A fundamental reason why I refuse to get Facebook

I don’t have a Facebook account, and as much as people try to convince me to get one, I invariably refuse for a number of reasons. Among those reasons, there is one that stands out. Yes, privacy is a concern, but this reason is even deeper, more fundamental, than that.

Image credit: FSF

I always say that getting a Facebook account would compromise my principles, but nobody asks how. Let’s start with a superficial reason for not getting an account: I don’t want to provide my real personal info. This, of course, stems from the privacy concern mentioned earlier. “Alright,” you might say, “but lots of people create accounts with fake names. What’s the issue?”

Everyone doing something doesn’t make it right. Everyone lies, but lying isn’t right.

If you actually take the time to read Facebook’s Terms of Service, you will encounter Section 4:

Logo Orientation Matters

Find a laptop and flip the lid open. Which way up is the logo on the back? On pretty much any laptop on the market today, including ThinkPads, the logo will be the “right way up”.

The back of the Lenovo ThinkPad T460. Note the logo’s orientation. [Laptop Mag]

The logo is oriented this way so that anyone looking at an open laptop from the back will see the logo properly. However, if you look at pre-2013 ThinkPads, you’ll see that the logo is upside down when the lid is open. I think the ThinkPad logo should be this way and not follow everyone else. Why?

Empty seats? Go sit.

I see this way too often: the bus is crowded, lots of people are about to board, and everyone stands in the front even though there are lots of empty seats in the back. Even worse, I see people standing in front of empty seats!

A crowded bus

This crowd makes it hard for everyone to board and blocks anyone who wants to sit.

Stop calling it a “hashtag”!

Seriously, stop calling every instance of the ‘#’ character a “hashtag“. Sure, call it a hashtag when it’s actually used as one, but don’t apply the term to each and every use of the character. It’s really #annoying!

Epic Pi Day

3.14.15 9:26:54

“But everyone says it’s 3.14.15 9:26:53!” It only happens once every century and they still get it wrong. Pi rounded to 12 digits is 3.14159265359, and since it ends in 59, the bolded 3 should be rounded to a 4.

Windows 10: the best Windows yet?

Microsoft announced Windows 10 today. The technical preview will come out tomorrow, October 1, 2014, and the final release will be sometime in the summer of 2015. EDIT 2014-10-01: the preview is now available.

Yes, that’s Windows 10, not Windows 9. Microsoft probably wants to distance itself from Windows 8; calling it “Windows 9” would make it too close to Windows 8. In a media briefing, Terry Myerson said:

But we know that based on the product that’s coming, and just how different our approach will be overall, it wouldn’t be right to call it Windows 9. So, we’re considering our “One” Microsoft strategy, the names of our products like Xbox One, OneNote, and OneDrive, and it’s obvious what the name should be: Windows One. But unfortunately, Windows 1 has been done by the giants that came before us. […] Because we’re not building an incremental product, that new Windows is Windows 10.

This jump reminds me of Firefox jumping from 3.0 to 3.5 because of all the new features they implemented, but this jump in the Windows version is on a grander scale.

No animations, please

I disable animations on all my computers (even the Mac) and people wonder why. It’s very simple: I find them annoying. I use the keyboard more often than I use my mouse, and keyboard navigation is significantly faster than mouse navigation for many, if not most, applications. I know what I’m doing, and I don’t need an animation to tell me that a window has opened or minimized to the Taskbar. Animations take to perform, and that time is a delay in action. Although windows are actionable when the animations start, at least in Windows, there are times when I would see the window fade in and out and barely catch a glimpse of the window content because my commands given through the keyboard were done faster than the animations.

YouTube user Rcountrycomputer has uploaded a video showing navigation on Windows with and without animations, and navigating without animations indeed seems faster.

Windows with and without animations and fades. by Rcountrycomputer [YouTube]

She knows what your next move is

I was on Madobe Ai’s Tumblr one time (which is something I never do, but I seem to find myself on Microsoft’s characters now and then) and I came across this image:

The Madobe twins playing what looks like Old Maid with Aizawa Inori

Automatic Page Prediction: it’s a feature that predicts which links you’ll visit next and preloads them. At face value, it’s a useful feature since it leads to faster browsing, however, I wouldn’t be one to trust it.

By the Full Moon’s Light

The Beast stumbled in the dark for it could no longer see the path. It started to fracture and weaken, trying to reshape itself into the form of metal.
Even the witches would no longer lay eyes upon it, for it had become hideous and twisted.

The soul of the Beast seemed lost forever.

Then, by the full moon‘s light, a child was born; a child with the unbridled soul of the Beast that would make all others pale in comparison.

from the Chronicles of the Pale Moon, 24:2

about:palemoon

Mozilla has made too many mistakes. It all started with putting tabs on top and getting rid of the status bar in Firefox 4. It wasn’t much of a big deal back then because the functionality could be brought back with an option and a recommended add-on, respectively. Things all changed when Mozilla announced that a new look, called Australis, had landed in Firefox Nightly.

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Google Dumps XMPP

I logged on to Pidgin on May 19, 2014, to see that all my Google contacts are gone. On that day, Jabber.org and the rest of the XMPP network implemented mandatory encrypted connections.

XMPP

Apparently, Google thinks it’s too good for that, that they can do whatever they want. It’s true: they can do whatever they want, but their decisions will impact their users, and in this case, negatively. It’s good advice that you shouldn’t do something merely because you can do it. By not implementing mandatory encryption like the rest of the XMPP network, Google is leaving its users unsecured and vulnerable to eavesdropping. Some might even say that not securing the connection is deliberate, to ensure that Google can scan your chats if the need arises. This selfish thinking will now also keep Google’s users from interacting with people on encryption-mandatory XMPP servers.