Just deleted a post because without the embed code it made no sense. Somewhere between previwing the post (in which the video was clearly visible and working fine) and the actual publishing, the code vanished. Very strange. I've had videos turn into blank spaces labeled that the video is no longer available, but I've never had a line of html disappear from a post that had been saved.
Technology. Like the S.O. says, it's fucking magic.
Showing posts with label adventures in cyberspace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adventures in cyberspace. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2017
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Speaking of willful ignorance
It was unreal. This elderly woman allowed herself to be sweet-talked by a dude who said he was about 20 years younger than she was. Pretty soon they were "dating," a term I find questionable -- how do you "date" someone you've never actually met face to face and with whom your only contact is electronic? He sent her flowers, poetry, occasional cheap little gifts, all to demonstrate how smitten he was.
And then the requests for "loans" began. Over a period of several years, the lady gave the man $76,000. She wiped out her savings. She got in trouble with the IRS. She was basically bankrupt, but she was still trying to raise money by selling off her "collectibles" (which appeared to be a box of Beanie Babies -- good luck with that one, lady) to send the dude more money. He'd basically sucked her resources dry incrementally -- $1,000 here, $500 there -- but was still trying to get more out of her. She'd become estranged from her adult children. Her son and daughter kept telling her she was being scammed but she refused to believe it. She actually wrote to Dr. Phil begging him to help her prove to her children that the love of her life was real.
What struck me as the most unbelievable part was the fact the man had managed to dodge face-to-face meetings for several years. In emails and chats he'd promise they'd get together "soon" but whenever it was supposed to happen there'd be some last minute glitch. On at least one occasion she was actually in the same city where he supposedly was but bad luck conveniently intervened. And it was always something happening to him, of course, like a sudden illness or a missed flight connection. For multiple years and $76,000!
Unfortunately, we did not see the entire show. I'm now tempted to go looking for that episode online. It had just gotten to the point where Dr. Phil was looking at physical evidence, stuff the dude had sent to the woman to prove he was being honest, and pointing out to her how documents like a cancelled check had been tampered with by having amounts or dates changed. It was pretty obvious the lady had been scammed, but Dr. Phil hadn't gotten around to revealing yet just what they had learned about the scammer or scammers -- because fairly often the catfishing that involves ripping people off will be a team effort. Several con artists will work together to string along multiple victims while they empty bank accounts before moving on. The one unusual thing about this particular case was that the scammer hadn't quietly disappeared once the victim told him she was totally broke, her resources exhausted, and close to losing her house. Once you've sucked all the blood out of the turnip, why linger?
It's a mystery. Although in a way the part of the episode we did see answered one of the questions I sort of had about Facebook. Every so often I'll get a friend request from someone I've never heard of, no mutual friends, just a total and complete stranger. I know there are some people who collect "friends" the same way some people collect Hummel figurines IRL -- we all know people who will talk about having hundreds of Facebook friends when they don't actually know more than a handful as more than a name -- but I've never been into doing that. Unless someone is either someone I know in the real world or a friend of a friend (and most of the time not even then), I ignore friend requests. In any case, I'd wonder why some dude would bother sending me a friend request when we'd never even interacted in a comments thread. After watching Dr. Phil, though, I find myself thinking that some of those random friend requests were probably from scammers fishing for a victim. All the more reason, I guess, to hit the Ignore option whenever one pops up.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Why do I have to watch fake news shows to see actual reporting?
Being stuck in a motel for a few days does have some advantages. Among other things, we've been able to watch television when it's actually happening instead of dealing with the hassles of streaming stuff many days later. Last night we watched "Full Frontal" with Samantha Bee. It was. . . enlightening.
One of the segments focused on Russia and Internet trolling. Russia is apparently the motherlode of Internet weirdness. Being an Internet troll is a civil service job there. People get paid by the state to go hang out on the Internet and push various memes and fake news and get comment threads going that in some way further Russia's interests.
At this point in time, those interests include disrupting the U.S. political process. It's pretty clear Wikileaks has been aided and abetted by the Russian government in releasing material detrimental to the Clinton campaign. Vladimir Putin would prefer that Donald Trump win the election next week, although he'll probably settle for enough crap being stirred up that a Clinton administration ends up being distracted by a gazillion bullshit investigations and faux controversies. Because let's face it -- Putin has no fear of Trump. Trump is so thin-skinned it's unreal, which would make him remarkably easy to manipulate. He freaks out when Saturday Night Live makes fun of him; I shudder to think of how he'd react if a foreign leader told him to shut up. Clinton, on the other hand, is a bitch with balls of steel. I disagree with a number of her positions on foreign policy -- she's much, much too hawkish (not a surprise considering she's taken advice from that toad in human form, Henry Kissinger) -- but for sure she's not likely to flinch in a crisis.
