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176
N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: NANY2016 idea - Cursor Control
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 09, 2015, 09:38 PM »
Very roughly it seems to me to be a kind of "override naturals" kind of thing and you'd have to "load modules" kind of thing.

Notepad? Notepad2? Kingsoft Spreadsheet? MyInfo (My turbo program) ?  X others? It's close as is to that Sharecart system where some master X uses the same data but it may mean diff things in diff programs. So to call it "universal" feels dangerous somehow.

I think it's a good idea but prone to truly epic vicious scope creep!
 :o
177
Living Room / Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 08, 2015, 02:06 PM »

"IMMO, getting into a pissing match with ad technology..."

I dunno, I think the Ad industry gets aggressive and wants to see how far it can push before it's driven back.

I am getting more and more grumpy HEY BUY A COCA COLA BECAUSE NEW ZEALAND LIKES IT that you can't even read text anymore!

 >:(
178
General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox drastically bleeding market share
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 08, 2015, 01:39 PM »

Well, they seem to be *overly* "focused on their market". Yes, at the expense of everything else.

Unfortunately, they made decisions on "who is important in their market".

 :(
179
Living Room / Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 07, 2015, 01:18 PM »
Okay, this is not "Devil's Advocate" because I think she is *partly* right. And I think we're at risk here of "glossing over her well tuned language". I'm just gonna put stuff in quotes because I don't feel like scissoring parts of the original.

1. To begin this discussion with respect, *spell her name correctly*. (I like to joke it was 5% of my old job because I have an eye towards these things.) Its *Denelle*. Not "Danielle". And then the last part of you calling her "Dixon-Fire" is just ad hominem.

2. "An issue needing more balance is user data. The collection and use of data is not inherently harmful. It helps with powering personalized features, keeping products up to date, providing user support and improving the ways products work. Providing user value through data collection is a healthy and necessary way to help create compelling experiences. However, when data is collected without providing the user with value or control, and the value exchange becomes opaque, confusion sets in. Then users start to mistrust the entire system—including the good actors.

We are trying to get to the root of the problem – but not just through research. We are also working to develop products, features and engagement supporting a great user experience and commercial sustainability."

This is very nearly completely correct!
:tellme:

What is happening right now is the data *is* being collected *without value or control*. So she's right! So what happens if we somehow developed turbo control for us, to "value the shit out of what we want"!? (To use the phrase from Matt Damon's character in The Martian).

And paraphrasing elsewhere, "Why are users using blunt instruments?" - Because we didn't give them a scalpel! What if the browser started with (in a special particular edition) hardcoded forced zero ads (as best they can, companies are starting to slip by with javascript pushed ones into new pages and stuff).

Then *at our discretion* one by one, there is a button on the top that says "I'm bored. Show me a dropdown list of ads available for this page." (Or other menu, your choice of UI but that's a quibble.)

So then you get a list and you go "Pampers, skip. Target, skip. Cheerios developed new tech to make their Cheerios certified Gluten Free ... ooh, that's interesting! Sure! Show me that ad!"

Then Cheerios gets notice back that you viewed their ad of your will, and I bet if anyone did a study on this "info retention about the product" will be higher. I know it is for me - I can paraphrase almost 75% of their related announcements on that topic right now. (And I like Cheerios anyway!)

So holy hell, FF used to be the brand you could fork, PaleMoon seems to be the only strong fork of it left (For 32 bit Windows?, there are some others on Linux etc.) So what would THAT feature look like? THAT could create a tremendous new thread because then people can go *seek out* new ads and some of them would go viral!

180
Living Room / Re: Anyone know anything about CAN-SPAM laws?
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 07, 2015, 12:48 PM »
I think certain companies have found "obscure provisions" (not necessarily loopholes) that allow them to not put "this is not spam" in the footer, and probably something like having kept documentation of every address being stored with the original reference request.

Though I'm too lazy to look on my other account, I think Radio Shack comes to mind.

What makes it worse is many sleazy companies put the "Footer" there but bogus, because when you click it to opt out, they go "Yay! Someone read this! Sell this number to our "partner" ! Then they can get four more spam!"

181

I might have some clarity here.

Cop tasering *himself* "to learn / to look funny / to create a meme" = Funny
Cop tasering *suspect* (not staged as a skit) = police aggression = Basement.

182
...
However, I am a bit confuzzled by what I have observed in an ad hoc manner as and when I have performed searches, and over an extended period from some time back, because sometimes:
  • (i) Some text strings of more than adequate length could not be found in local searches of DCF - that is, using the DCF local search function. I had presumed this could be the result of (say) either a local indexing failure, or deliberate site blocking (non-indexing) of certain strings/posts by admins.

