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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘bugs’
27.02.2023
Of course some of us expected Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT to be rubbish—and we knew ChatGPT would make stuff up. Because Bing makes stuff up.
If you have a normal, functioning web crawler (or spider), there’s no way you would ever wind up with pages that have never existed. Nothing about this is normal.
The latest contributions from Microsoft’s Wayback Machine for site:lucire.com are these. On my phone, I noticed it had ranked in third place, after two framesets from the early 2000s, a page we had for Plucker for the Palm Pilot! That gives you an idea of how old Bing’s index must be.
On the desktop, meanwhile, a site:lucire.com search now includes sites that aren’t lucire.com. I guess if your index is that small now, you need to pad it out not just with repetition, but other domains. One is related to us—it’s our Dailymotion channel—but the other is totally random with no connection whatsoever. Bit like ChatGPT.
My friend Robin Capper has discovered the same, when enquiring with the new Bing about himself. It claimed to have sourced from his Linkedin—but fed him back facts that are nowhere to be found. Here’s his blog post. I like how he put artificial intelligence in quotes, since there’s nothing intelligent about this. It’s a simple text processor, but it sure gets a lot of things wrong.
Tags: 2000s, 2023, AI, Bing, blogosphere, bugs, Microsoft, retro, search engine, technology
Posted in business, internet, New Zealand, technology, typography, USA | No Comments »
19.01.2023
When you’ve been saying the emperor has no clothes for the last few months—and on the emperor’s forums—I shouldn’t be surprised we are at this point now.
Bing is virtually dead, and they don’t want me probing Bing Webmaster Tools (which are largely useless) about my own sites to show up even more of their BS.
As moves go, this is pretty daft. I mean, it was pretty useless before, so now I wonder how much more BS there is. I guess whomever is running Bing wants to confirm to me that Bing is dead along with the rest of it.
Tags: 2023, Bing, bug, bugs, Microsoft, search engine, technology
Posted in internet, technology, USA | No Comments »
12.12.2022
Kurt and I have very different brains, if you read this thread that I jumped in on.
I am sure he is right on how things should work. Get me talking about spacing and spelling, and I’d be in the same boat. Or the use of the word billion. I have my ideas on all of these, but not everyone follows them.
But in the Wikipedia article he cites, not everyone accepts that [email protected] and [email protected] are the same—and certainly my own experience backs this up. You won’t be able to email me, for example, if you miss the punctuation. I also won’t be able to reach employees at some of the big media players on this planet.
I know Gmail would like us to think that a dotted and non-dotted email address are the same, and says as much, but there are just too many stories out there of people receiving emails not meant for them.
And you know what I think of Google: what it says and what it does have not always been the same thing.
Kurt believes all those people have fed in the wrong address for their emails to wind up with others. It’s entirely possible, but for one tale that I linked to, on Reddit.
A former network engineer, Dan Hoyer, said, inter alia:
So, bottom line is that Gmail didn’t always ignore dots, and people who had dots but had that address first were merged with the non dotted accounts and started receiving email from someone else’s non dotted account in addition to their dotted version. (I am not sure, but I believe the reverse may have happened too if the non dotted name came first.)
And in the replies, Melissa Chapman says:
I am with you about the change. It 100% used to see dots and they were suggested to users as alternate forms when you created your gmail. I’ve gotten email for people with my same maiden name in California, New Jersey, Minnesota, and most recently France. And not just junk mail, but Paypal, church tithes, and utilities. It’s frustrating that Google completely denies that this is the case! I don’t use my older email much, but I also wonder if the other user has some access or gets some emails. Like with Paypal, they had confirmed their email to create the account!
Now, if Melissa is telling the truth, then there is an issue with Gmail, where someone else can get your emails. If what Kurt says is right, then Melissa’s claim about the Paypal account’s verification by another user is impossible if someone else did not register a variant of her address on Gmail separately, and was told that it was accepted.
With respect, if someone is ignoring certain claims, it’s probably because they don’t want to open their minds to the possibility that their belief system is wrong. I remember that from an earlier Google experience—and what kicked off my de-Googling in 2009. As I said, I accept Kurt’s position on how things should be—but in practice not everyone is strict about things, and the computer world is as rife with examples as any other.