In any case, Samantha Bee's staff had done serious research on the subject of Russian meddling on the Internet. They even managed to track down a couple people who work as trolls. One fellow cheerfully admitted he's got something like 28 online identities, all supposedly American, that he uses while spreading various bits of propaganda and rumors. The woman Samantha Bee talked with poses as, among other identities, a housewife from Nebraska. From what the young man said and given his proficiency with English, I'm guessing the biggest hurdle he's had to jump in creating fake identities and getting involved in comment threads is dumbing down his vocabulary and ability to spell to match up with the typical American's lack of knowledge of standard English.
The big question I have (along with a lot of other people) is why are the fake news shows doing a better job of covering current events than the supposedly real ones? Time magazine ran a piece recently on some of the late night show hosts (Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert) and noted that the satirical shows like "Full Frontal" and "The Daily Show" are doing the in-depth investigative reporting we once assumed the straight news programs did. Instead, news networks like CNN, ABC, et al just serve as stenographers, breathlessly parroting whatever the latest rumors are and doing no fact-checking whatsoever -- it's apparently so much easier to speculate and toss out melodramatic headlines than it is to do a little background research. "Full Frontal" looking at who's actually putting what out on the Internet is a perfect example.
You know, I would hope that everyone who spends any time at all wandering around the Intertubes knows about sock puppets, the fake identities created to make it look like a site is generating more traffic than it actually is or to help gin up a controversy. A comment thread will look like there's a dozen or more people arguing back and forth when the reality it's maybe one real person and a whole lot of sock puppets. And sometimes it's 100% puppets. This is one of the many reasons why the best advice anyone can follow when it comes to the Intertubes is Never read the comments! It's just too easy to let yourself get sucked into a 100% faux argument. Then the next thing you know you're telling all your friends global warming is a conspiracy to make Al Gore rich and that Hillary Clinton personally ordered a hit on Antonin Scalia. Gullible people, Russian trolls. Definitely not a good combination.
The S.O. suggested that one reason the mainstream media, the straight news shows, do such a poor job of doing investigative reporting is they're owned by corporations that have a vested interest in keeping the sheeple ignorant. Well, so are the satirical news programs like "Full Frontal" and "John Oliver Last Week Tonight." Does tossing in some dark humor make the shows less threatening? Or do the corporate overlords just assume it doesn't matter because the target demographic for those shows (people in their 20s) are notoriously uninvolved in politics. Or they were. Bernie Sanders may have changed that.
One of the segments focused on Russia and Internet trolling. Russia is apparently the motherlode of Internet weirdness. Being an Internet troll is a civil service job there. People get paid by the state to go hang out on the Internet and push various memes and fake news and get comment threads going that in some way further Russia's interests.
At this point in time, those interests include disrupting the U.S. political process. It's pretty clear Wikileaks has been aided and abetted by the Russian government in releasing material detrimental to the Clinton campaign. Vladimir Putin would prefer that Donald Trump win the election next week, although he'll probably settle for enough crap being stirred up that a Clinton administration ends up being distracted by a gazillion bullshit investigations and faux controversies. Because let's face it -- Putin has no fear of Trump. Trump is so thin-skinned it's unreal, which would make him remarkably easy to manipulate. He freaks out when Saturday Night Live makes fun of him; I shudder to think of how he'd react if a foreign leader told him to shut up. Clinton, on the other hand, is a bitch with balls of steel. I disagree with a number of her positions on foreign policy -- she's much, much too hawkish (not a surprise considering she's taken advice from that toad in human form, Henry Kissinger) -- but for sure she's not likely to flinch in a crisis.
In any case, Samantha Bee's staff had done serious research on the subject of Russian meddling on the Internet. They even managed to track down a couple people who work as trolls. One fellow cheerfully admitted he's got something like 28 online identities, all supposedly American, that he uses while spreading various bits of propaganda and rumors. The woman Samantha Bee talked with poses as, among other identities, a housewife from Nebraska. From what the young man said and given his proficiency with English, I'm guessing the biggest hurdle he's had to jump in creating fake identities and getting involved in comment threads is dumbing down his vocabulary and ability to spell to match up with the typical American's lack of knowledge of standard English.
