I see Billie Eilish is singing the next James Bond title song, and it sounds pretty good.
The last one, âWritingâs on the Wallâ, wasnât one of my favourites and while I didnât mind Sam Smithâs composition, I felt a female voice might have suited it better. On a Bond music forum on Facebook (when I was still using it), I voiced disappointment, only to get comments in the thread essentially saying, âEveryone who dislikes this song is a homophobe.â
Up until that point I had no clue about Smithâs sexualityâdidnât care then, donât care now. I didnât think much of this until tonight, when it dawned on me that when I say Iâm not a fan of Brexit, on busier social media threads Iâll get, âStop calling British people racists.â
In neither case was homophobia or racism even hinted but it puzzles me that people can somehow go into Mystic Meg clairvoyant mode and see things that arenât thereâand get it completely wrong. And that has to be one of the things wrong with social media these days: people far too much in their own heads to even see what is right in front of them, letting their imaginations run riot. Could they be projecting? In any case, a discussion, or even an argument, is pointless if parties are unwilling to stick to the facts in front of them, preferring to go into snowflake mode and fling out accusations. It does them little credit.
And folks wonder why so many of us have social media fatigue and would be quite content if certain sites vanished overnight.
Posts tagged ‘2010s’
Asus ROG Strix Evolve: a gaming mouse for a non-gamer
18.02.2020My early 2000s Microsoft Intellimouse 1·1 is still the perfect shape for me. After getting the second-hand one into service last year, I thought that I needed a spare. Iâve several other mice, including no-brand ones, that are a decent size, but I got used to having the forward and back buttons on either side.
Microsoft makes a Classic Intellimouse these days, but itâs based on a later design, and it appears the side buttons are on the left only, which seems to be the convention in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Itâs also had some reviews criticizing the quality, so I knew I couldnât go with the latest.
I headed back to Recycling for Charity, where I sourced this Intellimouse, but judging by the stock, Iâm not alone in my preference. All that were left were smaller mice, making me wish that I bought multiple Intellimouses a few years ago and stocked up. This surely is a massive hint to mainstream mouse makers on a latent, forgotten market.
After sampling some during spare time at Noël Leeming in Porirua, which did fit my hand, I opted to look online. The Noël Leeming ones were mostly Logitech, and my experience is that their mice last about two years. I wanted quality.
After much searching, one mouse that matches the dimensions of the Intellimouse (125 mm Ă 65 mm Ă 40 mm) with one millimetre out on the height is the Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) Strix Evolve, and our old friends at Just Laptops in Albany had them on special at under NZ$70 plus freight. Thatâs a lot more than the NZ$3 I paid for the used Intellimouse and the NZ$25 I paid for the Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 in 2015, but with Asus claiming that the switches were good for 50 million clicksâprobably 10 times more than regular miceâI decided that three times the price for ten times the longevity (at least in one respect) was acceptable. And it had two switches on each side, which I could program.
It arrived a (working) day later. A lot of the gaming features are lost on me: the option to have lighting effects, choosing your own colour or having it cycle, for instance. I donât necessarily need DPI switching. Itâs simply vital that I have something my right hand is comfortable with.
The mouse comes with a second set of covers, so you can raise it slightly to suit your hand. I tried all permutations: left high, right low, vice versa, both low, both high, before deciding on having both sides in the raised position. The rubber side panels help with grip, and they aid comfort.
The first negative is that the forward end isnât as wide as I was used to. The Microsoft mice are a reasonable width all the way down, and the Evolve is slightly narrower. That means my ring finger touches the mouse pad more on the side, as it did with an earlier Lenovo (plenty of those at Recycling for Charity, incidentally). I thought I wouldnât be able to get used to it, as I didnât with the Lenovo, and it does continue to be a slight problem. In other words, I havenât quite got the perfect mouse and itâs a lesson about buying online when your requirements are this strict (though again I wouldnât have considered this a major problem if manufacturers werenât skimping on materials and giving people repetitive strain injuries).
Asus hasnât deceived about the measurements: it is 125 mm wide at its greatest width, just as Microsoft has it on theirs.
I may put up with letting my ring finger drop and go along the mouse pad for the time being just for comfortâs sake and see if Iâm OK with washing the pad more regularly. Or adjust my hand positioning slightly. But I know I cannot use the modern mice.
One Tweeter noted that maybe the mouse manufacturers are finally appealing to women, and I had to agree it was nice for us men to experience just once what itâs like for them in a usually male-designed tech world.
The other features are excellent: the ability to program the switches, which I did very early; and I can turn the lighting off as I see no point to it if my hand is on the mouse obscuring most of it. Then again, Iâm not a gamer.
The mouse wheel and switches are far more solid than anything Iâve encountered, making the 50 million-click claim believable. I do occasionally hit the right button inadvertently, probably out of unfamiliarity, and I must hit the DPI switch from time to time, again accidentally.
