Since Autocade was reinstalled last year, an errant line appeared on the home page: ‘Category: Pages using DynamicPageList3 parser tag’. The sole page that was listed under this Mediawiki category: the home page. It was very useless information, especially for site visitors. I finally discovered how to hide this, and I’m recording it as the […]
Tag: transparency
NewTumbl is dead—the signs were there
On the 7th and 8th of this month, I had a couple of comments on an old post about NewTumbl, indicating to me that the site had shut down without warning. Members headed in to see this: I left in 2020, though I accidentally told someone in a private email that it was […]
Beware AI; the dangers of Google ads; and the beauty of Radio.garden
Hat tip to Stefan Engeseth on this one: an excellent podcast with author, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. Among the topics he covers, as detailed in the summary in Linkedin’s The Next Big Idea: • AI is the first technology that can take power away from us • if we are not careful, AI […]
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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 […]
NewTumbl takes things seriously
I have to say I’m impressed with NewTumbl as they responded to my Tweets about potential censorship and post moderation. I think they will allow me to share a few points. First, they took me seriously. The fact they even bothered to look into it is well beyond what Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook and […]
Business as usual at Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg comes forth, tells us nothing we didn’t already know
Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg came out and made a statement on Facebook that had no apology (though he gave a personal one later on CNN) and, at a time when people demanded transparency, he continued with opaqueness. First, he told us nothing we didn’t already know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Secondly, he avoided […]
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: the signs were there for years, if one only looked
Facebook’s woes over Cambridge Analytica have only prompted one reaction from me: I told you so. While I never seized upon this example, bravely revealed to us by whistleblower Christopher Wylie and reported by Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison of The Guardian, Facebook has shown itself to be callous about private data, mining preferences even […]
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Wired’s Louise Matsakis did what no other journalist could: break the story on Facebook’s forced malware scans
With how widespread Facebook’s false malware accusations were—Facebook itself claims millions were “helped” by them in a three-month period—it was surprising how no one in the tech press covered the story. I never understood why not, since it was one of many misdeeds that made Facebook such a basket case of a website. You’d think […]
Does TPPA redux protect Big Tech?
SumOfUs/Creative Commons Prof Jane Kelsey, in her critique of the still-secret Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (formerly the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement [TPPA]) notes in The Spinoff: The most crucial area of the TPPA that has not received enough attention is the novel chapter on electronic commerce—basically, a set of rules that will cement […]
Zuckerberg wants to fix Facebook: too little, too late
WTF: welcome to Facebook. (Creative Commons photograph.) Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to fix Facebook in 2018 is, in my opinion, too little, too late. However, since I ceased updating my Facebook profile last month, I’ve come across many people who tell me the only reason they stay on it is to keep in touch with […]
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