  • (ii) Some text strings of more than adequate length were not found in some or any DC Forum posts, in duckgo searches, even though the strings were in one or more DC Forum posts. I had presumed this could be the result of (say) deliberate site blocking - e.g., (say) robots.txt of certain strings/posts, or other blocking, so that search crawlers were inhibited/blocked.

  • (iii) Some discussion threads in the main DCF forum being unavailable in Wayback beyond a certain point due to robots.txt blocking. I had presumed this could be the result of deliberate site blocking of certain strings/posts by admins.
    ...
    Any daylight on this would be helpful.
I've seen much of this too Iain, so here are my guesses:

1. The new search is a disaster. I think it was one of the days I was working on the Getting Things Done thread and for the life of me I couldn't get it to come up in the *new* DC search. It seems to do "OR" searches so I'd get all threads for "getting", and "Things" and "Done".

The old board had a pretty good hand optimized search by someone from DC, and Mouser hasn't had time / figured out how to port it over.

2. The crawlers of different search engines work differently, and to varying success. Unfortunately, I have to report I like DuckGo's philosophy, but that its engine simply gave me mediocre results a lot like you are saying, you can be staring at the relevant DC post in one window and the DuckGo simply refuses to pull it.

Then change engines and as much as I *don't* like their philosophy, Google IS basically the best except weird cases. I've done the same search in like 4 engines (including Binged-Yahoo and Startpage) and they come up with different results of varying quality. So it can't be a block per se if Google finds it and Duck doesn't.

3. Maybe it costs money to run scans at sufficient intervals or something, but Wayback simply sadly not reliable for thoroughness and I know you are a thorough person. So a page for ex you know changes every day only has such as 5-20 images for that month. Again, Google's spider is the best because it runs at lightning speed and I think I recall once a post I made an hour earlier showed up in Google. [/list]
183
Living Room / Re: whatsapp anonymous
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 05, 2015, 04:24 PM »
hello!

I want to use whatsapp (talk with a person) without him learning my real number or by using a fake number

is that possible?

there are several guides on the net, but I couldn't find a decent one!

thanks!

If you don't mind spending a little extra money, it's not all bad to set up a whole new separate internet phone for general use that is only used for special case uses. I have Magic Jack paid for five years for that kind of thing and I tell people it's "outbound only" so it should "never ring".

(And in one weird case, here in NY City USA one of the agencies told me "oh, you bought your cell phone in Massachusetts? Sorry, we can't call you" (?!!) )

Plus just general emergencies and weirdness like "I lost my phone, let's dial it ... Oh! It's under the laundry!!"
 ;D
184
Developer's Corner / Re: Ethics in Technology
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 04, 2015, 06:45 PM »
Hey @40hz! Good to see you back here! You've been sorely missed!

But that doesn't mean we will agree on everything. :D

(PS - I'm a couple bottle of merlot in, so don't expect too much. ;) )

If VW were so convinced of the insanity of existing EPA regs, why didn't they publicly challenge them, ideally in conjunction with the other major auto manufacturers, if the existing and planned future regulations were so obviously going in the wrong direction?

I think that you are massively over-estimating the ability of the industry to reason with government.

We are NOT talking about some kind of rational topic here. This is a purely religious topic. Climate and emmissions and the like are NOT topics for logical debate. They are religious topics. Reason need not apply, because it will be repelled.

How do you reason with religious extremists? You can't. And climate isn't a topic where you can have a reasonable discussion. The topic is toxic and there is no good will in the discussion.

I have to just disagree slightly with the wording. They are not "religious" topics because religion at its best saves lives, and religion at its worst is a "different brand of extremism". Sure they're toxic topics, but not religious ones. You don't "believe in climate change after death" or such.

I'd rather call them in a secular manner in your choice of variants of economic styles, where people are just saying stuff with an agenda.


185
Developer's Corner / Re: Ethics in Technology
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on October 02, 2015, 11:32 PM »
So, given the insanity that VW is facing, I certainly can't blame them for skirting idiotic laws.

If you truly believe that, that's pretty sad Ren. Even coming from someone who likes to occasionally throw the proverbial "alligator over the transom" just to get people thinking and talking. (Which is something I can appreciate. ;) )

...

If the so-called bad regulations could be shown for what they are, they'd get changed in fairly short order. Figure a year or two at most. Because the one place you can always hit an American, and be guaranteed to get their full attention, is their checkbook.

