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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Archive for the ‘media’ category
08.08.2022
In early July, I wanted to see if we could add Lucire to Bing as a news source in their Pubhub鈥攁fter all, Google has us as one, as Yahoo, Altavista and Excite had back in the day. And I鈥檇 say that 25 years of publishing with an international team might qualify us as being media.
The folks came back rejecting us, saying we needed to come back in a month鈥檚 time. Usual story: look at our rules, you must have messed up.
Bing tells everyone this these days, because it鈥檚 a good way to keep webmasters confounded as they try to figure out what鈥檚 wrong with their site and why they can鈥檛 get it listed. It鈥檚 the same with Pubhub.
The one 鈥渞ule鈥 that might be very broadly interpreted in their favour was that articles needed to have bylines. Granted, a lot of news ones don鈥檛, since sometimes we don鈥檛 want credit for them, and you don鈥檛 always see a reporter鈥檚 name for shorter, simpler items. But features do have bylines. And when Bing swung round in early July, coincidentally I had written quite a lot of the last bunch of articles, so my name was all over them. That was a no-no.
So here we are, a month and a few days on. The home page (the one that Bing declines to include in their index now, as it prefers pages from the early 2000s that we haven鈥檛 linked to for over 17 years) contains articles from me, Stanley Moss, Lola Cristall, Jody Miller, and Elyse Glickman. There鈥檚 one story on Panos Papadopoulos that he wrote in the first person.
What鈥檚 the bet that nothing will happen?
Sometimes you have to give it a go, even when you know nothing will happen鈥攋ust to prove a point.

Above: The top pages in a site:lucire.com search on Bing. Five of these pages we haven’t linked to in 17 years. As a search engine, it makes absolutely no sense.
I was surprised, however, that Bing claims to have 330 results for site:lucire.com today, up from 10. It’s still a tenth of what Mojeek has, and a twentieth of what Google has. But it is an improvement. Maybe the worst is over?
It’s still useless as a general search though, and even more useless as an internal search. The fact that popular pages are excluded and 17-year-old ones aren’t means something remains very wrong with the search engine.
PS. (August 9 NZST): I spoke too soon. Bing says 330 results, but try looking beyond 50, which was what it tended to cap Lucire at.

Tags: 2022, Bing, JY&A Media, Lucire, media, Microsoft, news, publishing, search engine, technology Posted in internet, media, publishing, technology | No Comments »
07.08.2022
Ever since we had to reset the counter for Autocade in March, because of a new server and a new version of Mediawiki, it鈥檚 been interesting to see which pages are most popular.
The old ranking took into account everything from March 2008 to March 2022. With everything set to zero again, I can now see what鈥檚 been most popular in the last few months.
Some of the top 20 were among the top pages before March 2022, but what鈥檚 surprising is what鈥檚 shot up into the top slots.
Over the course of half a day on Friday GMT, the Toyota Corolla (E210) page found itself as the top page, home page excepting. And the Kia Morning (TA) page shot up out of nowhere recently, too.
I know our page on the Corolla is number one on Mojeek for a search of that model but that can鈥檛 be the only reason it鈥檚 done so well. I haven鈥檛 studied the referrer data. A shame that link: no longer works on search engines.

Corolla fans, thank you for your extra 6,000 page views! It鈥檚 helped our overall total, but the viewing rate is still down at 2019 levels thanks to the collapse of the Bing index, and the search engines that it鈥檚 taken down with them.
I almost feel I鈥檝e shot myself in the foot for promoting Duck Duck Go so much since 2010! But then I hopefully spared a lot of people from being tracked (as much) by the big G.
Tags: 2022, Autocade, Bing, JY&A Media, Mediawiki, Mojeek, publishing, statistics, Toyota Posted in cars, interests, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology | No Comments »
05.08.2022

Above: Some French text in Lucire.
Regular Lucire readers will have seen a number of articles run in English and French (and one in Japanese) on our main website. Typographically, the French ones are tricky, since we have to distinguish between non-breaking spaces and non-breaking thin spaces, and as far as I know, there is no code for the latter in HTML. Indeed, even with a non-breaking space, a browser can treat it as it would a regular space.