Nevertheless, Iâm going to keep my eye out for second-hand Intellimouses. Mine has become the back-up again, and really I didnât think I was asking for much. Microsoft had a perfect design for which the tooling must be long amortized, so it makes you wonder why they donât just trot it out again and make a bundle more off us.
Tags: 2010s, 2020, Asus, computing, design, Microsoft, recycling, technology
Posted in design, New Zealand, technology | No Comments »
Five stars for Dell’s P2418D monitor
12.02.2020
Working at night: the making of this blog post
I had to put in a good word for Dell’s P2418D monitor (earlier post here) after the multiple negative reviews left by one person.
If I had to write something negative, it would be about their website blocking me from submitting my positive review by claiming I was using an ad blocker. I wasn’t. But I do have ‘Do not track’ turned on and I wonder if that is doing it.
Eventually I got the review through on my eighth attempt by using a vulnerable browser: one with no privacy plug-ins, allowing all cookies, with all the default tracking that Big Tech likes.
After reading another reviewerâs multiple entries, I had a few doubts about this monitor, but Iâm glad I bit the bullet anyway. I bought mine in 2020, so they may have ironed out the bugs.
First up, the QHD resolution is a great thing to have. Windows 10 automatically scaled everything 125 per cent for me, and the programs that were a bit fuzzy were easily sortedâyou just go into the properties and make sure that they use their own magnification and not the OSâs. Iâm actually more productive as a result of being able to see the finer detail. I work in publishing and itâs great to be able read the smaller copy on a spread. Before I would have to zoom in and out to do a lot of my work.
I donât really need 27 inches as I donât want to move my neck to see the different corners of the screen: 24 is plenty for me. I actually have a feeling 27 inches would decrease my productivity, but thatâs just my personal preference.
Iâve noticed no backlight bleed, the edge is fine for me and the desktop appears normally. As to the prompts that appear when the monitor goes into sleep mode (one source of complaint for one reviewer)âfor me it doesnât sleep for ages (it must be my settings) and when it does, Iâm usually out of the room. In three weeks Iâve seen those prompts once.
I had a problem with the driverâWindowsâ security settings prevented me from opening the executableâbut I was able to open it using an elevated command prompt. The controls you need for resolution, brightness, contrast, etc. are in there, too, if you donât wish to fiddle with the buttons on the front of the unit itself.
All the cables are included (USB 3 downstream, Displayport, power), and itâs been great having USB ports on my monitor. Itâs allowed me to tidy up the external HDs a lot (I run three). Going from DVI-D to Displayport has been useful, tooâI know I shouldnât notice 1 ms improvement in speed but I really sense that I do!
The blue-light-blocking comfort mode means I donât get sore eyes if I work late, another bonus.
Iâm glad someone makes QHD at this sizeâin fact, I know Dell does 4K at this size, too. But QHD is fine for meâof the programs not using Windowsâ scaling, I donât want the menus to get too small! A great investment to my everyday computing.
Hope that redresses the balance a bit more for Dell. I get that the other person is annoyed, but stick it all in one review, please!
Tags: 2010s, 2020, computing, Dell, technology
Posted in technology | 2 Comments »
Human-centred peripherals should be the norm
02.02.2020Iâve had a go at software makers before over giving us solutions that are second-best, because second-best has become the convention. While I can think of an explanation for that, viz. Microsoft packaged Windows computers in the 1990s with Word and Outlook Express, itâs harder to explain why peripherals havenât been human-centred.
I thought about this with my monitor. Itâs “only” 24 inches, despite being QHD. But it works for me, as 27 or more would see me move my neck to view the corners. I was always happy with the 24-inch Imac: I had no desire for it to be larger. If I had 27 inches I might need to sit further back, cancelling out the upsizing. Despite saying this, I can see in some situations where people would be quite happy with 27 (and even larger ones for coders), but it begs the question of why there arenât more 24-inch QHD monitors on the market. My friend Chelfyn Baxter believes it is the optimum size for productivity (granted, he told me this over five years ago, though I still see little to fault him). Are our suppliers driving us to larger sizes, just as car importers are driving us to automatics here? (The latter is not backed up by any research on preferences, to my knowledge.)
The same thing applies to keyboards. To me, the optimum width of a keyboard is around 40 cm. Any wider, youâre reaching for your mouse and causing repetitive strain injuries. Iâve stuck to my 40 cm rule for a long time and havenât had the sort of pain I had in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I had a standard-width keyboard. The mouse is roughly where I expect it to be, and I wouldnât object if it were closer still. Again, it begs the question of why 40 cm isnât a standard if it saves us from pain.
