Instagram’s slow frame rate is probably down to an incompatibility with Android 7

I thought downgrading to an earlier Instagram would have solved the frame-rate problem, but I was wrong. Here are two videos using the same file. The first was uploaded using my new phone, but running v. 43 from April 2018, given that using the latest Instagram produced very stuttered video. However, it was the same […]

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The newer the Instagram, the clunkier the video

It’s been nearly one week with the new Meizu M6 Note.    It’s the “international” model, which means it’s not Chinese-spec, and there was no way to turn it into a Chinese one.    One observation is that the international one is far buggier than the Chinese one. Either that, or Android 7 is far […]

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YouTube tracks you even when you’ve signed out and blocked their cookies

Of course YouTube lies. Say you’ve paused your search and watch history on YouTube. And you block all youtube.com cookies. YouTube won’t track you, right? You’ve made it quite clear you don’t want a record of what you’ve done, so YouTube shouldn’t keep one.    Wrong.    As with Big Tech, what you expect given […]

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Meizu’s made it harder to switch OSes and root the M6 Note—at least I managed the latter

Above: If phones were sentient beings, it probably is a bit mean to have the old phone take a photo of its successor. After a drop to the ground (and by that I mean the hard floor at the local Pak ’n’ Save) produced lines on the screen of my old Meizu M2 Note, I […]

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It takes 10 years (and sometimes 50) for the establishment to wake up

Given the topic of this post, some of you will know exactly why this still, from the 1978 Steve McQueen movie An Enemy of the People, is relevant. If you don’t know, head here.   Admittedly, I was getting far more hits on this blog when I was exposing Facebook and Google for their misdeeds. […]

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Americans like big numbers

Scott Milne and I had a little fun over ‘American English’ recently on Twitter (and hopefully US friends will see this in the humour in which it was intended). He wrote: It's the 23rd of November. Black Friday's are the 13th. Unless I am missing some imported America bullshit, I call bullshit. — Scott Milne […]

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Why paywalls are getting more prevalent; and The Guardian Weekly rethought

Megan McArdle’s excellent op–ed in The Washington Post, ‘A farewell to free journalism’, has been bookmarked on my phone for months. It’s a very good summary of where things are for digital media, and how the advent of Google and Facebook along with the democratization of the internet have reduced online advertising income to a […]

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The double standards on the Ross affair are equally to do with race

Graham Adams, in a very good opinion in Noted, suggests that while there is a public interest in knowing the identity of the married National MP who had an affair with her colleague, Jami-Lee Ross, the media have been silent because of the relationship it enjoys with parliamentarians. He contrasts this with The New Zealand […]

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Remakes: Widows joins other Euston Films series

I see British filmmaker Steve McQueen has remade Lynda La Plante’s Widows.    I was younger than he was when it aired, and didn’t appreciate the storylines to the same extent, though I have recollections of it.    What I did recall was a Smith and Jones sketch, which had a voiceover along these lines: […]

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A more honest computing glossary

  Since (mostly) leaving Facebook, and cutting down on Twitter, I’ve come to realize the extent of how outdated traditional computing definitions have become. To help those who need to get up to speed, I’ve compiled a few technobabble words and translated them into normal English.   app: in many cases, an extremely limited web […]

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