The porn blackmail scam—ignore it if you receive it

I’m not saying I can’t be conned—because by my own admission, I have been—but sometimes when you’re very sure of your position, scammers’ lies don’t work.    Here’s a fascinating one that came in today, a lot more aggressive than the usual request for helping someone move millions of dollars of bullion out of the […]

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Just another Christmas for a staff nurse

My late mother was a nurse. Before she was a midwife at Wellington Women’s Hospital, she was a staff nurse in wards 21 and 26 at Wellington Hospital.    From what I remember, ward 21 was first, which meant she was working there some time between 1976 and 1978. This is a letter that she […]

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Forced to take prime-time nostalgia trips

‘There’s an old Polish proverb …’ I believe it’s ‘Reality television can’t stop the motorways in Warsaw from getting icy.’   I’ve always known what sort of telly I liked, and often that was at odds with what broadcasters put on. In the 1970s, my tastes weren’t too dissimilar from the general public’s, but as […]

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The EU lands Google with another fine—but will Google change?

Zain Ali   The EU gets it when it comes to fines. Rather than the paltry US$17 million certain US states’ attorneys-general stung Google with some years ago for hacking Iphones, they’ve now fined the search engine giant €4,340 million, on top of its earlier fine of €2,420 million over anticompetitive behaviour.    That US$17 […]

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A letter from composer Terry Gray, 1991

What a coincidence to come across a letter from composer, arranger, conductor and former TVNZ bandleader Terry Gray, dated May 25, 1991, after I blogged about him on (nearly) the seventh anniversary of his passing. Here it is for others who may be interested in a little slice of Kiwi life. It looks like ITC […]

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The decline continues: Facebook pages no longer accept YouTube links

Many of you know that I no longer use Facebook for my personal stuff. However, there are still work things to do, although I’ve noticed Facebook pages get more and more useless by the day. Here are the stats for my Facebook page:    Strangely, I can see the stats on a page that’s not […]

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Musk apologies to Unsworth, only because teacher told him to

Via Adeline Chua: I see Elon Musk has apologized to Vernon Unsworth. But it smacks of the apology a child would give after being compelled by his teacher to do so.    Translation: ‘I wouldn’t have said anything if the Vern didn’t push me. It’s all Vern’s fault.’ Or, ‘Vern made me do it.’   […]

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The founder’s image is tied to the business—or, why Elon Musk shouldn’t call someone a pædophile

I have often said that each new technology often goes downhill when unsavoury parts of our society get to it. Email was fine before spammers, Wikipedia was fine without sociopaths, Blogger was fine without Google ownership, and Google was fine without an NYSE listing.    But what does one make of Twitter? Once upon a […]

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A three-decade time capsule hanging on my door

There was an Epson bag hanging from the back of my bedroom door, hidden by larger bags. I opened it up to discover brochures from my visit to a computer fair in 1989 (imaginatively titled Computing ’89), and that the bag must have been untouched for decades.    I’ve no reason to keep its contents […]

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Life is precious

I taught 180 people at tertiary level in 1999–2000.    Gutted that a second has passed away.    Most of them were kids when I taught them.    Lost one to a brain bleed in 2015, just lost another to cancer.    Look after yourselves out there, and live life to the full. Tell those […]

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