‘Google.com is blocked’—good riddance

This error message began creeping up this week:     google.com is blocked google.com refused to connect. ERR_BLOCKED_BY_RESPONSE   And appears with increasing frequency. Maybe Google is too poor to be able to serve everyone? I’ve noticed the search results worsen, as this blog’s covered. Is this the reason I can’t use it any more? […]

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Bing Chat doesn’t pull from web page content—according to Bing Chat

I had a bit of fun with Bing Chat last week, during which I got it to admit that when it searches the Bing index, it does not look at the content of the web pages. Bing Chat says it only has access to the snippet, URL and date.     Of course, it lies, […]

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Reaching the end of Facebook

With the new season of Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei nearly upon us, I decided I’d pop into my Facebook group (I’m still an admin) to see what had been happening. I’ve been there a few times this week and I have discovered some of the site’s latest features.    Groups: these now have […]

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I want to remove a My Business location, but Google won’t let me

I really should not have wasted my time with Google, as My Business (see yesterday’s post) reminded me just why I don’t use the site—it’s not only the privacy issues, but the fact that things don’t work as advertised, which has always been the case with Google.    You’ve already seen that it’s impossible for […]

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In my experience, the only browser that works with Jetstar’s website is Safari for Mac

I’ve found some forum entries about this, but they date back to the beginning of the decade. I alerted Jetstar to this in March, and the problem has worsened since then.    Basically, I can’t book online, and I don’t know why. Consequently, I booked one flight with Air New Zealand and only managed, after […]

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PS/2 keyboard one way to get your Windows 10 computer back after bricking

Everybody wants PS2. Still from The Professionals episode ‘Servant of Two Masters’. I read this article in The Guardian, thinking: surely, after Microsoft rolled out some terrible updates, it wouldn’t be so stupid as to do one that bricks customers’ computers again? Especially after the bug was reported a month ago.    The April update worked reasonably […]

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You can post two-minute videos on Instagram, but no one will ever see them

Updated in a follow-up post: click here. Since Facebook bought Instagram, it’s been getting buggier, of course.    I’ve complained about Instagram uploading a series of posts in a totally different order to what I had (which, on ANZAC Day, made it difficult for anyone to follow the story I was trying to tell on […]

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Windows Unreliability Monitor

Microsoft should rename Windows’ Reliability Monitor to Unreliability Monitor.    This isn’t too unusual for Windows 10, is it?    I’ve put Oracle Virtualbox and Cyberlink Power2Go back on, because it’s becoming more apparent that Windows 10 is incompatible with my hard drives in certain circumstances. It’s always when a drive (including a phone set […]

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Another program rendered incompatible with Windows 10’s fall Creators update

It’s fast becoming apparent that Windows 10’s fall Creators update is a lemon, just like the original Windows 10.    As those of you who have followed my posts know, my PC began BSODing multiple times daily, on average. There were brief interludes (it went for three days without a BSOD once, and yesterday it […]

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Mozy driver could have been behind 100–200 BSODs since the Windows 10 Creators fall update was installed

A post shared by Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jack.yan) on Jan 14, 2018 at 4:04 p.m. PST Two very helpful people—bwv848 at Bleeping Computer and Sumit Dhiman at Microsoft—have taken me through the steps to figure out what was going on with my Windows 10 desktop computer, on which I’ve had between 100 and 200 BSODs […]

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