Category: internet

broken links

I installed the Broken Link Checker plugin on my site today, and spent probably too much time fixing broken links. Doing blog maintenance like this feels like productive work, but really isn’t. But it’s kind of fun, and lets me stroll down memory lane a bit, rediscovering stuff like Get Your War On, which I’d forgotten about.

A lot of dead links can be easily replaced with ones from the Wayback Machine, and the plugin helps with that. But some of the links on this blog seem to have completely disappeared from the internet, which makes me a little sad. Nothing lasts forever, I guess, even an interesting review of The Two Towers from a newspaper in Las Vegas that apparently only existed from 2003 to 2005. Oh well.

I’ve been linking to Wikipedia, the NY Times, and Amazon a lot lately. I think (and hope) that those sources will be around for a while, and that they won’t mess with their URL schemes in a way that breaks old links. (For the most part, they haven’t, at least recently.)

The plugin has found more than 600 broken links so far, and I’m not even sure if it’s done crawling the site yet. I need to be careful about getting too wrapped up in this, or I’ll be doing it all day. (Or maybe all week.) I’ve actually talked myself into deleting some old posts, where the links are dead, and I didn’t really say anything interesting about them. That’s always been hard for me to do, but I’ve got more than 2000 posts on this blog, so it makes sense to cull some useless ones out occasionally.

Internet Annoyances

I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed with my cable TV and internet provider, Optimum. I vented a bit about them last year, and I guess it’s time to vent some more. In addition to all of the other things that bug me about them, they’ve just added a new one: ad injection. I was browsing on my iPad last night, and got a giant banner ad from Optimum, patting themselves on the back for giving me a free trial of The Movie Channel. This is on a page that would not normally have ads. Then, this morning, I got another banner ad from Optimum, on my desktop computer, again on a page that shouldn’t have had any ads.

I did some searching, and yep, I’m not the only one seeing this. Here a DSL Reports thread about it. (TL;DR: Apparently, HTTPS Everywhere might solve it.)

I’ve seen ads from them on my phone, while using their WiFi hotspots, and that’s annoying, but not unexpected. But doing this on my home internet service is pretty horrible behavior. I haven’t experimented much, but I guess the ad blocker that I use on iOS doesn’t catch this, nor does uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger on my desktop. I think that being on my VPN might help, since I haven’t seen this on my Mac, and I have that set up so that it’s (almost) always connected to the VPN. And I think I still have my router configured to use Optimum’s DNS servers. I should probably change that, even if that won’t help with this particular problem.

Earlier this week, I read a good post on Troy Hunt’s blog about Pi-Hole. I’ve thought about setting up a Pi-Hole box on my network before, but it always seemed like it would be overkill. Maybe not, though, if my ISP can’t be trusted to leave my web browsing alone. It’s bad enough that they email me and call me, trying to up-sell me on faster internet service and more expensive TV packages. Now, that’s not enough, and they need to shove ads into my browser too. Ugh. (I’m not sure if Pi-Hole would actually help with this issue either, but it seems like it might be a good idea.)

So I guess that’s my venting for today. Optimum is the only option I have for internet access. (Verizon Fios is an option in my area, but my building isn’t wired for it.) And internet access isn’t really something someone in my profession can do without. So I guess I’m stuck with them for now.

Digg is probably done

I just found out that Digg has been bought by a company named “BuySellAds.” So… that doesn’t sound good. The previous owner, Betaworks, used it as a kind of “curated” news site, and it was interesting to check on once in a while. (But not interesting enough to check regularly.) The original Digg was pretty cool, but lost out to Reddit in the war of, umm…, sites that allow users to upvote and downvote stuff. (There’s probably a name for that category, though I guess Reddit is the only site left in that specific category?)

I guess the pending acquisition is why they shut down Digg Reader recently.

Betaworks also used to own Instapaper, which is a service I still use a lot. Instapaper is now owned by Pinterest, which worried me at first, but they seem to have mostly left it alone. (The Ten Years of Instapaper post on the Instapaper blog is interesting.)

Meanwhile, Facebook is still kind of horrible, but I’m still checking it every day. I have decided to delete the Facebook share button on this website though. Nobody was ever using it, and I assume it was pulling in some Facebook tracking code, so it seemed like a good idea to turn it off.