Then thereâs the mouseâI now use a Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1 from the early 2000s after my 2005-made, 2015-new one gave up. I know thereâs a lot of comedy around the US president having small hands, but weâre no longer in the sort of society whose products change to appease a leader. But regular mice are awfully small, a trend that seemed to have begun in the 2010s. I canât hold them and maybe I have large hands, but I canât be alone. In so many places I visit, I see some very uncomfortable hands try to grip a small mouse. I learned that was a bad thing in the days of the round 1999 Apple USB mouse (it wasnât the Imouse), which created a trade in adapters that snapped on around it.
Fortunately, mice manufacturers do offer larger sizes, recognizing that not all of us accept a childâs size as the standard. Here I can understand why mice have downsized: the manufacturers attempting to save a few bob and forcing more of us into it. However, there must be a decent part of the population who think, âIâll be uncomfortable with that. I wonât buy it,â and let the market move accordingly.
I wonder how much more comfortable and productive a chunk of the population would be by following a few basic rules: have a monitorâwhatever size suits youâwhere you limit strain on your neck; have a keyboard around 40 cm wide or less; and have a mouse which your hand can rest on (and keyboard wrist rests and mouse wrist rests to suit to make you comfortable). But I know most of us will just go, âThe default is good enough,â and unnecessarily suffer.
Speaking of practical, I hope Mudita gets its designs on the market sooner rather than later. Who needs pizzazz when we all value simplicity? Technology serving humanity: what a novel idea! Here’s how we can help.
Tags: 2010s, 2020, 2020s, Apple, cellphone, Chelfyn Baxter, computing, design, health, health care, humanity, keyboards, Microsoft, mouse, Mudita, productivity, software, technology
Posted in design, technology | 1 Comment »
Sticking with 24 inches, but going to QHD: a pleasant upgrade
31.01.2020
The Dell P2418D: just like the one I’m looking at as I type, but there are way more wires coming out of the thing in real life
Other than at the beginning of my personal computing experience (the early 1980s, and thatâs not counting video game consoles), Iâve tended to have a screen thatâs better than average. When 640 Ă 360 was the norm, I had 1,024 Ă 768. My first modern laptop in 2001 (a Dell Inspiron) had 1,600 pixels across, even back then. It was only in recent years that I thought my LG 23-inch LCD, which did full HD, was good enough, and I didnât bother going to the extremes of 4K. However, with Lucire and the night-time hours I often work, and because of a scratch to the LG that a friend accidentally made when we moved, I thought it was time for an upgrade.
Blue light is a problem, and I needed something that would be easier on the eyes. At the same time, an upgrade on res would be nice.
But there was one catch: I wasnât prepared to go to 27 inches. I didnât see the point. I can only focus on so much at any given time, and I didnât want a monitor so large that Iâd have to move my neck heaps to see every corner. On our work Imacs I was pretty happy to work at 24 inches, so I decided Iâd do the same for Windows, going up a single inch from where I was. IPS would be fine. I didnât need a curved screen because my livelihood is in flat media. Finally, I don’t need multiple screens as I don’t need to keep an eye on, say, emails coming in on one screen, or do coding where I need one screen for the code and the other for the preview.
Oddly, there arenât many monitor manufacturers doing QHD at 24 inches. There was a very narrow range I could choose from in New Zealand, with neither BenQ nor Viewsonic doing that size and resolution here. Asus has a beautifully designed unit but I was put off by the backlight bleed stories of four years ago that were put down to poor quality control, and it seemed to be a case of hit and miss; while Dellâs P2418D seemed just right, its negative reviews on Amazon and the Dell website largely penned by one person writing multiple entries. I placed the order late one night, and Ascent dispatched it the following day. If not for the courier missing me by an hour, Iâd be writing this review a day earlier.
I realize weâre only hours in to my ownership so there are no strange pixels or noticeable backlight bleed, and assembly and installation were a breeze, other than Windows 10 blocking the installation of one driver (necessitating the use of an elevated command prompt to open the driver executable).
With my new PC that was made roughly this time last year, I had a Radeon RX580 video card with two Displayport ports, so it was an easy farewell to DVI-D. The new cables came with the monitor. A lot of you will already be used to monitors acting as USB hubs with a downstream cable plugged in, though that is new to me. It does mean, finally, I have a more comfortable location for one of my external HDs, and I may yet relocate the cable to a third external round the back of my PC.
Windows 10 automatically sized everything to 125 per cent magnification, with a few programs needing that to be overridden (right-click on the program icon, then head into âCompatibilityâ, then âChange high DPI settingsâ).
Dellâs Display Manager lets you in to brightness, contrast and other settings without fiddling with the hardware buttons, which is very handy. I did have to dial down the brightness and contrast considerably: Iâm currently at 45 and 64 per cent respectively.
And I know itâs just me and not the devices but everything feels faster. Surely I can’t be noticing the 1 ms difference between Displayport and DVI-D?