Tags: 2022, bugs, email, Gmail, Google, Mastodon, technology
Posted in internet, technology, USA | 2 Comments »
08.12.2022
Because I locked my Twitter, Keybase was unable to find its usual proof there. It told me to link a new one from their ‘app’. I’d love to, folks, but you don’t let me see anything.
That’s Keybase. I can’t see anything in the window, and I can’t move the window. I have reinstalled the program, to no avail.
These software people are all having a good laugh at regular people. I’d rather they spent that time making things that work.
Oh, look, they’re HQed in New York. What a surprise.
Eventually, right-clicking the Keybase icon in the tray (when it didn’t disappear) showed a link, ‘Keybase’. I clicked on that. So now I have this window.
Ah, but you can fix the Keybase thing from the website. Great!
Let me click that link!
It’s the same story if you use their command-line method, and the bin\bash method just gives lots of errors in red.
From the days of Yahoo!, to Vox at Six Apart, to years of Big Social BS (BSBS), nothing really changes with this lot. You’d hope they’d stop failing at their jobs, but you’re reminded that many won’t.
PS.: The program window did load after a few hours. No idea how to add a Mastodon proof to it, so maybe it did me a favour by failing to load in a reasonable time. Their website offers zero clues on how to make this addition in the program—just that it can be done. Once again, there’s no thought given to regular people, only computer programmers.
P.PS.: I received an email from Github where I filed a report several days later, and it appears discussions around the removal of Mastodon proofs began in 2020. The feature was removed in 2021. But this hasn’t wound up on the website yet after a year, so people are in the same boat as me.
Tags: 2022, bugs, computing, Mastodon, software, technology, Twitter, USA
Posted in internet, technology, USA | No Comments »
08.12.2022
I see Avira has downgraded me to their free version despite my being paid up. As far as I can tell, this has been the case for months, and I remember Tweeting them back when Twitter was a thing.
I can’t log in at all, and it keeps showing a ‘Get Prime’ button to force you to pay again. No thanks.
I went to their website and fed in my issue. They then take me to this page, which is pretty typical for a lot of computer companies: blame it on the customer.
I take them at their word and clicked on their link to download the allegedly missing Microsoft .Net Framework 4.6.2. Only problem is, none of the download links on the Microsoft site work. (Because Microsoft.)
I still manage to get the MSI file from Microsoft and of course there was nothing ever wrong with my set-up. I already had the Framework installed:
Your move, Avira. And that move had better include fixing the problem and extending my subscription period by at least half a year.
I guess this is what happens when a big US company buys up what was a pretty decent German one.
Tags: 2022, Avira, bugs, computing, Germany, Mastodon, Microsoft, software, technology, USA
Posted in technology, USA | No Comments »
09.10.2022
Immediately after blogging about Bing being able to pick up an article from 2022, Microsoft’s collapsing search engine has reverted back to being the Wayback Machine. There was just over a week of it living in the 2020s, but it seems it’s too much for them.
It’s back to, well, Bing Vista, for want of a better term. Of the 50 results (out of a claimed 120!) that it’s capable of returning for site:lucire.com, here is how it breaks down based on the publication year of the article. Since my last test, Bing has eliminated the 2018 and 2019 results (one page per year). We wouldn’t want to think it could deliver anything from the last decade, would we?
Bing
Contents’ pages ★★
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001 ★★★★★
2002
2003 ★★★★
2004 ★★★★
2005 ★★
2006 ★
2007 ★★★★★★★
2008 ★★
2009 ★★
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
There were 29 unique results, which means 21 were repeats—42 per cent! Bing says it had 120 results but really only had 29. To fill up the 50 it had to show 21 results multiple times!
Let’s see how Google fared for the first 50 results.
Google
Contents’ pages ★★★★★★★★★★
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002 ★★
2003
2004 ★★
2005 ★
2006
2007 ★
2008
2009 ★
2010 ★★
2011 ★★★
2012 ★★
2013 ★★
2014 ★★★
2015 ★★
2016 ★★
2017 ★★
2018 ★★
2019 ★★★
2020 ★★★
2021 ★★
2022 ★★★★★
Google has moved again since we began looking at things. In an earlier test tonight, Google had two repeat results, which was a surprise. But I wasn’t able to replicate it when I did the one for the blog post.
No such issues at Mojeek, where every entry is unique. They really are more capable of delivering search engine results for site searches that are superior to the other two’s.