Sorry. Bad laws need to be confronted. Not sidestepped because someone claims that "better information" or a "higher reality" is guiding them. That's the same argument that's used to justify "teaching the controversy" in public schools. Or denying access to information abput legal medical alternatives to women who, out of necessity, attend publicly funded health clinics. Or deciding there's a "higher truth" that grants you an exemption from your sworn duty as a public official to uniformly issue marriage licenses.

If everyone gets to have their own private laws and interpretations, you're heading toward an eventual breakdown of any legal system that allows it to become commonplace. And that can only result in a far greater set of problems for our society than the problem of a bad regulation itself. Because that's claiming privilege - from the Latin privilegium meaning "law applying to one person, bill of law in favor of or against an individual." And that's hardly a way to run a society based on shared freedoms, rights, and legal protections - no matter how flawed the attempts taken to achieve those goals.

About "nothing immoral about skipping a law" is just dangerous. The "true situation" is that people should be moral to begin with, certain people are sleazy, so a good law gets there to add some teeth and haul them back in line. So breaking a good law ... should be a bad thing.

So then yes, then bad laws get in there. Then you wonder how to stay moral in the face of a bad law. That's where the chaos ensues. But it's also not enough to "show" a bad law - the web now is pretty good at doing that. You have to find *other* reasons that make the people who put in the bad law for their own uses, to find it now *worse* to have that law there.

So adding a new industry to this, I'm staring at a Fascinating new wrinkle going on at Cheerios via General Mills. They decided to go for the certification of Gluten Free, which they seem to be succeding at. So a fairly good law is some reg that says "to legally qualify for the cert you need less than 20 parts per million grains to be gluten containing." So maybe a fourth rate knock off cereal would just fudge it and then should get slammed for it. So it's a pretty good law. And Cheerios seems to be pulling it off unless a scandal comes to light later. So then yay them.


186
Developer's Corner / Re: Ethics in Technology
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 29, 2015, 07:33 PM »
I come from "Old Accounting" too and I once walked off a job from an agency that was just so wrong on any level I couldn't take it. Thankfully my family is well off enough to pick me up a couple of times!

And sometimes if that happens too many times to you, that wrecks your entire mental health. Mine got wrecked by something else, but I took Ethics classes in biz school and they don't include things Like Volks-w fscking mech engineering things to fsck the clean air act.

So we're left with a Net culture where you hear about scary things from posts on ... DonationCoder.com

Just ... wow.

"Your car maker is trying to play you. And you learned about it ... on DC."

0_o
187
Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 20, 2015, 12:05 AM »
fyi: Forum upgraded to v2.0.11.
Thanks for the hard work! Keep this up and we might allow you a half-day off on Dec 25.

No, don't you know the Retail Way? Mouser has to work DOUBLE on Christmas because that's when *everyone else* is taking it off! He might get 7AM-3PM off December 27!
:o
188
Does she like Solitaire?

You mean "Klondike/Canfield".

As I have been amiably advising while visiting some local Chinese kids, "Klondike" is not "Solitaire". Solitaire is a *category*. "Klondike" is the most famous variant in that class.

But when her eyes get tired, buy her a twin deck of cards and teach her how to play German Spider. That's also ... Solitaire! And it has such a stunning different feel that she might like a break from stuff. Just make sure it's a big table!

If anyone actually cares, we can branch a thread out. This was just to niggle that "the game Bill Gates put on MS Windows" is a "class violation" or something : )


189
I wasn't talking about deleting anything. I was talking about the fact that if you installed it, and it immediately had this list, it just culled it from your OS.  It didn't cultivate this list itself.  It was just revealing what was there.

I could be wrong, but I think the point Tao was trying to make is not where this list came from or why the list was there, but why would a browser have access to the last 15 days activity on his PC? For what purpose did the developer program this 'feature'?

I, for one, do not see why a browser would need to keep track of any of my activities other than browsing & download history. If a web browser is keeping track of what videos I watch, what Word documents I open, and what files I copy to what directories then that browser needs to be uninstalled. I have never used SlimJet and if this is not the kind of activity Tao means then please ignore my ramblings.


BINGO.

I know web history is a "thing". But since when do "web browsers" get to identify the last fifteen days of your local Hard Drive history?! So yes, you nailed it, hence why I nuked it. There's no sane reason "it should have known" ... except the Alice in Wonderland reason that people "like it because it's convenient" but I have thought for years on the flip side of what they can't shut down under "terrorism", they activate under "convenience".

See that Free-Game article elsewhere.

