A.C. Flory's Blog, page 123

Possible new #email #scam ?

I’m not a programmer so I’m just guessing that the two emails below are scams, but whatever they are, any change of pattern deserves caution.

So what are these changes of pattern?

I’ve noticed two, and they both involve the email address of the sender. Before I show you what I mean, it’s worth having a quick look at the standard parts or components of an email address. I’ll use my gmail address [this is my public email only] to illustrate:

meekasmind@gmail.com

The components are as follows:

the username – i.e. meekasmind
the @ symbol
the mail server – i.e. gmail
the top level doman or extension – i.e.  .com

The @ symbol never varies but the username could be just about anything, same with the mail server, however the top level doman is usually restricted to a few familiar extensions. These include:

.com
.org
.net
.info

I’m sure there are more, but those are the main ones, off the top of my head. Outside of the US, these extensions often include the country code – e.g. .com.au for Australia.

Now have a look at the screenshots of emails I received just this week:

This is the first one I received. Note the .stream extension. Now it is possible that new extensions were approved while I wasn’t looking, but when I searched for the ‘concert-tickets‘ mail server from which the email supposedly came, I found nothing. Zip, zero, nada.

The next day I received three more emails with the hypenated mail server name and the .stream extension. Hmm..a pattern emerging here.

Then today a variation on the theme:

Instead of a .stream extension on the email address, we now have a .download. Assuming the .download and .stream extensions are legitimate, just exactly how many of these extensions are there?

Note something else as well. Under ‘Improve Your Vision’ [which is a link to another web location] there is vertical line. That line is not a truncated picture holder [given that Firefox blocked the images embedded in the body of the email*]. Nor is it an error. That line is another link.

Why is that line potentially significant?

Because even people who know to be wary of links in emails might click it just to find out what it is.

For me, another suspicious thing is the lack of ‘other’ information in any of these emails. Now it’s possible that the blocked images contain more information – i.e. text – but as a form of marketing, this doesn’t seem to be very smart. Which leads me to suspect that it’s not really marketing at all.

If anyone knows anything about these ‘new’ extensions – i.e. whether they are legitimate or not – please reply in comments. Until we know for sure, however, please treat these kinds of emails as potentially dangerous.

cheers

Meeks

*The reason Firefox blocks at least some images in emails is that certain images ‘can’ contain malicious code. I’m not sure how that works, and I’m not sure how often it happens, but I know it’s a possibility.

Filed under: SCAMS! Tagged: '.bmp', '.download', '.stream', address, code, email, malicious, malware, new-extensions, picture, virus

Weeding my #Reader list

Dear Everyone,

Please don’t worry, 98% of my Reader list remains unchanged, which means that I’m still following you, still popping in whenever I can, still enjoying your content.

The 2% of blogs I have weeded out include some ‘professional’ rebloggers and an 18+ site that suddenly appeared out of the blue [excuse the pun].

I have nothing against ‘soft porn’, or even erotica. If that’s what you enjoy, great, just allow me the freedom not to be bombarded by it. This is not the first time that the WordPress Reader has gifted me with questional blogs, but I really hope it’s the last.

I have nothing against reblogs either, in fact when I find a post that really grabs me, I’ll reblog it myself. But…if I recommend something it’s because I genuinely think its good. You may disagree with me – we are different after all – but at least you’ll know that my recommendation is honest. When I find my Reader filled with recommendations that smack of professional marketing, well, I get a little annoyed.

Do I flood you with endless posts about my books?

Maybe I should. Maybe I should become a professional marketer myself. Maybe I should treat all of you like potential dollar signs…but I can’t. Most of the people I follow, I really like and to my old-fashioned way of looking at the world, when you like someone you treat them with the same respect you’d like them to show you.

So no spamming of marketing material on Meeka’s Mind. If you like my fiction, great. If you only come here for the how-to posts, that’s great as well. If you only drop in for the music or some wacky tech, you’ll always be welcome. And if you stay and chat, you’ll become part of the family. My Manifesto.

