Category: Technology

we need to inflict pain — on facebook

whbeebe1 Comment

The title of this post it taken from a comment made by the Zuck himself with regards to Apple’s upcoming privacy policies against silent cross-application tracking on iOS apps and web sites. The best way to inflict pain as an individual is to use the product as little as possible, to maintain control and use it my way, not Zuck’s way.

I do have a Facebook account; my third since I first tried Facebook in the late 2000s.

  • The first time I joined Facebook I amassed hundreds of ‘friends’, played dozens of games (FarmVille being the number one), and posted all sorts of messages. Nothing outrageous, but in hindsight it showed what a blithering idiot I could be. It was as if all my adult control evaporated when I logged into Facebook. After several years I killed that account.
  • It wasn’t until the sometime around 2013 that I went back in again. This time I focused on keeping up with my kids and immediate family. I played no games, and was a  lot more circumspect about what I said. The problem that forced me to kill my second attempt was when I got into an argument over what one of my daughters said, and how my immediate family reacted. I reacted quite strongly on my daughter’s side, which stirred up a family shit-storm. Shortly thereafter I killed that account.
  • This last account I’ve kept limited to 19 people, all of them immediate work or professional friends, people I’ve come to care about. No family, not my kids. My kids have asked me not to friend them, and I understand their reasoning and respect that.

With my third foray into Facebook, I’ve adopted the following rules.

  • Little to no politics. I’m a card-carrying liberal to be sure, but I keep my comments to a minimum. If I comment at all it’s about technology issues, such as Facebook’s evil nature. I’ve unfriended a few people who’ve gone crazy conservative on me.
  • No more than ten minutes/day on Facebook. I have a timer I start to make sure that all I do is drop in, check on folks, then log out. I always log out, and I also kill that little photo login they want me to keep up on their login page. Sometimes I’ll put my account into lockdown for weeks at a time.
  • No ads. Every time Facebooks pops up an ad I kill it.
  • No recommended groups. Every time Facebook recommends a group I kill it. I’m following exactly who I want to follow. I neither need nor want any recommendations Facebooks may make.
  • Ignore recommended videos. The latest interface recommends videos for me, which I ignore. Totally.
  • Facebook and Instagram are not installed on my iPhone nor my iPads. I only visit those sites at home on my personal computer.

There are some others, but those are the key ones. I developed those first for Twitter, then adapted them to Facebook. Basically I’m an adult and can handle these social media properties in an adult manner, part of which is controlling how much of my time I invest in any and all of them. None of them, in particular Facebook, are to be trusted. As long as I never forget they’re adversaries I can keep them at arms length, so to speak. Whenever I feel I’m getting too involved I shut them down and walk away, weeks at a time if necessary. Social media isn’t addictive, but I am lazy at times and they can become a bad habit if I let them. I won’t let them, not anymore.

F*ck the Zuck.

signing up for starlink

whbeebe2 Comments


Yesterday I spent $99 for the privilege of waiting in line for a possible Starlink slot here in Orlando, Florida. There’s no guarantee I’ll get one, and if I do, it won’t happen until “beginning mid to late 2021,” if it happens at all.

I’m doing this because I’m tired of my terrestrial service provider, Spectrum. They bought out Brighthouse Networks, which was a spinout of Time Warner Cable. So you can see I’ve been doing business with that entire group for some number of years. Spectrum keeps slowly raising my monthly rates so that I’m now back up to $124/month. Yes, this month they doubled my download rate to about 200MBS “at no extra charge!”.

I  think that Spectrum’s speed boost is more than just a coincidence with Starlink offering service in my area. And if I stay with Starlink, I’ll have to pay an additional $400 to purchase the antenna and associated equipment. But after that, my monthly fee is a flat $99/month, with speeds starting at $100MBS, which was where I was at before Spectrum boosted mine.

My only problem I need to solve is what to do with my house phone. That’s part of my cable package. I’ve already looked into using an AT&T device to in essence add my home phone to my wireless plan, for an additional $15/month. With my home line split out of my cable package, I have the freedom to pick whomever I want for data, and right now, that selection is Starlink.

I also want to make my home a bit more robust. Earlier this year I installed a UPS and put all my comm gear and one of my computers on it. Sure enough, Florida Flash and Flicker lost power on a clear and sunny day. Everything stayed up on the UPS for the two hours we were without power. Unfortunately Spectrum lost power as well (the loss hit over 1,000 customers). When my home power came back I was still out of Internet connectivity for another three hours as Spectrum fixed their equipment issues. So much for power backup; I still had to power cycle my cellular modem/access point to get everything sorted out.

So here’s to the future. Terrestrial service providers are going to get some real competition in the very near future. And I believe that many of us are going to move to Starlink, or something very similar.