Put bluntly, "Oh Hai Brand New Browser. How did you know I was downloading medical files last week? And it's a nice crispy list now. So where are you sending that list that you gloriously refuse to tell me?"
"Ssssh. It's Convenient!"

:o   >:(

190
Can you say more about this means?

Tao, you can read a Mozilla blog entry here that talks about WebExtensions, Electrolysis, and the road ahead. They have huge aspirations and say it will make for a better browser. Time will either prove them right or wrong. Not everyone at this point shares their opinion.


This is my vote for a "Time Capsule".

(Quoting you) "Time will either prove them right or wrong". I'd like that if nothing else than DC boards, to have the "Pre" situation documented out a bit. So then whichever ways it goes, we have "what we think now" and whatever horrific mess it turns into, then we get the "After".

Whichever way all this goes, to me it's becoming the old African phrase, "when Elephants fight, the grass suffers."

So I don't trust Mozilla. I happen to use PaleMoon because they seem to be really trying hard to reign in the junk to make a legit browser. I trust the *spirit* of PaleMoon. It's just now whether they can keep up if Mozilla is about to upend everything.
191
General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox drastically bleeding market share
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 19, 2015, 11:22 PM »
I've tried many times to switch to Chrome on my PC and netbook (to benefit from syncing with my Chromebook and Android tablet), but I came back to FF every time, as I just keep finding Chrome inferior to FF in my Win7 and XP environments. So as long as Chrome continues to underperform in Win (and MS doesn't come up with something better than IE), there should be hope for FF...

I keep saying I have no interest in the back end rendering, and just use FF for its extension-AddOns plus a Classic Restorer menu.

I don't know why anyone hasn't stuck a "Classic FF" add-on to Chrome. Then see the news elsewhere add-ons are getting all wiggly and stuff.

Although it never worked for me, at a distance I can respect the Linux philosophy that the back end is de-coupled from the front end UI. But in BrowserLand, I'm a FF-Clone guy because nothing else has ever made any sense in any way.

And I just saw that Josh from the controversial Button Masher Bros did a live stream and griped "damnit, that's right, lots of these Unity games don't run in Chrome". And I like my LudumDare stuff. So if an entire browser can't run games, why bother to use it?
192
Developer's Corner / Re: Ludum Dare 33 "You are the Monster" Thread!
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 19, 2015, 07:28 AM »
Okay, this is one of the early fun finds for me in Ludum Dare 33 "You are the Monster".

MadMonsterMassacre [MMM]
http://ludumdare.com...review&uid=46957

The art is almost not to be believed for so short a time - I think the devs said they borrowed stuff, but it's still grand!

Dragon pic1.jpg

It's pretty well balanced too. I got to 3600ish points, and I'm sure someone with good reflexes and the patterns down can get over 5000. It really wards well timed combos!

It is a Windows download with an installer, but it's worth it. The devs stayed focused and didn't try to over-do it, and worked hard to get it smooth. I didn't see many bugs. There's possibly one where you shoot the big flame and your health keeps going down, but that's minor.

So a lot of fun!
193
Living Room / Re: Getting Things Done revisited
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 18, 2015, 10:07 AM »
It has been a looong time since I read the GTD book, so I'm not 100% sure what I took from it and what I learned elsewhere, but if I recall correctly, using lists that are context specific is from GTD. So I now use https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas (because I can edit it in the web browser and there's an app for that) for lists of all kinds. Weekly shopping, calling people, project work, what I want for xmas, whatever. Amazing!

Another great thing for productivity (at least for me) is email: I email 'stuff' (ideas, reminders, links, things to do when back at the PC, ...) to myself almost every day. And since I use a specific address alias (https://support.goog...l/answer/12096?hl=en), Gmail automatically applies a label, which helps to find/ process them later. I use a different address alias for "some day, maybe" stuff. Those emails get a label too, but don't even show up in my Inbox. Very helpful.

Yep, context specific sounds about right. "Personal choice" whether Canvas or my notes program or other people use other things. I'm about 50-50 "misc" vs context, but yeah I agree. I just did my sweep this morning and have a couple minor things to report in on.

I have a bit of a fine balance with temporary low level notes that I just smash on a sticky because I can throw them out when they are done. It's a hack effort to try to curate the notes program to only be "second or third level or higher" level of notes because I don't need endless entries of "DO DISHES!!" (Which takes me about three days to quit stalling and do!)

