Poor spammers

They make all that effort to add random spaces in words so automated SMS spam filters don’t block their attempted spam/phish…and then the spam filters effortlessly figure it out and block their messages anyway.

(งಠ_ಠ)ง

Crappy online banking security

You’re always only one SIM-jacking event away from losing control of your bank account.

Screenshot of a smartphone text messaging app that shows four text messages. All the messages read: “Don’t share this code with anyone, including NAB. Your security code is XX for Internet Banking password reset”. That six digit numerical code designated by XX changes in each message.

It’s 2022 and still banks don’t offer time-based, one-time tokens (like when you look up a code from Google Authenticator) as your second factor when authenticating with them. It’s embarrassing.

Favourite garden tool

Today I used my favourite garden tool (which I didn’t know was my favourite garden tool till I used it today): a line trimmer (aka whipper snipper). Same with my new self-propelled lawn mower, which now my second favourite.

Photo of a grass-spattered line trimmer (whipper snipper) and battery powered lawn mower on an outdoor deck.

Portrait mode on the Pixel 6 Pro

So the portrait mode + front-facing camera combo on the Pixel 6 Pro smartphone works quite well.

Especially when you can use the magic eraser to remove two instances of unruly beard hair :)

Selfie of a man looking straight into the camera. The man is in his 40s, and is bald with a full, but trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He is wearing glasses and a black henley-style pullover. The background behind him is out of focus, helping his face stand out more in the photo.

Hello Mexico!

Finally got the time to start playing Forza Horizon 5 today! Hello Mexico :)

Really fun game so far. Looks gorgeous in widescreen HDR. Great music too. 10/10 would recommend.

Photo of a widescreen computer display that’s showing the interior of an airplane cargo hold that contains a jeep that’s about to be parachuted out of the rear cargo door that’s open behind the vehicle. On the desk, under the display are two speakers. Directly in front of the screen is a gaming steering wheel that's attached to the desk.

Picking a typeface for writing code

Do you have a favourite typeface for writing code? (Assuming you write code, of course.)

If not, CodingFont is a brilliant website that will help you find your preferred coding typeface — tournament style!

The process is simple and elegant: you compare code written in two popular coding typefaces side-by-side, then you pick the one you prefer. Do this over and over again and, through the process of elimination, you’re left with the coding typeface you like the most.

In my case that’s JetBrains Mono. (Though I’m also happy to code in both Fira Code and Source Code Pro.)

I love typography and have literally spent days pouring over typefaces, comparing them closely, and then picking the ones I want to use in different scenarios. Like this comparison I did when I wanted to select a typeface for all the charts and diagrams I post on this blog:

Which is why all my charts and diagrams are now in Fira Sans or Ideal Sans. (Where they used to be in DIN Next or Open Sans.)

CodingFont lets you do this type of side-by-side comparison without any of the hassle. So, if you’re a coder – or even someone who regularly uses monospaced fonts – then this is totally worth a try.

Have fun!

Impressive Pixel 6 Pro camera performance

Whoa. The Pixels 6 Pro’s forward-facing camera really is excellent!

This photo was cropped slightly, but is otherwise completely untouched.

Selfie of a smiling man standing on an outdoor deck on a sunny day, with a residential garden behind him. The man is bald and has a trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard. He is wearing glasses and a t-shirt with the original book cover of Phillip K Dick’s book ‘Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?’ printed on it.

Also, compare these two untouched (again, only cropped) selfies.

The Pixel 6 Pro (right) does a much better job than the Pixel 3XL (left) that I just upgraded from.

Collage of two selfies of the same man in the same location. The man is bald, has a salt-and-pepper beard, and is wearing glasses and a pair of black wireless headphones. He is standing in a residential garden, with the sun behind him. The photo on the left, captioned 'Pixel 3XL', clearly shows the bright environment he’s in, but his face is shadowed and the clouds in the sky aren’t well defined. In the photo on the right, captioned 'Pixel 6 Pro', his face is well lit and you can see some of the details in the clouds.

