Who pioneered phone food ordering and delivery?

Not that any search engine will find this, but according to the BBC’s The Secret Genius of Modern Life (episode 2), the inventor of the phone orders for food was the Kin-Chu Café at 137 South Brand Boulevard, Glendale, Calif., in 1922 (another link here). ‘Special Delivery Service 11 A. M. to 1 A. M.—Phone […]

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Is the sun setting on Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei?

It does seem the sun is setting, after 25 years, on Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei on RTL.    Last week, the network released three episodes from 8.15 p.m., and to heck with the low ratings of the last episode which would be far too late for younger viewers. They’re doing the same this […]

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Google exposed private user data between 2015 and 2018

Big Tech isn’t afraid of the law, but it is afraid of bad press that could affect its stock price. The Murdoch Press has, refreshingly, stayed on Google’s case, revealing that there had been another exposure of user data, allowing developers access to private information between 2015 and March 2018.    The company sent a […]

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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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Consumer’s choice: how I bought a car from the UK over the ’net and shipped it home

Originally published at Drivetribe, but as I own the copyright it only made sense to share it here for readers, too, especially those who might wish to buy a car from abroad and want to do the job themselves. It was originally written for a British audience. Above: The lengths I went to, to make […]

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Where did all the manual transmissions go?

Above: The gear selector in the BMW i3, as tested in Lucire. See here for the full road test.   When I was searching for a car to buy after my previous one was written off in an accident, one no-brainer was that it had to be a manual. It can’t be that hard, right? […]

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Travel diary (or, a diary that travels)

A photo posted by Jack Yan (@jack.yan) on Apr 9, 2016 at 10:31pm PDT A photo posted by Jack Yan (@jack.yan) on Apr 10, 2016 at 10:37pm PDT   What a fun project! In September, a class in a Québec school set its pupils a travel diary project. The idea: see how well travelled each […]

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It’s all going fines at Volkswagen

General Motors’ fine in 1995 for 470,000 cars using defeat devices against EPA testing: US$11 million. Volkswagen’s fine in 2016 for 580,000 cars using defeat devices against EPA testing: potentially US$40,000 million (or $40 billion, as the Americans say). The local companies get off far easier in the US. In fact, GM can even get […]

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Facebook forced me to download their anti-malware, and my own antivirus gets knocked out

When Facebook says it cares about security, I laugh. Every day I see bots, spammers and click-farm workers plague the site, and despite reporting them, Facebook lets them stay. It will make a statement saying it would no longer kick off drag queens and kings, then proceed to kick off drag queens and kings. So […]

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The fall and rise and fall of Kim Dotcom, and why, according to the US, watching YouTube makes us all criminals

In response to a friend’s Facebook post applauding the possibility that Kim Dotcom would get extradited, two days ago. It’s unedited, other than the inclusion of a link and a note, and I apologize for the grammatical errors. Surely this remains the only case in the history of humankind where copyright is a multi-jurisdictional criminal […]

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