The other category is these "perpetual topic reminders" such as for my new medical needs I really have to make a point to drink lots and lots of water or Things Happen. So I left that one as a small folded-half sticky there in paper in visual sight. But there's stuff that is mid zone, that is useful to have visually for about a week, but then does need to not be forgotten, but if you really have to curate what gets to Live Forever on paper, you have to push yourself to just go ahead and jam it into the GTD system you have running.

A couple examples:

- A bunch of fairly interconnected items popped up all related to a new medicine I am starting to test and try out, and the fact I can't seem to get hold of my Psychiatrist, and I recall some info letter in the mail about a bunch of the doctors changing office buildings, and so on. So that whole mess is all important, but they just can't all live there as seven stickies on the desk.

- Various songs I found interesting this month. Nice not to forget them out of sight out of mind, but they too can't each hog a piece of paper just because I found them at different times.

194
If it immediately had it, then it retrieved it from your local machine, not what it was personally collecting, no?  So the information is there, and it just accessed it.  So even after you uninstalled, it's still there.

Just food for thought.

I was a bit unclear, I meant it didn't delete anything, but now it has a list of stuff which roughly looked to be recently added files. So I have to assume that list of files is floating around out there. Nothing the end of the world, but I can see if it was allowed to stay it would get more and more. So I presume for example it doesn't have today's info. But boring web browsers shouldn't be doing that.

But I can see if someone had a juicy file name, that can drift into bait for ransomware, which we just saw recently in a couple of articles.

195
Living Room / Re: Malware uptick using WordPress Exploit
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 18, 2015, 08:51 AM »

And it's not just some random even high profile site, but the sheer number makes for minimum 12,000 person-hours of repair and update just the servers, times a fully-valued $25 per man hour, that's $150,000 in damages not counting any of the other things-times-6000 that need to be done!

:o
196
Developer's Corner / Re: Confessions of a free-to-play games producer
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 18, 2015, 08:44 AM »
I only play Ludum Dare *actually free* games!

So does anyone know how these other games get this kind of info? "We know where you live, we know your income level, we know your relationships, your favorite sports teams, your political preferences. We know when you go to work, and where you work."

"When you work" I can see, usage pulls on a server, "where you work" might be just everyone wants an email and it might be a work email, but sports teams, relationships, and political prefs!?

EDIT: Sorry, sloppy lazy reading of the story. I was thinking about info the company wanted entered directly somehow to "unlock a code" or something.
197
What you suggest is a way to go for developers of forked versions, although it would reset the code base to zero & they'd have to re-integrate all of their tweaks and changes.

Yes, that's what I figured. The question is whether doing that is more work than, er, developing and maintaining their own rendering engine. I suspect it is *less* work, probably by a fair margin. But I am not involved in the project, I don't know what they've done code-wise, so I can't say with any authority. It seems to me though that their fundamental development model needs to be evaluated in light of this ESR expiration issue. The option they provide is useful and appealing for a number of people, so it's clearly worth them continuing to make it available for the long-term if possible. They need a sustainable way to do that, not just for the next 6 months or year or 18 months but for the next 5+ years if possible.

- Oshyan

Take a look at this Release Notes because I just got the latest update from PaleMoon.
http://www.palemoon....g/releasenotes.shtml

They seem/say to try to do a lot more than "just remove the tracking" - they've tried to tighten Firefox's original (bloated?) code to become a better browser. So if that page is only *six months* of fixes, FF24 is what, like three years ago? And goodness knows what *new* junk FF has been adding they will want to go fix and take out.

So I'd say the whole Browserland is getting murky!
:tellme:

(Memo - you'd think software devs would know the differences between Extensions and Add-Ons, so if their blogs are that ambiguous, what does that mean in the whole scheme of things? And what does the intersection of this "Electrolysis vs moving stuff to Chome-like mean?)

198
I'm hoping your line of thinking is correct, but even then, Mozilla has something coming called "Electrolysis" that's going to turn proper add-ons on their ear in the future.

Can you say more about this means?

199
...Slimjet

I just looked at Slimjet and *immediately* un-installed it!

I went looking at "settings" and it had "history" of the last fifteen days of my local machine activity!

Browsers are not supposed to know what your local machine is doing!
>:(

So to me that's almost a cousin to a Trojan Horse! Because if it knows all that, then I would quite easily believe it could be sent somewhere! It could be close to RansomWare if you're not careful!


200
Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here
« Last post by TaoPhoenix on September 18, 2015, 12:18 AM »

Not sure when the latest newsletter ended up at the top of the forum page, but I think that's a good idea. (Somehow I didn't see it there before - I thought I remembered having to go down into Newsletters or something.)

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