Oh, and in case it isn’t bleedingly obvious by now, I bought Google’s latest and greatest smartphone: the Pixel 6 Pro :)

So much SMS spam!

Apparently it’s ‘Send Ameel spam text messages weelk’ here in Australia. Fortunately Android’s spam/phishing SMS filter is as good as Gmail’s corresponding email filter, so all this crap gets automatically blocked and reported.

Screenshot of an Android smartphone screen showing the SMS messages app. The title of the page is ‘Spam and blocked' and below this are several text messages from various Australian mobile phone numbers. All messages claim to be package delivery updates that trick unthinking recipients to click on a malicious URL.

Log in alerts FTW

Log in alerts are such a useful feature. It’s eye-opening to see just how frequently people try to break into your accounts!

Alerts like these also drive home the importance of using two-factor authentication. I have that turned on everywhere. Seriously, you should too.

Screenshot of an email from Instagram that reads “Sorry to hear you’re having trouble logging into Instagram. We can help you get straight back into your account.” and then a button that says “Log in as ameelkhan”. Below that is text that reads “You can also reset your Instagram password”.

Instagram also offers an incredibly useful additional security feature: a list of emails they’ve sent you in the last 14 days.

Malicious actors can send fake log in alerts that are actually phishing emails. You can check this sent-email list in your account settings to verify if the email you’ve just received is real or not.

Screenshot from the Instagram website. The page’s title is ‘Emails from Instagram’. The text below this reads: “Security and login emails from Instagram in the last 14 days will appear here. You can use it to verify which emails are real and which are fake.” Below that is a list of emails, all with the subject “ameelkhan, we’ve made it easy to get back on Instagram”. Each item on this email list also has a timestamp so you can tell when it was sent.

All set for Windows 11

Something to look forward to in (probably) October!

Screenshot from a Windows computer showing a pop-up window with the title “This PC can run Windows 11” and text that reads “Great news - this PC meets all the system requirements for Windows 11, and it’s free. We’ll let you know when it’s ready to install.”

More about Windows 11 here:

Favourite 4K videos

Hello. Here are some of my favourite 4K videos, timelapses and hyperlapses (ie moving timelapse).

First we have JeffHK’s ‘30 Days Timelapse at Sea’.

I’d been wanting to buy a 4K monitor for a while. That video of Jeff’s is what finally got me to pull the trigger on a 32” 4K Dell display. Thanks Jeff!

Jeff’s more recent '14 Days Timelapse of U.S. East Coast' is fantastic too.

And while you’re on his channel, check out his Panama and Suez canal transit videos.

Next is Mike Oblinski whose storm videos are mindbogglingly gorgeous. Like his recent ‘Monsoon 6’.

Or 'Vorticity 3’ from a few months ago:

Then we have Timelab Pro, who create some of the most fantastic 4K+ drone footage.

Their latest video is from Switzerland.

Though my recent favourite of theirs is ‘75 000 h.p. The Biggest Nuclear Icebreaker’ – which is set to Hans Zimmer’s Inception soundtrack, no less.

Next we have this lovely hyperlapse from FilmSpektakel which presents 'A Taste of Los Angeles’.

Finally there’s this timelapse that I just recently came across. It’s from The Timewriters and is a riveting ‘Travel from Rotterdam to Amsterdam in 10 minutes by boat'.

If watching these types of videos is totally your jam, by the way, search for ‘4K timelapse’ on YouTube. You’ll find so many fantastic videos.

Happy watching! And let me know if you have any favourites I should really watch.

Gaming PC FTW!

It’s here! Exactly five months and one day after I ordered it, my Scorptec Blackout Gaming PC is finally up and running – and it’s all that I’d hoped it would be :)

Photo of a wide desk showing a large black desktop computer tower with a Wi-Fi antenna on top of it. Next to the tower is an ultra-widescreen computer monitor. The monitor is switched on and has a cloudy, starry nebula displayed on it. Behind the monitor is a pair of desktop speakers. In front of a monitor is a split gaming keyboard and a gaming mouse lying on a mouse pad.