Amazon is kind of horrible too, but I placed two orders with them this week already, and of course just bought a new Kindle. Much like Facebook, they’re too convenient to just stop using them. (I mean, if Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos actually teamed up, super-villain style, and went on a mad killing spree, I’d reconsider. Until then, though, I need my cheap USB cables and Bloom County comics.)

Democracy and Facebook and other depressing news

I’ve mentioned here before that The Interpreter is probably the best email newsletter I get from the NY Times. I’ve been catching up a bit with my “read/review” email folder this morning, and saw a link to their video on democracy, from back in January. The video distills some themes that that have come up in their newsletter/column repeatedly over the last year. It’s all quite worrying.

Following a link on Twitter, I also saw their current article about Facebook use in the developing world, titled Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match. I usually see Facebook from a very first-world perspective, getting annoyed with dumb ads and misleading memes, but those are usually harmless. It’s eye-opening to read about the effect that Facebook can have when it becomes popular in the developing world. I’m not sure how mad I should be at Facebook for this stuff, but they could definitely be doing more to mitigate the worst of it. There’s one quote in the article that states the problem with Facebook more succinctly and poetically than any other statement I’ve seen:

“We don’t completely blame Facebook,” said Harindra Dissanayake, a presidential adviser in Sri Lanka. “The germs are ours, but Facebook is the wind, you know?”

Yep.  As I mentioned recently, I use Facebook with a bunch of add-ons that strip out most of the evil stuff. There’s a new tool from Firefox that puts Facebook in a “container,” making it a little harder for them to track you, hopefully. I haven’t tried it, since I’m assuming it would be overkill for me, since I’m already using three add-ons to filter Facebook. There’s still too much good stuff on Facebook for me to consider dropping it, but I definitely don’t feel guilty stripping ads from it and depriving them of a little ad revenue.

Twitter too

After posting about Facebook a couple of days ago, I though I’d follow up with a quick post about Twitter. I’ve been using Twitterrific on both my Mac and iOS devices for some time now. Like Facebook, Twitter also has an “algorithmic” feed, by default. Twitterrific uses a straight chronological feed, with no ads or promoted tweets confusing things.

Twitter, unlike Facebook, has allowed third-party clients to access the service via a supported API and present their own interface to the service. (Facebook’s feed can be altered by monkeying with their web page, via browser add-ons and stuff like that, but there’s no way to write an authorized third-party Facebook client, using a supported API.) But Twitter has been slowly backing off on their support for third-party clients over the last few years. The most recent issue is described here. (The description on that page is clear enough that I won’t try to restate it here.) I hope Twitterrific and other third-party apps remain viable and useful for the foreseeable future. I really kind of like Twitter. I follow some interesting people there, and I’ve found a lot of interesting stuff via my Twitter feed.

On a related but more general topic, the Mozilla Internet Health Report for 2018 is interesting. (Though I think they got a little too creative with their page design…)

I’ve also been following a few threads around alternatives to Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/etc. One thought is that RSS is ready for a comeback. I’ve mentioned that recently. I haven’t really been able to talk myself into checking my The Old Reader page regularly just yet. I need to clean up and organize my feed list before I’d consider it to be really useful. Maybe the next time we get a rainy day, I’ll look into that. I’m mildly curious about things like micro.blog and mastodon, but I’m not sure either of them has enough momentum to really go anywhere.

Facebook adjustments

Even after all the Cambridge Analytica stuff and Zuckerberg’s 10 hours of testimony in DC this week, I’m still using Facebook. I’ve known for a long time that a lot of the free stuff on the Internet involves a tradeoff between privacy and convenience, and I’m generally careful of what I share and what I don’t, and which apps and services I use and which ones I avoid.

On the desktop, I use Facebook in Firefox, with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and FB Purity all installed and running. On iOS, until recently, I’ve just been using the regular Facebook app. But I switched to using an app called Friendly recently. It’s pretty good, though it’s got a few rough edges. It does ad blocking (after a $2 in-app purchase), and lets you re-sort your news feed chronologically, and some other little tweaks. I’ve also recently set FB Purity to sort my news feed chronologically, so now I’m seeing stuff that way on both desktop and iOS. It’s funny how different Facebook looks when you’re seeing stuff in simple date/time order, rather than whatever order their algorithm decides to use. I’ve also reviewed and tweaked my privacy settings a bit. This page at iMore has some good advice for that.