Phew…I feel so much better after that rant!

hugs to all,

Meeks

 

Filed under: My soap box Tagged: marketing, professional, Reader, reblogs, unfollow, Wordpress

Good Art is … a deadly beauty

As someone interested in biology, I find these amazing pictures of disease causing microbes absolutely fascinating. It’s a great post and I recommend it to anyone with a curious mind!

Chas Spain

Borrelia burgdorferi – a spirochete transmitted to Humans via ticks, produces Lyme Disease

Can we regard those things which cause pain and suffering as beautiful?

Some of the beasties represented here have been too closely associated with my family for comfort over the years but the enhanced imagery by medical illustrators makes these deadly harbingers of disease fascinating rather than frightening.

My daughter was diagnosed with the fairy floss like Borrelia burgdorferi after a trip to Germany last year and had to undergo some serious chemo to remove it after oral antibiotics didn’t work.

She did get asked to go on the science show, Catalyst, recently which was a positive experience.  Luckily she is now looking so much better, but other people with Lyme-like symptoms in Australia often don’t fare so well.

The official line in Australia is that the species of spirochete (the group of bacteria) which cause Lyme disease isn’t found here so those people who…

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Filed under: Uncategorized

Amazing #architecture – The Dancing House in #Prague

I hate brutalist architecture, but that doesn’t mean I hate all modern architecture. Case in point is this amazing building in Prague.

Called the Dancing House, or sometimes the Fred and Ginger house [in a nod to dancing legends, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers], this organic looking building playfully denies the engineering that must have gone into its construction. Just looking at it makes me smile.

Here are a few more views:

To learn more about the Dancing House, or to visit the sites from which the images were taken, just click on the relevant picture.

Now I’m off to do some gardening on this glorious, sunny Sunday!

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: architecture, Czech, Dancing-House, organic, Prague

#Nice – truck attack, 80 killed

I’ve just learned that there’s been a new terrorist attack in France – in the southern city of Nice. Details are still sketch, but it seems that a man driving a truck ploughed into as many people on the road as he could, shooting at the same time. The crowds were there to celebrate Bastille Day and were caught completely unawares.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/jul/14/nice-bastille-day-france-attack-promenade-des-anglais-vehicle

I don’t know how accurate the death toll is, but even one person is too many. My thoughts are with the people of France.

Meeks

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 2016, 80, attack, Bastille-Day, France, July 14, Nice, terror, truck

#Chatbots – and we need them because…?

Okay, all I know about chatbots is what I’ve been reading on Medium lately, and the frustrating experience of ringing my utility company and being forced to answer the STUPID questions of its chatbot.

You know how it goes. You ring and either have to wait forever for the call to be picked up, or the chatbot answers and asks for your account number when all you want is some general information. Grrrr….

So you dig out a utility bill and spit out the account number, knowing full well that if you get through to a real person they will ask you for the number again anyway.

Then the utility company bot asks you to explain the reason for your call. You grit your teeth and try to think of a one or three word description and e.n.u.n.c.i.a.t.e it as clearly as possible while growling in the back of your throat.

What happens next? The chatbot either mishears you, or simply doesn’t have a response for your particular query and asks if you want to speak to a customer service representative…

-face palm-

Do I want to speak to a real, live person? Oh god…

Anyway, if you look at this infographic from Medium, you will see a comparison between a chatbot ‘conversation’ and the same query via a simple Google search:

To me, there is no point in carrying on a long, inane Q&A ‘conversation’ with a chatbot when a word or two is all I need to get all the information I need from Papa Google. But am I just being an elitist nerd?

I rather suspect I am. In fact, I rather suspect that most people who regularly use computers are elitist nerds. Why? Because using a computer is actually a lot harder than learning how to use apps on a smartphone. That is why smartphone use has skyrocketed world wide. It is also the reason some pundits believe the days of the desktop [computer] are over. Why pay so much and have to go through such a steep learning curve to do things a smartphone can do so much easier?

