Samsung Chromebook 3 review

(image borrowed, sorry, I am a horrible person)

I'm a huge Chromebook fan but I'd never bought myself one. (I bought someone a Samsung Series 2, and I use a work Acer C301.) I finally bought one recently, however, when a laptop died shortly before Black Friday. I like Samsung's products (no jokes about batteries!) and the "3" looked pretty good from the reviews. Here are my thoughts about it, after using it for a month.

To remind the reader, it is very inexpensive ($150-200 depending on store and sales) so one shouldn't expect much from the components: Intel Celeron 1.6GHz 3050, 4GB DRAM, no USB 3.0 or USB-C, decent 11" video and WiFi. It's /very/ light and has one claim to fame: the keyboard resists spills. Another thing they did right: micro SD slot! No more adapter! No more wasted space!

Despite being on the light side, the screen hinge and keys feel solid. I like the form factor. The keyboard feels good, although the arrow keys are tiny and "bury" themselves pretty easily. The Acer is better here.

The problems show up when I start to use it. It feels slow. When it's slow, it seems to be using WiFi - fetching Google search suggestions, waiting for Google apps to respond, waiting for a site to load, waiting for authentication to complete, etc. - so it's a little hard to blame the Chromebook. However, the Acer has no such trouble (except for one spreadsheet I have) so I suspect that it is indeed the Samsung. I verified that it is using 5GHz during these tests.

I've caught some bugs:
- When I logged in the first time, it went into a reboot loop. It didn't stop until I turned off all the extensions in my profile on another computer. :/
- One time, with the lid closed, the battery died. I guess this doesn't always suspend it.
- One time I returned to it after a day, with the screen still lit. This might have been because I was cycling the power-cord.
- One time, after opening the screen, it didn't respond, despite holding the power key for 11 seconds. It finally responded when I opened the screen a hair wider. Weird...
- One evening, it couldn't maintain a connection to a Chromecast. I tried again the next evening and it worked fine. The next evening, it worked fine for one video, then couldn't keep the next video running. Still trying to narrow down the conditions for failure...

On the bright side:
- Putting it into dev mode went well, and I installed Crouton without issue. I haven't played with it much, however.
- It does everything that I've asked it to do. There isn't a website that I've visited that it couldn't display.
- TODO: Try Android apps!

Summary:
- A little slow (compared to faster Chromebooks.)
- A little unreliable, but bearable
- Worth every penny!

This Christmas, Unity's Best Friend: Retailers

"I never met a customer I didn't like." may be a funny quip, but this season, it may be providential for national unity. We're hearing daily that the racial hatred drumbeat is getting louder. The country needs someone on the other side speaking for racial tolerance and unity. That someone may be retail.

Marketplace recently noticed that some retail sales were drastically down after the election  - down to 25% of pre-election numbers.

Maybe this is temporary, but if it impacts Black Friday, then it could easily wipe out the 3.4% gain that the NRF predicted.

With all these neo-Nazis running around yelling, "Go home!", and half (!) of retail's customers being "minorities", what is retail to do?

Clearly retail needs to get the word out that minorities are welcome at their stores. They need to make it crystal clear that the stores will protect and welcome them.

Remember: Right now the minorities don't know who their friends are. They assume that the other half of the country voted for their deportation. It would be welcome news to hear the weighty opinion of the gargantuan American capitalist system give its blessing to the "minority" shoppers.

Would the stores simply be doing this because of the potential sales? Doesn't that mean that they don't truly - in the bottom of their jingling hearts - love each and every person?

Sure, but a convenient friend is still a friend.

Someone's Calling Shenanigans

This story is interesting to me because I'm sort of a crypto-nerd, and definitely computer scientist, and one of the intersections of those disciplines is voting machines.

On Tuesday, the 22nd, cryptographer Matthew Green tweets about an article about J. Alex Haldeman, a computer science professor and supposedly serious election systems researcher, in NYMag:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html

The gist is, Haldeman thinks the votes in 3 states are worth re-counting. The clues: Electronic voting machines have been shown repeatedly to be vulnerable, recently there have been known hacks by foreign nationals, and there are some disturbing statistics in the swing states: Counties which used electronic voting were 7% off of counties which didn't.