Mojeek
Contents’ pages ★★★★★★★★
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004 ★
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009 ★
2010 ★★
2011 ★★
2012 ★★★
2013 ★★★★★
2014 ★★★
2015 ★★★★★
2016
2017
2018
2019 ★★★★
2020 ★★
2021 ★★★★★★★★★
2022 ★★★★★★
An improvement on our September 21 test, where Mojeek has managed to capture more 2020s pages as part of its top 50.
I won’t run the other search engines through this—I just wanted two points of comparison to highlight how ridiculous Bing remains, with the resultant effect on web traffic. It means Duck Duck Go, Qwant, Ecosia, Yahoo and others, which are also Bing, are just as compromised.
I might lay off them for a while as we know it’s crap and things aren’t going to change. Microsoft has firmly entrenched itself as a bunch of liars, like their other Big Tech counterparts.
Tags: 2000s, 2022, Bing, bugs, Duck Duck Go, Google, history, Microsoft, Mojeek, search engines, technology
Posted in internet, technology, USA | No Comments »
02.10.2022
Windows 11 22H2 arrived for me yesterday, and the first order of business, as always, was to sort out the typography. This earlier post is roughly right: make the registry hacks, then change the properties of the fonts in C:\Windows\WinSXS (namely by giving them administrator access) before deleting them. However, I needed one extra step to get them out of C:\Windows\Fonts, and that was to boot up in safe mode and delete them from 7Zip. Only then could I change the properties and say farewell to the dreaded Arial.
You still can’t type most characters above ASCII 128 in Notepad—a crazy state of affairs introduced during Windows 11’s time—though I managed to get the pound sterling sign to work (even though there might be less need to type it now thanks to the UK government). I guess no one uses the euro symbol at Redmond, or goes to a café (forget about any accented characters).
We’ll see if Explorer still rotates photos by itself—but as I’ve replaced it with One Commander for most of my file management, it will be a while before I will find out.
The new icons look good, and the new Maps seems to work reasonably well. Mostly I just care that my usual programs are fine and Windows’ font substitutes don’t do anything silly.
Tags: 2022, bugs, computing, fonts, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, technology, typography
Posted in design, technology, typography | No Comments »
03.06.2022
With my personal site and company site—both once numbers one and two for a search for my name—having disappeared from Bing and others since we switched to HTTPS, I decided I would relent and sign up to Bing Webmaster Tools. Surely, like Google Webmaster Tools, this would make sure that a site was spidered and we’d see some stats?
Once again, the opposite to conventional internet wisdom occurred. Both sites disappeared from Bing altogether.
I even went and shortened the titles in the meta tags, so that this site is now a boring (and a bit tossy) ‘Jack Yan—official site’, and the business is just ‘Jack Yan & Associates, Creating Harmony’.
Just as well hardly anyone uses Bing then.
Things have improved at Google after two months, with this personal site at number two, after Wikipedia (still disappointing, I must say) and the business at 15th (very disappointing, given that it’s been at that domain since 1995).
Surely my personal and work sites are what people are really looking for when they feed in my name?
The wisdom still seems to be to not adopt HTTPS if you want to retain your positions in the search engines. Do the opposite to what technologists tell you.
Meanwhile, Vivaldi seems to have overcome its bug where it shuts down the moment you click inside a form field. Version 5.3 has been quite stable so far, after a day, so I’ve relegated Opera GX to back-up again. I prefer Vivaldi’s screenshot process, and the fact it lets me choose from the correct directory (the last used) when I want to upload a file. Tiny, practical things.
Big thanks to the developers at Opera for a very robust browser, though it should be noted that both have problems accessing links at Paypal (below).
We’ll see how long I last back on Vivaldi, but good on them for listening to the community and getting rid of that serious bug.
Tags: Bing, bugs, computing, Google, Jack Yan & Associates, Microsoft, Opera, PayPal, search engine, search engines, Vivaldi, web browser
Posted in internet, marketing, technology | No Comments »
08.05.2022
Last night’s hour-waster was chatting to Facebook Business Support. No, that’s unfair. I was actually assigned an incredibly good rep who took me seriously, and concluded that Facebook did indeed have a bug which means, of all the pages I can manage, the one for Lucire is alone in not allowing me, or any of its admins, to do anything. How coincidental, after losing Instagram and Twitter for periods during 2021.