There is a part of me that wants to scream that what a smartphone can do is just a fraction of what a ‘proper’ computer can do, but the words barely form before I get a flash of the early 80’s and the emergence of the personal computer. Back then, PCs were much less powerful than mainframes, and I’m sure a lot of old school programmers could not see why everyone couldn’t just learn FORTRAN or something…

So…smartphones may be to the future what PCs were to the past because they are:

cheaper,
convenient,
portable in a real sense,
easy to use, and
a growth market

But I hope, truly ruly hope that chatbots are just the toddler stage of a technological progression that will end [?] with real voice recognition and real AI support.

Until then, I’ll stick with old school search engines and my antiquated desktop because…I’m an elitist dinosaur with poor eyesight and a pathological hatred of chatbots.

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: technology Tagged: AI, chatbots, computers, conversation, Google, mainframes, PCs, search, smartphones, technology, versus, voice-recognition, vs

#scifi ? Or the genuine history of a war yet to come?

 

I have been a fan of author, Chris James for some time. How could I not? He’s a very good sci-fi writer! Anyway, when I read this blog post of his, I was intrigued to say the least.  Read it and see for yourselves:

The Stranger and the Manuscript
Posted on July 10, 2016

I had the shock of my life a few days ago when I took the dogs for a walk in my local forest, only for a stranger to approach me and address me by name; in fact, by both my author name and my real name.  Much greater shocks were to come later in our brief discussion.

Standing slightly less than average height, the Stranger wore lose-fitting black garb which hid all body contours, and the hood fitted quite tightly over the head and wrapped around it to obscure the chin, mouth and nose.  Only two piercing blue eyes stared out at me.  In addition, the pitch and timbre of the muffled voice gave no indication of this person’s sex; it could’ve been a female with a low voice or a male with a high voice.  He/she spoke in a gender-neutral tone that would shortly become very frustrated with me.

My disorientation at being denied clues to this person’s identity was compounded by the reactions from my dogs.  Normally they run and sniff everything in the forest.  Crazy in particular never stops moving for a millisecond, and flies through life with a constant expression of wondrous stupidity on her ugly face (well, they say dogs take after their owners *sigh*).  Now, however, I noticed that both dogs had become still, frozen…

– See more at: http://chrisjamesauthor.com/books/the-stranger-and-the-manuscript/#more-2334

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Chris-James, future, history, military, science-fiction, war

#FFXIV – The Vault

I’ve always believed that the definition of true courage is not a lack of fear but the exact opposite – lots of fear but the courage to push ahead anyway. Sadly, I’ve been less than courageous the last six [?] months, putting off doing The Vault dungeon until I’d literally run out of anything more interesting to do.

Australian #politics – the bad, the bad and the ugly

On Saturday, July 1, 2016, Australia voted in a double dissolution election [for House of Representatives and Senate at the same time], but five days later we still don’t know which party will govern.

Nevertheless, we can safely say that Malcolm Turnbull has lost. If the Liberals remain in power, Turnbull may remain as Prime Minister, but his effectiveness will be severely compromised, as will his legacy.

So how did Malcolm Turnbull, one of the most respected and admired politicians in recent history, manage to lose his appeal in such a spectacular fashion?

The answer, I believe, is very simple, Malcolm was not allowed to be Malcolm and voters punished the party for it. To understand this, it’s important to understand the right wing, conservative, faceless, faction heavy weights of the Liberal party. They :

loved Tony Abbott,
hated Malcolm Turnbull [they still do]
had to acknowledge that Tony Abbott was almost universally hated by voters,
had to acknowledge that Malcolm Turnbull was liked and respected by voters on both sides of the Liberal/Labor divide

[confession: I liked him too and I’m a Labor voter],

Taking points 3 and 4 into consideration, it eventually became obvious that the party would suffer a landslide loss if Abbott stayed as Prime Minister. Worse still, only the hated Malcolm Turnbull would have any traction with voters. So after much gnashing of teeth, the conservatives gave in and offered Turnbull a deal: they would support his coup against Tony Abbott, but only if he [Turnbull] continued to toe the party line established by Abbott.

In hindsight, this seems rather crazy until you consider that the right wing has never had any time for Climate Change, or marriage equality or even that pesky NBN. So they were prepared to use the Turnbull popularity with the electorate but without all that small ‘l’ liberal nonsense.