I’ve been reading a comic book called The Private Eye recently. It’s a science fiction comic set in a world where there’s been a major internet privacy meltdown, and society has essentially reconfigured itself in a way such that personal privacy is a core value, and is taken to extremes. It’s a really interesting take on the subject of privacy and trust, and it makes me wonder what our world’s going to look like in 100 years.

Ben Thompson has a good overview of the Zuckerberg hearings at his site. A lot of interesting stuff has come out of all this, but I agree with Thompson on the bottom line: “The most likely outcome of Facebook’s current scandal continues to be that nothing will happen.”

TidBITS redesign

I’ve been reading the TidBITS newsletter for years. They’ve been publishing it for 28 years; I’ve been subscribing to it for more than ten. (I’m not sure how long exactly, but at least since 2002.) They just unveiled a new design and back-end after many years under the old design and system. The new system is based on WordPress, which isn’t surprising. Lots of websites (including mine) are running on WordPress these days. The design looks good. I haven’t seen any hiccups with the back-end yet, so hopefully they’ve done a good job with that. TidBITS has always been a good source of Apple news and analysis, better in general than most of the more modern web sites. (I won’t mention specific sites, but I’m thinking of certain sites with a lot of “top ten” listicles, sponsored content, and more space devoted to ads than articles.)

I’m always interested in how sites like TidBITS remain commercially viable. I doubt they make much money from ads these days. They probably get a modest amount of money from their membership program. And they have something called the TidBITS Content Network now too, which is interesting. They used to run Take Control Books also, but they sold that off a while back. I should probably pay them for a one-year membership. I keep meaning to do that, but I never quite get around to it.

I like the newsletter model for this kind of content, and I wish more people would use it. I’d love to find a Windows newsletter that’s as good as TidBITS. Years ago, I used to subscribe to Windows Secrets and that was pretty good for a while. It looks like they’re still around, but as a paid newsletter only, and it appears that none of the original contributors to the site are still involved. I found a recent post on Woody Leonhard’s site that runs through a little of the history of Windows Secrets. It used to have a lot of good content, from people like Woody, and Brian Livingston, and a couple of other good tech writers whose names I can’t remember now.

Digg Reader and other thoughts on RSS and news consumption

I learned today that Digg Reader just shut down. I had set up an account there when they started it up, but wasn’t actively using it. I also have an account with The Old Reader, but I’m not really actively using that one either. Both of those services started up after Google Reader was shut down in 2013. I’ve been thinking about going back to checking RSS feeds semi-regularly, rather than relying on Twitter and Facebook as much as I do now. If I did that, I’d probably just try to check my Old Reader account more often and maybe add/remove some feeds. (Here’s an article with a few other RSS reader alternatives.)

While I haven’t really jumped back into RSS yet, I did download Flipboard to my iPhone and iPad recently. Flipboard isn’t an RSS reader, but it is a way to follow a variety of news sources, similar to Apple News, but maybe better. (Well, Flipboard’s founder thinks it’s better, but he may be biased.) I think Flipboard is interesting, and likely is better than Apple News, but this is another case where the app is free, which makes me wonder about their business model. I think they’re just making money off in-app ads, which is fine, but who knows. (And I’m not really that excited about in-app ads either, to be honest.)

I’m still reading a lot of email newsletters, from the NY Times and a variety of other sources. I’m very far behind though. I’m currently reading news from late December 2017. (Merry Christmas!)

Here’s an interesting article from Farhad Manjoo about an experiment where he switched to getting his news from print newspapers for a couple of months. (Except that he didn’t really unplug like he said he did. Sigh.) I’m not going to switch back to print anytime soon, though I’m occasionally tempted. I’m also a little envious of this guy, who just stopped reading the news entirely after Trump got elected. That just seems irresponsible though. (And wildly impractical too for most people.)

