A very quick note, probably more for me than anyone else: the 4,300th model went up on Autocade tonight. It was slightly deliberate, since I checked the stats for the site to see we were up to 4,299. Iâve a folder of models to be added, and I admit I scrolled down a little to see what piqued my interestâhaving said that, itâs what I usually do anyway. But there was a desire not to add yet another two-box crossover (had enough of those for a while) or any model that would lead me to be obsessed about a full line (DAF 33, anyone?). As the 1980â4 Pontiac Phoenix is already on the site, the 1978â9 entry went up. (Yes, I disagree with Wikipedia, which has Phoenixes starting in 1977, which is true, but it was mid-year, it was officially part of the Ventura line, and Phoenix doesnât appear in the 1977 full-line brochure.) Wikipedians can do it their way, and Iâll do it mine.
At some point I’ll add the Oldsmobile Omega for 1975â9 and we’ll have the X-cars for those years all up.
Archive for October 2020
Autocade reaches 4,300 models before the month is out
31.10.2020Tags: 1970s, 1978, 2020, Autocade, car, GM, history, JY&A Media, Pontiac, publishing, Wikipedia
Posted in cars, interests, publishing, USA | No Comments »
Autocade reaches 21 million page views
25.10.2020
Above: The 4,283rd model entered into Autocade: the mostly forgotten Isuzu Bellel.
A few days ago, Autocade hit 21 million page views. It was pretty uneventful even for me, since the site hasnât been updated too much since the 20 millionth page view. Thanks to COVID-19, Iâve been quite busy and havenât contributed to the site nearly as much as I would want to, and itâs not helped by the industry churning out yet another boring two-box crossover that looks the same as the last boring two-box crossover.
I am happy that we achieved this milestone in three months with the addition of only 40 models over the last million views (the encyclopĂŠdia is up to 4,283 models). Thatâs quite pleasing, though I wonder if thatâs down to COVID-19. In July there wasnât much of an increase at all, which made me think then that the coronavirus had not affected readership.
Once again, hereâs the usual copy-and-paste-and-add to track the siteâs growth.
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for 10th million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for 11th million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for 12th million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for 13th million)
September 2018: 14,000,000 (four months for 14th million)
February 2019: 15,000,000 (five months for 15th million)
June 2019: 16,000,000 (four months for 16th million)
October 2019: 17,000,000 (four months for 17th million)
December 2019: 18,000,000 (just under three months for 18th million)
April 2020: 19,000,000 (just over three months for 19th million)
July 2020: 20,000,000 (just over three-and-a-half months for 20th million)
October 2020: 21,000,000 (three months for 21st million)
Not the fastest pace of growthâthat would be the million to get to 18,000,000 in December 2019âbut healthy all the same. Thank you to all the readers who have been using the site!
Tags: 2020, Autocade, car, cars, Isuzu, JY&A Media, publishing
Posted in cars, internet, New Zealand, publishing, Wellington | 1 Comment »
Language lines on NewTumbl
24.10.2020This post was originally posted to NewTumbl.
Iâm surprised that a clip from a front page of a British tabloid newspaper was ruled M by a moderator here after I made it O. It was critical of British cabinet minister Matt Hancock and made fun of his surname, with two words that rhymed with its two syllables.
The words on the headline included the work wank, which was even starred there (w*nk) for the really sensitive. I realize this is an American website but I didnât even think that was a word they used. For most of us in the Anglosphere, itâs nowhere near offensive. Itâs not uncommon to call someone a wanker and the word is never bleeped on televisionâitâs that throwaway. I learned of the word wank when I was 11, and wanker I heard before that. Kids would probably know of it even younger now. A younger reader would not link it to anything sexual and if they did, theyâre a dirty little kid. (Same with bugger, which infamously even appeared on television commercials for Toyota here, and I know in Australia, too.)
The second word that appeared was cock, a colloquialism for penis, but also it has other meanings. Letâs not get into those: itâs clear the context suggested penisâin the same way an American might call someone a dick, I suppose. Again, hardly offensive, never bleeped, and, I donât know about the US, but here itâs the word that children might learn to refer to male genitalia.
