AutoCorrect: No It’s Not The Phone’s Fault

 Computing, General, Security  No Responses »
Nov 022017
 

Autocorrect can be annoying when it happens to you, or amusing if it happens to someone else. But one thing that appears when you look at amusing autocorrects on the Internet is that you often find someone saying “it’s the phone” or “the phone is doing it”.

No it isn’t. It’s your fault.

Way back in the mists of time when we didn’t have smartphones and keyboards were big clunky mechanical things (some of us still use them), one of the first bits of IT security advice I ever gave was to read though the emails you are about to send. Whatever means you use to compose a message, there are chances of making a mistake. So what you get in the message you composed may not be what you intended to write.

As a bonus, you get a second chance to review your message to check for “thinkos” (like typos but where your brain comes out with something you didn’t intend).

If you choose to send messages (of whatever kind) without checking they say what you intended, you are responsible for the mistakes.

The Bench

The Smartphone Disease

 Computing, General  No Responses »
Sep 162017
 

My Facebook news feed came up with a post with this embedded within it :-

Now I’m not in the business of telling someone they should own a smartphone, but taking some of the objections in turn …

Firstly if you are letting your smartphone boss you around and letting it overwhelm you, you’re using it wrong. You decide when to use your smartphone as a communications tool; most of those messages and emails that your phone is constantly pinging and burbling to you about can wait until it is convenient for you to answer.

Do any of your friends get annoyed when you don’t respond to their messages within seconds? Tell them to grow up and get a life.

To give you an idea of how I use my smartphone, here’s a typical day :-

  1. The phone is charging downstairs in the front room where it has been since the evening. If it is ringing, bleeping, throbbing, burbling madly, I won’t know until I’ve finished getting up.
  2. If I am curious about the reaction to some photos I posted the previous night I might pick it up and take a quick look at the notifications, or I might not.
  3. As I head out the door for work, I’ll pick it up and put it straight into my pocket. On the way into work I might hear phone calls, or I might not.
  4. I may as I approach work, pull out the phone and take a quick look at the agenda screen (particularly if I recall an early meeting).
  5. If I remember, I’ll switch the phone to silent before I sit down to work. If not, and the notifications get annoying, I’ll remember then.
  6. If I get a phonecall whilst I’m working, I’ll pull out the phone, check who is calling, and slide to red (to reject the phonecall) if I don’t recognise the caller.
  7. When I take a break from work, and I’m not chatting to anyone, I’ll pull out the phone and have a quick look at Facebook, home email, etc.
  8. When I head home from work. the phone stays in my pocket. I’ll check the phone on getting home to see if I missed anything.

You might be wondering why I have a smartphone given I use it so little. Well first of all I do use it more than is implied here – particularly whilst travelling (having train timetables and maps in your pocket is really handy).

In terms of ethical production, not all smartphones are the same. There are even places which score phones based on the ethics of their production; there is even a smartphone whose whole purpose in existence is to be an ethically produced phone – the Fairphone.

So giving up your smartphone is the lazy way of ensuring you have an ethically produced phone that you don’t get bossed around by. No harm in being lazy here of course!

Is “…would be nice if it were someone other than a white dude…” Racist? And Sexist?

 Film, General  No Responses »
Sep 072017
 

Well of course it is.

To give a bit of context, this came up in reaction to an article on Hollywood picking a director for a Star Wars film, and the possibility of the chosen director being someone other than a white male. Of course the comments kept bouncing back and forth between declaring the comment above to be racist and sexist, and claiming that it wasn’t.

Highlighting that Hollywood seems to have an exclusive club of candidates to direct big budget films which exclude anyone who isn’t white and male, is perfectly reasonable. Or at the very least, turning a blind eye (as far as “industry recognition” (like the Oscars)) to female directors when they do get to direct (and there are plenty of talented female film directors). In fact there are also plenty of talented non-white film directors too.

Which is a bit of a surprise – you would expect the famously liberal Hollywood to be gender and ethnic background blind when it came to picking talent. You might have assumed (as I did) that the career path for film directors favours rich white dudes – perhaps with “internships” (slavery for rich youngsters) amongst other things.

So it would appear that Hollywood is actually being sexist and racist in selecting film directors for major films. And it needs to fix this.

In other words the sentiment of the statement was anti-racist and anti-sexist.

But the way that comment was expressed was racist.

Any time you say something like “must choose ${ethnic group}” or “must not pick ${gender}” you are being racist and sexist. Even if it is in a good cause.

It is better to come up with a better way of saying the same thing: “It would be a surprise to see Hollywood select a director from any background rather than it’s usual pool of directors that give the impression that Hollywood is racist and sexist.”

Apart from anything else, the comments following such an article might be a bit more interesting.

Contemplating The Sea

Cats Are Cute, Cows Are Chewy

 General  No Responses »
Aug 132017
 

It wouldn’t surprise me if I have ranted about this before, but I just don’t understand how people decide how some animals are food, and others are “cute” and shouldn’t be harmed. In the later case, there are all sorts of stories on Facebook (and presumably similar places elsewhere) about some sort of animal cruelty to “cute” animals.

Yet most of us ignore the cruelty to food animals, and indeed wild animals. Admittedly most of that cruelty happens behind closed doors with only the occasional peek behind the curtain.

But what really determines whether one species is looked upon as food and another is looked upon as a pet? It cannot be as simple as being cute is the deciding factor, or those of us seen as ugly would also be considered to be a food source.

You could argue that pet animals were formerly work animals of one kind or another, and that certainly applies to dogs and horses, but there are plenty of pet animals it doesn’t apply to – cats (admittedly cats were sometimes tolerated as pest control animals), hamsters, birds, tortoises, reptiles, etc. So that isn’t a good argument.

It is possible to argue that some animals – in particular dogs and horses – have a special place because our partnership with the animal is inherently linked to our survival. But even that doesn’t work – both horses and dogs are eaten all over the world (including Europe).

I have hunted the Internet for possible reasons why we should not eat pets, and whilst there are plenty of pages out there trying to rationalise why we should not, there is nothing that really makes sense. So it might as well be that pets are cute and food animals are not.

Essentially we have a non-rational position on eating pets which is fine. But the rational position is to eat any animal you like the taste of, or to eat none.

The Death of Youtube

 General  No Responses »
Aug 092017
 

It is a bit of an exaggeration to proclaim the death of Youtube, but given the recent changes in how advertising revenue is shared out amongst content creators it is entirely possible. At least in the long term.

For those who have not been made aware, Google has changed how advertising revenue is shared out to content creators, which has resulted in many creators losing incoming; sometimes significant amounts. The intention appears to be to pay advertising revenue to those content creators that advertisers like, which sounds fair enough. But the unintended consequences :-

  1. New content creators will be discouraged because their advertising revenue is likely to be so low as to make it seem impossible to make money with youtube.
  2. Existing content creators who are not ridiculously popular will also be discouraged, and are likely to look for alternatives to youtube that will maintain their income.
  3. Content creators will be encouraged to make middle-of-the-road content that nobody finds offensive, advertisers like, and is popular with the overwhelming majority; in other words just like ordinary TV. Essentially this discourages the kind of content that makes youtube interesting (or at least not as boring as broadcast TV).

Now would be a great time for a competitor to jump in, and encourage content creators to jump ship with a revenue payout mechanism to encourage creative content producers – the small ones and the innovative ones – yes this will mean the larger content creators will lose out, but perhaps they can afford to.

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