Get Your Grump on Thursdays - Was (What's chapping my @ss today?)

[Dallas Tex]

My gripe is folks using the thursday gripe thread for naive political sloganeering.

[Tom]

I know that this has been mentioned before, but backpack leaf blowers are the devil's spawn. I work from home three days a week and it's cleanup time. All day long it was the lawn crew at the apartment buildings behind my house and a rotating cast of my neighbors lawn services. By the end of the day I had one wicked headache. Almost makes driving in to the office tolerable!

[donevwil]

Three, no make that four grumps:

1. Layoffs yesterday....
2. ... are continuing today.
3. It appears I only come to the 'Salon nowadays to post a grump.
4. 8 years to retirement

Good day all.

[guido]

Three grumps:

1. Layoffs yesterday....
2. ... are continuing today.
3. It appears I only come to the 'Salon nowadays to post a grump.

Good day all.

That is a truly sucky time to go through. My ex company axed the entire US development organization in April. Don't let the bastards wear you down!

[ChristianWong]

A lighter grump but a grump nonetheless:

My company firewall has suddenly blocked Flickr and Instagram (and likely other sites) so I can no longer see all the lovely ride and new bike day photos everyone is posting here.

[Octave]

My partner has an iPad at home that she uses for making art. Occasionally, we also use it for displaying recipes while we cook. Yesterday, I opened up the browser to look up a recipe and I saw an advertisement in the corner from Tocris, a chemical supplier that we use in the lab, displaying prices for WIN 55,212-2, a chemical that we use in the lab. I've never looked at any drug/chemical information on the iPad, I've never logged in to any account of mine on said machine, so it is not connected to the browser on my work computer, and we don't use an Alexa or anything like that (nor have iPhones) that would be listening to our conversations. How the f*ck did that happen? Tocris is a very specific advertisement, and seeing one of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals that they stock, the one that I happen to use in the lab, pop up on an ad? W.T.F. I nearly threw the thing out the window.

[Saab2000]

My partner has an iPad at home that she uses for making art. Occasionally, we also use it for displaying recipes while we cook. Yesterday, I opened up the browser to look up a recipe and I saw an advertisement in the corner from Tocris, a chemical supplier that we use in the lab, displaying prices for WIN 55,212-2, a chemical that we use in the lab. I've never looked at any drug/chemical information on the iPad, I've never logged in to any account of mine on said machine, so it is not connected to the browser on my work computer, and we don't use an Alexa or anything like that (nor have iPhones) that would be listening to our conversations. How the f*ck did that happen? Tocris is a very specific advertisement, and seeing one of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals that they stock, the one that I happen to use in the lab, pop up on an ad? W.T.F. I nearly threw the thing out the window.

Welcome to the modern world of Big Brother, who is watching.

My suggestion is to go to Google or YouTube (an arm of Big Brother) and do a search of privacy settings to turn on or turn off on your mobile devices. You will not totally insulate it but you may be able to reduce some of that stuff. There's an "Ad Tracking" setting on IOS devices, among several others to help reduce privacy intrusions.

The secondary benefit of modifying the default settings is that you will likely achieve better battery life.

I feel your pain. I see ads all the time for things which have no reason to appear, many of which are due to the fact that I travel a lot and often to the same places. I try to limit my "Location Services" availability.

[monadnocky]

My partner has an iPad at home that she uses for making art. Occasionally, we also use it for displaying recipes while we cook. Yesterday, I opened up the browser to look up a recipe and I saw an advertisement in the corner from Tocris, a chemical supplier that we use in the lab, displaying prices for WIN 55,212-2, a chemical that we use in the lab. I've never looked at any drug/chemical information on the iPad, I've never logged in to any account of mine on said machine, so it is not connected to the browser on my work computer, and we don't use an Alexa or anything like that (nor have iPhones) that would be listening to our conversations. How the f*ck did that happen? Tocris is a very specific advertisement, and seeing one of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals that they stock, the one that I happen to use in the lab, pop up on an ad? W.T.F. I nearly threw the thing out the window.