But, hereâs the real kicker: the image was from the front page of a national newspaper. Not the top shelf wrapped in a brown paper bag or plastic at a convenience store.
Looking at the classifications, M is for adults-only stuff, with âstrong suggestive or violent language.â O was already suggested by NewTumbl staff as suitable for politics, including COVID-19 posts (this qualified), and the language by any standard was mild (feel free to come and give your reasoning if you were the mod and you want to defend your decision).
So Iâve had a post removed for a word that an 11-year-old uses (remember, O is for âolder teensâ) and another word that children use, and both appeared on the front page of a national newspaper.
I have used these words on a website run from a country that thinks itâs OK to show people getting blown away in violent movies and cop shows (oh, sorry, âpolice proceduralsâ), where guns are commonplace, but words are really, really dangerous. Thought you guys had a First Amendment to your Constitution.
The conclusion I am forced to draw is that the post was removed because, like Facebook, there is a right-wing bias shown by a moderator who does not like a conservative government criticized here. Good luck, because Iâll continue to criticize a bunch of dickheads that even my right-leaning, pro-market, lifelong-Tory friends in Britain dislike. If this post is classified M then I will have to conclude that the reason is also political, because thereâs not a single word here that any right-thinking user of English would deem âstrong suggestive or violentâ.
I came here because I objected to the censorship at Tumblr, where, for instance, they hide posts referring to NewTumbl in searches. Thatâs pretty tame but enough for me to insist on free speech over silly, petty corporate decisions, the sort of games that other silly, petty corporations like Google play. I can live with NewTumblâs male nipple rule and other attempts to be non-sexist, but I also believe that if youâre moderating, you should be apolitical.
Tags: 2020, censorship, Conservatives, COVID-19, Facebook, free speech, freedom of speech, language, media, newspaper, NewTumbl, politics, UK, USA
Posted in internet, media, publishing, UK, USA | 1 Comment »
Was it six networks or only five? In all this excitement, they’re ‘Still the One’
23.10.2020Iâm sure there are many, many more examples of this tune being used to promote TV networks, but it seems to be a standard in at least three countries I know, and probably far more besides.
It is, of course, âStill the Oneâ, which ABC used in the US to celebrate being the top-rated network there in 1977 for the second consecutive year. It was rare for ABC to be on top, but I think the general consensus was that jiggle TV got them there.
Australia, which has always had a lot of US influences, then used it for Channel 9 in 1978 and included the original American footage. It would have been properly licensed but in the days before YouTube, and less international travel, few would have known of the origins.
It was then adapted for the Murdoch Pressâs Sky One satellite network in the UK the next decade (did they first see it in Australia?), before being revived by 9 in Australia in 1988. It was adapted once again for TVNZâs Channel 2 here in New Zealand to kick off the 1990s.
The slogan was used regularly by 9 as the 1990s dawned though new songs replaced the original, and by the end of the 1990s, both Channel 9 and its NBN sister were using the familiar tune again.
Was that the end? In 2003, WIN, another Australian network, brought it back for their promos. As far as I can tell, WIN, a regional broadcaster, doesn’t have a connection to 9, but instead has an agreement with the Ten Network there. Just to make things confusing, 9 was using it at the same time, and it continued to do so into the mid-2000s.
A quick internet search on Duck Duck Go reveals it was originally a song performed by the band Orleans in 1976, from their album Waking and Dreaming. The song was written by the then-married Johanna and John Hall. It charted at number five in the US. Given that it was used by ABC in 1977, it would have been a familiar tune to Americans at the time. I wonder if the Halls expected it would become a TV network standard in so many countries, and what did they think?
Let me know if there are other countries and networks that used thisâI’ve a feeling it went even further!
Orleans
ABC, USA
Channel 9, Australia (1978)
Sky One, UK
Channel 9, Australia (1988)
Channel 2, New Zealand
Channel 9 and NBN, Australia (1998)
WIN, Australia
Channel 9, Australia (2003)
Channel 9, Australia (2006)
Tags: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Australia, history, identity, marketing, New Zealand, TV, UK, USA
Posted in culture, interests, media, New Zealand, TV, UK, USA | No Comments »
Oh look, a Gmail privacy leakâit’s really, really time to stop using them
19.10.2020Still want to use Gmail? How’s this for discouragement?
