Geek Stuff category archive
It’s All about the Algorithm 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Amanda L. Giordano explores ten techniques that “social” media companies (remember, they are companies who desiring profits from our “engagement”) use to keep us “engaged.” Here’s what she says about the algorithm:
Follow the link for the other nine items she identifies.
Aside:
I would argue that, in most cases, there’s nothing “transparent” about the “terms of service.” They are often, purposefully in my opinion, dense piles of impenetrable legalese designed to discourage persons from reading them all the way through.
The one exception in my experience is Google, whose terms are written in generally plain language. Yet persons, including on occasion myself, use them anyway.
Driving to Distractions 0
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier is not enamored of all the tech in his new car. A snippet:
Well too late, my intrepid researcher.
(snip)
Frankly, I’d love to act as if the vehicle doesn’t have any of this stuff, but the vehicle continues to flaunt it. My ever-changing instrument cluster is consistently flashing unsolicited messages such as “Keep both hands on the wheel,” and “Lead car has departed,” comments that seem about a step removed from “Don’t pick your nose.”
Thank heavens, my new(er) car is free of most of the nagware. The most annoying thing is that, when the fuel gets low, it displays a message reading “[mumble] miles to empty,” as if I am incapable of seeing the fuel gauge right in front of me. I have to punch the okay button on the steering wheel to make it go away, but at least it goes away until the next time I start the car.
Other than that, though, it pretty much lets me drive it; it doesn’t try to drive me.
Geeking Out 0
Listening to Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me with the QMMP media player on Debian Sid with the Plasma Desktop. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Geeking Out 0
Mageia v. 8 with the Fluxbox window manager. Thunderbird and Firefox are shaded in a tabbed window. GKrealM is is in the lower right and xclock in the upper right. The wallpaper is from my collection.
The Crypto-Con 0
Sam, Emma, and their guest (who is unfortunately not named in the notes) discuss the cons behind the con.
Aside:
I find it somewhat curious that the same persons who complain about “fist currencies” are all in on the most fiat of all “fiat currencies.”
The Clock Is TikToking 0
One more time, “social” media isn’t.
Geeking Out 0
Updating a VirtualBox VM of Debian from Buster to Sid on Magiea v. 8 under the Fluxbox window mananger.
This is research. I’m planning to update my Thinkpenguin laptop from Buster to Sid. Debian unstable (“Sid” is Debian “unstable,” that is, a bit beyond testing, but not yet released) is more stable than most distros’ stable.
The Crypto-Con, Reprise 0
Another psychologist takes a look at crypto-currency. I find Nigel Barber’s take particularly interesting–he seems to think it may be an “investment mania.” Here’s a bit (emphasis added):
Like the cryptocurrencies of today, buyers had little knowledge of the true value of the investment and were guided mainly by the fact that the market price was rising.
That sort of irrationality leads to some bizarre equivalences. At the height of the tulip mania in Holland from 1636 to 1637, a rare type of bulb was used to purchase a home. In the dot-com boom of 1999, companies with revenues smaller than a corner store had market valuations of billions of dollars.
Follow the link for the rest, especially if you are thinking about “mining” some crypto con.
The Crypto-Con 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller examine why persons fall for the crypto-con. Here’s how they start their piece:
Marketers celebrate this moment of “pester power” for its shattering of rationality and the cultivation of a lifelong vulnerability to the shopping frenzy. Never mind that kids can learn to identify those frenzied feelings and develop tools to deal with them, which include slow and deep breathing to calm the body and soul. That psychological skill is not much welcome in our culture of consumerism.
This brings us to the latest craze to gin up the masses—cryptocurrency and the useless stuff you can buy with it in the hope of a big payday.
Follow the link to see how they end it.
Geeking Out 0
A VirtualBox virtual machine of the recently released Slackware v. 15 with KDE running on Mageia v. 8 with the Fluxbox window manager. Firefox is shaded, that is, “rolled up” into the title bar, in Slackware (you can’t do that with Windows). The Mageia wallpaper is from my collection; the Slackware wallpaper was included in the install.
The Deleteriousness of the Disinformation Superhighway 0
Psychologist Michelle Druin is less that optimistic about the effects of the internet on dis coarse discourse (and, by “the internet,” I think, based on the examples she cites, that she refers primarily to “social” media). She cites five negative effects that she has observed; follow the link for a detailed discussion of each.
- It’s pushing us towards inauthenticity . . . .
- It may be increasing our paranoia . . . .
- It’s making us care too much about what other people think . . . .
- It’s pressuring us to create stage-worthy moments . . . .
- It’s making us want the impossible
Focus-Pocus 0
Thom and his guest discuss the myth of multi-tasking and how it is destroying attention spans.
Facebook Frolics 0
BadTux sees a glimmer of hope.
Stray Thought, Devolution Dept. 0
I suspect that future historians, should scholarship survive the impending floods and famines made inevitable by our societal paralysis in the face of accelerating climate change, will conclude that one of the tipping points in the self-destruction of our society came when persons stopped thinking of themselves as fellow participants in the polity and starting thinking of themselves as brands battling for “likes” and “followers.”
I am not sanguine.
Geeking Out 0
Mageia v. 8 with the Fluxbox window manager. Thunderbird and Firefox are shaded in a tabbed window. Xclock and GKrellM are on the right. The wallpaper is from my collection.
A Picture Is Worth, Facebook Frolics Dept. 0
Don’t believe me? See for yourself.