I can foresee this being far more productive than my old set-up, and Ascentâs price made it particularly tempting. I can already see more of the in- and outbox detail in Eudora. Plantin looks great here in WordPerfect (which I often prep my long-form writing in), and if type looks good, Iâm more inclined to keep working with it. (It never looked quite right at a lower res, though it renders beautifully on my laptop.)
I feel a little more âlate 2010sâ than I did before, with the monitor now up to the tech of the desktop PC. Sure, itâs not as razor-sharp as an Imac with a Retina 4K display, but I was happy enough in work situations with the QHD of a 15-inch Macbook Pro, and having that slightly larger feels right. Besides, a 4K monitor at this sizeâand Dell makes oneâwas outside what I had budgeted, and Iâm not sure if I want to run some of my programsâthe ones that donât use Windowsâ magnificationâon a 4K screen. Some of their menus would become particularly tiny, and that wonât be great for productivity.
Maybe when 4K becomes the norm Iâll reconsider, as the programs will have advanced by then, though at this rate Iâll still be using Eudora 7.1, as I do today.
Incidentally, type on Vivaldi (and presumably Chrome) still looks worse than Opera and Firefox. Those who have followed my blogging from the earlier days know this is important to me.
Vivaldi
Opera GX
Tags: 2010s, 2020, Chromium, computing, Dell, design, Eudora, Microsoft Windows, New Zealand, Opera, retail, technology, typography, Vivaldi, web browser, WordPerfect
Posted in design, internet, publishing, technology, typography | 2 Comments »
Social media sheeple don’t know they’re sheeple
27.01.2020
Andrew R. Tester/Creative Commons
Itâs pretty hard to deactivate oneâs Facebook. When I ceased posting in 2017 and reduced my activity to client stuff and group management, I made sure that I had no more Facebook sign-ons left. But it turns out that Lucireâs Twitter-to-Facebook page script relies on my account.
I did look today and got caught up in a thread which reminded me why I donât tend to look at the feed. Usual behaviour: person offended by a friendâs post. Spewed out opinions disguised as fact. Got called out. Couldnât back them up. Then began obfuscating and attacking the messenger.
It would be funny if it werenât so obvious these daysâand that this person thinks they are intelligent. Social media have allowed those under the average IQ to believe they are the superior beings in the human race, because they have an audience and enough dopamine hits from likes to back up that feeling.
To heck with facts. We also find the same folks despise expertise, and truth is the obvious casualty.
I still remember last year one gentleman having a go at me for a Tweet that joked about MSG in âwhite people foodâ (a term, I should note, that whites use), then proceeded to tell me all the incidents of racism perpetrated by my race that he had witnessedâall without recognizing that what he was doing was putting forth a âmaster raceâ argument on how his race was better and more tolerant. A racist who slams others over race. It stuck in my mind as a brilliant exemplar of ignorance and pigheadedness. Iâd link it but heâs deleted itâI hadnât expected the cowardiceâbut it was a great example of how the original message became the pretext to attack someone rather than engage. (Incidentally, thereâs plenty of MSG in occidental foodâjust look out for those 600 numbers, and fast food joints are particularly nasty.)
I know thereâll always be more sheeple than independent thinkers. I know thereâll always be more whoâll swallow BS than analyse something for themselves. But itâs still disappointing to see it writ so large in this social-media-democratized world of ours.
Of course everyone should have a voice, a freedom to say their piece.
But in a bigger forum it would also be useful for all of us to have some sense of self-control and admit it when we donât have evidence or weâre not experts in the area. I donât think thatâs likely unless schools are training kids some netiquette, what an actual debate looks like, and how social media âdebatesâ are not debates.
Iâd never go on a forum to debate my GP over medicine. And if I did, Iâd qualify my statements with âAs a layman, I would have thought âŠâ and allow myself to be corrected by people who know more than me in their specialist area.
In the 1980s, the Scots comedian Robbie Coltrane said the difference between a Briton and an American was that the Brit might recognize their limitations and say, âI didnât go to a very good school,â whereas the American would say, âIf he comes over here, Iâll shoot him.â But in 2020 I doubt such a distinction exists, certainly not online. A Briton is as likely as an American, or a New Zealander for that matter, to be anti-expert and truth- and fact-resistant.
I donât know where that puts society. When I talked about leaving Twitter, one very active and knowledgeable friend in the South Island said he would stay because he âdidnât want to let the bastards win,â or a sentiment to that effect. Sometimes I feel retreat leaves some of us in a gated community while the Morlocks go wild in Big Tech forums. And there would be absolutely no point to such an arrangement, because we enrich each other in society through contact, not isolation.
So how do you educate others who are so resistant to education, so unwilling to enter into a debate without character assassinations? Is this why the social media sites love us so much, because some of us think that the only way to get through with facts is to shout?