Google is now rewriting all URLs in gmail/gsuite email messages, *including those downloaded via IMAP*, to go via Google URL redirection, which is a HUGE privacy leak. they're editing the actual message bodies in your inbox.#google #privacy #gmail #security
— Jeffrey Paul (@[email protected]) 🏴 (@sneakdotberlin) October 18, 2020
For those of you who can't reproduce: I'm able to reproduce on two different G Suite accounts/domains, and have heard reports of others experiencing this, but it looks like this happening to *all* URLs, but presently only *some* accounts.
— Jeffrey Paul (@[email protected]) 🏴 (@sneakdotberlin) October 18, 2020
update: someone from @google confirms that
a) this is a thing
b) they've turned it on without askinghttps://t.co/lzVPNSvMFq
— Jeffrey Paul (@[email protected]) 🏴 (@sneakdotberlin) October 18, 2020
Couple this with my last post on this, I’d now go so far as to warn people to get rid of their Gmail accounts. As a layman, the service just does not seem secure to me.
PS.: This is from another Tweeter more schooled in these matters than me.
Not just these Gmail usersâ privacy is being breached, but also those who send email to the Gmail users, or receive it from them. https://t.co/Nm7PaFvbem
— Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian) October 19, 2020
Tags: 2020, Google, privacy, Twitter, USA
Posted in internet, technology, USA | No Comments »
Payoneer frustrates and sends you round in circles
08.10.2020I can safely say that I wouldn’t choose Payoneer as a payment service. As I told in their forums today as a last resort, after already spending hours (in the plural!) on this.
This has been deeply frustrating and here I am telling the story for the fifth time, since Payoneer stores none of my requests in the support centre.
Today I received an email saying a payment was coming from a company that I work with. The problem: the bank account on file is out of date.
There is no way I can make any changes.
You may think that I can go to the settings on my account and do the edits there, but this particular account is not recorded there. So how can I remove or correct an account that is not even shown on the Payoneer website?
No matter which option you select from payoneer.custhelp.com, youâll get an automated response that is completely useless and irrelevant.
The emails read, âIf this response does not resolve your issue, visiting our Support Center is the fastest way to find a resolution,â which is a complete and utter lie, since you cannot file a single support request. After youâve typed out your story for the umpteenth time, support never receives a thing. You just get another automated email with useless information. When you look under âMy requestsâ, you find that Payoneer never recorded what you wrote. This must be the quietest support centre in the world.
When clicking on the link when the websiteâs advice is useless, you get a 404 that reads, âThis site has been disabled for the time being.â
They keep sending me to pages that I have already seen and can do nothing with. This has been the worst payment website I have ever had to deal with, as they keep sending you round in circles and nothing ever gets resolved. Itâs out of sheer desperation Iâm on a public forum in the hope someone knows how to do this.
I’m not kidding about their website. Here are some fun pages it’s led me to in order to resolve my query.
I’d like our money, please.
Tags: 2020, computing, customer service, Payoneer, technology, user interface
Posted in internet, technology | No Comments »
If you’re in the ‘New Zealand can’t’ camp, then you’re not a business leader
04.10.2020
Which club is the better one to belong to? The ones who have bent the curve down and trying to eliminate COVID-19, or the ones whose curves are heading up? Apparently Air New Zealand’s boss thinks the latter might be better for us.
From Stuff today, certain âbusiness leadersâ talk about the New Zealand Governmentâs response to COVID-19.
We have Air New Zealand boss Greg Foran saying that elimination was no longer a realistic goal for us, and that we should live with the virus.
This is despite our country having largely eliminated the virus, which suggests it was realistic.
No, the response hasnât been perfect, but Iâm glad we can walk about freely and go about our lives.