Upgrading my PC gaming, er, game

I’m a PC gamer and over the last few years I’ve been buying myself Gigabyte gaming laptops. But when Microsoft Flight Simulator came out last year and struggled to run on my AERO 15 laptop – which, to be fair, is now three years old – I realised it was finally time to upgrade to a full-on gaming desktop. This decision coincided really nicely with NVIDIA releasing their GeForce 30 series, their latest line of dedicated graphics cards.

So, on the day the RTX 3080 was released (which was 18 Sep 2020 in Australia), I ordered a pre-built gaming PC from Scorptec, my favourite local computer retailer.

(Much as I’d love the idea of assembling my own gaming PC, that’s not something that I want to spend time on. I have several other mini-projects to keep me occupied.)

A graphics card? In this pandemic?

Sadly the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in NVIDIA’s production schedule. While, on the customer side, demand for those graphics cards far outstripped whatever NVIDIA could supply. So, from the middle of September 2020 to the middle of January 2021, my computer desk remained unoccupied.

Photo of a wide, half empty desk with several computer accessories arrayed on it: a pair of desktop speakers along the back; a gaming joystick and throttle; a gaming steering wheel; and three boxes, one each for a keyboard, mouse, and mousepad.

By November 2020 Scorptec had realised just how low the supply of the new NVIDIA graphics cards was going to be, so they created a page on their website though which customers could stay updated on how things were going. My NVIDIA graphics card was ASUS customised and co-branded. When Scorptec’s page was originally launched they’d only managed to fulfil 13% of the pre-orders on that particular card.

By January 2021 those pre-ordered had climbed into the 20% range. That’s when the curved, ultra-widescreen LG computer monitor (38GN950-B) that I’d ordered in December 2020 arrived. (Yay!)

Then, in mid-February – when that number climbed to 38% – I got a message from Scorptec to say that my gaming PC was almost ready to go. (I’d asked for an extra hard disk to be installed and that delayed the order by a couple of additional days.)

So it was on 19 February 2021 that I finally got my hands on this gorgeous machine. Now I can finally play Flight Simulator to my heart’s content. (After its 157GB data download, of course.)

Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, a gaming joystick, and gaming aircraft throttle, and a large drinking mug. The computer screen shows a window with a long download progress bar.

Throttles and pedals and wheels, oh my!

Funnily enough, Flight Simulator is the game I’ve played least since I got this PC.

Instead of joystick and throttle mode, I’ve gone mostly into steering wheel and pedals mode. (Thrustmaster FTW, either way.)

Photo of a desk on which there are: a computer tower, an ultra-widescreen computer monitor, a split keyboard (with backlit keys), a gaming mouse (which a glowing logo), desktop speakers, and a gaming steering wheel. Below the desk is a set of gaming car foot pedals. Pushed to the sides are a gaming joystick, a gaming aircraft throttle, and a paper stand on which there is a printed diagram of that joystick and what its various keys are mapped to.

The games I’ve been playing most are SnowRunner, BeamNG.drive, DiRT Rally 2.0, and Never Alone – all of which are fantastic and I’d highly recommend. (That last one, of course, is narrative based side-scroller that only requires a keyboard and mouse.)

I’m also really looking forward to Forza Horizon 4 which will finally be released for PC on 10 March.

So here’s to many more hours of gaming enjoyment. If you’re a gamer of any sort too, I wish you many hours on joy on your gaming set-up as well. #GameOn

Favourite podcast sign-offs

Do you have a favourite podcast sign-off ? I have six!

This Week in Tech

Up first is the O.G. podcast sign-off from Leo Laporte (with an occasional assist from Owen JJ Stone) on This Week in Tech:

LEO: “Another TWiT…is in the can.”

Rocket

Then there's my favourite podcast sign-off, which is from Simone de Rochefort, Brianna Wu, and Christina Warren on Rocket:

SIMONE: “This episode of Rocket is terminated.”

BRIANNA: “Terminated.”

CHRISTINA: “Terminated.”