A religious person might advance the idea of living life better and to lead by example. Donât preach it, show it. That doesnât mean isolation, but it does mean demonstrating that not being an arsehole is enriching. Sounds good to me, except, with some so self-obsessed with ignorance, will they even recognize that thatâs whatâs happening? When this person on Facebook was called out today, I don’t think she realized it. Itâs easier in the real world, and not so much in the virtual one where people are so caught up in their own head.
PS.: Let my friend and colleague Peter Fraterdeus have the last word here:
It turns out that Facebook etc are the perfect Petrie dish for extracting Dunning-Kreuger syndrome.
— Peter Fraterdeus (@ideaswords) January 27, 2020
Tags: 1980s, 2010s, 2020, Big Tech, Facebook, racism, Robbie Coltrane, social media, Twitter
Posted in culture, internet, technology | 1 Comment »
Twitter also tracks your preferences, even after you opt out of ad customization
18.01.2020As with most platforms, I selected, on Twitter, that I didnât want my advertising to be personalized. I donât mind them making a buck, but I do mind them tracking my preferences, just as I did with Google and Facebook.
Google lied about its advertising preferences from 2009 to 2011 till yours truly busted them, and Facebook lies by continuing to compile preferences on you even after opting out, repopulating deleted preferences in some cases, and now, blocking you from making further edits to them. I was surprised that Twitter had a bunch of options I never saw beyond that old ad preferences’ one till I happened across them after clicking âWhy did I see this ad?â You can find this here.
Go a bit further to this link, and there they are, nearly 500 preferences linked to me, compiled even though I had opted out of personalizationâmaking Twitter just as bad as Facebook.
What do I do? Exactly what I did on Facebook: I deselected each and every single one. Twitter doesnât need this to market to me. Frankly itâs enough that it has my IP address and it can geo-target. It doesnât need any more precision than that. I get to the bottom of the page, having done them all:
And just like Facebook, within hours it has reselected over 400 of them, repopulating preferences and overriding what the user wants.
In fact, some were being reselected within seconds, but I put that down to the fact I was using a cellphone. As of this writing, the second deselections have been done on the desktop.
This is simply not right, but we have been seeing signs in the latter part of the 2010s that Twitter is as bad as Facebook, with its love of bots, bigotry and its mass censorship. Now itâs as devoted to selling its users as the rest of Big Tech. The net result is Iâll begin limiting my time on Twitter because its privacy intrusion has gone too far. It cannot be trusted. It will probably become a work tool as Facebook has, where I do little of my own stuff, and only serve my clients; or I simply have automated content.
I suppose you can always say, âWell, at least itâs not as bad as âŠâ and on that note, I checked in to Facebook to see if I could post a question on why advertising preferences were not editable.
Eventually I found four others had managed, after wading through Facebookâs many layers of pages before getting to one where you could pose a question, to ask the same.
Except none of them are clickable to a question-and-answer page. They all take you to a Facebook Business advertising queriesâ page.
Therefore, I asked the question even though it had already been asked. I doubt Iâll hear back, as I noticed that on the same visit, Facebook had censored two of my earlier responses.
Why? They reveal that Facebookâs platform is buggy, that I was unable to do some things on pages that it claimed I was able to do.
All I can say is that this is petty. Facebook: for the last 15 years your platform has been buggy. Everyone knows this. Covering up a couple of comments made in your own forums, comments that are truthful and actually helpful to others who encounter the same thing, doesnât make your platform any less buggy. But this is the Zuckerberg way: all-too-precious, wimpy against criticism, with a self-belief that not publishing something will make it go away. I mean, itâs worked against equally wimpy governments. It is a page out of the Google playbook, too: its forums are full of cultist believers who ask, âHow dare you question our god?â when you post about bugs. However, it alienates users.
Itâs probably why the old Getsatisfaction Facebook forum was closed down, because it revealed so many bugs about the system.
Iâm hoping the 2020s will see some sort of mass rejection of these Big Tech social-tracking platforms, but I thought that would happen years ago. I was wrong. There are still good people on them but there are also good people on Mastodon and elsewhere.
PS.: Here we are, four hours later, after I unticked all the preferences. At least 300 of them have been reselected by Twitter. So it is like Facebook. Once again, we have to say to a US Big Tech firm: stop lying. Your claims about your settings are bogus.
P.PS.: Day two, still fighting Twitter, which reticked a lot (but not all) of the preferences. Still in the hundreds.
