Author: chuck

Converting multiple FLAC files to OGG

A few days ago I wrote out how I split a single FLAC file that contains several tracks, into multiple individual FLAC flies. FLAC is a high quality lossless audio format, but they’re also pretty large in size. Personally, I like to convert my FLAC audio files to OGG format which can be considered the open format alternative to MP3s. These are essentially the music files I use for playback on devices with limited storage such as my smartphone.

I used to use Gnome’s Sound Converter program for this task, and although I think it’s great, I felt like it was a bit overkill to have GUI program do this simple task when it could be done in the terminal with a single command.

With the following command, I’m basically saying to find any file with “flac” in the name and to convert it to OGG with a quality of “6”. I’ve found that “6” put’s it more or less in line with an MP3 file at bitrate of 320kbps. 

find . -name "*flac" -exec oggenc -q 6 {} \;

Here I’ll be converting the album Distances by HUVA Network that I recently split up from a single FLAC file.

Depending on how many tracks are in the directory, the conversion may take a couple minutes.

Once the conversion is completed, I’m left eleven new OGG files along with the eleven original FLAC files.

Splitting FLAC Files from the Terminal

Performing a clean high quality rip of a CD often results with a large single file such as a FLAC or WAV depending on how it’s been ripped. In my case, it’s a big .flac audio file which includes several tracks along with a .cue file which includes track start times. I’ve tried a variety of GUI applications, but I’ve found that the easiest and most simplest way of splitting up these types of audio files is to just do it in a terminal.

First, be sure that cuetools shntool and flac are installed which will allow you to run cuebreakpoints and shnsplit. If your single file happens to be a wave (.wv) then also install wavpack. The tool cuebreakpoints reads the break-points from the cue file which can be piped into shnsplit which is the program used to split up the tracks from the single file.

sudo apt install cuetools shntool flac

Now, navigate to the folder where the cue and flac files are located and run the following command. 

cuebreakpoints file.cue | shnsplit -o flac file.flac

In my case, I’m splitting up the album Belus by Burzum, which looks like this:

Ignore “bad character”. This is likely due to the Swedish characters in the track names.

The end result is eight new tracks.

The end result isn’t perfect as I’ll have to rename and properly tag each file with Kid3-qt, but this is the easiest method I know of for splitting

Note: If you’re working with a wave file (with the .wv extension), I like to convert to FLAC before splitting:

wvunpack audiofile.wv -o - | flac - -o audiofile.flac

#DeleteFacebook

There was once upon a time (basically most of my 20’s) where I would share just about anything and everything to Facebook. I’m not sure I would have defined myself as someone that “over shares”, but I was certainly a highly active user of the platform, sharing every ridiculous photo and every stupid thought. As time went on, I not only adopted Facebook’s other services like Facebook Messenger and Instagram, but also other platforms like Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, etc and began actively sharing there as well thanks to the power of the network effect. Over the last few years or so, my use of these platforms gradually declined, primarily in part of gaining a deeper understanding about how the platforms operate and make money, but also due to, what I viewed, as negatively effecting my psyche.

I just want to provide a little bit of context of my personal experiences being on the other side of the screen. I worked at a digital marketing agency which specialized in social media marketing and content creation, which certainly contributed to why I quit social media all together. Due to the nature of my job, I was often on these platforms for 40 hours a week. It was here where I began understanding exactly how social media platforms work and what sort of personal data they collect. I sat in on a couple meetings with Facebook employees who shared in detail about how their advertising platform works, how to narrow our target demographics for paid media promotion, best practices for content, and which elements were needed in our content to drive engagement.

I helped inform Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram ads (of course we wouldn’t call them “ads”) which would then be promoted across social. I would create detailed reports from the data generated from these posts to see which content received the most reach, impressions, and total engagements (engagement rate). I’m oversimplifying here, but my goal here was to determine which creative elements performed the best in terms of what users would actually click on and engage with.

Facebook Needs to Collect as Much Data as it Can About You

Facebook is incentivized to collect every piece of information it can about you so that it can sell the keys to that information to advertisers – this is where the vast majority of where Facebook’s revenue comes from and at this point it’s common knowledge. What I find amusing is that a lot of this information Facebook doesn’t even have to ask for. We share this information with them by happily providing our full name, age, gender, location, political stance, and religious views. On top of that, we share our music tastes, our favorite movies, our favorite actors. We even share status updates of our thoughts – all of this data to be used to compile any even more detail advertising profile about you. This collection of personal data is how it makes it’s money – meaning that Facebook is not the product, you (the user) are the product that they sell to companies – a cliche statement, but nonetheless accurate.