Darknet Diaries

Next is the most consistently entertaining podcast sign-off, which is from Jack Rhysider on Darknet Diaries:

JACK: “And even though <insert funny, nonsensical, episode-specific tech reference/joke>, this is Darknet Diaries.”

Command Line Heroes

Possibly the most encouraging podcast sign-off is from Saron Yitbarek on Command Line Heroes:

SARON: “I’m Saron Yitbarek. Thanks for listening and keep on codin’“

Full Story

This next podcast sign-off is the most unassuming, but somehow also the most reassuring. It's from Laura Murphy-Oates from when she's the host of Guardian Australia’s Full Story:

LAURA: “Okay, catch you tomorrow” or “Okay, catch you on Monday.”

99% Invisible

Finally there's the podcast sign-off that always makes me happy. This is from Roman Mars on 99% Invisible and ends with:

ROMAN: “…but in it's heart will always be in beautiful downtown Oakland, California.”

2020 NBN update: now with FTTC

I’ve been tracking the NBN speeds we’ve been getting in the last four houses we’ve lived in. (NBN is Australia’s National Broadband Network, by the way.)

Since 2015, when we swapped our ADSL connection for the NBN, every time we’ve moved house our speeds have been gotten better. That’s mainly because, when picking a place to rent, we’ve only looked at houses with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connections. (Also because the NBN network itself has been getting incrementally better.)

This time, because we wanted a specific type of house within our price range, we decided to compromise a little and go for a place with a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) connection. The performance of FTTC connections depends very much on how far your house is from the fibre-optic distribution point on your street. We lucked out and found a house we wanted to rent that is directly across the street from one of these points.

Speeds I can live with

Compared to the house we just moved from, our download have dropped only 12.7% to 91.9Mbps, which I’m super happy about.

Unfortunately our upload speeds dropped by 51.2% to 18.5Mbps, which isn’t ideal.

Given how much time Nadia and I spend on video conference calls for work, this drop in upload speeds might be an issue if we’re both on a video call at the same time. I guess we’ll wait and see how the connection performs when that situation arises in the next few weeks.

Other changes: latency, technology

There are two other differences compared to our previous NBN connection.

First, our connection latency has increased 78% from 3ms to 5ms. You don’t notice that too much day-to-day, though, so this hasn’t been an issue so far.

Second, given the technology change from FTTP to FTTC, we had to change modems because the fantastic Synology RT2600ac we were using doesn’t support VLANs (virtual local area networks).

UPDATE (24 Aug 2022): With a firmware upgrade to SRM 1.3, the Synology RT2600ac router does now support VLANs (announcement; feature support; configuration info). A big thank-you to to Craig in the comments for letting me know about this update!

FTTC is more of a shared connection than FTTP, so you need to use a VLAN-capable modem to connect to the internet. But all is well because I quickly bought a Netgear Nighthawk AX8, which is an equally fantastic modem that does support VLANs (and, specifically, 802.1Q VLAN tagging).

(If any of you are wanting to connect your Netgear Nighthawk AX8 to an FTTC connection, by the way, follow the configuration that rhys375 figured out you need to get this working.)

A mixed bag, but I’m okay with it

Overall I’m comfortable with our new speeds. I might think differently if we have issues with simultaneous video conferencing, but I don’t expect this to be a major issue.

So, onwards and only slightly downwards! And let’s hope the NBN network keeps getting better and better as time goes by.

Contributing to Google Maps and Open Street Map

Turns out the 63 photos I’ve uploaded to Google Maps over the years have had over half a million total views!

Though just two of them — that Peninsula Hot Springs pizza one and the one from the helicopter flight over the 12 Apostles — have contributed to 200k of those views.

Over 500k views of my photos on Google Maps!

It’s cool of Google to keep sending update emails to their contributors that tell you how your contributions are performing and how they’re are helping other Maps users find what they're looking for. That’s gamification done well, and it certainly keeps me motivated to continue to share my local knowledge with them.

If you’re a regular user of Google Maps I recommend you sign up to be a local guide yourself. (I’m now a Level 6 local guide). What goes around comes around, as they say. And your contribution helps keep that wheel turning.

