December 30, 2023

Amazon's now-hidden Q&A

One of the many ways Amazon has become disappointing (besides long shipping times even for Prime stuff, and most egregiously, the insertion of ads into Prime Video) is the removal of browse access to the Questions and Answers. (For those new to Amazon, you used to be able to see the entire collection of questions and answers.) You can still ask a question, and you can search the Q&A for specific words; but you can no longer browse through all of them. I found this activity to be very valuable, as I’d often find facts, or problems, that I never would have thought to search for. Yes, there were lots of repeated questions, and an irritating amount of lousy answers, like “I don’t know I bought it for someone as a gift”, or my least favorite: “Ask the seller/manufacturer”. But I could wade through those easily and learn a lot about a product.

As of this writing it’s still possible to see all the questions by editing a URL:

If someone could write a browser extension to do this, it would be most appreciated.

Another disappointment: some years ago I chatted with Amazon support, and suggested that the emails they send out to product purchasers with the submitted questions have an “I don’t know the answer” link that leads to some gentle message thanking them but not leading to a published answer. It must have been misinterpreted, because somehow after that I no longer received emails asking me to answer questions for things I’ve purchased or reviewed. That’s too bad, because I believe the Q&A and reviews are the most useful things offered by Amazon, and I liked to help answer questions.

November 21, 2023

Fix the Facebook message “You must log in to continue”

 

If someone sees "You must log in to continue" when accessing what should be a public web page (that anyone should be able to see, even if they don't have a Facebook account or aren't logged in), these changes will need to be made by whoever owns the Facebook page:

From https://www.facebook.com/help/537592652938493 :

If your Page has age or country restrictions, you won't be able to see it when you're logged out of Facebook.

To see your Page when you're logged out, you'll need to remove all age and country restrictions:

<![if !supportLists]>1.       <![endif]>From your Feed, click Pages in the left menu.

<![if !supportLists]>2.       <![endif]>Go to your Page.

<![if !supportLists]>3.       <![endif]>Click Settings at the top of your Page.

<![if !supportLists]>4.       <![endif]>From General, click Country Restrictions, then click x next to any listed countries and click Save Changes.

<![if !supportLists]>5.       <![endif]>Click Age Restrictions, select Public and click Save Changes.

More info: https://www.facebook.com/help/www/778445532225441

 

 

 

October 17, 2023

A ‘Godfather of AI’ Calls for an Organization to Defend Humanity

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-godfather-yoshua-bengio-humanity-defense/

"Yoshua Bengio's pioneering research helped bring about ChatGPT and the current AI boom. Now he's worried AI could harm civilization, and says the future needs a humanity defense organization."

August 30, 2023

Hundreds of thousands forced to scam in SE Asia

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66655047

Oh great, now we can’t even be mad at or rude to the people doing the scamming, as they may be doing so at gunpoint. [sigh]

August 13, 2023

A Note About Paywalls and Inaccessible Stories

https://notallnewsisbad.com/a-note-about-paywalls/

This is regarding a specific site/newsletter, but is a good explanation of things and some solutions.