My wife and I were discussing something extremely specific the other day (an obscure product that would be very unlikely to pop up on an embedded Google ad). About an hour later, she navigated to a local news channel's website. At the top was a Google ad for this product. She has never searched for it online in any manner.

We have no Alexa-type devices whatsoever. Just two cell phones and some computers.

I guess it was a coincidence based on demographics? But, I mean, this product was really specific, and pretty obscure.

It totally creeped both of us out. Still does.

[slwrnu]

i take pleasure in never buying anything from unsolicited ads over the internet. Further, the mail companies get paid to deliver junk mail. They ignore polite messages on the door saying please no junk mail and I write "please return to sender" and take it back to the local post box.

[bigbill]

My wife and I were discussing something extremely specific the other day (an obscure product that would be very unlikely to pop up on an embedded Google ad). About an hour later, she navigated to a local news channel's website. At the top was a Google ad for this product. She has never searched for it online in any manner.

We have no Alexa-type devices whatsoever. Just two cell phones and some computers.

I guess it was a coincidence based on demographics? But, I mean, this product was really specific, and pretty obscure.

It totally creeped both of us out. Still does.

Other than what I search on Google or discuss on FB, I don't know how my information is gathered. I live alone with no Alexa and even if I did, the only words I say out loud are usually profanity, because I'm a retired sailor. If I'm on a conference call and bored, I'll do random searches to see what will show in my feed, I like to keep our AI overlords busy.

[bigbill]

A couple of things are chapping my ass.

1. I fired a guy about 10 days ago for numerous violations with the final one being safety related. He called the corporate hotline and made all kinds of unsubstantiated claims and outright lies. Now I have to counter each lie with evidence, which I have, it's just a PITA. My predecessor hired this guy even though he had been fired from his previous 3 jobs.

2. I'm the chief engineer, another department has two engineers that don't report to me. That department manager wanted to task my process engineer with a project and I pushed back saying he had two process engineers with no projects. He said that they were chemical engineers but I quickly pointed out that my process engineer is a ChemE as well. Pretty standard for ChemE's and Industrial Engineers to be process engineers in manufacturing. His two engineers are women, I asked him why a male engineer was held to a different standard. There's no gender for engineers, just a degree, this stuff pisses me off.

[Tom]

The contractors moved one of my techs to my security admin team because they can't find any qualified people on their own staff, they added another person to the security admin team that isn't qualified whatsoever but "she's very vocal" - seriously - and two of the people that they picked up off my staff because they couldn't find qualified people on their own staff (detect a trend? The pitch I got when I got told we'd been outsourced was that they had squads and squads of experts ready to spring into action for us... uh huh) have turned in their retirements from the OS team effective at the end of the month. Their replacements aren't techs like I've come to think of a tech - they don't dig into things and figure them out, everything needs to be fed to them. It's weird... you tell them how to figure something out, where to go find the documentation to research, they repeat your words back to you... and then nothing.

Tempering this is that I am getting two guys they hired from the company transferred to my team. They don't know anything of what we do but one guy is very sharp and I know he'll work out - at least until he quits.

Seeing the two people leave, though... it does lighten the mood in the yard a little knowing that somebody made it over the wall.

[Drew]

Other than what I search on Google or discuss on FB, I don't know how my information is gathered. I live alone with no Alexa and even if I did, the only words I say out loud are usually profanity, because I'm a retired sailor. If I'm on a conference call and bored, I'll do random searches to see what will show in my feed, I like to keep our AI overlords busy.

