TL;DR Answer was found here. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1426476/ubuntu-22-04-audacity-does-not-show-up-in-pulseaudio-recording-tab

sudo apt install audacity -y

Admittedly, the process of trying to lay down and run Audacity initially gave me a bit of grief.

Wanted to install Audacity on my freshly laid down copy of Ubuntu 22.04 and all the references I could find of Audacity was to either install using “Snap” or “Flatpak”. Was apprehensive about Snap versions of any software and recall having grief with Audacity Snap before on my older machine giving me vague errors (e.g error -9985) about being unable to save or being unable to listen to a particular recording device. “Going Transport” –> “Rescan Audio Devices” did absolutely squat.

Even went back into Ubuntu Store and enabled all permissions on Audacity with again, nil effect. Appears nothing has changed (at the time of writing this post) two years on. As a Ubuntu user, I don’t have an overall very good impression of Snap at all having had issues with other Snap packages including with Flameshot (a screenshot tool) being unable to save to the Picture directory.

Traditional Hangi at Christmas.

Admittedly, my desire to travel anywhere is in a definite lull at the moment. I’m anticipating it will come back at some point, but I ain’t going to try and force it back. May be accommodation and general travel costs is impacting this a bit.

Might do some day or short overnight trips somewhere these Holidays depending on availability of accommodation / tent sites and depending on how I feel. Again, I’m not going to force it. Will spend my holidays how I see fit.

An average picture of “The Tron” (Hamilton, New Zealand)

There’s been a bit of an issue in more recent months where Reviews posted to Google Maps aren’t being made public. They appear for the review’s author while they are logged in, but if you log out or view the same business listings in incognito mode, the reviews aren’t displayed. This appears to go regardless for reviews that are either positive, neutral or negative.

Got someone at Google to investigate, but it feels like I’m being strung along. Appears Google deployed some rather crude and improperly set up Artificial Inteligence (AI) / Machine learning (ML) Algorithm (which is rather imprecise and inaccurate) in a botched attempt to moderate their review platform and battle fake reviews which has resulted in swaves of legitimate reviews also getting nuked.

Unfortunately, for affected reviewers, there is no way to either appeal or upload eveidence to support the authenticity of one’s experience. At the same, if you discover fake reviews, there is no way to upload evidence of such, only simply flag them which is frankly and utterly useless.

In the meantime, I’m encouraging people not to bother lending too much weight towards Google Reviews for any purchasing decisions going forward. Their automated vetting processes haven’t left me with confidence in it’s accuracy because pragmatically there aren’t enough inputs nor data points for such a system to make a sound enough decision on the authenticity of reviews.

Keep hearing in the news this Wellington area based group of activists named “Restore Passenger Rail” gluing themselves to Roading infrastructure and being militant in their climate change activism.

From what I’ve seen, it appears they are more about climate change in general rather than solely focussed on bringing back our passenger train network. I think they need to rename their group to reflect their current end aims.

To be honest, if Climate change is their concern and while I do support increasing our use of Rail, I’m thinking there are other issues and aspects of living that can be considered for example continuing to encourage flexi-working from home. Taking an interest in urban planning (may be promote more highrise apartment living?), reducing mindless consumption (buying) of material goods that people don’t need (e.g needless replacing their clothing / outfit every few months) in a reduce, reuse, and recycling fashion among other possible initiatives to name a few.

Admittedly, my view of Google / Alphabet’s conduct in general is dimming and quickly headed towards the same level of regard I hold of Facebook / Meta.

Current Google products that I still use and rely on in some capacity include…

• Android O/S
• Google Play Store.
• Google Keep
• Google Maps (Please avoid allowing Google Reviews to influence purchasing decisions)
• Google Translate.
• YouTube (occasionally consumption only – with Ad blocking)
• Google Search (increasingly been replaced with a combination of Brave Search and DuckDuckGo)

Will be looking to ditch Google Keep over the Christmas break. Other services I will look to phase out over the coming years in favour of alternatives should those alternatives become viable. I acknowledge it may not be possible to ditch Google entirely and at best, simply restrain or limit where practical the usage of Google’s services.

Google Workspace (including Gmail, Calendar), Google Chrome Browser (All platforms), Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Chromecast and Google Chat products have already been largely ditched

Google Reviews should no longer be trusted in any capacity and should be best avoided in basing any purchasing decisions off. When looking up any given business on Google, pay little regard to it’s star rating or reviews as I’ve found Google reviews completely flooded out with Review fraud and manipulation. Please use other sources.

Appears they’ve hired some ex-surveilience / police guy and people are none too happy with this. See here for tweets and here for toots. Appears whoever looks after the Raspberry Pi Social media accounts are blocking people for voicing any criticism and people are none to happy with the snarky replies from the Raspberry Pi account.

Will circle back and have a read into it further later on and then consider my position.