The next day, Haldeman writes a piece on Medium clarifying his position:

https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba#.6ja3dhg56

It's more measured, essentially saying that he does not believe that the election was hacked, but that we need a recount to have faith in the election (and to know if we *were* hacked.)

Also today, Jill Stein is asking for donations to do a recount. She's doing pretty well so far:

https://jillstein.nationbuilder.com/recount

Exciting times...

P.S. I forgot to mention that Ron Rivest (the "R" in RSA) shows that you only need to count 2.3% of the ballots for confidence:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZM-i8t4pMK0

Election Thoughts

I haven't had time to write a longer piece on my thoughts about the election. I've only written little responses to other posts. Here are some extended thoughts that I haven't heard already.

One of the biggest thing that bothers me after this election is the harassment that some on the right are giving to supposed minorities. I have co-workers who, because they don't look completely White, are being yelled at to, "Go back to where you came from!"

These co-workers are well-dressed and well-groomed. They do not look like gang members or "job-stealing" migrant farm workers. They dress as affluent Americans.

The harassers are not "rednecks". They aren't missing teeth, they do not have a Confederate flag on their shirt, nor do they have a gun rack in their truck.

This isn't Arkansas or Mississippi. This is California.

In other words, these are perfectly educated (as far as I know) people, living in the most prosperous state in the union, complaining about perfectly productive people. I'm trying to figure out exactly what their problem is.

It would appear that these people are jealous that someone who doesn't look completely White was able to afford a nice shirt. Or nice slacks.

It would appear that these people are jealous that someone who doesn't look completely White got a white-collar job that they don't have. Even though they didn't apply for the job, much less go to college.

It would appear that these people, upon seeing someone less-than-White, and perceiving them as more successful, become insanely jealous. Perhaps they concluded that the person could not have gotten this success without cheating. In any case, the person concludes that the other person stole their opportunity somehow.

In other words, it would appear that it is precisely because they are so nicely dressed that the harassers are getting angry.

I guess now we have neo-Nazis coming out the woodwork, thinking they have some kind of majority. They're having their rallies and threatening minorities whenever it suits them.

My message to people-who-voted-for-Trump (notice I didn't say, "supporters") would be to stand up and yell at the top of your lungs that you don't support this racial hatred. Say that your vote for Trump had nothing to do with racism, and that you abhor the behavior of these bigots.

Why should you do it, instead of me? First, I am saying it. Second, they won't listen to me. You voted for Trump. They think you're on their side. The more Trump-voters who say they detest racism, the more you eat away at this imaginary majority.

Hopefully, when they look behind them and don't see anyone there, they might get the message.

Facebook is the new Fox News

Profits before propriety.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/11/the-forces-that-drove-this-elections-media-failure-are-likely-to-get-worse/

You Reap What You Sow

This post is addressed to the people who voted for Trump. We know that you're out there, even if you won't admit it. You have complained about pretty much every piece of Obama policy. You think that this country is worse off than it was 8 years ago, even though:

• Bush left office with a 25% approval rating; Obama's is 52.1%, higher than Reagan's
• Obama saved GM, preserving a million factory jobs
• the Dow is TWICE what it was the day he took office (18,000 vs 9,000)

Guess what? You're going to get everything you asked for. You want Republicans? You got 'em! In all 3 branches of government!

Remember the vacant seat on the Court? The one that the Senate refused to fill? Good news! You can bet it will get filled with someone who will side with Walmart and Wells-Fargo when they come to take your house away.

Remember the Bush administration? Remember Dick Cheney and Dennis Hastert? They're all back!