We know how Facebook makes it’s money. This, in turn, motivates the company to get you addicted to spending as much time as possible on their platform so that they can serve you more ads and more clicks. The reasoning is that you are more likely to click on an ad when it’s more relevant to you and thus the need collect as much personal information about you as possible.

Welcome to the world of the attention economy. In our current, highly connected society, human attention is a scarce commodity which is why this business model is effective. What’s the harm in that? Facebook’s algorithms, it’s massive amount of data on you, as well as the advertisements themselves are designed to pull at the strings of your psyche (often at an unconscious level), to manipulate you and drive you to perform an specific action be it a click or purchasing a product or service. Yes this is basic marketing 101, but marketing to this extent has never been possible until the advent of Facebook (and social media in general).

Facebook Watches You Even When You’re Not Using Their Services

Another important fact that most people seem to be unaware of is that Facebook not only tracks everything you’re doing when you use their platforms, but they track you even when you’re not using their services. Say you’re using Facebook on your laptop, you close the tab, and then you decide to cruise the web, reading some news, watching videos, what have you. You’re still be tracked! The embedded Facebook “Like” button you see on most websites are indeed a Facebook tracker that reports back to Facebook that you visited that page. Not only is this level of tracking occurring on their platform, but it occurs even when you’re not using their service.

Furthermore, the most popular smartphone applications also contain embedded Facebook trackers (as well as other ad trackers). The Facebook application itself track you even when you’re not even using the app, and have (at least in the past) what other applications you have installed on your device.

Cesspool of Misinformation & Filter Bubble

The fact that Facebook is a cesspool of toxicity and misinformation might be a point that every single person agrees with, but to be fair Facebook isn’t entirely to blame here. As pretentious as this sounds, a lot of people lack the critical thinking to distinguish between a news article and an article that’s blatantly fake information. I am guilty of falling for misinformation as I’m certain you are – whether you’re aware of it or not. These types of misleading articles get repeatedly shared and oftentimes people will formulate their views and opinions not on the actual article itself, but simply by reading a headline! Seeing information repeatedly, you are more likely to believe it’s true – familiarity breeds trust. Granted, I’ll go out on a limb here and call almost anyone out on reading just a headline and then forming an opinion – again, I am guilty of doing the same thing. As a result, we cannot seem to agree on anything which is causing us to slide into a post-truth era.

Furthermore, Facebook’s algorithm is designed to keep us in a filter bubble. Anyone familiar with the algorithms will know you will only see content Facebook believes you’re likely to engage with. This keeps us engaging with people that oftentimes share our opinion which further exacerbates confirmation bias, but this ties back to keeping us using the platform for as long as possible because having our attention means serving us more advertisements, which means more ad revenue.

Distraction & the Obliteration of Your Attention

The average person spends 144 minutes a day on Facebook. Imagine how you could put that time to more productive and meaningful use, such as learning a new skill or spending time with your family. The notification sound which precedes a pleasant spike in dopamine leaves us in a constant state of distraction. I immediately think of Cal Newport’s books Deep Work and Digital Minimalism – two books I highly recommend.

I’m not claiming to be a productivity guru immediately after deleting my account, but I can confidently say that rather than scrolling mindlessly I’ve consciously made the decision to read more books, start writing again (which resulted in the creation of this website), and meditating frequently. I’ve also picked up old hobbies like tinkering with Linux.

Am I a Hypocrite?

Seeing as how I have been and still occasionally dabble in social media marketing, one might think I’m a hypocrite or experiencing some major cognitive dissonance. On the contrary, I believe you can still market to your target audience without the need of Facebook or having an “All Your Data Are Belong To Us” mentality. From my point of view, collecting an insane amount of personal data on users is not only unethical, it’s also completely unnecessary and disrespectful to users. Hell, I feel pretty confident that the majority of people who work in digital marketing agree with me on this and many companies, to a degree, are forced into playing the game that’s what’s expected. I will concede that as a business, opting out might be easier said than done and is very much a complicated issue. I can’t suggest that businesses get off of social media. For individuals, however, I recommend avoiding social media entirely.