Your phone is listening, all the time... (assuming you have a smartphone)

[j44ke]

My partner has an iPad at home that she uses for making art. Occasionally, we also use it for displaying recipes while we cook. Yesterday, I opened up the browser to look up a recipe and I saw an advertisement in the corner from Tocris, a chemical supplier that we use in the lab, displaying prices for WIN 55,212-2, a chemical that we use in the lab. I've never looked at any drug/chemical information on the iPad, I've never logged in to any account of mine on said machine, so it is not connected to the browser on my work computer, and we don't use an Alexa or anything like that (nor have iPhones) that would be listening to our conversations. How the f*ck did that happen? Tocris is a very specific advertisement, and seeing one of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals that they stock, the one that I happen to use in the lab, pop up on an ad? W.T.F. I nearly threw the thing out the window.

My wife and I were discussing something extremely specific the other day (an obscure product that would be very unlikely to pop up on an embedded Google ad). About an hour later, she navigated to a local news channel's website. At the top was a Google ad for this product. She has never searched for it online in any manner.

We have no Alexa-type devices whatsoever. Just two cell phones and some computers.

I guess it was a coincidence based on demographics? But, I mean, this product was really specific, and pretty obscure.

It totally creeped both of us out. Still does.

It is called Fingerprinting. Read here to understand some of it. To quote from the article:

Privacy advocates say fingerprinting is abusive because in contrast to cookies, which people can see and delete, you generally cannot tell it is happening and cannot opt out of it.

If your devices use any sort of voice activated computer interface, your computer and phone will always be listening. If you have a smart television that can be operated with voice controls, your television will be listening. This information is ostensibly anonymous, but it is parsed for keywords to do things like gauge responses to content. Or incidental conversation about products.

As I understand it, the receding shoreline of support for older Apple products in the last several years makes users of older computers and phones more vulnerable to fingerprinting. At the same time, newer computers and phones can install newer better sneakier software that may be one step ahead of Apple's security systems.

[monadnocky]

...If your devices use any sort of voice activated computer interface, your computer and phone will always be listening. If you have a smart television that can be operated with voice controls, your television will be listening. This information is ostensibly anonymous, but it is parsed for keywords to do things like gauge responses to content. Or incidental conversation about products....

We were trying to figure this all out when it happened. We are not what you would call a really tech-savvy couple and do not work in high-tech fields; I consider us to be about 15 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology (and I'm fine with that). Our Xfinity cable box has voice-activated features, but one needs to keep a button depressed on the remote to get it to "listen" (as far as I know!) In terms of computer use, I'm typing this on a two-year old IMac; we also have much older MacBook Airs. A couple of aged Ipads as well. We don't (and never have) used any type of voice-activated anything. Cell phones included (I mean I guess I occasionally text with my voice but that's pretty rare). Unless one of these devices is actively listening without my knowledge - and it appears likely that this is the case - there is no way that the scenario described earlier could have occurred by demographic matching alone. No f'n way. I mean, what we were discussing was waaaaay obscure, like Octave's chemical obscure.

Totally unsettling, to say the least.

[j44ke]

I am not an expert on this, but I know a couple people who should know these things, only spoke on their phone with headphones because it should mean that the mic was not on. No bluetooth, etc. Meaning they kept their headphones plugged into their phones or used a dummy headphone jack.

For your iPhone, turn off Siri everywhere, and turn of Search & Suggestions for all apps. Learn How to Turn Off Siri on Your Apple iPhone or iPad | Digital Trends

Most of the "helpful" features where you are offered information the computer thinks you want to see involve some form of recorded/aggregated behavior by you gathered through analysis of what you type, select or say. It isn't just search history.

[ides1056]

Not Thursday, and not a gripe because I just had to laugh:

Came home yesterday and my wife said don't go into the house. I brought another dog home to "foster."

Number 6.

There never leave once they arrive.

Never.

[Tom]

Physically I'm extremely rested. Mentally I am totally spent.

[ElvisMerckx]

Serious foot problems have not responded to months of medical treatment. This evening I put on a medical boot to immobilize it for the next 10 days. I'm not the type to sit around the house all day, so the thought of no movement until Christmas Eve has me at a near panic.

[Dallas Tex]

The Great Romaine Drought of 2019. In my area, romaine has been in ultra short supply for about a month now. It’s killing me.