This was the natural outcome of greed, in the forms of monopoly power and sensationalist media

I did indeed write in the wake of January 6, and the lengthy op–ed appears in Lucire, quoting Emily Ratajkowski, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden. I didn’t take any pleasure in what happened Stateside and Ratajkowski actually inspired the post after a Twitter contact of mine quoted her. This was after President Donald Trump was […]

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Reaching the end of Facebook

With the new season of Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei nearly upon us, I decided I’d pop into my Facebook group (I’m still an admin) to see what had been happening. I’ve been there a few times this week and I have discovered some of the site’s latest features.    Groups: these now have […]

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Have we stopped innovating in online publishing?

For a while, we’ve been thinking about how best to facelift the Lucire website templates, to bring them into the 2020s. The current look is many years old (I’ve a feeling it was 2016 when we last looked at it), which in internet terms puts this once-cutting edge site into old-school territory.    But what’s […]

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The end of the cellphone?

Motorola This is a take that will probably never come true, but hear me out: this is the end of the cellphone era.    We’ve had a pandemic where people were forced to be at home. Whilst there, they’ve discovered that they can be productive on their home desktop machines, doing Zoom and Skype meetings, […]

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Google isn’t working

I’ve done several Zoom meetings since the pandemic was declared, and two Google Hangouts. While I’m not thrilled at having to use two companies with patchy (to say the least) records on user privacy, the meetings (three for Medinge, one for another board I sit on) have been productive, and the only bottleneck has been, […]

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Is Facebook lying to customers about who has seen their ads?

Not withstanding that I can’t edit my advertising preferences on Facebook—they took that ability away from me and a small group of users some time ago (and, like Twitter, they are dead wrong about what those preferences are)—I see they now lie about what ads I’ve seen and clicked on.    I can categorically say […]

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Are you a scam artist? Facebook loves you, and protects you

The Royal New Zealand Ballet generously put its Hansel & Gretel performance from November 2019 online for free this weekend, choosing Facebook as its medium. That, naturally, attracts scam artists, putting in false links in order to charge credit cards. Many Kiwis were duped. The RNZB reported many, and so have I. All six of […]

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Cellphone? What cellphone?

It’s true. I spent time on business development, answering emails, doing tech stuff on our sites, and generally kept on top of things. I often wonder if I would have become an active Facebooker or Tweeter had they been invented and come into my orbit in, say, 2002. We all may have been too busy […]

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Could this happen one day at GM?

The MG line-up in New Zealand. Could it be part of a bigger portfolio of brands later this decade? In the context of what has happened with Holden, and Peter Hanenberger’s thoughts on the direction of GM, I wonder how far away we are from seeing these headlines: Cash-strapped GM sells passenger car brands to […]

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Peter Hanenberger’s unintended post mortem of Holden

The 2009 Chevrolet Caprice SS, sold in the Middle East but made in Australia. I came across a 2017 interview with former Holden chairman Peter Hanenberger, who was in charge when the company had its last number-one sales’ position in Australia. His words are prescient and everything he said then still applies today.    He […]

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