The standard Chinese New Year news report

Janos Perian from Pixabay Every year, I hear or read a news report along these lines here: It’s Chinese, or the lunar, New Year today, and Asian communities all over New Zealand are coming together with their families to celebrate. It’s the Year of the Rat, which means it will be a lucky and prosperous […]

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GM’s Holden to abandon C and D car segments, delivering them on a silver platter to competitors

Stuart Cowley for Lucire   I haven’t spoken to Holden New Zealand to see if we’re following suit, but as far as Australia’s concerned, 2020 will be the final year for the Astra and Commodore, as Holden transitions to selling only trucks (utes) and SUVs.    Here we are, with its most competitive C- and […]

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Give me a break

From an Automotive News interview with Yves Bonnefort, CEO of DS.    Um, that’s called a station wagon or estate car, mate. You may also like A couple of days before it became official: thoughts on PSA and FCA linking up The top-selling cars in France, 2013 GM’s Holden to abandon C and D car […]

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Mastodon before Twitter: time to change my main social network

With the Twitter advertising preference monster continuing to gather preferences on all of us even after opting out—which basically makes Twitter Facebook—I decided to switch the Mastodon–Twitter Crossposter around.    With Twitter being my main social network, I was quite happy to allow the Crossposter to take my Tweets and turn them into Toots on […]

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Twitter also tracks your preferences, even after you opt out of ad customization

As with most platforms, I selected, on Twitter, that I didn’t want my advertising to be personalized. I don’t mind them making a buck, but I do mind them tracking my preferences, just as I did with Google and Facebook.    Google lied about its advertising preferences from 2009 to 2011 till yours truly busted […]

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Replacing Po.st with Addtoany, outside of Wordpress

Some of you will have noticed that Po.st went out of business, so all the Po.st sharing links disappeared from our websites.    The replacement: addtoany.com offers a similar service without the hassle of header codes. Just customize at their website, grab the code, and insert it where you want it. It’s now on the […]

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Alone again, naturally

Looking back over the years And whatever else that appears, I remember I cried when my mother died Never wishing to hide the tears. And at fifty-nine years old, My father, God rest his soul, Couldn’t understand why the only lass He had ever loved had been taken, Leaving him to start With a heart […]

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Switching to Opera GX from Vivaldi: I needed the better type rendering

Surprisingly, Vivaldi hadn’t notified me of any updates for months—I was on v. 2.05, and had no idea that they were up to 2.10. Having upgraded manually, I noticed its handling of type had deteriorated. Here is one paragraph in Lucire:    My font settings had also changed.    Coincidentally, I downloaded Opera GX last […]

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Carlos Ghosn redresses the balance

It’s been fascinating to watch Carlos Ghosn’s press conference in Beirut, and subsequent interviews, confirming my own suspicions back in November 2018 (as Tweeted and blogged). Carlos Ghosn's criticism of the Japanese justice system isn’t ‘one-sided’ as they claim. For 14 months, they controlled the narrative and the smear campaign against him. He and others […]

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It took a while: Autocade hits 4,000 models

The Chinese-market Buick Enclave became Autocade’s 4,000th model today. It wasn’t planned: in fact, I had readied a photograph of the Hyundai Tiburon (RD), expecting that would be the 4,000th. But, as happens with this site, you spot something, and you want that clarified. I haven’t been methodical about Autocade, ever—it has always been about […]

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