You Ate my Table

Your love is like  improperly prepared rat

Scientists Have Solved a Mystery About the Most Powerful Object in the Universe

Guilt.

Today I identify as  Michaelangelo's penis

Ban all gambling adverts, say more than half of Britons

For the benefit of American and other readers, I will translate British to English:

"We are a nation of people who do what the television tells us, especially the ads. We abandoned all personal responsibility years ago. Please take the bad stuff away so we can get back to overfeeding our pets and life insurance commercials."

Freddie Mercury: Queen star's friend Mary Austin to auction his personal treasures

She's 72 and wants to put her affairs in order. Some of the proceeds will go to charities.

It's been 30 years since Freddie left. 30 years. The movie, although somewhat sanitized, gave an interesting look into the private and professional sides of Freddie. By the end, you almost knew him, as well as his relationship with Mary.

Asking the Big Questions: Freddie influenced and entertained millions. He left behind his music and all of his worldly possessions. Was it a good life? If you were Freddie, would you say you had it all and when you left, you were happy? What were you most happy about? Your legacy? Your fulfilled life? An effect you had on one person?

In the end, a person you didn't know will own your house. Another will own your stage costumes. Is there a lesson here? The problem, as I see it, is that we don't hear from enough dead people to help us put things in perspective.

Nothing really matters. Anyone can see. Nothing really matters. Nothing really matters to me.

I am proud to announce the new Cisco Internet of Things Firewall. I was privileged to work with Cisco on the project, and brought my love for my technology with me. Here is a draft of the instructions

1. plug in the Cisco and get the updates
2. plug your IoT network into the jack labeled IoT
3. plug the network you want to protect from IoT into the jack labeled LAN
4. pull the power plug from the Cisco

You are now protected from all issues the IoT will bring to your network.

Cisco recommends the No Wire option, where the IoT jack isn't attached to anything, in case some ass plugs the Cisco back in.

Cisco and I are collaborating on the CLOUD Firewall. It works the same as the IoT Firewall, but says THE CLOUD on it. This will satisfy the CEO and his buddies because his network uses THE CLOUD.

In the pipeline is the AI Firewall, because THE CLOUD is last week's buzzword. The current buzzword is AI - Artificial Intelligence. All C-level executives must use the buzzword at least once in every sentence. lest they be though of as out of touch. Even the janitorial staff asks the CEO how the AI project is coming along, when the CEO goes to the men's room.

Magna’s new rearview mirror cleverly integrates a driver-monitoring system

You need to check the mirror sometimes, but this mirror's always watching you. Ugh.

As sea levels rise, the East Coast is also sinking

Meh... I never liked New Jersey anyway

 

• I'm enjoying my new phone from werk: the iDevice. No wait. I didn't say that. I'm enjoying that I only have to charge it weekly. I'm still not sure how to operate it, but that doesn't matter. I just have to answer it when it rings, which I can definitely manage. It's a piece of werk equipment, therefore I don't play with it. I use it for werk.
• After not being able to get the last one to ring for a long time, someone made me aware of the mute switch, so I'm ahead on that one thing.
• Unfortunately I'm not so lucky with Teams, which I have to use. It's like they put it together to purposely annoy the users. It has a special feature: the further up the chain the messenger, the less likely Teams will notify me of their message or text. So I get DING DING all day when my coworkers post something stupid about their nose piercings, but nothing when my boss asks me to do something. I've often thought Microsoft hates me almost as much as I hate it.

Speaking of Microsoft, in yet another bid to piss everyone off, they're discontinuing accessories and making them only for Surface. So if you like the $59.99 ergonomic keyboard, you can have it for $129. Don't forget the cameras and everything else. The ergo keyboards and mice are the only thing I like from Microsoft. Wankers.

IMGUR breaks the internet:

As of May 15, 'pornographic' or sexually explicit images are not allowed, with the existing images deleted.  In their stated effort to be diverse, they will be diverse to everyone except those with adult content. No 'hate speech' either. The Right must've whined again. Meanwhile, content from the beginning of Imgur will be deleted. This will delete content from Reddit and all the other social media sites.