Conclusion

Facebook’s product is not the platform – WE are the product and our DATA and ATTENTION are being sold to advertisers. It is important to ask yourself when using any free online service “how is this organization making money?”. If it’s not obvious, oftentimes you’re the product. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Companies like DuckDuckGo or Protonmail can monetize their service while also respecting their users.

If it’s not obvious at this point, my opinion is that Facebook is garbage and it’s the equivalent of feeding your brain junk food. I’m not telling everyone to go out and delete their Facebook accounts… actually maybe I am, but I know most likely won’t due to “reasons”. Additionally, I know that some people have their business heavily tied into Facebook and it’s simply not viable. I went back and forth with deactivating my account, unfollowed basically everyone, and then said fuck-it and ripped off the band-aid. Psychologically, I was worried and was experiencing fear of missing out, but after I deleted it, I felt so much better. To those wary of doing so, I’ll tell you the water here is just fine. As I said, I’m not sure anyone reading this will immediately go out and delete their account, but I think it’s important for everyone to understand exactly what Facebook is and how they make their money.

For me, deleting Facebook is the best thing I’ve done for my productivity, my privacy, and my mental health.

Some books regarding this topic that I highly recommend are:
– Digital Minimalism & Deep Work by Cal Newport
– Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
– Opt Out by Rory Price (who published his book free of charge)

Using Linux Full-Time for Work & Play

I’ve been using Linux off and on for the better part of 16 years. When I was 18, I volunteered (and later became an intern) at a local computer recycling non-profit called Free Geek that operates in my hometown Portland OR. Free Geek’s goal is to divert technology that would otherwise be recycled or thrown away, refurbish it, and give it back to our community at no or low cost. Hardware that cannot be reused is recycled in a responsible and ethical manner. Volunteering here gave me valuable exposure working at a non-profit, repairing computers, teaching other volunteers, and also working with Linux.

I’ve dual-booted Linux and Windows throughout college, coming back to Windows in order to play video games. Later on in my professional life I would use Linux for personal stuff, and used Windows and MacOS when it came to “actual” work. I had this impression that Linux was for personal use and tinkering, while Windows and MacOS were for work. My work at this time was either social media management (done entirely through a web browser) or general office stuff (editing documents, sending emails, researching county code, etc). However, one day out of curiosity I decided to use Linux exclusively for a day for work. Then a week. Then a month. As it stands currently, I’ve been using Linux exclusively for both work and personal use for more than a year and a half, and between two separate jobs in wireless and digital marketing.

Let me talk about the reasons why I made this switch. Today, I avoid using Windows at all cost (with the occasional exception of running it in a virtual machine for specific uses) due to the sheer amount of garbage that comes bundled with the operating system. On a typical Windows 10 install, there are dark patterns cramming Microsoft Edge down your throat and forcing you into creating a Microsoft account at install in order to use your computer. There are advertisements literally baked into the operating system which I paid for, telemetry (ie data collection) everywhere – even within calculator. With each update, some part of the OS UX changes so that some manager at Microsoft can say that they did something rather than improving functionality. Not to mention forced rebooting and the fact the system settings are a complete mess (Settings vs Control Panel).

Windows 10 Home (and Professional for that matter) is incredibly bloated with nonsense applications, most of which can’t removed directly. Certainly there are ways around this by using Windows LTSC, but from my own experience it’s quite difficult to find an actual key since they’re sold in bulk by Microsoft.

As privacy, it is possible to dive into settings and switching off at least some of the telemetry, but there’s still nonetheless still a lot of data collection occurring. Even if you do this, once there’s a new software update, these switches are magically turned back on. Of course, the “all your data are belong to us” mentality doesn’t only infect Microsoft products, but sadly the same can be said for any modern smartphone and other devices available today. The primary reason I won’t use Windows 10 is due to the complete lack of trust that the OS will respect my privacy.

As for MacOS, it’s a bit of a different story. There is some tracking that can’t be turned off, yes, but this is minuscule compared to what’s found in a stock Windows OS install. MacOS UX also isn’t the clusterfuck that Windows is. Software comes from a package manager, which is a big plus for security over Windows. The reasons why I don’t use MacOS (outside of some mandatory work tasks) is that 1) Apple devices are stupidly expensive, 2) I don’t want to buy into using the Apple ecosystem, 3) the OS is locked down with little to no room for customization. It’s also not free and open source, so again I have an issue with trust.

