Posted on 12/07/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook
As I've discussed previously, I found a happy medium with Facebook by reducing my friend count from about 500 to 225, and then unfollowing every one of them except my wife and kids. (They might post 5 times a month total). The real value I get from Facebook isn't in …
Posted on 12/06/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Twitter
Today is Throwback Thursday, so I'm going old school and sharing a link the way we used to do it back in the olden days before Facebook and Twitter. Going viral back then meant hundreds or thousands of people independently deciding to write about your blog post on the same …
Posted on 12/05/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Life
Facebook gave me a birthday reminder today for a Facebook friend that I haven't seen online in 2+ years. We were close enough to "real" friends that we made several attempts at getting together in real life for lunch or happy hour, but we never quite got organized enough to …
I got a notification this morning that the Google Photos AI had created a new photo book for me - Highlights of 2017. So I clicked though to take a look. Google thinks several things I photographed last year to sell on Craigslist qualify as highlights of my year. I have …
Posted on 12/01/2018 in misc • Tagged with Site-News, Internet, Blogs
Blame Andrea for this - she tweeted about it and 31 posts in a row might be what it takes for me to hit my 1 post a week goal for the year.
I'm kidding about that, I think. I'm pretty sure I'm over 30 blog posts for the year, so …
Posted on 10/16/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Twitter
On Mastodon, the "retweet" feature is called boost, and it has no capability for you to add commentary. This means if you boost something to your followers, you are amplifying the message. There is no mechanism for the user to boost something while providing commentary on it. This means almost …
Google Maps is a mature product and innovation seems to be lacking with it. In other words, it's like every other Google product. Here are a few things Google could add to Maps to make it more useful. I believe Google has the data to implement all these ideas now …
Posted on 09/05/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Twitter
I was reading the news online recently and realized something. I've been making an effort to get my news from the local paper via their online edition. By online edition I mean a digital representation of the day's newspaper, not the website. I literally flip through the pages, just like …
For the last week I've been vexed by a damn pop-up ad that took over my phone screen. The ads were for legit companies like Gerber Life Insurance and Honda. So I wasn't dealing with some skeevy malware, this was a legit ad network that had made it onto my …
Posted on 03/27/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Privacy
As I've written previously, I've changed how I use Facebook. It's mostly about Groups and Events for me. I unfollowed everybody except my wife and kids. Now, when I want to check in with my friends I simply go straight to their walls or I use the "New Posts" filter …
Posted on 03/20/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Privacy
Facebook was not hacked by Cambridge Analytics. Hacking implies that CA broke into their data or otherwise circumvented Facebook somehow to get personal data on 5 million Americans. What actually happened is far, far worse.
The system worked exactly as designed. Facebook is in the data collection and sales business …
Posted on 03/02/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Books
I read City by Clifford Simak recently. If you haven't read it, it is a dystopian cold war era novel in which man abandons the cities due to fear of nuclear war. Society breaks down as everybody lives in isolation, population dwindles, and eventually most humans abandons the earth, leaving …
Posted on 02/18/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Medtronic
Facebook's algorithms are in the news a lot these days, and with good reason. But this isn't about Facebook. I've been thinking about algorithms in general lately. This has been brought on by my wife's insulin pump, the Medtronic 670G. It's the first closed loop pump approved by the FDA …
Posted on 02/08/2018 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook, Twitter
It's been about 5 months since The Great Facebook Unfollowing. If you are wondering how its going, you probably aren't subscribed to my newsletter, as the evils of Facebook and social media are pretty much a weekly occurrence in it. I don't miss Facebook. At all.
I haven't quit completely …
At this point anybody that is paying attention is probably sick of "Why Social Media Sucks" articles." However, if we just keep doing social media the same way and don't change, things won't get better. I'm not under any illusion that anything I personally do here is going to have …
Posted on 12/28/2017 in misc • Tagged with Site-News, Internet, Personal
This site went online on 12/31/1995, so it's going to be 22 years old. Like most things as they grow up, they get more risk averse, and let's just be honest here, more boring. However, 2017 seems to have been much busier than 2016.
Posts in 2016 - 37 …
Posted on 12/19/2017 in misc • Tagged with Facebook, Internet, Family, Christmas
So, about that theory that by mostly quitting Facebook I'd write more here... I have been sending an email newsletter every week though.
A lot has happened since my last post back in September. The big news is that we have bailed out of the Washington DC area rat race …
Posted on 09/17/2017 in misc • Tagged with Internet, Facebook
Over the past few months my morning routine when checking Facebook has been to scroll through the "On This Day" posts from previous years, and delete everything that is not a photo or remembrance of me doing something fun with friends or family. It turns out that I don't even …
With Google getting more and more picky about ignoring websites that don't use SSL, I went ahead and added a SSL certificate to ODonnellWeb. I think the whole exercise is pretty damn silly. There is nothing non-public on the site, and no opportunity to login or otherwise share any sensitive …
Posted on 06/21/2017 in misc • Tagged with Books, Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Google
SECRETS ARE LIES
SHARING IS CARING
PRIVACY IS THEFT
That is the mantra of The Circle, the fictional but all too plausible social media company that destroys Facebook, Twitter, Google and Instagram in the social media game in the Dave Eggers novel, The Circle. (It was also just released as …