Baseless threats

A couple of years ago, friends in Wellington, who own a business—let’s call it X—were approached by a US company with the same name, though in a slightly different industry.    They wanted my friends to give up their page name facebook.com/x to them, and suggested that they should be facebook.com/xnz.    No suggestion of […]

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Rocketman’s most annoying scene

Originally noted at NewTumbl, this is the sort of stuff that can annoy me in films.    This is a scene from Rocketman, where Elton John (Taron Egerton) arrives at the Troubador in Los Angeles in 1970. Car people, spot the problems.    If you’re like me, you’re going: Elton’s in a 1978 Lincoln Continental […]

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Is the sun setting on Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei?

It does seem the sun is setting, after 25 years, on Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei on RTL.    Last week, the network released three episodes from 8.15 p.m., and to heck with the low ratings of the last episode which would be far too late for younger viewers. They’re doing the same this […]

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Putting on the breaks

Being self-employed my whole adult life, I haven’t exactly been let go from actual employment, but there have been some gigs, paid and unpaid, that came to an end without me expecting it.    I’ve never been sore about losing them, but I don’t agree with the way they were done.    Gig 1. Did […]

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What Vodafone’s Super Wifi is really like in practice

While I saw Vodafone’s Super Wifi commercials, I never thought to act on them, since (mistakenly) I thought it was something to do with cellphones. Might have been the gadgets they used in the commercial.    But, after talking to Raghu, their sales’ rep in Pune, a city outside of Mumbai that I know well, […]

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Despite being blatantly obvious, Facebook does nothing about thousands-strong bot nets

We already know that Facebook does nothing if you want to use scripts to join groups, even if the scripts all give roughly the same answers. Apparently that’s not enough to trigger the systems at this company that’s worth almost a billion dollars (that’s a proper billion, or what the Americans call a trillion). Unless, […]

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There goes the neighbourhood

Demolition has commenced on 1–4 Māmari Street, across the road from where I lived for over three decades.    I’m not against change and my feelings toward the development have already been recorded here.    It was with a tinge of sadness that I saw the demolition crews there and the only wall left standing […]

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How is your ad network different from this?

No point beating around the bush when it comes to yet another advertising network knocking on our door. This was a quick reply I just fired off, and I might as well put it on this blog so there’s another place I can copy it from, since I’m likely to call on it again and […]

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Facebook fooled us into thinking we were being creative

My friend Keith has been away from Facebook for six weeks, for work reasons, and hasn’t missed it. And he asked, ‘Was it all really a waste of time?’    I know you think you know what I’m going to say, but the answer might surprise you a little.    Fundamentally, it’s yes (this is […]

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When fashion magazine websites begin looking the same

Above: Vogue Korea’s website follows the æsthetic of a big lead image and smaller subsidiary ones. This started as a blog entry but took a tangent about 500 words in, and it was better as an op–ed in Lucire. Some of the themes will be familiar to regular readers, especially about Big Tech, but here […]

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