Tales from the Bitface

On @atpfm episode 280 @marcoarment says that playing music from your own library on Sonos is buggy. In my experience it’s flawless. And it’s what Sonos has done since before there was Apple Music or even Spotify, so it should work.

Orwell would have had something to say about their use of “unanimous”:

The judges praised her “whole set of amazing stories” and said they believed that “if George Orwell had been here he would have been unanimous in choosing our winner”.

(Emphasis mine.) From the Guardian.

When you manage your dependencies with Maven, the transitive dependencies mean you can find you’re using a library that you never explicitly said you depended on (because some library that you do depend on included it). This can lead to confusion, as I learned today.

I can think of only one reason to take refugee children away from their parents at a border, other than sheer cruelty. That is to scare other families, so they won’t try to reach your country.

There’s word we use for causing fear for political ends: that word is terrorism.

You know those pocket computers we all carry? Will we ever stop calling them “phones,” do you think? When did you last make a phone call on yours? And even if the answer is “today,” is that the main thing you use it for?

Well, London’s Micro.blog meetup was… let’s say, lightly attended. [@johnphilpin](https://micro.blog/johnphilpin) has the photo. Good time, though, if not WWDC-level.

Looking forward to Nick Cave, Patti Smith, etc at All Points East in Victoria Park today. They’re not keen on publishing the full lineup, but I finally found the clashfinder.

No major clashes except for Patti & St Vincent. But a bit of zigzagging between stages needed.

Oh no! Alarming email from “Apple Service”:

We have detect some problem with your account Apple,because was sign in from other IP.For the further informations please find the attachment file (PDF) and follow the intructions.

Not problem with my account Apple!

So, Micro.blog folk: we’re planning a meetup in London. It’s scheduled to kind of coincide with one that [@manton](https://micro.blog/manton) and others are having during WWDC in San José, but that’s not important, really.

What is Important is the date, time, and place: Tuesday the 5th of June, from around 6:30pm, at The Grenadier – 18 Wilton Row, Belgrave, SW1X 7NR. More details here.

So far attendance is looking a little light, so your presence is not just desired — it’s required

If you’re within striking distance of Central London, your Micro.blog community needs you.

We’re having a crazy silent, dry thunderstorm in London tonight.

I naively thought that, now that GDPR Day is here, we might see a reduction in annoying cookie popups. (I don’t know why I thought that; I was probably just being hopeful.) But it’s got worse Much worse. Giant, screen-covering popups; “Accept” buttons that don’t work. Oh dear.

This is a form of GDPR email I haven’t seen before (and I’ve seen a lot):

With new data protection rules known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) effective 25th May 2018, we are reaching out to existing customers to notify them that RCP Parking Ltd will be unsubscribing all existing customers from our promotional communications.
…
RCP Parking Ltd has determined that previously subscribed customers were not subscribed in a manner compliant with the new GDPR regulation.

Refreshingly honest.

Regarding Eurovision: I sort of understand why you can’t vote for your own country. Though if you could, would the most populous country automatically win? Or the country with the biggest LGBTQ community? I don’t think so. People would still vote for a song they liked. But it would be interesting to try it one year.

But more importantly: why can people in the UK not vote by text? Seems weirdly old-fashioned.

It’s been a 24-hour rollercoaster for my daughter (and all of us) as Brooklyn Nine-Nine has now been picked up by NBC. Phew.

Until his morning I couldn’t have told you the name of Frightened Rabbit’s lead singer, though I like some of their music. Now Twitter tells me of Scott Hutchison’s tragic death.

All I can say is: if you find yourself in a dark place, please, talk to someone. Help is there.

My daughter has just told me that Brooklyn Nine-Nine has been cancelled. God damn it. In this golden age of television that we’re living through, it’s consistently the funniest thing out there. Never an episode goes by that we don’t have to pause and jump back because one or more of us (to be fair, usually me) were laughing so hard we missed the next line.

I hope they don’t leave on another end-of-season cliffhanger.

My Dock came back without me having to do anything. Very strange.