So, in the interest of nostalgia, and remembering the good ol' days, here is a list of what the Bush administration did that you can expect the Trump/Ryan administration to repeat:

• Lower taxes for the ultra-rich, exploding the deficit.
• Give $600 to the rest of you, which you have to give it back at the end of the year.
• Leave AMT where it is, raising your taxes. Remember: The rich don't pay AMT! Only you do!
• De-fund Amtrak, raising airline ticket prices.
• De-fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (e.g. Downton Abbey, Sesame Street).
• De-fund the National Parks.
• Tell the oil drillers that they can do whatever they want, resulting in drilling and fracking right outside your home, and new earthquake fields.
• Buy up all the surplus oil - with your tax dollars! - and put it in the National Reserve, sending gasoline back to all time highs.
• Tell the banks that they can do whatever they want, resulting in the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression.
• Go to sleep on the job, resulting in the biggest terrorist attack in America's history.
• Invade a country for the purpose of financially benefiting the members of the Administration.

You can bet that they'll add:

• Repeal the Affordable Care Act, killing any chance for 20 million Americans to get health insurance.
• Remember those tech companies you revile with a jealous tinge? No Cadillac tax for them! Yay!
• Expel illegal immigrants, raising the price of food.
• Raise tariffs on Chinese goods, making a hair dryer cost more than a clothes dryer.

Congratulations, America! You earned it!

Teensy 3.6 Tips

These are just a few things that I ran into getting basic sketches working on the new Teensy 3.6. A lot of these tips are for someone running Linux.

- Currently, Teensyduino software (1.30) requires Arduino IDE 1.6.11. You can get it here:

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/OldSoftwareReleases#previous

- Install Arduino first. On Linux, I had to give the 'J' option to 'tar' because the file used 'xz' compression. Then run the Teensyduino downloaded file (you might have to make it executable first) and point it at the Arduino installation directory. The 'Next' button will stay grayed out until you point it at an Arduino directory that it likes.
- For Linux, the Teensyduino didn't install the file 49-teensy.rules. I found it here:

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/49-teensy.rules

It should be copied, as root, to /etc/udev/rules.d. I don't know if it's completely needed, but I suspect that this is where /dev/ttyACM0 comes from (below).

- In the Arduino IDE, board type should be Teensy 3.6, and USB type should be 'Serial'. That's all I had to change.
- Make sure you use a data-capable USB cable to connect to the Teensy. Power-only cables are all too common as give-aways with new phones. (Remember, these are the guys who made USB-C cables that blew up laptops.) The clearest sign that you're using a power-only cable is that the operating system won't even register that you plugged something in. Uploading certainly won't work.
- Before 'Serial.print()' will work, you need to:
-- Put 'Serial.begin(9600)' in your 'setup()' routine:

void setup()
{
    Serial.begin(9600);  // the speed doesn't matter
    // other stuff
}

-- Upload it to your Teensy.
-- Look under Tools::Ports and select the port that looks like the operating system accidentally found it. For me on Linux, it was '/dev/ttyACM0'.
-- Select Tools::Serial::Monitor.

You should see your print-outs in this new window.

- Remember that a pin number on one type of board may not be the same on another. The LED on the Teensy 3.6 is 13.

That's it for now. More as I continue to play with this thing...

Eero "review"

I'm saying "review" in quotes because I'm not doing an in-depth review. These are just first impressions (compared to other modern wifi routers, e.g. the OnHub.)

Setting up the eero was trivial. Here were the steps:

- Install eero app on Android phone. For obvious reasons, you want to do this before you lose wifi. :)
- Open the app. The first thing it wanted to do was text me a code.
- Receive the code and enter it into the eero app.
- Plug in the eero's power.
- Plug in the broadband modem's cable. It doesn't matter which port you use.
- Let the app "find" the eero.
- Give your network a name and password. I used the exact same name and password from my previous router so I wouldn't have to re-configure a mountain of devices.
- My phone joined the network and could reach the internet.
- At this point, the app wanted to do a speed test. The numbers below look correct to me (this is currently on a Verizon DSL link) but notice the date. Looks like a software buggette to me. :)

As you can tell, this went absolutely flawlessly. No asking for the modem to be put into bridge mode, no warnings about double NAT, no "try again".

For those curious, there is no current way to override things like:
- the subnet to use. It uses 192.168.1.x and (apparently) 192.168.7.x
- the DNS server to use (in case you wanted to use a child-safe service.)
- NAT loopback, port forwarding, etc.

The app claims that they're coming soon, fwiw.