What is less clear is why Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters accepted such a backhanded and hamstrung endorsement.

My personal guess is that Turnbull et al., must have seen the writing on the wall and grabbed what they could, believing [probably accurately] that he would never have a better chance of becoming Prime Minister.

So Malcolm and the conservatives struck a deal and for a while, the strategy appeared to work. Liberal popularity in the polls went up as Malcolm rode a wave of public hope.

We believed in Malcolm. Wasn’t he the man who lost the leadership of the Liberal party because he stuck to his principles on climate change? What greater sacrifice could a politician make? And wasn’t he also the man who openly supported gay marriage? And in a way, despite selling out on the full glory of the NBN, he at least managed to stop Abbott from scuttling it completely.

So Malcolm was our hero, and we believed that finally we would get a government that most of the country could swing behind. He might be a Liberal, but he was a good Liberal. Maybe even another Menzies [arguably the ‘best’ Prime Minister in Australia’s political history].

But then the winds of change began to blow a little cold. Week followed week and nothing we’d hoped for eventuated. Nothing on Climate Change. Nothing on marriage equality. Nothing on Refugees. Nothing on anything that any of us plebs actually cared about. What was going on?

In time, some of us began to think that Malcolm was playing a long game. Yes, he was under the conservative thumb now, but after the next election he’d be so successful that the conservatives would have to crawl back into their holes and finally, finally Malcolm could be himself.

I truly believe this was a part of the PM’s strategy when he called a double dissolution on an issue that no one seemed to care about, including him.

The trouble with this strategy was that Malcolm’s popularity declined in direct proportion to the release of policy after policy that favoured the big end of town while asking us to accept all the sacrifices required to balance the budget [at some point in the future].

Australians pride themselves on giving everyone a ‘fair go’, and we’ll happily dig deep to help those laid low by disaster [witness the 30 plus million dollars raised by public donations after the Black Saturday bushfires here in Victoria]. But Australians also have a history of distrusting the super rich and the big end of town. If the Liberals had offered genuine support to small business, we might well have tightened our belts and got on with it, but they offered incentives to companies and corporations that did not need the help. And they were going to pay for it by making us do without.

That major miscalculation was rooted in the conservative concept of the ‘trickle down’ effect. In essence, it means that if government supports big business, big business will generate growth which will lead to jobs which will lead to greater prosperity for all.

Sadly, most people in the Western world have now had first hand experience of the trickle down effect and they know it doesn’t work. So when Malcolm and the rest of the Liberals bleated about jobs and growth, we weren’t listening. Added to this disinterest was a great disappointment – we’d had such high hopes for Malcolm and he hadn’t lived up to our expectations. Malcolm wasn’t Malcolm. Had he changed his mind about all the things we thought he cared about? Or had he sold us out just to be PM?

I think we might still have voted for Malcolm if not for the brilliant campaign run by Bill Shorten. I personally dislike the man and can’t see myself trusting someone who stabbed two Labor Prime Ministers in the back in order to be given the job of opposition leader. Nevertheless, despite all expectations to the contrary, Bill Shorten ran an inspired campaign. He picked up on all the disenchantment of ordinary voters – including their fears for Medicare – and hammered them home.

In the final analysis, however, Shorten’s campaign would not have been as effective if the right wing conservatives had allowed Malcolm to be Malcolm. Instead, they muzzled the goose that might have laid their golden egg, and now they’re spinning all sorts of ‘reasons’ to explain its failure to deliver.

I feel sorry for Malcolm Turnbull because I can understand his desperation to finally wear the mantle of PM. But the truth is, when he sold out to the conservative right, he lost the perceived integrity that made him popular in the first place, and with that, he lost the very thing he wanted most – validation.

In my last post I talked about the disaffection of Western voters, and how this might lead to a change in how we ‘do’ democracy but in the meantime, we are protesting about the lack of integrity of our politicians in the only way we can – by kicking them out. This, too, is democracy.

cheers

Meeks

 

Filed under: My soap box Tagged: 2016, Australia, Bill-Shorten, climate-change, conservatives, Double-dissolution, election, gay-marriage, integrity, Malcolm Turnbull, Prime-Minister, refugees, ring-wing, selling-out

The end of Representational #Democracy?