Ironically, one editor can—of course someone who is supposed to have fewer privileges can do more. Such is Facebook.
A few things I learned. There’s a Meta Business Suite, which a whole bunch of pages got shoved into, whether you wanted it or not. My public page is there, for instance. It seems if you have Facebook and Instagram accounts for the same thing, you’re going to be in there.
Despite the two-factor authentication discussed in the previous post, I actually can get into the Business Suite, via another page I administer for a friend. From there I can get to Lucire’s tools.
I don’t need two-factor authentication for any of the other pages in there, including my own, and have full access.
Trisha, or Trish as she said I could call her, walked me through the steps, and asked me to get to the Suite page. Then she asked me to click ‘Create ad’, and I get this:
She asked me to check the account quality, and of course there are no issues:
She wrote: ‘Thanks for letting me know. It’s weird because I have checked all your assets here and it looks good. But, here’s what I suggest, Jack. We’ll need to report this to our Internal team so they can investigate. You might experience a bug or glitch.’
I theorized: ‘Just so you know, this page dates back to 2007 so maybe it is so old that Facebook’s servers can’t handle it?’
It wasn’t something she responded to, as she stayed on-subject, but it’s a theory worth entertaining, as it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve witnessed this.
So, for now, the one team member who can still go on Facebook for us posted this at my request:
I doubt they’ll ever fix it, and two years ago I did say I wouldn’t really bother if Facebook went buggy and prevented us from updating again. Clearly I am bothering, as I know we have readers who use Facebook. But I have very little faith this will ever be fixed, since I have seen other reported bugs (some covered on this blog) get ignored for years, and this isn’t a fleeting bug, from what I can make out.
The lesson, as I have probably hinted at more than once, is never rely on a Big Tech service. The sites are so unwieldy that they get to a point where no one knows how to fix them. If earlier experiences are any indication, such as what I experienced at Vox, we have arrived at the end of Facebook pages.
Tags: 2020s, 2022, bug, bugs, Facebook, Lucire, publishing, social media, social networking
Posted in internet, publishing, technology | No Comments »
01.05.2022
Some of the articles in Lucire are still manually designed in Dreamweaver, and those need to be added to the social networks in a similar way. There we use Zoho Social to update things.
In practice, we only do Twitter, as IFTTT then takes care of reposting our updates to Facebook. Today, I noticed that IFTTT has failed to take any of our Tweets to Facebook since April 25, for no reason I can work out.
We also cannot use Zoho Social to make Facebook page updates, so the fault does not lie with these individual services, but Facebook itself.
First Zoho Social said I needed permission from the page admin to add images, but I am the page admin; then it said I could not post at all.
I went to Facebook for the first time in goodness knows how long to discover there is no way to enter a post manually there, either!
I tried using the Meta Business Tools, but I can’t be authenticated, since they require you use an “app” (none of which I have heard of), a physical security key (strange to me as I have no idea what one looks like or where it goes), or a cellphone (yeah right, like I’m going to give Facebook that very personal detail for them to sell).
It looks like another massively stupid decision on Facebook’s part, so odds are we’ll cease to update any of our Facebook pages going forward. It will take too much effort to figure out how to fix this. Even if we could type into Facebook, we don’t want to be feeding in every headline and link manually.
I ceased to have any respect for Facebook many years ago, but kept things going there for the sake of our readers. But if they are shutting down the pages—certainly all their functionality is disappearing—then we will have no choice but to end our updates there.
PS.: If any of you are wondering, I am definitely the admin, but I can’t do any of the things Facebook says I can:
If I access the options under ‘Page Owner’, apparently I can report ourselves, but nothing more!
Looks I still can post to a page where I’m not the owner but a contributor, but I can’t post to one where I’m the owner and admin:
Remember how a page settings’ page usually looks?
Here’s Lucire’s:
The only options I have as admin are:
And before you ask, there are no page ‘violations’ other than one post from years ago, because US sites can’t handle artistic nudity where you can’t see anything inappropriate. Genocide and misinformation are fine, though.
I think what Facebook does is let you work on pages that aren’t yours(!)—it wouldn’t be the first time—but not your own! It really is this daft there.
Tags: 2022, bugs, Facebook, marketing, promotion, social media
Posted in business, internet, marketing, publishing, technology, USA | 1 Comment »
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