Even the web is forgetting our history

Hernán Piñera/Creative Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0 My friend Richard MacManus wrote a great blog post in February on the passing of Clive James, and made this poignant observation: ‘Because far from preserving our culture, the Web is at best forgetting it and at worst erasing it. As it turns out, a website is much more vulnerable […]

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Finding an Android browser that works without fuss is harder than you think

With my last two cellphones, I’ve not used the default browser. I usually opted for Firefox, and in December 2018, I believe that’s what I did on my then-new Meizu M6 Note.    I don’t recall it being too problematic, but the type on some sites displayed a tad small, so I sampled a few […]

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Facebook still can’t get the basics right

For a guy who gave up updating his own Facebook in 2017, and uses it just for work stuff, I’m still amazed at how many bugs I come across.    Two days ago: discovered that you can’t post links. The ‘Publish’ button is greyed out.    Yesterday: I wanted to tag one of our writers […]

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Light humour, dark copy

I really love Hong Kong 漫畫 or manhua, and found this in one of the boxes from the move.    This was before the days of our having a computer scanner, and I had photocopied it out of a magazine or newspaper. There were years the copier was on the blink and everything would come […]

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Google isn’t working

I’ve done several Zoom meetings since the pandemic was declared, and two Google Hangouts. While I’m not thrilled at having to use two companies with patchy (to say the least) records on user privacy, the meetings (three for Medinge, one for another board I sit on) have been productive, and the only bottleneck has been, […]

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A concert that takes you home

  One bonus of the lockdown was the live Easter Day concert held by Hong Kong’s own Sam Hui (許冠傑), perhaps fairly described as the king of Cantopop.    I had no idea this was even on if it weren’t for the fire at the Baxter’s Knob transmitter that took out television transmission in our […]

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COVID-19 stats’ update, April 16

Don’t worry, I won’t make this too regular, but as I had done some more number-crunching of the available stats during the daytime, I thought I’d share them. I’ve noticed that some countries update their test numbers on a less regular basis, e.g. France, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland, though Worldometers now has updated ones since […]

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COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done: April 13 update

I can cite these COVID-19 calculations (infections as a proportion of tests done) with a bit more confidence than the last lot, where many countries’ testing figures had not updated. I see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has released its total test numbers now, and they show a pretty good result, too.    Compared to […]

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Is Facebook lying to customers about who has seen their ads?

Not withstanding that I can’t edit my advertising preferences on Facebook—they took that ability away from me and a small group of users some time ago (and, like Twitter, they are dead wrong about what those preferences are)—I see they now lie about what ads I’ve seen and clicked on.    I can categorically say […]

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Are you doing on Facebook what Facebook does on Facebook? They’ll sue you

Pxfuel/Creative Commons CC0 1·0 Here’s quite a funny one for you this Easter weekend: Facebook apparently has filed suit against companies that do the following, according to Social Media Today. • Companies that sell fake followers and likes, which Facebook has pushed harder to enforce since New York’s Attorney General ruled that selling fake social […]

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