P.P.PS.: Day two, two hours later, 107 reticked:
P.P.P.PS.: Day four:
P.P.P.PS.: Day seven, still battling:
Tags: 2010s, 2019, 2020, Big Tech, censorship, computing, Facebook, internet, law, privacy, social media, Twitter, USA
Posted in internet, technology, USA | 1 Comment »
History of the 2010s: a look back at the decade that was
02.01.2020When I first wrote a satirical look back at the decade, which ran on this blog in December 2009 (on the old Blogger service, as I was helping a friend fight a six-month battle with Google to restore his blog), it was pretty easy to make up little fictions based on reality. This one, covering the decade just gone, was a different matter. No matter how you did it, often the reality would be stranger than the satire.
2010
The Australian establishment, especially large portions of its media, are shocked a woman could become prime minister. They spend her entire term telling the Australian public that this is morally wrong.
Americans decide that they needed less honesty from television, so Simon Cowell leaves the US version of Pop Idol, American Idol.
Donald Trump-hosted show The Apprentice gets its lowest ratings ever. He begins planning another show and brainstorms with his countrymen on Twitter.
Long-running shows Ashes to Ashes and Lost end with exactly the same conclusion. Frustrated at years of investment in the two shows, the Anglosphere is so turned off television that they would rather form silos on social media websites to make their owners rich. Two guys in San Francisco spot the opportunity and invent Instagram.
Jay Leno unquits The Tonight Show after discovering the $30 million per annum he made prior to leaving just couldnât sustain his car collecting hobby.
Kate loves Willy, so they get engaged.
2011
Itâs revealed that Arnold Schwarzenegger does films, politics, and the family maid.
Following the example of HH the Dalai Lama, Charlie Sheen decides to impart his wisdom to the masses, gaining an extra million Twitter followers as a result.
Cheryl Cole starts on the US X Factor amid much buzz, then vanishes from the show. Only her dimples remain.
Proving Apple is either a cult or a religion, Steve Jobs shrines appear all over the world after his passing.
How I Met Your Mother concludes as we find out River Song is Amy Pondâs daughter.
Kate loves Willy, so they get married.
Reality is stranger
Facebook launches Timeline, but it actually doesnât work on the 1st of each month as no one there has worked out there are time zones other than US Pacific. Still no one thinks theyâre stupid.
Google gets busted over its advertising preferencesâ manager, which actually doesnât stop gathering your preferences after youâve opted out from having them gather your preferences. None of the other NAI members seem to have a problem with their opt-outs. As far as I can tell, Google has been lying about its opt-out for two years, affecting millions.
2012
President Obama finally figures out that same-sex marriage would not bring about disasterâthat could safely be left to Big Tech, as it enjoys monopolies. As a result, Facebook has its IPO.
Forget 2011âs Steve Jobs shrines, Jesus got a new look in Zaragoza, thanks to a repair job. Not everyone is enamoured with the updated Jesus, but it saves the town and numerous businesses.
Prince Harry parties and brings a new meaning to ‘Las Vegas strip’. Got to have something to mark his grandmotherâs 60th Jubilee.
The Hunger Games makes stars of Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth, although people over a certain age thought it was The Unger Games, a remake of The Odd Couple.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect a kid.
In the real world
Malala Yousafzai kicks ass and a bullet to the head doesnât stop her. If anything, it makes her stronger and grows her reputation.
E. L. James gathers up her Twilight fan fic and puts it all into a book, called 50 Shades of Grey.
Remember, this is where Boris Johnson is mayor: the London Olympics use the Kazakh national anthem from Borat. High five!
Google gets busted over bypassing the âDo not trackâ setting on Iphone Safari browsers by The Wall Street Journal. Despite trying to look innocent, it stops this the same day. Several US statesâ attorneys-general decide this was such a gross violation of privacy that they fine Google a few hoursâ earnings.
Proving boys can do anything, Brad Pitt became the face of Chanel No. 5.
Lana Del Rey has really good hair.
2013
Jennifer Lawrence brings publicity to her new film, Silver Linings Playbook, by falling at the Oscars.
Miley Cyrus mainstreams twerking, which showed how far society had already descended. Her Dadâs âAchy Breaky Heartâ release in 1992 wasnât considered a cultural high-point at the time: the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Edward Snowden exposes mass surveillance on US citizens and even US allies. There is mass panic over the collection of data and the private sector pushes back, ensuring encryption of usersâ private information ⊠actually, nothing happened, and the NSA continued with its data collection while the Obama administration charged Snowden with a crime and tried to extradite him from Russia, where he had more freedom of speech.
HM Queen Elizabeth II evens things up with Helen Mirren by winning a BAFTA for playing HM Queen Elizabeth II.
Kate loves Willy, so they have a kid.
In the real world
RIP Nelson Mandela.
2014
Ellen Degeneres broke Twitter with a selfie, but since everyone knew why, no one recalls if the fail whale went up.
The world got a reminder not to upload private stuff to the cloudâas celebrities found out the hard way when their intimate pics were leaked. En masse, the world stopped uploading images to the cloud and to social media while they waited for Big Tech to fix things with their privacy ⊠actually, nothing happened, and people uploaded more photos, in the hope that hackers would find them and release them.