So after years of frustration with Windows, enter Linux. As it turns out, Linux has worked out just fine for me over the last year and a half. This of course entirely depends on the line of work you’re in. My current role is done almost entirely through a web browser. My previous line of work in wireless did unfortunately require me to occasionally run a virtual machine of Windows 10 so that I could use Adobe Reader Pro for forms and signatures, and sometimes MS Word since client documents wouldn’t render correctly in LibreOffice. Other than that, Linux is supported quite well for the vast majority of software. Hell, even MS Teams runs on Linux (which I reluctantly have to use). If I were to guess, the reason why Microsoft doesn’t port MS Office to Linux is is order to keep people (and Enterprise) on the Windows platform.

I think that my experience shows that even people with non-developer/programmer jobs can use Linux full-time. There is a bit learning curve, of course, but it’s an OS that respects it’s users. And hell, most stuff is done through a web browser these days anyways.

What are Dark Patterns?

Dark Patterns are user interface elements that essentially trick you into a performing an action or behavior. This especially occurs on social media and shopping websites where companies are using deceptive UX design to trick users into giving away data, installing unnecessary software (which is primarily adware or spyware in nature), or adding their email address to their mailing list where we’ll be spammed for eternity (because even though we may be lucky to find that opt-out link buried at the bottom of the email, the company’s customer email database will likely be sold to marketers). Needless to say, this is an unethical practice and by definition asshole design.

Learning to identify dark patterns will help not only help you avoid being bamboozled yourself, but if you work in the industry it will also help you push back on clients that may ask you to implement one. Note: I am not a UX designer.

To give you some background, the term “dark pattern” was coined by the UX designer Harry Brignull in 2010 where he started the website darkpatterns.org with the goal of “naming and shaming deceptive user interfaces”. On this site, a list of known patterns are identified but I’d like to focus on just a few that I’ve had this personal misfortune of dealing with.

The Roach Motel
Last year I deleted my Amazon account. I won’t get into the reasons why, but I will say that it was absolutely not a straight forward process. With most online accounts, deleting or deactivating your account is a pretty straight forward process, but with Amazon I spent time navigating their settings page which more or less resembles a rat maze. In fact, I had to send them a message to Amazon Support in order to delete my account. This dark pattern is called “Roach Motel“. The design makes it easy for someone to get into a situation (such as signing up for an Amazon account), but makes it very difficult to get out.

Friend Spam
Friend Spam is one that I’m sure many people have had to deal with in the early 2010’s. LinkedIn requested my email address under the pretense it would be used to find people I know on LinkedIn, with the innocent-sounding button “Add to network”. The reality was that they spammed ALL of my email contacts with an invite to LinkedIn while claiming to be a message from me. The result of this shady practice resulted in resulted in a $13 million dollar lawsuit.

Misdirection
This is one that’s very common and that I despise. Misdirection is a dark pattern designed to focus your attention on one thing in order to distract your attention from another. The most common example of this comes in the form of automatic opt-in of email spam. When signing up for an account or service, prominent marketing come-ons distract users from seeing check boxes that by default sign them up for a “updates and offers” disguised as “newsletters”, memberships, or software add-ons like a browser extension. I recently encountered this when I had to install Adobe Reader on Windows 10 for work and not only got an annoying little browser add-on collecting data of who-knows-what, but also a trial for McAfee antivirus which comes with continual pop-up advertisements. Granted, I caught this right away and reinstalled, but these check-boxes were automatically ticked and fools the user into thinking they’re required since they’re right below the terms of service agreement.

There are several others that have been identified that I (like most) have experienced such a Privacy Zuckering which tricks you into publicly sharing more information about yourself than you intended to, or the Bait and Switch when you set up to do one thing such as purchasing a product or service that’s advertised as free (or reduced price) but that it’s no longer available and the page presents similar or products of higher price or less quality.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been highlighting this issue recently (which is how I became aware of it) and has partnered with Access Now, Consumer Reports, Pen America, and Harry Brignull to set up a tip line to report dark patterns.