rinzewind.org/blog-en

Simple bash script to reduce the size of an EPUB file

José María Mateos — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Well, this blog is still alive!

Have you ever downloaded an EPUB file too many megabytes too large? The reason is, quite probably, that the images in the file come in high resolution.

As an .epub is nothing more than a .zip with a certain structure, it's possible to uncompress it, reduce the image size and leave everything as it was before¹.

I've been doing this by hand for a few months but in the end I've decided to save time in the long term.

Behold this technological wonder. You're welcome. Use it only if you know what you're doing, I'm not responsible for anything bad that might happen, yadda yadda.

Calibre has a plugin to do something like this but it doesn't reduce the size too much. The extremely simple and braindead solution I'm proposing gives me better results. ↩

Don't waste your time: let the regulator deal with the credit bureaus (at least in Quebec)

José María Mateos — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Credit bureaus are known for their sloppiness and incompetence, but you're forced to deal with them¹. Recently, a family member tried to freeze her credit score but she was having problems with it. I had recently found again this wonderful link that explains how to write proper complaint letters, so I decided it was a good opportunity to put this in practice. It's a good idea to always deal with these companies in writing so that there's a record.

We drafted a letter explaining what she wanted to do, what wasn't working, and what we expected from TransUnion, attached all the relevant documentation, and sent it by certified mail. A couple of weeks passed and we received a very standard response: "This communication is written in response to your correspondence and/or documents received disputing the accuracy of certain information in your credit file"... which is not what we had done.

In Quebec, credit reporting agencies are regulated by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). They have a process to help citizens with their complaints, and they'll be a middleman with authority between us and a company that's not doing what we requested. The process can be started here and it takes 10 minutes to fill. So we decided to do that: we explained what we sent to TransUnion, what we expected them to do, and what we received back, and attached all the communications we had with them so far.

A few days later (this was fast!), she received an e-mail from TransUnion asking how they could help, and offering to call next morning; this solved the problem promptly.

I'm writing this because at this point I've seen many stories in different forums of people trying to deal with these companies with no success. This workflow worked for us:

Contact (in writing!) with the company and tell them very clearly what you want them to do. You can follow that link I mentioned above; this FTC guide is also good.
Wait for a response. If it's good, you're done.
If it's not (most likely), contact your provincial regulator and check if they offer a service like the AMF does, or in any case contact them with the relevant documentation so that they know that a company under their supervision is not doing its job properly.

they already have your data whether you like it or not, so you have no choice. ↩

The tech downturn seen through Hacker News comments

José María Mateos — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 10:00:00 -0500

Yesterday, I ran my script to check how many comments on the monthly Hacker News Who's hiring post mention a remote option. Remote jobs reached a level of 75 % - 80 % and stayed there (it doesn't look like that's going to change soon), but what's striking is the drop in the number of comments.

Article in Montreal Gazette about credit freezes in Quebec

José María Mateos — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 15:40:00 -0500

(The Montreal Gazette published this week this piece I sent them. It's part of a larger campaign to bring changes to ID theft laws in Canada that I have started on a separate domain; you can get more information at idtheftreform.ca. If you're interested, please join our mailing list.)

On June 20, 2019, millions of Desjardins customers learned that their personal data had been leaked in one of the largest incidents of this type to ever happen in Canada. They joined the increasing ranks of Canadians who have seen their information leaked. In its 2021-2022 annual report, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada informed of 645 breach reports, “affecting at least 1.9 million Canadian accounts.” These are only the breaches we know about; the actual situation is likely worse than that. A recent survey revealed that 74 per cent of responding businesses didn’t report a cyber security incident after it was discovered.

The people most affected by these leaks, the ones who saw their most sensitive data getting out (name, address, birth date and social insurance number), must be on the lookout for identity theft forever. With that information on hand, criminals can impersonate them, get a new car, phone or credit line, and the victims will have to scramble to prove, in a perverse inversion of the burden of proof, that they didn’t open those accounts. It can happen next week, next month or 10 years from now. In its 2021 report, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported 29,500 cases of identity theft, an increase of 45 per cent over the previous year.

Official guides to protect yourself against identity theft (CRA, Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre) emphasize personal measures: shred your mail, don’t give away personal information, use strong passwords. However, no matter what you do at the personal level (and you should still do it), your data is not yours anymore. It will keep jumping from company to database to report and every time it gets copied the probability that it will get leaked only increases. It doesn’t need to be digital: your data can be stolen from your mailbox, or from the tax receipt you threw away without shredding. And once it’s out there, there’s no going back; you can’t unscramble an omelet.

Once we accept that we have little control over our data, it is wise to establish a second line of defence downstream. The two main credit bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion, offer their customers credit monitoring services and will send them alerts if something changes in their file. It’s a reactive solution, and not a very good one at that; it may take up to 30 days for a notification to get sent.

A better tool arrived at the United States starting in 2003 in California, and later legislated federally in the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act: the credit freeze. It enables U.S. citizens to lock their credit files. This means that their file can’t be accessed and no new credit accounts can be opened unless the freeze is removed or temporarily lifted, in case that person is really applying for new credit. As opposed to monitoring services, it’s a proactive approach: it gets triggered before the damage is done.

