A quick and dirty, err, I mean, fast and furious url forwarding service ..read more

Maybe there’s still hope for social media ..read more

So, why is it so bad to teach Google/Twitter/Facebook… which things interests you, when they use that data to find you more of those things? Think about it this way: when you see something that enrages you, you are pretty likely to check it out. Click on it and the system learns that this is of interest to you. So in order to keep you engaged (make you see one more ad), you get more and more of the things you hate ..read more

Passwords are inherently insecure, so we are told (not they aren’t). It would be better to BUY into FIDO (no, it wouldn’t ..read more

Shall we call it Quitter ..read more

I just had a revolutionary idea for a new social media site: no accounts, no moderation, everyone can just write what he wants, when he wants, but nobody can read anything. No bubbles, no drama, no fake news. I call it Shreddit ..read more

David Schütz found a great lockscreen bypass bug on the Google Pixel. All you have to do is to hot swap the SIM card with one, you know the PUK of. Type in three wrong PINs, then just enter the PUK and the phone goes straight to the home screen. Imagine that this is something, the FBI fought Apple with tooth and nail for. There’s a reason why I keep telling people not to bother with lockscreens, but rather consider their phones to be a portable version of the computers in a public library ..read more

Funny how people are seriously suggesting now that Twitter should offer a whole rainbow of colored checkmarks with different payment tiers (including a free one) and meanings to better categorize people of public interest. How stupid can you be to not understand simple business plans? The whole point of Twitter Blue is not to be fair to anyone or to better identify people, but to sell a vanity trophy. That only works when it is a) hard to get and b) comes as a package deal ..read more

I just had this horrible thought while showering. What if Twitter did collapse and all the big brands wanted to know how that affects their sales? They run the numbers and find that the loss in revenue is smaller than their combined spending on a social media team, diversity hires and general wokeness. Elon Musk might be the cure for (internet) cancer ..read more

A marketeer tells me, “you have to have accounts on all social media platforms to drive traffic to your blog!” He even has screenshots of Google Analytics to “proof” his point. It’s a half truth, of course. The other half is that social media traffic does not convert (at all). Visitors come to check out what everyone else in their bubble is talking about and immediately leave again to contribute their two cents to a discussion that happens off-site, where it will be dead and buried in three days ..read more