Economist Benje Patterson says that if we donât increase our risk tolerance, âWe could get to that point where weâre left behind.â
When I first read this, I thought: âArenât we leaving the rest of the world behind?â
Is Taiwan, ROC leaving the world behind with having largely eliminated COVID-19 on its shores? It sure looks like it. How about mainland China, who by all accounts is getting its commerce moving? (Weâve reported on a lot of developments in Lucire relating to Chinese business.) The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has adopted policies similar to ours with travel and quarantine, and Iâve been watching their infection figures drop consistently. Theyâre also well on their way to eliminating the virus and leaving the world behind.
We are in an enviable position where we can possibly have bubbles with certain low-risk countries, and that is something the incoming government after October 17 has to consider.
We are in a tiny club that the rest of the world would like to join.
Let’s be entirely clinical and calculating: how many hours of productivity will be lost to deaths and illnesses, and the lingering effects of COVID-19, if we simply tolerated the virus?
Work done by Prof Heidi Tworek and her colleagues, Dr Ian Beacock and Eseohe Ojo, rates New Zealandâs democratic health communications among the best in the world and believes that, as of their writing in September, we have been successful in executing the elimination strategy.
Some of our epidemiologists believe the goal can be achieved.
I just have to go with the health experts over the business “experts”.
Iâm not sure you could be described as a âbusiness leaderâ if you are a business follower, and by that I mean someone who desires to be part of a global club that is failing at its response to COVID-19. GDP drops in places like the UK and the US are far more severe than ours over the second quarterâweâre a little over where Germany is. Treasury expects our GDP to grow in Q3, something not often mentioned by our media. As Europe experiences a second wave in many countries, will they show another drop? Is this what we would like for our country?
Iâve fought against this type of thinking for most of my career: the belief that âNew Zealand canâtâ. That we canât lead. That we canât be the best at something. That because weâre a tiny country on the edge of the world we must take our cues from bigger ones.
Bollocks.
Great Kiwis have always said, âBollocks,â to this sort of thinking.
Of course we can win the Americaâs Cup. Just because we havenât put up a challenge before doesnât mean we canât start one now.
Of course we can make Hollywood blockbusters. Just because we havenât before doesnât mean we canât now.
Heck, letâs even get my one in there: of course we can create and publish font software. Just because foreign companies have always done it doesnât mean a Kiwi one canât, and pave the way.
Yet all of these were considered the province of foreigners until someone stood up and said, âBollocks.â
Once upon a time we even said that we could have hybrid cars that burned natural gas cheaply (and switch back to petrol when required) until the orthodoxy put paid to that, and we wound up buying petrol from foreigners againâprobably because we were so desperate to be seen as part of some globalist club, rather than an independent, independently minded and innovative nation.
Then when the Japanese brought in petrolâelectric hybrids we all marvelled at how novel they were in a fit of collective national amnesia.
About the only lot who were sensible through all of this were our cabbies, since every penny saved contributes to their bottom line. They stuck with LPG after 1996 and switched to the Asian hybrids when they became palatable to the punters.
Through my career people have told me that I canât create fonts from New Zealand (even reading in a national magazine after I had started business that there were no typefoundries here), that no one would want to read a fashion magazine online or that no one would ever care what carbon neutrality was. Apparently you canât take an online media brand into print, either. This is all from the âNew Zealand canâtâ camp, and it is not one I belong to.
If anybody can, a Kiwi can.
And if we happen to do better than others, for Godâs sake donât break out the tall poppy shit again.
Accept the fact we can do better and that we do not need the approval of mother England or the United States. We certainly donât want to be dragged down to their level, nor do we want to see the divisiveness that they suffer plague our politics and our everyday discourse.
Elimination is better than tolerance, and I like the fact we didnât settle for a second-best solution, even if some business followers do.
Those who wish to import the sorts of division that the US and UK see today are those who have neither imagination nor a desire to roll up their sleeves and do the hard yards, because they know that spouting bullshit from positions of privilege is cheap and easy. And similarly I see little wisdom in importing their health approaches and the loss of life that results.
Iâm grateful for our freedom, since it isnât illusory, as we leave the rest of the world to catch up. And I sincerely hope they do.