I read a lot of Robert Heinlein growing up. Even science fiction dealt with the circular nature of societies. We don't want to go there. Personal responsibility has gone out the window. If there is something we don't like, we're free to ignore it. Delete or turn the page. Stop forcing your issues on the rest of us.

The body being 'dirty' came directly from religion, to keep us in line.

I often say we are a nation of morons. Unfortunately it turns out we are a planet of morons...

Russian forces suffer radiation sickness after digging trenches and fishing in Chernobyl

Who saw that coming? 

 Maurizio Cattelan: Banana artwork eaten by Seoul museum visitor

 He was hungry 

Principal forced to resign over Michelangelo's David visits sculpture

Fired because the historic artwork had a penis. Parents were outraged, probably because they don't have a penis.

Man's viral worm dance at charity event wows Rita Ora

You laugh, but this Viral Worm Dance will usher in world peace!

Laptops are for People Who Like Supermarkets

One android-related item: I've said it before, but you never realize how bad things are until you put a firewall on your phone. This might sound difficult, but hear me out...

Let's take our normal android phone.. you install a cool internet radio app like TuneIn radio. You fire the program up and listen to whatever stations you like. It became my #1 player.

Since my phone met its maker, I had to transfer everything to a new one (whatever you pay for insurance is worth it). LG, in addition to great phones, has a great transfer app. I found this out after I did everything manually on the new phone, because I only know how to do complicated things - I get nervous with anything easy. My original firewall was No Root Firewall, named because you don't have to root your phone to use it. I decided to give Netguard firewall a try.

With a firewall, when you fire up TuneIn Radio, you will get ill seeing where it goes. The firewall shows you every destination. You will see the obvious packets to the radio's domain. Then you'll see a shitload(technical term) of packets going all over the place. Spend any time looking them up and you'll see they're all advertising. So for each call for radio, there are 5 or more ad calls. One of the things about android that pisses me off is the apps are allowed to 'come alive' when they're not being used. TuneIn runs constantly, contacting ad domains. It has absolutely dominated my logs, moreso than goog calls. 

Btw, you don't need goog. You don't need to put in a goog account. You don't have to allow goog outside the phone. Since all apps phone home, the firewall stops them. Many apps don't need any net access at all, yet demand it. If you install a puzzle app, there's no reason it needs access to your phone, camera, storage, and internet access. So stop it with a firewall. You also won't see ads on everything... it's a less automatic ad-blocker.


If you have any questions, please ask. 




RIP Bill Macy (97), who played the husband on the tv show Maude.

Today's Worthless Fact: Hollywood's William H Macy had to be identified by that name because you can't have 2 people with the same name, because of some ridiculous union rule. Another example is Aerosmith's Brad Whitford and actor Bradley Whitford.



Dear lefty

• Why don't you like Faceyspaces?
• Why don't you like flesh-eating bacteria?

How the FBI abused NSA mass surveillance data.

1. a kangaroo court (FISA) was set up to rubber-stamp requests for surveillance on foreigners only.
2. the NSA slurped up everything it could, including Americans
3. the FBI violated everyone's rights by warrantlessly going through the NSA eavesdropping data.
4. This is a very clear 4th Amendment (search and seizure) violation.
5. 9-11 was a bonanza for mass surveillance, as planned.
6. As Zappa said, the only thing we have to fear is our own government.

• Nancy Pelosi introduced an NSA Reform bill that is closer to a "Let Them Continue To Do What They Want" bill. 
• Nancy Pelosi is the lowest form of politician one can find, if one can even imagine such a thing. This is your voting, California. This is what we have near the top of the pyramid. Do you still think there's any difference between Reps and Dems?

Let's take the time machine: way back to a previous employer, which had a kitchen with actual silverware. They caught one person licking the silverware and putting it back in the drawers. He probably migrated to doorbells.