Here in Canada we’ve had to wait almost 20 years, but credit freezes are finally arriving, though only in Quebec, thanks to the Credit Assessment Agents Act, passed in October 2020. As of Feb. 1 this year, Quebec residents are to be able to place security freezes with the credit bureaus. So if you are not currently shopping around for new credit, put aside a couple of hours, contact Equifax and TransUnion and freeze your file for free. You don’t know who might be trying to do something nefarious with your data until they do.

Those in the rest of Canada? Today is a day as good as any other to contact their elected representatives, to ask them to enact similar legislation.

Two details about TransUnion Canada's website

José María Mateos — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 09:00:00 -0500

In preparation for February 1st, when Quebec residents will finally be able to place credit freezes with the credit bureaus, I created user accounts with both Equifax and TransUnion so I could manage the freezes from there. As I had already created the accounts, I wanted to access my free credit report, as mandated by law. The process with Equifax was very straightforward, but TransUnion's website still hasn't worked for me. There are two details about the webpage I'd like to highlight.

1. The regular sign-up method tries to sell you a subscription

I tried creating my account by going to the main page, then clicking on "Member Login", and then on "Sign up". Lo and behold, I have a nice "You Have Chosen: TransUnion Credit Monitoring for $24.95/month" box on the side. No, I haven't.

The right way to create an account without any associated product is to follow Government of Canada's official guide on how to get one's credit report for free, where they link to TransUnion's "Consumer Disclosure" page, and from there you can click on this link and manage to create an account without any subscription attached to it.

2. The "Online Consumer Solutions" page doesn't work

The page that TransUnion uses to provide the free credit report (called "Consumer Disclosure" by them) works, if by "works" we mean crashing in three different ways:

Logging you out immediately after logging in because you've been idle "for more than 20 minutes."
Showing this nice error message: "Unfortunately, the Web site has encountered a temporary issue with your request. We apologize for the inconvenience." It's been temporary for the last couple of weeks.
A page not redirecting properly error.

I stopped trying after a while, but I'm sure I might have found new and thrilling error messages if I kept at it.

3. Special mention: the phone service

I dislike talking to corporations on the phone because I prefer to keep a written record of what was discussed. However, TransUnion announces a "Interactive Voice Response system" in their PDF form to request the free credit report, so I was curious.

I called the number shown on the document, and after selecting 1 for English language, I heard the following message: "If you are calling from a mobile device, you can skip waiting on hold and speak to our agents via mobile messaging. To receive a text message from us now, please press 1." That looks interesting. After pressing 1, I received a text message and the call was automatically terminated. This was the message:

Welcome to TransUnion. To start your conversation please click on the following link, which will redirect you to TransUnion Chat. Link: https://www.transunion.ca/customer-support/main

Please do not disclose personal information unless requested by a live agent. To stop receiving messages, reply STOP. For help, reply HELP.

Yes, the page is TransUnion's customer support page, where they list ways to contact them.

I guess someone's KPIs have gone through the roof because customers choose to end many calls by themselves after a few seconds.

Why do I have to deal with this crap?

Not long ago, Equifax uploaded to YouTube a webinar in which they list practical details on how they plan to implement Quebec's Bill 53. It's interesting to watch, if only to get a glimpse of how credit bureaus work internally. The minute 18:30 contains a phrase that everybody should acknowledge:

"We're all consumers, and consumers are customers."

And that's why I have to deal with these two companies. I have no choice. That's also why the service quality is so dreadful.

The e-mail address jmmateos@hggm.es (or jmmateos@mce.hggm.es) no longer works

José María Mateos — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 08:29:00 -0500

I'm writing this post just in case the following chain of extremely improbable events take place: a) someone has read one of the articles I published in my prior life as an academic; b) wants to get in contact with me to ask something or make a comment; c) has tried the e-mail address listed in the paper and has received an error message; and d) has gone to Google to search for the e-mail address to see if they can find another way to contact me.

As I said, extremely unlikely, but as posting on the blog is free, it won't hurt.

For reasons I don't really know, my e-mail addresses in the domain hggm.es no longer work. If you want to get in contact with me, you can find up to date information here and, if I don't change the blog template too much, in a box right below this post.

The feed at shared.xml has stopped updating

José María Mateos — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 14:30:00 -0500

It never had too many subscribers, but for those of you that are still there, please beware that the feed at shared.xml has stopped updating. As I started a Mastodon account not long ago, I'll share interesting links and articles there instead. Here's my account, and if you prefer RSS access, we have you covered.

This only affects the XML file I was using to share articles from time to time. This blog is still running and its feed is still where it always was.

Important notice

José María Mateos — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 15:30:00 -0400

The number of employees let go today from this blog is exactly 0.

As comments are not allowed, the moderation team (me) is still working as hard as yesterday, at least.

You can receive a real time feed here. You can send me your DMs with the information you'll find on this page.

All this costs way less than $44bn.

Should you quit academia?

José María Mateos — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 12:12:00 -0400

At any given point in time, thousands of people are thinking whether it's worth it pursuing a career in academia.

I've created this simple page to help them decide. It doesn't give too many details, but some decisions should be quite clear.

The weirdest spam message I've received so far

José María Mateos — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 07:48:00 -0500

It goes like this (excerpted):

Are your production models too big? Would you be interested in getting the same performance out of your LightGBM/XGBoost/Random Forest models but with 80% fewer features/explanatory variables?

Kindly click to respond: Yes Maybe No

We're approaching what I'd expect to read in a cyberpunk text. Pssst, I have this model here, want to try it?