R to the P BBC Apr. 28th

Source: R to the P BBC Apr. 28th

Ping

Still Alive. Less online. Better Life so far :).

Where did Noivad go?

The Ads really got to me (see prior post). So, after an update with a bad UI, I moved my blog. I really didn’t WANT to host it myself, but if you want something done right…

Anyway, I’ll see anyone that cares to follow me at my ad-free blog http://blog.noivad.net/ now with slick push notifications! :)  Oh, and if you care, I’ll soon have another media outlet, but it will be focusing on a different realm that I have written a bit about here and there. I would announce it now, but we are still setting everything up and I do not want to jinx it. I will say that we are reviving a production I did about 15 years ago that I greatly enjoyed working on. But perhaps I have said too much already?

Thanks for reading.

thanks for all the fish

…the new posting UI is horrid… I moved to http://blog.noivad.net and no longer post here. Why? #1: I really do not like advertising, expecialy when it takes up a lot of screen real estate and clashes with my aesthetic. I was a full time designer last century & aesthetics really do matter for how your writing it received. Search for my post about when they overruled my protest to not sending out the company reports in PDF format. Looks matter, but you must still have the substance to justify the positive attention, BTW. A lot of apps & sites are coming out that add nothing beyond a skin deep rehash of things that have existed in uglier forms for over a decade. I see almost nothing in new UIs that actually make full use of the paradigm they are in to make using them truly efficient and enjoyable, Basically once the focus went from function to aesthetics, the entire industry lost its way and think slick UIs are what makes a product good. Sadly, most people are fooled by this, and now UI/UX has actually regressed to a state that they were in during the mid-90s.

This might sound like a “Trumpism,” but I know I could do a much better job with a team of people who also understood even parts of this philosophy.

Why It is Stupid to Buy a SmartTV

There are no regulations concerning what information can & cannot be collected with smart devices, nor how that information is transmitted. This article from the BBC explains how LG’s SmartTV sends the names of his family members in clear text across the internet— something that most people would be uncomfortable having publicly available.

Besides selling your private information to any and all advertisers or 3rd party entities willing to pay for it, none seem to have anyway to prevent those 3rd parties from transferring it to others (aside from legal clauses — which would be hard to prove & a lengthy process to fix). Nor it there anyway to redact information once released to 3rd parties.

But this is only part of the threat to personal security because it would be trivial for a person with the technical ability or a warrant to obtain any and all information collected by such devices. Smart devices — those with convenience features tied to internet connectivity — are trojan horses for violations of privacy far more invasive and covert than anything else and rely of consumer ignorance to operate unfettered:

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-29826642

The only solution is to either never connect the devices to the internet, block all traffic or not purchase them at all.

Tech Crime & Punishment

In a recent article Sophos had a poll asking what the appropriate sentence for tech related fraud — such as fake “Windows Support” call saying you have a virus and asking for $300 to fix it over the phone. I have covered what to do with any unsolicited phone calls before (The “short” answer: do not believe any claim of identity and ask for proof such as their employee ID#, the company they are representing {which they are often obligated to give you}, the case number for your issue, & a callback number and hang up. Then look up the company contact info — make sure the company is on the up and up {has a physical address, look up consumer complaints about the company, etc.} — and call the official number with your case number if it all checks out. And never be afraid to get a second opinion — if a person tells you not to bother contacting someone else for a 2nd opinion — or worse discourages contacting a 3rd party — it is a huge red flag.) 

Excuse the outlandishness of this idea — it is just an idea that needs further refinement. If you are extremely narrow-minded or think “nothing can change/nothing will help” please stop reading now, to avoid reading something that might upset you. You have been warned…