The big question I have (along with a lot of other people) is why are the fake news shows doing a better job of covering current events than the supposedly real ones? Time magazine ran a piece recently on some of the late night show hosts (Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert) and noted that the satirical shows like "Full Frontal" and "The Daily Show" are doing the in-depth investigative reporting we once assumed the straight news programs did. Instead, news networks like CNN, ABC, et al just serve as stenographers, breathlessly parroting whatever the latest rumors are and doing no fact-checking whatsoever -- it's apparently so much easier to speculate and toss out melodramatic headlines than it is to do a little background research. "Full Frontal" looking at who's actually putting what out on the Internet is a perfect example.
You know, I would hope that everyone who spends any time at all wandering around the Intertubes knows about sock puppets, the fake identities created to make it look like a site is generating more traffic than it actually is or to help gin up a controversy. A comment thread will look like there's a dozen or more people arguing back and forth when the reality it's maybe one real person and a whole lot of sock puppets. And sometimes it's 100% puppets. This is one of the many reasons why the best advice anyone can follow when it comes to the Intertubes is Never read the comments! It's just too easy to let yourself get sucked into a 100% faux argument. Then the next thing you know you're telling all your friends global warming is a conspiracy to make Al Gore rich and that Hillary Clinton personally ordered a hit on Antonin Scalia. Gullible people, Russian trolls. Definitely not a good combination.
The S.O. suggested that one reason the mainstream media, the straight news shows, do such a poor job of doing investigative reporting is they're owned by corporations that have a vested interest in keeping the sheeple ignorant. Well, so are the satirical news programs like "Full Frontal" and "John Oliver Last Week Tonight." Does tossing in some dark humor make the shows less threatening? Or do the corporate overlords just assume it doesn't matter because the target demographic for those shows (people in their 20s) are notoriously uninvolved in politics. Or they were. Bernie Sanders may have changed that.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Another exercise in frustration
AKA Cyberspace Mysteries.
Since moving back up here to the tundra and deciding to live in the middle of nowhere, the only way the S.O. and I get to watch television is via streaming. Most networks now let you watch their prime time shows after a delay of anywhere from 1 to 30 days after an episode originally aired, which means we see stuff like "Survivor" a day later than every one else. We don't actually have too many problems finding what we want with one notable exception: sports.
It doesn't matter what sport it is, no one wants to watch an event after the outcome is already known. The S.O. has become quite adept at finding sites for watching NASCAR or football, although the quality of the streams can vary quite a bit. Once in a while he gets lucky and the network carrying the game or the race will live stream the event free. Doesn't matter if it's a sketchy site that's pirating the broadcast or the actual network, though. If it's a live stream, things inevitably get weird. The only way to describe it is to say the stream hiccoughs. It skips. It's like data packets drop out when the buffering slows down. Weirdness ensues. There'll be a hiccough and a race skips right over a couple of laps. Color commentators get cut off in mid-sentence. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's annoying. And last night?
I'm not sure if it was a kindness or an irritant, but the football game went from "We're in overtime. Kickoff in a minute" to a screen saying "Commercial break" to hearing an announcer say "and the Cardinals move on in the playoffs with a final score of 26." The S.O. went from hoping for an overtime miracle to sitting there dumbfounded muttering what the hell?? I'm not sure just how many minutes overtime actually took up, but the S.O. saw none of it. It felt kind of like when you're listening to an LP on vinyl, someone bumps into the record player, and you go from track 1 to track 3 with nothing in between. Very, very strange.
That whole thing with live streaming can be weird. We watch the local news as a live stream, but it can be odd. Sometimes there are commercial breaks; sometimes the stream starts a couple minutes later than it would if we were actually watching it as an over the air broadcast and the stream just runs straight through, no commercials at all. It's definitely a mystery.
Every so often someone suggests we spent money on DISH. I don't think so. With the live stream, there's the problem of hiccoughs. If we had DISH, right about the time things got interesting, the dish would fill with snow and the S.O. would miss key plays because he'd be outside with a broom. Either way, he ends up cursing -- and right now the cursing is free.
Since moving back up here to the tundra and deciding to live in the middle of nowhere, the only way the S.O. and I get to watch television is via streaming. Most networks now let you watch their prime time shows after a delay of anywhere from 1 to 30 days after an episode originally aired, which means we see stuff like "Survivor" a day later than every one else. We don't actually have too many problems finding what we want with one notable exception: sports.