Scotland decides to stay part of the Unionâfor now. Of course they could trust London not to do something silly like leave the European Union.
Bill Cosby makes Mel Gibson look respectable.
Jay Leno decides heâs made enough for his car collecting hobby and leaves The Tonight Show, though he might still unquit. Watch your back, Jimmy.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect another kid.
In the real world
Youâve heard of the website You Park Like a C***? An American exchange student in Tübingen wanted to be featured on Youâre Stuck in a C***.
RIP Robin Williams, one of the funniest actors on Earth.
2015
Volkswagen, trying to outdo its links to Nazism and allegations of labour relationsâ corruption, recalls tens of millions of diesel vehicles to see how far its brand would stretch. The US plans to fine VW way more than Ford or GM when they cheated on emissions, because, foreign.
Donald Trump hits on an idea for a new reality show where he runs for president. Casting begins.
Steve Harvey named the wrong winner at the Miss Universe pageant. At this point, being âHarveyedâ is a fairly innocent term.
Jon Snow is very much alive and continues fronting the news on Channel 4.
Kate loves Willy, so they have another kid.
In the real world
Forget that August 9, 1976 Sports Illustrated cover; Caitlyn Jenner appears on the cover of Vanity Fair.
2016
The Chicago Cubs win the World Series, as detailed in Greyâs Sports Almanac.
In November, the unthinkable happens: Wellington has a massive rainstorm, followed by an earthquake that triggers a tsunami warning, followed by flooding and extreme fog that leave the city cut off from the rest of the country. Summer would be called off while citizens figured out what to do. The UFO invasion does not take place, though with local body elections, certain candidates were replaced by replicants.
Kate loves Willyâand Harry loves Meghan. Not a bad way to mark HM the Queenâs 90th birthday.
In the real world
The UK votes to leave the European Union: Nigel Farage is overjoyed, but Boris Johnson and Michael Goveâs body language and facial expression reveal their dismay, and their words donât match.
I discover first-hand that Facebook is forcing downloads on people with the guise of âanti-malwareâ, even though this claim is dubious, and Facebook admits data are transferred back to the mother ship. I spend two years finding a journalist with the guts to write about it. Potentially millions have already been affected stretching to the beginning of the decade.
RIP David Bowie.
2017
With the approval of the US audience, a massive, multi-channel series débuts, starring Donald J. Trump. It shows a dystopian America that elects a game show host its president, and warns us what can follow. This four-year experiment is expected to culminate in 2020 with an election special, which determines the seriesâ fate for a renewed batch of episodes.
Kendall Jenner can do anything. She can solve riots with cans of Pepsi. Forget flower power.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect another kid.
In the real world
La La Land wins the Oscar for Best Picture, until it was taken off them and Midnight wins the Oscar for Best Picture. Someone Harveyed (first definition): presenter Warren Beatty had been handed the wrong card.
Someone unplugs British Airwaysâ computers, and all flights at Heathrow and Gatwick are cancelled.
News of Harvey Weinsteinâs alleged sexual harassment changes the meaning of getting âHarveyedâ, and this one is far more horrific.
2018
Kanye West became Donald Trumpâs biggest fan and joins the cast of his experimental four-year show. He plays an unhinged character who believes slavery was a choice.
Harry loves Meg, and tie the knot. Meghanâs Dad, however, was too busy pursuing a career in modelling to attend.
Taylor Swift gets the voters out, and the public hasnât seen anything like this since David Hasselhoff brought down the Berlin Wall.
Kate loves Willy, so they have another kid.
Reality is stranger
Louise Matsakis at Wired writes the story on Facebookâs forced downloads, after I tipped her off. Facebook stopped pushing these downloads, after affecting millions and telling them it was for their own good.
A month later, a pink-haired man named Christopher Wylie blew the lid on something much bigger: Facebook, in violation of a 2011 FTC consent decree, allowed a data company to harvest over 50 million users, swinging the outcome of the US presidential election.
Roseanne comes back, Roseanne Barr Tweets something racist, Roseanne goes away.
Some media job-shame actor Geoffrey Owens for working at Trader Joeâs; people come to his defence.
Twelve boys are rescued from a cave in Thailand, after Elon Musk makes a coffin that others brand impractical, angering him so much he calls one of the rescuers âpedo guyâ.
Speaking of Elon, Tesla will call the cops on you if youâre a whistleblower, telling them youâre heading to work to shoot up the place.
And yes, this does mean that the real news was whackier than the fiction.
2019
To keep the ratings up for his long-running show, Donald Trump gets jealous of Greta Thunberg, as she didnât have to fake her Time Person of the Year cover.