It Begins....

Amazon handed over audio from 2 Echo devices in a Florida murder case.
Yes, there was a subpoena.

Let's review, shall we?

• They bought a spying device that didn't eavesdrop.
• Ok, well, maybe it eavesdrops a little.
• The device didn't activate until its name was heard
• Ok, well, it kinda listens all the time.
• It only records your voice 'for more accurate voice recognition'
• Ok, well, it records everything.

Since it records everything, the police want the recordings because they might contain evidence of a crime.

Before you read anything else, run out and buy one of those Ring doorbell cameras that allow you to see who's there when you're not home. The police love that device, and have even helped sell them to neighborhoods, so they can review the footage.

Lastly, an IoT set of videocams around the house, so AmazonFaceyspacesGoogle can see what you're doing and so can the police. To prevent crime, send the feed to the police first, then Google. They promise it will be kept private.

Would we lie to you?

Again?

Today I identify as fuzzy chartreuse shag carpeting

Today in the news:  Multiple People Killed in Rollover Crash Involving LAPD Pursuit

That was the headline.

The story was that a 3 minute chase resulted in the perp crashing and rolling his vehicle. 3 dead and one hospitalized from the vehicle only.

• There is now a frozen rising-crust pizza stuffed with bacon. That's disgusting.
• I'll let you know how about it as soon as I finish it.

On Halloween, hospitals used to offer free xrays of candy to look for foreign objects.   If you want to xray your leg, that will cost $495.

Meanwhile, a child got sick because his candy was tainted with antipsychotic meds.

• Ain't technology great? Our gadgets automatically make the time changes. We no longer have to be aware, for those of us who were historically aware. My mother used to call her kids to remind them to change the clocks. Now the kids might have to call her.
• In completely unrelated news, I found a great way to get out of bed quickly: the one clock that didn't adjust itself told me I was an hour late for work. You shoulda seen me jump!

Say, do you live in the wildfirey areas of California?

If so, PG&E (We provide power, unless we shut it off) requests that you kindly stop shooting at its employees. Thank you and that is all.

How do we know this is fake news?

Because you can't own guns in California.

No thank you, I'd rather  have a long chat with Kim Kardashian, where she tells me all her ideas about things and stuff.

An analysis of 136 depression-related sites in France, Germany, and the UK revealed a majority embed an "impressive" number of trackers, mostly for marketing.     Well, that's depressing.

• ThermionicEmissions regrets to announce that Beto has dropped out of the race. Not that the rest of them are any better, nor are your Second Amendment rights safe.

Heroes of the Stupid  

There is a tumbler page on which an entomologist rates ant emojis.

A man buried 42 schoolbuses.
no word on whether they were full or not.

SJW Stinkies  

Do you have asthma and want to reduce your carbon footprint?

Stop using your medicine and find "greener" meds, per UK researchers.

Or you could stop your meds altogether and die, canceling your carbon footprint forever.

New York Times: refugees needed to fill 'void of cultural diversity' in white towns.

do NOT misgender the employees

Android Apps I'd Like to See

I still love my Android devices.  The phone gets daily use and the tablet every few days.  There are just a few more apps I wish someone would come up with:

1. non-root firewall: would stop all the crapware (and operating system) from phoning home
2. Ccleaner: Crap Cleaner is one of my favorite Windows apps.  It literally cleans the crap from the system.  Android Assistant has some cleaners but I want more and better.
3. app firewall: something to stop the stupid apps from popping up by themselves.  I can't see any reason why any programs need to start themselves unexpectedly.  If I have email set to manual, there's no reason for email programs to come up.
4. non-root hosts file/ad-blocker: in Windows and linux, one can use a hosts file to block crapware/adware/viruses.  This would be great for android.
5. a keyboard that doesn't suck: vertical or horizontal, I just can't type on them.

I'd also like web browsing to be less painful but this is probably less an android issue than a size issue.

What would you like to see?