The decline continues: Facebook pages no longer accept YouTube links

Many of you know that I no longer use Facebook for my personal stuff. However, there are still work things to do, although I’ve noticed Facebook pages get more and more useless by the day. Here are the stats for my Facebook page:    Strangely, I can see the stats on a page that’s not […]

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Musk apologies to Unsworth, only because teacher told him to

Via Adeline Chua: I see Elon Musk has apologized to Vernon Unsworth. But it smacks of the apology a child would give after being compelled by his teacher to do so.    Translation: ‘I wouldn’t have said anything if the Vern didn’t push me. It’s all Vern’s fault.’ Or, ‘Vern made me do it.’   […]

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The founder’s image is tied to the business—or, why Elon Musk shouldn’t call someone a pædophile

I have often said that each new technology often goes downhill when unsavoury parts of our society get to it. Email was fine before spammers, Wikipedia was fine without sociopaths, Blogger was fine without Google ownership, and Google was fine without an NYSE listing.    But what does one make of Twitter? Once upon a […]

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A three-decade time capsule hanging on my door

There was an Epson bag hanging from the back of my bedroom door, hidden by larger bags. I opened it up to discover brochures from my visit to a computer fair in 1989 (imaginatively titled Computing ’89), and that the bag must have been untouched for decades.    I’ve no reason to keep its contents […]

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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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Neil Gaiman on JY Integrity on his UK paperbacks

When Neil Gaiman pays you a compliment about one of your typeface families (JY Integrity, which I designed in 1993), you gratefully accept. They are glorious. Thank you so much for making the font. — Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) July 7, 2018 You may also like A three-decade time capsule hanging on my door Finishing off […]

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How Silicon Valley and the Soviet Union are alike

Anton Troynikov’s banner on his Twitter account. I really enjoy Yakov Smirnoff’s old jokes about the Soviet Union, and the Russian reversal that is often associated with him. In the 21st century, I’ve used the odd one, such as, ‘In Russia, Olympics game you!’ and ‘In America, internet watch you!’. I’m sure I’ve done wittier […]

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Why you shouldn’t build projects on Google Cloud (or, why are we still having these conversations?)

This story on Medium, about Google Cloud, is all too familiar to me (hat tip to Donkey). It mirrors my experiences with Google in 2009 and 2013.    A company monitoring solar plants and wind turbines had Google pull their account twice. The Googlebot falsely claimed there was suspicious activity, with Google threatening to delete […]

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As the most experienced long-video Instagrammer, welcome to the club

It appears my friend Justin was spot on: I probably was part of a test group trialling longer Instagram videos since April.    Today, Instagram announced that people could upload 10-minute videos, and an hour for those with big followings.    This news article (hat tip to Cachalot Sang on Twitter) says there’ll be a […]

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The end of US ’net neutrality: another step toward the corporate internet

Elijah van der Giessen/Open Media/Creative Commons That’s it for ’net neutrality in the US. The FCC has changed the rules, so their ISPs can throttle certain sites’ traffic. They can conceivably charge more for Americans visiting certain websites, too. It’s not a most pessimistic scenario: ISPs have attempted this behaviour before.    It’s another step […]

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