He heads to the UK for the D-Day commemorations, and bonds with HM the Queen, telling her, âMy Dad was German and my Mum was Scottish, too.â
The British attempt a remake of Donald Trumpâs show. They search for a man who is born in New York, cheated on his first two wives, has five kids, funny hair, used to espouse more liberal views, before trying to sell ethnonationalism as part of his schtick. They find him: Boris Johnson, best known for his earlier work on Little Britain USA. Within weeks heâs already cheated on his partner Carrie by giving everyone in the UK a weak pound.
Harry loves Meg, and this year, they didnât need Kate and Willy to provide the baby news.
Reality is stranger
Facebook says it will act in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, but by the following month, New Zealandâs privacy commissioner reveals theyâve done nothing, and are âmorally bankrupt, pathological liarsâ.
Twitter deletes the account of Will âEgg Boyâ Connolly, but not racist Australian politician Fraser Anning, again demonstrating how fearful they are of racists. Twitter also deleted an account that looked for anti-Semitic bots, as bots are good for business (just like Facebook).
The Hong Kong police show their nostalgia for the British, by using the same colonial, “the natives are revolting” techniques once developed to quash piccaninnies.
The UK charges in to the Ecuadorian Embassy to arrest Julian Assange, then subject him to psychological torture. The US and UK mainstream media continue vilifying him, while the Russian state media call it out.
Mark Zuckerberg keeps meeting with right-wing figures, and people still want to keep making him rich by using Facebook, despite being lied to constantly about everything.
Tags: 2010s, Aotearoa, Ashes to Ashes, Australia, BBC, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Caitlyn Jenner, celebrity, Chanel, Cheryl Cole, Condé Nast, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Ellen Degeneres, Facebook, film, Google, history, humour, Jennifer Lawrence, Kendall Jenner, Lucire, mainstream media, Malala Yousafzai, media, nationalism, New Zealand, news, politics, royalty, Simon Cowell, Taylor Swift, TV, Twitter, UK, USA, Volkswagen, Wired
Posted in business, culture, humour, interests, internet, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing, TV, UK, USA | No Comments »
Business as usual at Wikipedia
27.12.2019I know Wikipedia is full of fiction, so what’s one more?
I know, you’re thinking: why don’t you stop moaning and go and fix it if it’s such a big deal?
First up, for once I actually did try, as I thought the deletion of a sentence would be easy enough. But the site (or maybe my own settings) blocks me from editing, so that’s that.
Secondly, it reinforces this blog post.
This one sentence was presumably written by a New Zealander, and one who knows very little, though they have more editing privileges than me.
Like the 12-year-old ‘Ford CE14 platform’ piece that only got corrected after I posted on Drivetribe, I have to ask: what possesses someone to invent fiction and to be so sure of themselves that they can commit it to an encyclopĂŠdia? (Incidentally, subsequent Wikipedians have reintroduced all the errors back on to the Ford page since editor Nick’s 2017 effort to correct itâyou simply cannot cure Wikipedia of stupid.)
I know we aren’t being set very good examples by American politicians (on both sides) and by British ones these days, but surely individual citizens have some sort of integrity when they go online to tell us how great they are?
For the record, the Familia nameplate was never used here in the last generation for a new carâyou only see it on Japanese imports. Secondly, the three-door BH shape was only ever sold here as a Ford Laser, never a MazdaâFamilia, 323 or otherwise.
“Post-truth” is nothing new: it’s been the way of Wikipedia for well over a decade. It was all foreshadowed online.
It still begs the question why I don’t see such callous edits on the German or Japanese editions of that website.
Tags: 1990s, 2010s, 2019, Aotearoa, Ford, history, integrity, language, marketing, Mazda, New Zealand, Wikipedia
Posted in cars, culture, internet, marketing, New Zealand | No Comments »
The return of borders?
22.12.2019Nadia has done it for ages, but I noticed Glamour did it for a while in 2018, and Wheels has stuck with it for its “new look”. What’s the deal with bordered covers?
I still prefer them bled, especially as I remember the difficulties of doing them back in the old days, and print agencies discouraged me from bleeds on cheaper jobs.
Unless there’s a clever reason, I can’t really see these covers as having a greater impact. Having bought Wheelsâ design issue recently, I was pretty disappointed in the overall look. Nothing really beats the feeling of the UVed, upmarket Phil Scott issues back in the late â80s, even if the price hike put it slightly outside my teenage budget, and I stopped getting the mag monthly.
Based on a cursory examination, CondĂ© Nast’s Glamour went back to bled covers by the end of 2018, the gamble probably having done nothing for circulation.
Tags: 2010s, 2017, 2018, Bauer, Condé Nast, design, editorial design, Glamour, magazine, magazine design, Nadia, publishing, redesign, trend, Wheels
Posted in cars, design, publishing, USA | No Comments »