So what鈥檚 our solution? Manually, and laboriously, putting in <NOBR> tags around the words that cannot be broken. It鈥檚 not efficient but typographically, it makes the text look right and, unless we鈥檝e missed one, we don鈥檛 have the problem of guillemets being left on a line by themselves without a word to attach to.
The language is set to fr in the meta tags.
Among our French colleagues, I have seen some go Anglo with their quotation marks and ignoring the traditional French guillemets. Others omit any thin spaces and, consequently, adopt the English spacing rules with punctuation. For some reason, I just can鈥檛 bring ourselves to do it, and maybe there is an easier way that we haven’t heard of. I hope nos lecteurs fran莽ais appreciate the extra effort.
Tags: 2020s, 2021, 2022, French, JY&A Media, Lucire, programming, publishing, typography Posted in business, design, interests, internet, media, publishing, technology, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
02.08.2022



Here are three Elle covers that I uploaded to last month鈥檚 gallery, from 1991, 2007 and 2022. Which looks the most modern?
To me, it鈥檚 the 1991 US one. The Futura Light type is calm, it all looks rather balanced, and the photograph is well lit and composed. From memory, it was commended by the Society of Publication Designers in New York but I have to check my old annuals.
Go to 2007 and there鈥檚 just too much clutter, and the custom type looks uncomfortable, especially the bolder cut. The 2022 cover sits somewhere in between, but it feels like it鈥檚 the dawn of desktop publishing with different sizes and weights, and type inside circles.
Granted, I鈥檓 not comparing apples with apples, as the 21st-century covers are for the French market, and the 2022 cover isn鈥檛 strictly for Elle but the Elle Corps summer special. Makes you wonder what timelessness is, and if such a thing even exists. Many of the old covers for Lucire that I art-directed were meant to be timeless, too, but how they have dated! Is it about calm, a lack of clutter, and a sensible, restrained use of type? Or does that in fact date things, and we’re just at a moment in time when the 1991 cover’s trends have come round again?
Tags: 1991, 2007, 2022, design, Elle, France, graphic design, Hachette, layout, publishing, typography, USA Posted in design, France, media, publishing, typography, USA | No Comments »
24.07.2022
Because I have OCD, one more round of stats.
It鈥檚 not just us: Bing seems to have a reduced index for everyone. Here are a handful of sites that I fed in at random for site: searches. The only site where it beats Mojeek in indexed pages is, you guessed it, Microsoft鈥檚. I guess since Google favours Google鈥檚 own results, Bing does a better job indexing Microsoft鈥檚鈥攁nd I doubt it鈥檚 because their own people conform to Bing鈥檚 applied-when-they-choose rules.
Die Zeit
Google: 2,600,000
Mojeek: 4,796 (0路18 per cent of Google鈥檚 total)
Bing: 3,770 (0路15 per cent of Google鈥檚 total)
Annabelle (Switzerland)
Google: 11,700
Mojeek: 405 (3路46%)
Bing: 105 (0路90%)
Holly Jahangiri
Google: 738
Mojeek: 222 (30路08%)
Bing: 49 (6路64%)
The Gloss (Ireland)
Google: 19,200
Mojeek: 1,968 (10路25%)
Bing: 71 (0路37%)
The New York Times
Google: 36,200,000
Mojeek: 2,823,329 (7路80%)
Bing: 1,190,000 (3路29%)
Lucire
Google: 6,050
Mojeek: 3,572 (59路04%)
Bing: 50 (0路83%)
The Rake
Google: 11,500
Mojeek: 1,443 (12路55%)
Bing: 49 (0路43%)
Travel & Leisure
Google: 28,100
Mojeek: 9,750 (34路70%)
Bing: 220 (0路78%)
Microsoft
Google: 122,000,000
Bing: 14,200,000 (11路64%)
Mojeek: 1,748,199 (1路43%)
Detective Marketing
Google: 998
Mojeek: 579 (58路02%)
Bing: 51 (5路11%)
In the earlier Microsoft thread I linked, the original poster found that after they joined Bing Webmaster Tools and imported their Google data, that鈥檚 when their site vanished from Bing. So, again, we鈥檙e not alone.