Tags: 2020, Air New Zealand, Aotearoa, business, car, cars, China, communications, COVID-19, electric cars, Europe, film, fonts, freedom, health, Heidi Tworek, innovation, JY&A Fonts, Lucire, media, New Zealand, politics, Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Stuff, Taiwan, UK, USA
Posted in business, cars, China, culture, leadership, media, New Zealand, politics, typography, UK, USA | No Comments »
Two big reasons not to use Gmail
03.10.2020I was absolutely shocked to learn this is how Gmail works.
If I read this correctly, #Google lets more than one person use a single email address (in this case, over 200!)? How daft! Why would they do that? pic.twitter.com/KtTO6PnDEI
— Jack Yan çç”æ© (@jackyan) September 27, 2020
PS.: This was the image linked above, before I locked my account:
As youâll read in the thread, this has been confirmed by other Gmail users.
That should rule out ever using Gmail for secure communications. Not that you should be using a service like that for anything important, but the fact is Gmail has become ubiquitous, and I believe a lot of people donât know any better.
Just imagine being able to receive some emails meant for your rival by signing up to an address that varies from it by a full stop or period.
Secondly, we’ve noticed a large amount of spam where we can trace (via Spamcop) the origins back to Gmail. Oftentimes they have Gmail reply addresses, as in the case of 419 scams (where they may use another ISP or email service with a “sacrificial” address to send them). Why would you risk being among that lot?
Add this to the massive list of shortcomings already detailed here and elsewhere and you have a totally unreliable platform that doesnât really give a toss. They didnât care when they removed my friendâs blog in 2009 and then obstructed any attempt to get it back, until a product manager became involved. They didnât care when their website blacklisting service libelled clean sites in 2013, telling people not to visit them or link to them. And they donât care now.
There really is no reason to use Gmail. Youâll risk your emails going to someone else with a similar address, and youâll be among the company of unethical actors. I can truly say that if Gmail werenât this ubiquitous, and used by so many friends, Iâd just set up a rule on our server and block the lot.
Tags: 2020, ethics, Gmail, Google, internet, Medinge Group, monopoly, privacy, spam, technology, Twitter, USA
Posted in business, internet, technology, USA | 5 Comments »
Search engines favour novelty over accuracy and merit
01.10.2020I was chatting to another Tweeter recently about the Ford I-Max, and decided Iâd have a hunt for its brochure online. After all, this car was in production from 2007 to 2009, the World Wide Web was around, so surely it wouldnât be hard to find something on it?
I found one image, at a very low resolution. The webâs not a repository of everything: stuff gets removed, sites go down, search engines are not comprehensiveâin fact, search engines favour the new over the old, so older posts that are still currentâsuch as this post about the late George Kennedyâcanât even be found. This has been happening for over a decade, so it shouldnât surprise usâbut we should be concerned that we cannot get information based on merit or specificity, but on novelty. Not everything new is right, and if weâre only being exposed to whatâs âinâ, then weâre no better at our knowledge than our forebears. The World Wide Web, at least the way itâs indexed, is not a giant encyclopĂŠdia which brings up the best at your fingertips, but often a reflection of our bubble or what the prevailing orthodoxy is. Moreâs the pity.
I canât let this post go without one gripe about Facebook. Good news: as far as I can tell, they fixed the bug about tagging another page on your own page, so you donât have to start a new line in order to tag another party. Bad news, or maybe itâs to do with the way weâve set up our own pages: the minute you do, the nice preview image that Facebook extracted vanishes in favour of something smaller. Iâll check out our code, but back when I was debugging Facebook pages, it was pretty good at finding the dominant image on a web page. Lesson: donât tag anyone. It ruins the ĂŠsthetic on your page, and it increases everyoneâs time on the site, and that can never be healthy. Time to fight the programming of Professor Fogg and his children (with apologies to Roger McNamee).
Top: The post Facebook picks up from an IFTTT script. Above: What happens to a post that once had a proper image preview after editing, and tags added.
Tags: 2020, B. J. Fogg, bug, Facebook, Ford, Google, history, Roger McNamee, search engines, World Wide Web
Posted in cars, culture, interests, internet, technology | No Comments »