MIT Peeps: Have you heard what JonMon is up to nowadays?

May 6th, 2013

This post is mostly for the benefit of my fellow MIT alumni.

Remember Jonathan Monsarrat?

If so, then you may have gotten the same impression of him back at the ‘tute that I did, to wit, that he gave off creep vibes.

Judging from what has been written about him online since then, he’s done other things to reinforce that vibe, but this just about takes the cake… He has recently filed a lawsuit against several people, including Ron Newman whom many of you probably also know, alleging that they defamed him in discussions that took place in various forums on LiveJournal almost three years ago.

The lawsuit is clearly baseless and doomed to fail if it makes it to trial, but it seems likely that JonMon isn’t so much interested in prevailing in court, but rather in scaring people into removing their LiveJournal postings by raising the specter of an expensive legal defense.

Ken White has put up the Popehat signal asking for pro bono legal help defending against this attempt to suppress people’s free speech.

I’ve known Ron online for over two decades. He’s a good guy, and if he ends up needing financial help defending himself against this suit, you bet I’ll be contributing to his legal defense fund.

If there’s anything you can do to help — whether it’s providing pro bono assistance yourself, hooking Ron up with somebody who can provide such assistance, or just kicking in a few bucks to his legal defense fund if one is set up — then I encourage you to do so. And if you’re an MIT alum, make sure to mention it when you help…. It’s important to let people know that JonMon’s conduct is considered neither normative nor acceptable to most of the MIT community.

 

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Hack of the day: Pulseaudio / Bluez: Switch headset between A2DP and HSP automatically

April 23rd, 2013

If you’ve always wanted the Bluetooth headset you use on Linux to switch from high-fidelity (A2DP) to HSP/HFP Telephony automatically when you start using the microphone, and switch back automatically when you’re done, see this project which I just published on Github. Enjoy!

 

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Ohio company “Med Express” SLAPPs customer for true eBay feedback

April 15th, 2013

Here are the appalling facts in a nutshell (the full story is here)…

A woman buys a product on eBay from “Med Express” of Medina, Ohio. The product arrives postage due. She posts negative feedback about Med Express because of the postage due. Med Express sues her for defamation. When contacted about the lawsuit, Med Express explicitly concedes that the suit has no legal merit and their goal is to bully the customer into taking down the negative feedback, because Ohio has no anti-SLAPP statute and it’ll be too expensive for her to fight the lawsuit in Ohio.

If you are a lawyer with bar privileges in Medina, Ohio, or you know someone who is a lawyer with bar privileges in Medina, Ohio, and you or the person you know is willing to donate some pro bono time to give Med Express the legal ass-kicking they so roundly deserve, please get in touch with Ken White at Popehat (his take on this story is here).

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Comics aggregator supports King Features again, sort of

April 3rd, 2013

Recently, I wrote about why my comics aggregator stopped supporting comic strips distributed by the King Features Syndicate. In a nutshell, King Features changed how their comics are distributed in a way that (a) makes it much harder for my aggregator to scrape them, and (b) makes it 100% clear that they don’t want people scraping their comics.

They’re the copyright holder for these strips, so it’s their right to decide how people are allowed to view them. Aside from the ethical concerns with intentionally bypassing their restrictions, I frankly don’t want them to sue me. So free access to their strips through my aggregator is no longer an option.

However, all of their strips are available for your viewing pleasure at Daily Ink for the low, low price of $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year. With a paid subscription to Daily Ink, you can get King Features strips daily on your smart-phone, tablet or computer, as well as in email.

If that’s good enough for you, then you can go sign up there now and stop reading. However, if you’d like to get strips from Daily Ink all in one place with the other strips you read through my aggregator, then read on.

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MA RMV no longer emailing reminders about license renewals

April 3rd, 2013

A public service announcement for my readers in Massachusetts…

Several years ago, the Massachusetts RMV stopped mailing out paper letters reminding people to renew their driver’s licenses. Not mailing these letters supposedly saves the RMV about $600,000 per year; if that’s true, then stopping them seems like a reasonable thing for them to do.

Because this is the digital age, and people really do need to be reminded to renew their licenses, the RMV offered an email reminder service to replace the paper letters… You could go to the RMV web site and enter your email address and license expiration date, and the RMV would email you reminders as that date approached. Great idea, right?

Well, it was a great idea, until they silently discontinued the service this past winter without notifying the people who had signed up for it. If you were one of them, you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a renewal reminder from the RMV.

If you are a AAA member, you can use the service offered by the AAA to replace the discontinued RMV service. Alternatively, Attorney Brian Simoneau is offering the service for free to anyone.

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Rec: BlueRigger

March 15th, 2013

I recently bought a Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter from BlueRigger, because I wanted to use a wireless headset on my desktop computer at home, and it doesn’t have Bluetooth built in. It didn’t quite work… I was able to listen to music just fine on my headset, but when I tried to switch it into telephony mode (i.e., activate the microphone), it stopped working.

I emailed BlueRigger about the problem. They worked with me aggressively to find a solution to the problem. Eventually, they concluded that the Bluetooth 4.0 adapter, which has a relatively new chipset in it, is incompatible with Linux, but an older version of the same product is fully Linux-compatible. So they sent me one for free, and indeed it fixed the problem.

Well done, BlueRigger.

 

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Rec: Colonial Shoe Repair in Boston, MA

March 13th, 2013

I heartily recommend Colonial Shoe Repair in downtown Boston, MA. They took my wife’s pair of leather boots which were scuffed and salt-encrusted and had a broken zipper, and in a week replaced the zipper perfectly and cleaned, reconditioned, and waterproofed the boots to make them look almost like new.

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Unfiltered diesel exhaust from MBTA buses

March 7th, 2013

In my meeting today with the MBTA about the air quality inside T buses, I suggested that the fact that we sometimes see exhaust smoke coming from underneath the buses, despite the fact that the buses’ exhaust pipes are on top of the buses, might indicate a broken exhaust system which might explain how exhaust fumes are getting into bus passenger compartments. As evidence of this, I pointed to an article by Doug Tillberg on TransitBoston.com.

In response, the T employees at the meeting explained to me that it’s actually normal for exhaust smoke to come from underneath the buses, because there are actually two engines in the back of the bus that burn diesel fuel, one of which exhausts out the pipe at the top of the bus, and the other out from underneath.

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Meeting with MBTA about bad air in buses

March 7th, 2013

Today, I met with the MBTA to discuss my concerns about poor indoor air quality (IAQ) inside some T buses. I am extremely grateful to Michael Buckley, Sen. William Brownsberger’s Legislative Counsel and Policy Advisor, for arranging the meeting and attending with me.

The following T employees were present: Jeffrey Gonneville, Chief Mechanical Officer; Dave Carney, Director of Bus Operations; Erik Scheier, Project Director; and two other people whose names I’m sorry to say I didn’t write down and can’t recall. (If they read this, I hope they will forgive me. If I am going to keep doing this kind of thing, I really need to get better at remembering people’s names, which I’m really awful at.)

I learned several things at the meeting, and I obtained commitments from Jeffrey Gonneville to take concrete steps to look into my concerns. I wish I’d learned more, and I wish the T had committed to do more, but progress has been made.

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Stop & Shop just about redeems itself

February 28th, 2013

I received a call last night in response to the complaint letter recently I sent to Stop & Shop. The ensuing conversation yielded the following relevant information:

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