Importantly, data sets like these could do with more contributions from non-majority demographic city residents. So please review, rate, and share photos from non-mainstream places you love. That’s why, for example, I make sure to review every South Asian store and restaurant I go to in Melbourne.

And please don’t just contribute to closed, commercial data sets like Google Maps. Also contribute to open data sets like Open Street Map (where I’m also a contributor). That’s not as easy to do, I know, but the extra effort is worth it. Plus you learn a lot about map-making in the process — so that’s a win-win :)

Keyboard shortcut muscle memory

There’s a lot to be said about muscle memory.

I subscribed to Google Play Music in July 2013 and have been using it almost exclusively to listen to all my music since then. The only time I use a local media player on my laptop is when I want to listen to a bunch of high resolution albums I have in FLAC, which isn’t all that often these days.

So it still surprises me, then, when I find myself using — without a second thought — all the important keyboard shortcuts in Winamp!

WinAmp interface showing the album being played is Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Awesome day at the Avalon Airshow 2019

I love aviation, so it’s awesome that we live in Melbourne, which is close to Avalon Airport where the Australian International Airshow (usually just called Avalon Airshow) is held every couple of years.

Last time I got to take an inside tour of one my favourite military transport aircraft, the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, so this year I just enjoyed it from the outside. Of course you have to walk quite a way away before you can take a selfie that shows more than just one section of the Globemaster!

Other cool military transport aircraft I got to check out included the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules (from Republic of Singapore Air Force), Kawasaki C-2 (from Japan Air Self-Defense Force), and Boeing CH-47 Chinook (from Royal Australian Air Force).

Speaking of air forces, there was also an air force dog there!

Coming back to aircraft, some of the other highlights for me were this Beechcraft Super King Air (from Ambulance Victoria), Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin (from Victoria Police), and Douglas DC-3 (from Melbourne’s Gooney Bird).

My favourites from the commercial aviation side were this Boeing 747-400 (from Qantas) and the Cirrus Vision SF50 (Vision Jet). The Cirrus display was also where I got to meet Stefan Drury, who I’ve been following on YouTube for a couple of years and am a big fan of. Turns out real-life Stef is just like YouTube-star Stef :)

It was a super hot day so I didn’t have the time or energy to check out much else, like the indoor exhibition booths, seminars, military dog performances, and drone racing – all of which I wanted to go to. But I did get to check out this model aircraft display from Victorian Model Aeronautical Association.

I also didn’t get to watch many of the flying displays properly – though I did get to follow the aircraft around with my binoculars, so that was cool.

I had specifically wanted to watch the Globemaster in action, and even timed my day to be in the public viewing area when it was due to fly. Unfortunately, due to air traffic issues, its slot was rescheduled. So I had to make do with seeing it zip back down the runway to await a future slot. Oh well.

Here are some snippets from what I did get to see.

Finally, just before I left, I checked out the one bit of equipment you don’t ever want to use, but you’re very happy to see in the hugely capable hands of Airservices Australia.

All in all, I had a really fun time. And, given it was going to be a 40-degree day at Avalon, my plan of getting to the airshow just after gates opened and 8am and leaving around lunchtime worked out exceptionally well. So much so that I’m already looking forward to the 2021 show!

Staying safe and private online

I do lots of things to keep myself as secure and private as I can online – so many that I figured I’d make a list.

Securing my devices

  • make sure all my devices are fully encrypted – that includes all phones, tablets, laptops, and external hard drives (plus some USB sticks)

  • make sure all my data is backed up – and where it’s backed-up it is encrypted at rest (my cloud backup tool of choice is Arq and I use a local Synology NAS and Google Coldline as my backup locations)

  • make sure I have USB recovery drives for my all Windows installs

  • make sure my computer is kept proactively and reactively secure using anti-virus and anti-malware tools (my AV tool of choice is the pre-installed Windows Defender and my anti-malware tool of choice is Malwarebytes)

Securing my internet connection

  • configure my router to use a secure, private DNS server (CloudFlare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s Public DNS 8.8.8.8)