I’d seriously be rethinking my business model if I was running a search engine that was reliant on Bing.
Tags: 2022, Google, Microsoft, Mojeek, publishing, search engine, search engines, statistics, website Posted in internet, media, publishing, technology, USA | No Comments »
23.07.2022
Earlier today, Amanda and I had a wonderful time at Te Papa to celebrate the Chinese Languages in Aotearoa programme. My contribution was appearing in a video, that was on this blog last October.
It dawned on me that despite being on YouTube, this really needs to be on the home page of this website, replacing the below.
It just never occurred to me any earlier how ideal the Te Papa video was, and how much it speaks to my whakapapa and my identity. But the penny has dropped now.
I know I still need to update the 2018 intro. It needs to be more profound than what appears in these blog posts.
It should also reduce confusion for visitors trying to find out more about my Toronto mayoral candidate namesake, who I note still does not have a declared website or email address on the that city’s official list.
Tags: 2013, 2021, 2022, Cantonese, history, language, mayoralty, museum, politics, Te Papa, Vimeo, YouTube Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, media, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
10.07.2022
Sean O’Grady puts into his opinion piece what so many of us have said. He does it far better than I could.
They backed Johnson through the Dominic Cummings scandal, through the resignations of two ethics advisers, through the scandal of a party donor paying for the decoration of his flat, through the mishandling of the pandemic and the mismanaging of Brexit with a rotten deal, Partygate and law breaking, an unlawful prorogation of parliament and breaking treaties and international law, allegedly trying to get Carrie a 拢100,000 job and Wilfred a 拢150,000 treehouse, depriving kids of free school dinners 鈥 and much, much more 鈥
So it鈥檚 not just Johnson who鈥檚 morally compromised, but the whole Tory party, with rare exceptions. They are all guilty men and women because they voted for him, campaigned for him, sustained him, lied for him and generally disgraced themselves and the country in the process. They were all members of the cult of Boris, and they knew exactly what he was.
They didn鈥檛 care because he was a winner. He hasn鈥檛 suddenly turned nasty 鈥 he was like this since about the age of eight. He鈥檚 outlived his usefulness to them, but if they thought the devil incarnate could win them the next election they鈥檇 be signing his nomination papers right now. Parties tend to get the leaders they deserve.
Sunak, Javid and others are in no position to be preaching about integrity. If seeing the monarch mourn her husband whilst sitting alone due to COVID-19 restrictions at the same time Johnson partied at his ‘work event’ didn’t concern them, are we to believe that they are one bit concerned about sexual assault? Pull the other one.
If the Tories are smart, they’ll go for someone well outside this band of muppets. But as O’Grady also states, ‘Your next PM, like Johnson, will be chosen by about 90,000 mostly elderly, reactionary and unrepresentative members of the Conservative Party.’ In such cases, name recognition and familiarity will decide the next leader. Sadly, that’s unlikely to be anyone from the moderate wing of the Conservative Party. That is now a minority.
Will they promote a better culture than Johnson did? Possibly. If they have some sense of organization and leadership. But that alone is not going to fix the UK’s problems. Ideologues should not come before pragmatists, but it’s hard to see any other outcome given what the Conservative Party has become.
Tags: 2022, Boris Johnson, Conservatives, deception, ethics, media, newspaper, politics, scandal, The Independent, UK Posted in culture, leadership, media, politics, UK | No Comments »
08.07.2022

Years ago, we removed the Facebook widgets from Lucire鈥檚 pages. Last year, there were Instagram鈥檚 and Twitter鈥檚 turns, after each of those platforms locked us out (though later we regained access, and in Twitter鈥檚 case we issued a veiled threat to their lawyers). Last night, it was Disqus鈥檚 turn as we removed the commenting gadget from the Lucire site.
