Geek Stuff category archive

Not what it’s cracked up to be, he said oxymoronically:

“On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection,” said University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross, lead author of the article and a faculty associate at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. “But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result—it undermines it.” The researchers concluded as a result of their study, that the more participants used Facebook over the two-week study period, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time.

In which I talk about the magic of Mageia.

Extremely skeevy, highly predictable.

Nicole March, who says she took the nude photos for an art course, is suing Best Buy after her nude pics appeared on the Internet.

According to the lawsuit, March took the computer to a Tuscaloosa Best Buy in August of 2011 and paid $131 for the Geek Squad to salvage data from her hard drive.

They salvaged the data, all right, then decided it deserved a wider audience.

According to the story, she’s suing because she found the store manager’s response less than adequate. According to the story, the manager is a “him.”

Men are pigs.

Oh, my.

Marc and Lauren Gilbert told ABC News that a stranger gave them the scare of their lives when he hacked into their baby monitor and began cursing and calling their 2-year-old daughter filthy names.

A case of infantile Facebook.

Oh, wait.

That’s redundant.

One of my favorite reads, the San Jose Mercury-News,* has recently redesigned their website to make it more streamlined, modern, and usable (at least, I expect that’s what the consultant told them).

One of their enhancements was a script that spikes my CPU like mad. NotScripts tells me that it is a native SJM script, not a third-party script. In this screengrab of Conky, you can see what happens when I close the Mercury-News tab.

There is no sign that the script is in any way malicious. Running top shows no unexpected processes or activity.

In another oddity, I have to enable scripts from denverpost.com in order for mercurynews.com to work properly, but denverpost.com does not spike my CPU.

As the director said, “Rewrite!”

___________________

*I particularly enjoy the Roadshow column because the columnist is just a damned fine writer.

Apple patents a new piece of iJunk, designed to further wall the garden.

Police forces around the world have had the problem that when their officers get a bit carried away and start pepper spraying tied captives there is someone on hand filming the event on their mobile phones.

(snip)

But they may not need to fear scrutiny much longer – Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, whenever they like.

All the coppers have to do is decide that a public gathering or venue is deemed “sensitive”, and needs to be “protected from externalities” and Apple will switch off all its gear.

Apple, walling off the internet, one electron at a time.

Via Thoreau.

Don’t believe them likes:

How much do you like courgettes? According to one Facebook page devoted to them, hundreds of people find them delightful enough to click the “like” button – even with dozens of other pages about courgettes to choose from.

There’s just one problem: the liking was fake, done by a team of low-paid workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose boss demanded just $15 per thousand “likes” at his “click farm”. Workers punching the keys might be on a three-shift system, and be paid as little as $120 a year.

George Smith’s term, “the culture of lickspittle,” is an understatement.

By the way, courgette is Brit for zucchini.

Super special super-fantastic summer Linux/Unix extravaganza!

Door prizes! Eats!

Geeky discussions and demos by and for geeky people!

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

When: Saturday, August 3, starting at noon.

Where:
Employee Cafeteria, Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Learn more about TWUUG.

Sponsored in part by: O’Reilly Media, Inc. and The Linux Foundation.

Mageia v. 3 with the E17 desktop environment:

Details at the link.

Virginia officials are warning residents about a new email scam promising recipients a big inheritance from a deceased relative.

Hadley Freeman offers four easy-to-remember rules.

Misogynistic twits.

The “Grandma” scam has surfaced in these parts.

You’ve probably heard of it. Someone posting as grandkid calls up claiming to need bail or to have lost his or her wallet in some foreign clime and requests money.

How do they make themselves convincing, you ask?

From the marks’ own words. From my local rag:

Investigators say the scammers use social media to find out about the grandchildren. According to the FBI’s website, “The actual grandson may mention on his social networking site that he’s a photographer who often travels to Mexico. When contacting the grandparents, the phony grandson will say he’s calling from Mexico, where someone stole his camera equipment and passport.”

The phony grandchildren, nieces or nephews also say they don’t want to get their parents involved.

George Smith offers more tech tips:

Don’t watch Net TV on original content server websites of mega-corporations. They drip with what would have been considered malicious programming ten years ago.

Learn why at the link.

George Smith shares some hints for increasing your enjoyment of the Zuckerborg.

Then again, maybe not.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Nir Eyal explains why those smartphone programs that promise to change your life probably won’t.

Afterthought:

I do have one app that might fall in this category. It tracks my bike rides via GPS and tallies up the distances, speeds, and so on, and can map them on Google maps. (When I use it is the only time I turn on the phone’s GPS.)

It does increase the enjoyment, but it doesn’t tell me when or where or how far to ride.

Ex Post Afterthought:

Also, it does not phone home to anyone.

Fortunately enough, I’ve never had to participate in any sort of video conferencing, personal or professional, though I suspect it will eventually catch up with me. I have used Ekiga, but only to make a phone call, not to “skype in,” as folks say today.

I did see a video of an early executive video conference, ca. mid-90s, back when I worked at the railroad.

It taught me one thing vividly: Don’t eat lunch on camera.

Jack Shakely shares his own awakening in the Las Vegas Sun.

The 2-year-old resolutely refused to sit in front of the computer screen and screamed and clawed his way up his mother’s arm like a skittering spider monkey. The 4-year-old was more benign, but after wiping peanut butter and jelly all over the screen and pounding on the computer keyboard, he too lost interest and started wrestling with the dog.

I initially chalked this up to short attention spans until I looked down at the far right corner of my computer screen and saw staring back at me the grimacing death mask of a character out of the cast of “Marat/Sade.” I had Skyped my grandchildren, pulling back the curtain on a bed-headed, stubble-chinned lunatic of a grandfather. Nobody, including me, had any use for this person.

More awakening at the link.

Special July date because Independence Day fell on the first Thursday. Meetings are normally on the first Thursday of each month.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, July 11.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

Crackdown. From The Guardian:

Facebook is to crack down on ads running next to offensive material by launching a new system that will create a blacklist of pages and groups that contain any violent, graphic or sexual content, even if it previously passed its community standards.

More at the link.

The surprising take-away about this is that Facebook has “community standards.”