  • configure my Android phone to use a secure, private DNS server when on 4G (on the latest Android phones go to: Settings > Networks & Internet > Advanced > Private DNS)

  • use a VPN whenever I’m on an even slightly insecure network – on both my laptop and smartphone (my VPN provider of choice is Mullvad)

  • turn on my router’s guest network (with network isolation) and connect all my non-computer internet-connected gadgets (TV, Blu-ray player, cable set top box, etc) through that

  • use an advanced router that supports enterprise-level intrusion prevention (in my case I use a Synology router and their Intrusion Prevention app)

Securing my browser

Update: Check out my follow-up post for my list of ‘Firefox extensions for privacy and security’.

Securing my online accounts

  • use a password manager to generate and store long, secure, unique passwords for all my accounts (my password manager of choice is LastPass)

  • use two-factor authentication to keep as many of my accounts as possible secure (check the excellent Two Factor Auth List to see which accounts and services you can set up two-factor authentication for)

  • keep a regular, close eye on the data that various online services and social networks have on me by going through their ‘security check-up’ processes (eg Google’s excellent Privacy Check-up)

  • check all my email addresses on Have I Been Pwned to see which online services that I have an account with have had their user data stolen – also sign up to their ‘Notify me’ service to get an alert every time any of my email addresses is found in a newly stolen user data set

Always be learning

  • keep up with the latest in security via things like the Security Now podcast, several blogs, and a bunch of security-related mailing lists

  • check the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense website for the latest guides

  • consider switching to “ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives” to social media networks, online services, and software using the comprehensive (and growing) list on switching.social

I switched my mobile phone account back to Telstra

Much of my life is on the internet so slow network speeds really irk me. Which is why, two years ago, I moved my personal mobile account from Telstra to iiNet.

The need for speed

Back in 2016 the Optus mobile broadband network had among the best 4G data speeds: 21% faster downloads and 33% faster uploads compared to Telstra (when measured from my office). And the prices offered by resellers of that network, in my case iiNet, were significantly lower too.

I’d been with Telstra for ten years, but switching to iiNet — who were offering a clearly superior product — was an obvious choice. (I’d had iiNet as my home broadband ISP for over seven years by that point too.)

I need 4G at work

I currently spend about a third of my day in the office every single weekday. When I’m there I connect my work phone to the corporate Wi-Fi network. However, for various reasons, I don’t connect my personal phone to work’s guest Wi-Fi network. So, for over half of my weekday waking hours (more if you count my commute), I rely on my phone’s 4G connection.

This was all well and good till about two months ago.

We move to a new building

My office is in Collins Square, which is a five-tower complex in Docklands, Melbourne. Two months ago we moved offices from a tower at the front of the complex (adjacent Collins Street) to a tower at the back (overlooking the Yarra River). The views from this new building are much better, but the 4G download speeds for Optus mobile network users are much, much worse.

My work phone is with Telstra, so I was able to compare the 4G download and upload speeds I was getting from both Telstra an iiNet in this new building. The results speak for themselves.

The 4G speeds I was getting from iiNet were better than what they were in 2016, of course, but they were 8 times slower than what I was getting from Telstra.

Better coverage goes a long way

Telstra has always had better mobile and mobile broadband coverage in both urban and rural areas across Australia. That superior coverage was making all the difference here.

An investigation revealed that the the iiNet cell tower that gave me the best signal strength in the new office building was behind two of the other Collins Square buildings. Meanwhile the Telstra cell tower that gave me the best signal was just across the river.

So, yeah. The decision to switch back to Telstra was about as easy as it had been to switch away in the first place.

The good news is that, over the last two years, Telstra’s customer service has improved considerably. Ten minutes with an agent at one of their stores was all it took to make the switch back. And, as a bonus, I’m getting three times as much data from Telstra for the same monthly price I was paying at iiNet.

All is well again.

Update 4/2/19: Since publishing this post I discovered that Telstra has activated a cell tower at the top of Collins Square! Since that’s the tower my phone now connects to most often, my 4G connection is now even faster and is considerably more reliable from all corners of the office.