Geek Stuff category archive
Oops 0
I tried to install a plugin to make this site more mobile friendly and it broke my WordPress.
I had my hosting account open at the time, so I went to phpMyAdmin, opened the file manager, navigated to the WordPress plugin directory, deleted the plugin’s directory, and everything worked again.
(Wiping brow) I got off easy that time. And I learned something.
Last time something went wrong, I was offline for a month.
Kittens! 0
A wallpaper from my collection in the Plasma desktop on Mageia v. 7.
Afterthought:
Speaking of felines, one of the cats knocked my little bedroom television to the floor, taking a lamp and the answering machine with it, last night. It took me half an hour to get everything reconnected this morning.
I haven’t gotten the culprit to confess.
Yet.
Geeking Out, Seasonal Edition, Coda 0
The Plasma desktop on Mageia v. 7. Claws-Mail and Firefox are shaded near the top of the screen. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Popularity for Sale 0
It’s no surprise to those who pay attention that you can buy likes and followers and sharers (choose the term favored by your particular “social” media platform of choice) for your “social” media presence. What is surprising is how cheap it is to do so.
That’s about a thousand fake friends for a dollar. Never has love been so cheap.
Follow the link for more about the study in question.
Geeking Out, Seasonal Edition 0
Listening to an episode of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in Firefox on Ubuntu MATE with the Plasma desktop. The Konsole terminal emulator is open to the left of Firefox. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Facebook Frolics 0
Cathy O’Neil skewers the Zuckerborg’s argument that it is to big and complex to break up. A snippet (emphasis added). As an aside, I suspect that U. S. Steel, American Sugar, and other trusts busted by Teddy Roosevelt made similar arguments.
Really? No doubt, the breakup would be difficult for Facebook’s managers, who rely on data sharing among WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook to create the most complete possible profiles of users and then sell their attention to the highest bidder. If the companies were separated, all the investment they’d been making into surveillance and targeting wouldn’t immediately work out as well as they had hoped. For them, the product is the advertising, not the service to users.
“It’s All about Mememememememe” 0
In the midst of a larger article about pro- and anti-vacine memes on “social” media, psychologist Utpal Dholakia notes the following:
Influencing others and changing their minds is a fourth reason to post, but it’s a distant fourth for most of us.
The Disinformation Superhighway 0
Websites wielding weaponized widgets perpetuate petabytes of prevarication in these viral times.
Decorated 0
Ubuntu MATE with the Plasma Desktop. The wallpaper is from my collection.
I must admit that getting into the holiday spirit in these Trumpled times has been difficult.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
It seems that the new right-wing “social” media app, Parler (no, I won’t link to it), which aspires as far as I can tell to be a wingnut Twitter, has got itself some unexpected fans.