Autocade hits 1,500-model milestone

08.05.2011/13.27

Thanks most recently to the work of Keith Adams, who added numerous important models into Autocade, we now have reached 1,500 models. The 1,500th is a bit mainstream, but after all the odd cars we’ve put in over the last three years, it’s nice to have something almost everyone knows. Audi TT (8J). 2006 to […]

Google Ads Preferences Manager issue conﬁrmed by NAI

05.05.2011/00.38

I’ve now had conﬁrmation from the Network Advertising Initiative that Google has, indeed, been dodgy about its Ads Preferences Manager. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We were able to reproduce the issues you saw and have been working with Google for the last week to address them. I am happy […]

It’s nice to be believed

21.04.2011/07.15

The bug I wrote about a few days ago that’s emerging when I use Autocade is now ﬁled with Telstra Clear—and it’s been escalated. For years I would report various faults, including with Telstra Clear, and I would not be believed. What a difference now that I am believed. For around two years, […]

Facebook resets email preferences, after it removes gay photo as ‘abusive’

20.04.2011/00.31

Not only does Google Ads Preferences Manager reset on a regular basis and bugger what your preferences are, Facebook has today reset (at least for myself and one other friend) email settings. ‘Set emails to spam.’ Why Facebook does this regularly, I have no idea—but this is relatively minor compared to their removal of […]

National thinks the internet is ‘Skynet’ as copyright amendments pass second reading

13.04.2011/13.10

This would be humorous if the implications of the copyright amendments were not so serious: Also speaking in favour of the bill, National MP Jonathan Young compared the internet to Skynet, the ﬁctional artiﬁcial intelligence network in the Terminator movies that tried to destroy mankind. That was in the National Business Review. I believe […]

Errors abound in the New Zealand internet as government ﬂip-ﬂops again

/12.42

This one hasn’t happened for a while (over a year), and, the last time I blogged about it, I managed to solve the issue—after putting up with it for years prior to that. (The solution before December 2009 was to wait for the computer’s foul mood to pass—hardly scientiﬁc.) Unfortunately, this ﬁx no longer […]

Two years on, the mainstream media wake up over BYD’s ethics

10.04.2011/06.02

I said it in 2009, and apparently, so did a diplomat whose note was leaked via Wikileaks: BYD might not stand scrutiny in a non-Chinese court over its vehicles. When I raised it, a few BYD fans (agents?) came commenting, trying to pick holes in my post, though they were unable to deny that […]

The new Honda goes at over 400 mph

07.04.2011/01.01

I have to hand it to Honda. The next new model from the Japanese ﬁrm is faster than the NSX and its old Formula 1 cars. It goes at Mach 0·72. The simpliﬁed version of Honda’s history goes something like this. Once upon a time, Mr Honda wanted to make cars. He wasn’t […]

Not all American hosting companies get it right

03.04.2011/22.37

While there was a British company that took months to respond to the equivalent of a DMCA complaint (under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act), generally American ﬁrms are very on the ball. There are exceptions. I won’t name this outﬁt but the weekend’s responses were laughable. March 21: Pirate puts up a copy […]

Someone’s doing something right inside Google

01.04.2011/23.45

The troubles with Google that I’ve faced—privacy breaches, Ads Preferences Manager not honouring its claims, ﬁghting for six months on behalf of a friend over a deleted Blogger blog, Chrome being buggy (but not nearly as badly as IE9), phantom entries in my Google dashboard, unanswered messages—would suggest, to anyone studying business or a graduate […]