better speeds. They even have some software that only turns on the 5G radio when you are actually using a lot of data and puts everything else through LTE to save battery.
iPhone 12 Pro
Next, they are offering two sizes under both the normal 12 model and the 12 pro model. The iPhone 12 has a 6.1†OLED display, and a new iPhone 12 mini with a 5.4†OLED display. I am guessing the demand for an updated smaller phone for people who only have skinny jeans or kids and women was high enough for them to get one out. Over on the Pro line, you get iPhone 12 Pro with a 6.1†OLED display and the iPhone 12 Pro Max with a 6.7†OLED display. All of these have their “Super Retina XDR†marketing, but the OLED displays should look really nice up close.
Apple A14 Chip
All of the phones got a new processer chip, the A14 that is supposed to be super much better than anyone else. (Lol, the spell checker didn’t like that sentence.) Basically, smaller transistors let them put more power into the chip with better GPU, image processing, machine learning, and lower power. With Apple controlling everything, just expect everything to be just a little more snappy and work without a problem. They use this chip to do a lot of work to make taking photos look better along with recording videos.
iPhone 12 Camera Lens
That takes us to the cameras. A lot of time was spent showing the camera on both lines of phones. Things like better low light photos and video with improved sensors and lens systems, then sending the image to be processed using HDR with the fancy new A14 chip. The standard 12 has a wide and ultra-wide and front camera. All use the extra processing for better photos from the front.
iPhone 12 Pro Cameras
The 12 Pro has a wide, ultra-wide, telephoto, front, and they added LiDAR to help with low light photos and video. The LiDAR can also be used for 3D scanning, but they mostly push it for pictures. On the 12 Pro Max, they also increased the wide camera’s size for even better video. Also, in the 12 Pros, you can use ProRAW along with the image processing and video recording in Dolby Vision. There was a few bits in there about how you could use the 12 Pros cameras to record movies, but we know most people will just be recording random stuff in their lives.
iPhone 12 Ceramic Shield Glass
The normal 12 is aluminum with thinner bezels and glass front and back. The 12 Pro is stainless steel with glass front and back. There are some different colors for both lines. Normal has black, white, red, light green, and navy blue. Pro has graphite, white, gold, and pacific blue. They also kept up with the waterproofing, making the pro line even more sealed, so you won’t have to worry about dumping your water on it. Both phones come with a new glass called “Ceramic Shield.†It is some new way of hardening the glass while keeping it clear. They still sell cases that I will get into later, so even they think you need something to protect your phone from falling and breaking.
iPhone 12 smaller box with no accessories
That takes us to accessories, and they are cheaping out and not giving you as many. The claim is it will save all kinds of waste, and they can make the packaging smaller (my iPhone 11 had a lot of extra space under the power adapter they could have already gotten rid of). The phone will now only come with a USB-C to Lightning cable, rather than make everyone happy and use a USB-C connector like everyone else. The headphones and charger are gone, and they are pushing for “just use the ones you already have†or buy the AirPods that make them a lot of money.
iPhone 12 MagSafe Case and Wallet
They are getting one thing right with charging. They now improved the wireless charging to “snap†or MagSafe to your phone. So you get a better charge, and it let them use the magnets to sell magnetic cases for protection and a magnetic card wallet. There were images of a new multi-device charger for all things Apple and an in-car charger, but those are not on the website or talked about much.
iPhone 12 Pro Colors
So the big take away, don’t buy a new phone a week before they announce a new one. The new iPhone 12 now has “5Gâ€, some improvements to cameras, processers, and charging, all in a smaller box. I have set my 11 up to be returned, and I will be getting the iPhone 12 Pro Max because I like all the extra screen size, memory, and cameras. They are not releasing the Pro Max and mini for another month. They gave no reason for that. Some rumor sites even talked about how this release is way late too. Below is a table of prices and release dates for sizes. If you want to support my site and help me pay for gadgets, take a look at my Savings & Support Page for ways to help.
My previous job had given me an iPhone 7 Plus because they used all Apple and were paying the bill. When CCP Virus hit, they still had my number on their plan, and so when I left, they just let me stay on it for a while. Recently they have not been doing any better, so I took back my number and wanted to take the opportunity to update my phone. I used to always get the Google released phone because I had fewer problems with them. But I now feel better about the quality of the Apple iPhone.
I spent some time looking over the iPhone 11 vs. 11 Pro Plus. The only significant difference I can see is the screen size is slightly bigger along with the display type and the extra camera on the pro. I did not feel the need to spend more on the pro, not to mention you must jump up to 256GB of storage, adding more cost. The standard iPhone 11 next to the 7 plus feel almost the same size, so I do not feel like I lost anything.
So far, the new phone works almost the same. There are a few things that I think I notice about running the OS and apps, they do seem to load or jump up faster. But with no home button, some things take more time to do, such as switch apps, or if the bedtime mode is active, I have to dismiss and then slide open past the lock.
FaceID is kind of nice because you do not have to touch anything. But it can have problems when it does not see you well, and with all the mask nonsense, it does not know who I am with a mask, and I end up putting in a code. I may be able to teach it my face with a mask, but that’s super lame.
So, I do almost feel like I did not gain much by getting a new iPhone. Yes, it has better chips and screens. The iPhones do not feel fresh in software. The camera is much better, and I want to do some more testing. We are getting to the point that most new phones do not change much. When the software is the same, it makes the problem even more noticeable. I notice the battery life, as that 4-5-year-old iPhone 7 was only saying it had 87% but was getting low at the end of the day, not leaving WiFi.
But when you move phones, the major hassles are getting apps set back up. Some require logins or restoring data. Some even store everything on the phone that is not great. Yes, you can make the move or restore from another phone option that iPhones seem to do much better than Androids. I chose to start fresh, which may not have been the best, but I do not store anything on the phone, so it worked out fast enough.
I move Android phones about every 1-2 years. Sometimes it was just the fact they would stop booting (happened to 4 different phones). But the fact the iPhone 7 is still running shows something. On Windows, I reset the OS every year or so because it gets filled with stuff that makes it slow too. It is also an excellent time to update some hardware, but not rebuild the entire thing. I had never needed to reset the iPhone. I did a reset of my iPad, but that was when the screen shattered, and it was being sent in for replacement.
The iPhone 11 will probably be updated soon, but I am ok with not the newest anymore. A few years ago, you would not see me saying iPhone seems better than Android, but I do like them now. I expect to slowly move my family over to iPhone so that things are the same as mine. I got my kids on iPads last Christmas, and they have been solid tablets for them. I am sure there will be something I did not move over right or an app I missed but not a big problem. I am happy with it. I just need to find a case I like and get the camera figured out.
