I was led to believe that SRWare Iron was Chromium with more privacy, but this morning’s experience testing it was a bit disturbing. Let’s take a fairly common search, like Amazon seller. SRWare’s default search engine is Bing, or at least its own search takes you to Bing. And Bing puts in its first result […]
Read More… from Strange behaviour on SRWare Iron, and Bing ranks phishing site first
Extra plug for my friend Randy Scobey, who has written a memoir. Since Randy and I met through blogging in 2006, it seems fitting to mention this on my blog. What I wrote in Lucire about his book is heartfelt. If you want to read a first-hand account on the stigma felt by the […]
Read More… from My friend Randy writes a book; our ‘Written by humans’ graphic; Hart’s is economical
This is from Perplexity, showing how convincingly these bots with their large language models spit out utter drivel: And not everyone will have the actual knowledge to call them out on it: “AI” is only useful when you already know the answer, because it does get it wrong and you need […]
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 […]
Read More… from Who pioneered phone food ordering and delivery?
I thought I’d look at selling the Autocade Yearbook through Amazon, since people who visit the site are in the mood for shopping. Against all my instincts, I’d bite the bullet and make bloody Jeff even richer. But the whole sign-up process is a swindle. Here’s what I sent to them. Hello there: I […]
Read More… from Signing up on Seller Central: another Amazon swindle
This has been going on for between 10 and 20 years, and I think closer to the latter. Didn’t know Jeff was this hard up for cash. I didn’t record the dialogue last time, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but since I can’t trust the buggers, I will this time. Fed in to […]
Read More… from It would be nice to get my Amazon Associates money
A great quote from Penn Jillette in Cracked: Einstein comes up with this idea E = mc² — a profound, powerful, mind-blowing idea — and he has to work forever to make people understand that and to share that reality. Woodward and Bernstein are pretty sure the president of the United States committed crimes, and […]
Read More… from Tech musings from a non-tech: search engines and the nightmare of AWS
It’s hard to find fault with Robert Vanwey’s ‘Who to Boycott’, subtitled ‘There are some in business who treat workers like property’. Note: for those who don’t like Substack, you might not wish to click through. But I gave my word to Rob I would link it because I was impressed by his thinking and […]
In the editorial to one of our print publications—not yet at liberty to say which—I show a 2004 cover of Lucire featuring Jennifer Siebel inset in the text. It got me thinking how, when I first designed the cover, with Jon Moe’s photograph, I was aiming for a classical timelessness. Now nearly 20 years on—in […]
I wanted to add a few words to Amazon for Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics 2, but it seems Amazon no longer lets me post reviews. I guess Jeff B.’s rich enough without needing my content. I thought some of the negative ones he got there were a bit rough, given that he’s not proclaiming that […]