It doesn't matter what sport it is, no one wants to watch an event after the outcome is already known. The S.O. has become quite adept at finding sites for watching NASCAR or football, although the quality of the streams can vary quite a bit. Once in a while he gets lucky and the network carrying the game or the race will live stream the event free. Doesn't matter if it's a sketchy site that's pirating the broadcast or the actual network, though. If it's a live stream, things inevitably get weird. The only way to describe it is to say the stream hiccoughs. It skips. It's like data packets drop out when the buffering slows down. Weirdness ensues. There'll be a hiccough and a race skips right over a couple of laps. Color commentators get cut off in mid-sentence. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's annoying. And last night?
I'm not sure if it was a kindness or an irritant, but the football game went from "We're in overtime. Kickoff in a minute" to a screen saying "Commercial break" to hearing an announcer say "and the Cardinals move on in the playoffs with a final score of 26." The S.O. went from hoping for an overtime miracle to sitting there dumbfounded muttering what the hell?? I'm not sure just how many minutes overtime actually took up, but the S.O. saw none of it. It felt kind of like when you're listening to an LP on vinyl, someone bumps into the record player, and you go from track 1 to track 3 with nothing in between. Very, very strange.
That whole thing with live streaming can be weird. We watch the local news as a live stream, but it can be odd. Sometimes there are commercial breaks; sometimes the stream starts a couple minutes later than it would if we were actually watching it as an over the air broadcast and the stream just runs straight through, no commercials at all. It's definitely a mystery.
Every so often someone suggests we spent money on DISH. I don't think so. With the live stream, there's the problem of hiccoughs. If we had DISH, right about the time things got interesting, the dish would fill with snow and the S.O. would miss key plays because he'd be outside with a broom. Either way, he ends up cursing -- and right now the cursing is free.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Reducing my online footprint
I am giving serious thought to backing away from the Intertubes, at least a little. I'm actually thinking about closing one of my email accounts. I've had it forever, which could be why it attracts spam the way chum draws in sharks. I checked it this morning: close to 50 messages, none of which are personal. It's all crap from various interest groups and retailers. I tried unsubscribing from some of the political groups, but it didn't help. The useless emails keep coming. It took me a little too long to learn to never give my email when a store clerk requests it. The occasional coupons received are feeble compensation for the deluge of advertising for current sales -- why on earth, for example, does Office Depot feel the need to tell me three times in the same day that paper is on sale? So maybe the thing to do is just get rid of that account.
Although it probably wouldn't help for long. Sooner or later I'd sign up for announcements or news on a different account and the same thing would happen all over again.
I do think, though, that I'm going to close out my LinkedIn account. It makes no sense to have it now that I'm retired. And for sure I really don't care when former co-workers add new contacts or when other Michigan Tech alumni get a discussion going about almost anything. It doesn't matter what the topic is, sooner or later the thread will be hijacked by a bitter white male. MTU has more than its fair share of misogynistic and/or racists asshats who are sure their own careers are being stifled by political correctness promoting women and minorities ahead of them. There lots and lots of bitter engineers out there who thought they'd be running General Motors by the time they were 40 and instead they're stuck making incremental improvements to widgets at a company no one's ever heard of. So it's probably past time to back away from LinkedIn. And once it's gone, a tiny percentage of the crap that had been showing up in the in box for one email account will be gone, too. It's a start.
Although it probably wouldn't help for long. Sooner or later I'd sign up for announcements or news on a different account and the same thing would happen all over again.
I do think, though, that I'm going to close out my LinkedIn account. It makes no sense to have it now that I'm retired. And for sure I really don't care when former co-workers add new contacts or when other Michigan Tech alumni get a discussion going about almost anything. It doesn't matter what the topic is, sooner or later the thread will be hijacked by a bitter white male. MTU has more than its fair share of misogynistic and/or racists asshats who are sure their own careers are being stifled by political correctness promoting women and minorities ahead of them. There lots and lots of bitter engineers out there who thought they'd be running General Motors by the time they were 40 and instead they're stuck making incremental improvements to widgets at a company no one's ever heard of. So it's probably past time to back away from LinkedIn. And once it's gone, a tiny percentage of the crap that had been showing up in the in box for one email account will be gone, too. It's a start.
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