 

Home phone service (for old people)

Last summer, I got a notice that Verizon was going to retire the copper phone lines in my town. And, via my landlord, I’ve been told that our building apparently can’t be upgraded to fiber. So, we won’t really have an option for “traditional” home phone service anymore. I got a follow-up notice from Verizon last month. They still haven’t set a final date for retiring the copper, but it looks like it’ll happen before the end of this year. So I started looking around at alternatives. My cable company has an option for phone service, for $30/month, which is a little less than what I’m paying Verizon now. But I did a little more digging and found that Verizon has a wireless home phone option that’s only $20 a month (assuming you already have Verizon Wireless), plus $30 for the little base station that you need to buy. So that’s not a bad deal.

I know that all the young people have given up on regular home phone service. But I’m an old man, and I’ve had the same home phone number for more than twenty years, and I don’t want to give it up. So I went ahead and signed up for the Verizon wireless home phone service today. I’m hoping that the call quality is reasonable. In theory, it should be about the same as my cell phone, since it’ll be on the same network, but who knows whether the $30 device they give you affects call quality (vs an iPhone) or not.

Good Old Email

I’m a big fan of email. Say what you will, it’s still pretty darn useful. There was news this week about Google wanting to use AMP with email. I ignored this, since I don’t use Gmail anymore, and it didn’t seem like a big thing, on the surface. But there’s a post on the FastMail blog today titled Email is your electronic memory that’s pretty interesting. (FastMail is my current email provider.) They talk about how email should be “immutable.” (Apparently, the AMP thing is more about making email interactive rather than making it faster.) I haven’t thought about it too much, but the immutable nature of email is one of the most useful things about it. The web, in general, is very mutable. Web sites and web pages come and go. URLs change. But, if I’ve got an email in my mailbox, then the text (at least) of that email is fixed. I can search for it and find it and do stuff with it.

I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters. One of the things I notice in these newsletters is whether they contain actual content, or just links to content. In general, newsletters that actually contain content are more useful than those that are just link collections. Warren Ellis’ newsletter is a good example. He includes a lot of text content within the body of the newsletter. He also includes links out to other stuff, which is unavoidable, but the main content of the newsletter is actually in the newsletter, as text. The newsletter for Tor.com goes the other way. It’s mostly just a list of recent articles on the site, with short text summaries and links out to the articles. The annoying thing about that newsletter is that the links expire. They use a link redirection service that, I assume, gives them analytics about how many times the links are clicked and stuff like that. But the links expire after a month or two. And I’m usually a month or two behind in reading those emails. So, if I click any of the links, they just go to an error page. To find the article I wanted to read, I have to search for it. That actually discourages me from reading most of the articles. I have to really want to read it to bother copying and pasting the title into DuckDuckGo or Google.

I also subscribe to a bunch of newsletters from the NY Times. Those are somewhere in between; there’s usually some content right in the newsletter, but also short article summaries and links out to the Times site for the full articles. One of the best newsletters they have is the one for The Interpreter. It generally contains a good well-written article in the body of the email, plus links out to related articles at the Times site and other sites.

And I use an alert service from the Times to get email notifications when new articles are published on certain subjects that I’m interested in. I have alerts set up for articles about comic books, sci-fi books & movies, and a couple of my favorite museums. These are really useful, since they frequently surface articles that I wouldn’t have stumbled across otherwise. But I was disappointed to see today that they have apparently discontinued that service. I haven’t seen an announcement about it, but there’s no longer a link to the alerts page from the account settings, and if you go directly to the alerts page, it’s now a static page that says “The New York Times has discontinued the My Alerts feature.” So that sucks.

Prior to setting up the alerts through the NY Times site itself, I had them set up through IFTTT. They were useful, but sometimes they’d stop working for no discernible reason, and they weren’t nearly as good as the official NY Times alerts at finding relevant articles. But I guess I might have to go back to IFTTT now. We’ll see. There’s probably some other fancy way for me to get alerts about NY Times articles, through a different third-party service, but I haven’t done any research into that yet.

Anyway, this was originally going to be a short post about how I need to catch up with my newsletters and news alerts, since I’m three or four months behind now. I only just read an article about how great the Michelangelo exhibit at the Met is, and it ended two days ago, and I didn’t get a chance to see it. Oh well.