People tend to talk about our Western systems of government as ‘democracies’, but the reality is that they are only representational democracies.

Why ‘only’?

Because the original Greek definition of democracy was one man, one vote. Of course by that definition, neither slaves nor women could vote, but it was still a pretty amazing concept in a world of Kings, Emperors, Warlords and other hierarchical and dictatorial forms of government. When a civic decision had to be made, everyone would crowd into the plaza and vote with a show of hands. Simple. Direct. And non-scalable. Imagine how big a plaza you’d need for even a small country like say Hungary.

By the time some of the countries of Western Europe decided to give this democray thing a go, they’d already figured out that one man, one vote simply couldn’t work, not for big places like England and France. So they invented a system that allowed their citizens to choose between just a few people for the right to vote. The person who ended up being chosen at the grassroots level would then go up to parliament and vote on their behalf. This is the basis of representational democracy – one person voting in the name of lots of people.

Now representational democracy was a great invention in its time, but the reality has never lived up to the hype because all those representatives ended up being funnelled into parties. Then factions within those parties would compete amongst themselves. Eventually, one person would gain enough power to represent not only the whole faction but also the party. This leader would then go head to head with the leader of the opposing faction until one of them won. Eventually, the leader who won would get to represent and make decisions for…all of us:

 

Forgive me for this child’s view of politics, but sometimes we have to remember what’s real and what is merely an aspiration. At the moment, the kind of democracy that gives each man and woman a vote that actually matters is still just a pipe-dream.

Or is it?

During the lead up to the recent Australian election, many of the political pundits mentioned that a massive proportion of eligible young voters were not registering to vote. [In Australia, voting is compulsory and anyone 18 and over is supposed to register their name on the electoral roll].

Were these young people merely apathetic? Just not interested in politics? Not interested in politics as we know it? Other?

At 63 I can hardly speak for the young, but as someone who lives on the internet, I can make a few educated guesses:

I don’t think the young are disinterested in politics at all
I think they are merely disinterested in the traditional form of politics taken for granted in the West.

Now let me make a few guesses as to why:

change.org
Facebook [and Tumblr and Twitter and…and….etc]

What does social media have to do with politics? And disaffected youth? Everything.

Todays 18 year olds have grown up having a direct say in the issues they care about – via Facebook et al., and organisations such as change.org and getup [amongs others]. On these platforms, groups form almost organically and as the groups grow, they gain a voice, a voice that is being heard by pollsters and politicians alike. The major parties may deny that they take any notice of online petitions, but no institution is large enough to withstand the fury of a self-righteous group.

So the young have found a platform and those in control are paying attention, and this is happening in real time, day after day. Why on earth would these young voices care about an election that happens only once every 3 – 4 years and does NOT reflect their views?

Make no mistake, in a representational democracy, only voting blocks actually matter. Individual votes matter hardly at all. For example, here in Warrandyte, we are part of the Jaga Jaga electoral area. Jaga Jaga is never mentioned in post election commentary because it is a safe Labor seat, and has been for a very long. Thus, no matter how I vote, my vote has no effect on the outcome of the election because it would take a massive change to turn Jaga Jaga into a swinging electorate. And swinging electorates are the only ones that can really change the final outcome of the election.

So for young people living in Warrandyte who do NOT believe in Labor’s values, voting is essentially pointless, and exactly the same thing applies to Labor voters in a safe Liberal electorate. Yet all these young people have had a taste of what true democracy could be like.

They have made their voices heard on social media and that is the kind of system they want: one person, one vote and each vote counts.

We do not yet have the technology to make online voting, issue by issue, a reality. The internet is simply not secure enough, not yet, but it will be, and when it is, I believe representational democracy will change. It will have to. Brexit and Trump and the [possibility] of a hung parliament here in Australia guarantee it.

We who are governed want to have a say in how we are governed. We want democracy.

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: My soap box Tagged: 2016, Australia, change.org, democracy, election, Facebook, getup, petition, politics, representation, vote, youth