Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the current state of search engines and why Google increasingly doesn't work anymore. In the news, iOS has multiple zero-day zero-interaction vulnerabilities (update your devices immediately) and Reddit is trying to embrace the worst parts of phpBB. 12 years ago we gave two short talks about how game mechanics (and UX design) literally make the communities that use them.
Things of the Day
Episode Links
Whenever some choad on the airplane tells me that he’d prefer to sit in my seat, instead of the one assigned to him, I say “You know, I’d also like to sit in my seat. But, I’d happily sit in your seat for $500 (or some amount depending on price of flight)”. That usually settles the question. Capitalism kind of sucks, but once in a while, it is fun to use it for righteousness.
Now, if it’s a parent travelling with a young child, the situation is a bit different. Here’s a pro-tip, though: If you really want to trade seats in order to sit next to your child/SO/whatever, always volunteer to trade down in order to sit next to who you want.
Bet on Rym’s marathon time, you say?
Side action on bargle/non-bargle is another good one.
The sole spam I have gotten in gmail for many years now is influence brokers trying to publish their astroturf “articles” to the GeekNights web site. A few a month on average.
These spams get through largely because they aren’t automated. They are real people sending these emails from their actual accounts. Just like job recruiters.
Weird. In recent months, I’ve been regularly getting so-obviously-spam I can’t believe Gmail lets it through.
Random gibberish in the From: field, “click here to get your free blah”, etc. Several a week.
I mark every one as spam. They still get through. What is Gmail doing? Good ol Bayes should work. A regex should work!
Are you using free gmail? Maybe there’s a difference between free @gmail.com and the not free google workspaces.
Hmm, hadn’t thought of that. These are all in free gmail I think, now that you mention it.
Anecdotally I can tell you that the number of coolers I have won from Dick’s Sporting Goods (for instance) via my free Gmail account in recent months is too damn high. Whereas I also get basically nothing to my (still free legacy Google Apps for Domains/Workspaces) Gmail account.
Cory Doctorow just wrote an article on the downfall of Google.
Google Image search is totally unusable now.
Not any different than Google text search.
YouTube search is now as broken as Google search.
