Still from AFP video I’d far rather have the action taken by our government than the UK’s when it comes to flattening the curve on coronavirus, and the British response reminds me of this 2018 post. Just because the chief scientific adviser there has a knighthood and talks posh isn’t a reason to trust […]
Read More… from The British approach to coronavirus: by Grabthar’s hammer, what a savings
I wanted to see what TV1 news (I can never remember its official name with all its rebrands over the years—is it One Network News, TVNZ1 News, One News, or something else?) had on GM’s decision to shut Holden, but I missed both the six o’clock and the Plus One screenings. I headed online with […]
Read More… from One News is hard to miss on TV, but hidden on the internet
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 […]
When I first wrote a satirical look back at the decade, which ran on this blog in December 2009 (on the old Blogger service, as I was helping a friend fight a six-month battle with Google to restore his blog), it was pretty easy to make up little fictions based on reality. This one, covering […]
Read More… from History of the 2010s: a look back at the decade that was
There are websites such as CBS News in the US that no longer let us here in New Zealand view them. US Auto Trader is another one. It’s a damned shame, because I feel it’s a stab at the heart of what made the internet great—the fact that we could be in touch with each […]
Read More… from The “fortress America” approach to the internet fuels piracy
Pixabay Each year, I mentor one student from my Alma Mater. I won’t reveal their identity or what we discuss, as these are privileged, but one thing that became apparent today is how each generation might think that young people are on to it. That they won’t fall for the same bullshit that we did […]
Read More… from The smart ones always seem to be the minority
After the last 11 months, only two Instagram users—myself and an Indonesian user called TryAink—uploaded videos of over a minute (his were up to four). It looks like he and I were experimenting to see how much Instagram would really allow. I guess we were the guinea pigs before IGTV was launched, though unlike those […]
As my final post on Google Plus, I posted the Murdoch Press article on how the company exposed user data between 2015 and 2018, choosing not to disclose it publicly for fear of regulatory scrutiny and damage to its reputation. How interesting to note that it has now been removed twice by the powers […]
Read More… from Google censors at every level—it’s just what they do
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 […]
US Department of Defense Keen to be seen as the establishment, and that means working with the military–industrial complex, Google is making software to help the Pentagon analyse drone footage, and not everyone’s happy with this development. The World Economic Forum’s ‘This is the future of the internet’ makes for interesting reading. It’s […]