Obviously, not having Disqus鈥檚 trackers was a big plus, and speeding up page-load times, but there were two other major considerations: readers seldom comment these days (fashion is less divisive than politics), and, we have no idea where the money for all the Disqus advertising is.
I seem to recall that we were nearing their US$100 payment threshold, and I had in mind that once we hit it, I鈥檇 take the ads off. They were pretty ugly anyway.
Logging in yesterday, I was surprised to see Disqus claimed we had earned a little over US$3 now, while there is no record of any payment to us in the last year. Disqus also has nowhere on its site detailing payments made. Nor has it any feedback forms for non-subscribers (though you could argue that we have 鈥減aid鈥 them in terms of the space their ads took up on the Lucire website all these years). I posted a question on their forum鈥攖he best I could do there. Seventeen hours later, no answers.
Right after that, we removed the Disqus gadget on all of Lucire鈥檚 static (HTML) pages, and switched off the Disqus plug-in on the WordPress (news) part of the site for posts going forward. No pay, no stay. I also removed the default comment boxes for the last 100 stories, though I might still change my mind and reinstitute them. If I do, they鈥檒l be native ones, not anything to do with a plug-in that slows things down.
All those years, adding plug-ins that were once far more innocent; as each one became part of the surveillance economy, the detriments began to outweigh the benefits. What鈥檚 interesting to me is, other than the Facebook widget, their removal came after they prompted us with something dodgy, not because we suddenly had concerns about their tracking. Till I started investigating, I didn鈥檛 even realize how bad the problem was, though with hindsight of course I should have known, given how I鈥檝e banged on about Facebook and Google. Part of me thought wishfully about Twitter, and as for our Instagram gadget, it was being run through another service (which might have been worse since it meant another company knowing stuff), and back when Instagram was a thing, I thought our readers would enjoy it.
I鈥檓 not consistent as Autocade鈥檚 Disqus forms are still up (at least on desktop), but they don鈥檛 have the dreaded Disqus ads, and readers actually comment there. But I will have a look for a good alternative鈥攁nd I won鈥檛 be touching any of those Disqus settings as I don鈥檛 wish for the ugly ads to be introduced.
Tags: 2022, advertising, Disqus, finance, JY&A Media, Lucire, privacy, publishing, surveillance, surveillance capitalism Posted in business, internet, media, publishing, technology | No Comments »
02.07.2022
As embedding from Mastodon is not working tonight, I’ll copy and paste Per Axbom’s post:
Nice bit of reporting from Swedish Radio. They built an online fake pharmacy and activated Facebook advertising tools. Thousands of simulated visits to the pharmacy were made each day, and the reporters could see all the sensitive, personal information being stored by Facebook.
Facebook sent no warnings to the pharmacy, despite saying they have tools in place to prevent this from happening.
A few weeks ago they revealed how this was happening with real pharmacies.
He links this article from Sveriges Radio.
So, how long has it been since Cambridge Analytica? We can safely conclude that this is all by design, as it has been from the start.
Tags: 2020s, 2022, Facebook, media, privacy, social media, Sweden Posted in internet, media, Sweden, technology, USA | No Comments »
02.07.2022
Here are July 2022鈥檚 images鈥aides-m茅moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Tags: 1960s, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970s, 1971, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1980s, 1986, 1987, 2007, 2010s, 2011, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020s, 2022, actors, actresses, advertisement, advertising, Apple, Audi, Bertone, BL, book, Boris Johnson, British Leyland, car, celebrity, Chrysler, Citro毛n, design, Elle, Europe, Ferrari, film, Ford, France, Germany, GM, Hachette, humour, ITC, James Bond, Japan, Lamborghini, language, magazine, magazine design, Marcello Gandini, Mastodon, Mazda, McLaren, media, modelling, modernism, newspaper, Opel, Peugeot, Porsche, PSA, publishing, Renault, retro, Roger Moore, science fiction, social media, Spain, supermodel, technology, The Persuaders, Tony Curtis, Toyota, Triumph, TV, Twitter, UK, USA Posted in cars, culture, design, France, gallery, interests, marketing, media, politics, publishing, technology, UK, USA | No Comments »
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