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Added on 4 Jul 2013. Last read 1 week ago.

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This feed currently contains the following newsitems (total count 1117):

    • Where is brand Aotearoa?
      • One thing holding back exports from Aotearoa New Zealand is the absence of a true, authentic national brand. I said this even back in the days of the 100% Pure campaign, which was much lauded. I cynically asked: can we really claim this when France and Germany outspend us on the environment as a percentage [...] Read More... from Where is brand Aotearoa?

    • Google results are old
      • That Google seems to get older and older. Here are the top 10 for site:lucire.com as of October 10, 2024. The home page isn’t there, and maybe that’s OK. But what is there is the index.html file to the 2000 folder, which was put there to catch any programming errors (e.g. forgetting to [...] Read More... from Google results are old

    • Continuing the disinformation removal and bot blocks
      • Call me an idealist, but I think people should stop using those search engine copy massaging programs, write like real humans, and expect the technology to bend to us, rather than the other way round. That’s how we still conduct business. There are still disinformation pages out there, but no new ones since I called [...] Read More... from Continuing the disinformation removal and bot blocks

    • Blocking the Semrush bots
      • It’s not enough to block just Semrush’s bot, SemrushBot, in one’s robots.txt, since they have a whole bunch of them. We’ve usually allowed all bots but with “AI” and Semrush’s terrible programming that wasted hours of my time every day for nine months, there are certain parties no longer welcome to crawl. To block Semrush [...] Read More... from Blocking the Semrush bots

    • Quick test of index size on the occidental search engines
      • Google really doesn’t like this blog. When I do a site: search, it still puts HTML pages up top, often pre-2010, and as of yesterday, it trails Mojeek and Bing in terms of the number of pages in its index. Who knew? Google being last of the three. It got me wondering how [...] Read More... from Quick test of index size on the occidental search engines

    • Here’s probably how Semrush linked concepts—and got it totally wrong
      • When you have been on this disinformation-busting journey for nine months, you can work out how Semrush got everything so wrong. Here’s one item, a bunch of SEO tools, and if you read the description, ‘Google SEO Xiaoyan’ is in the copy. Probably deeply questionable, which is why Google offers it for Chrome. [...] Read More... from Here’s probably how Semrush linked concepts—and got it totally wrong

    • If it’s important, you can depend on Google to act as censor
      • We know Meta’s not on the side of justice or democracy, as it shows over and over again, and OnlyKlans’ fascist leanings are obvious. Google pretends that it’s all about the algorithms when we know it’s not: for years it would censor anything critical of itself when I posted to my old Google Plus account. [...] Read More... from If it’s important, you can depend on Google to act as censor

    • Forgetting humanity: the desperation of tech
      • How very interesting to see that the disinformation posts about me have stopped going up since I called out Semrush on their own subreddit. For four days I’ve not found any new ones on Google. The timing tells me that Semrush can, contrary to its response, adjust keywords, especially after learning the sheer hell their [...] Read More... from Forgetting humanity: the desperation of tech

    • Forty-eight hours without new disinformation—dare we hope for seventy-two?
      • Now isn’t that interesting? After posting about Semrush on their Reddit, where their error is laid bare for all to see, I have now had a blissful 48 hours where there were no new disinformation posts about yours truly pop up on Google searches. So much for Semrush claiming that it could not remove a [...] Read More... from Forty-eight hours without new disinformation—dare we hope for seventy-two?

    • Autocade reaches 39 million page views
      • Here we are, 39 million page views on Autocade, as the stats’ counter ticked over to 11,361,125 earlier today (which we add to the previous installation’s 27,647,011). It’s two months, 16 days since we were at 38 million, and as July and August were leap months, that’s 78 days. Last time it was 50 days. [...] Read More... from Autocade reaches 39 million page views

    • “AI”? Facebook’s bot city has already been around for a decade
      • I’m surprised that people are surprised that this is where Facebook is going. In the words of my friend Richard MacManus, in reference to this interview with Mark Zuckerberg in The Verge: ‘Mark Zuckerberg basically just confirmed that your feeds will soon be full of AI-generated content. Another reason the fediverse needs to exist: so [...] Read More... from “AI”? Facebook’s bot city has already been around for a decade

    • If you’re still writing disinformation after all this, then tech is your master, and you are the slave
      • If you peel away the technobabble of what Semrush said to me on Reddit, basically their algorithm messed up when it included an unspaced version of my name. It wasn’t trending. It was just an extrapolation made by an algorithm that, unfortunately, had a very negative consequence for me. But it also didn’t help [...] Read More... from If you’re still writing disinformation after all this, then tech is your master, and you are the slave

    • The trials of removing disinformation from Bluehost
      • Here’s a company that seems to protect sploggers and disinformation spreaders: Bluehost. One of the disinformation splogs had a Cloudflare account, which hid their real host. I filed a DMCA report, as this splogger was stupid enough to use my photo. These seem to get through the Cloudflare system better than things classified as ‘other’. [...] Read More... from The trials of removing disinformation from Bluehost

    • Semrush finally explains how my (unspaced) name wound up in their system
      • Posting on Reddit has elicited something from Semrush, with Vic on their team writing this in response to me. Hi Jack, sorry for any confusion—I’ve been discussing the case with my team internally to make sure we’re all on the same page. Our system aims to predict trends using various signals, but sometimes unexpected patterns [...] Read More... from Semrush finally explains how my (unspaced) name wound up in their system

    • Losing your number-two position when switching to HTTPS, 31 months on
      • In 2022, when the Jack Yan & Associates site went to HTTPS—though some parts of it were on that even in the 2000s—it fell from being second place in Google to below 30th for a search for my name. However, the accepted wisdom was that HTTPS sites outranked HTTP ones on Google. The “experts” all [...] Read More... from Losing your number-two position when switching to HTTPS, 31 months on

    • On the Semrush subreddit: ‘How the Keyword Magic Tool made my year hell’
      • Since emailing Semrush got nowhere, and sending a release to the search engine press got nowhere, maybe posting to their subreddit might work. Of course, it might get deleted. It might even make things worse and spark copycats. Who knows? But what choice do I have after nine months? How the Keyword Magic Tool made [...] Read More... from On the Semrush subreddit: ‘How the Keyword Magic Tool made my year hell’

    • Semrush, according to a customer: ‘Their data made no sense’
      • From a user on Reddit, _cth_. Need I say more? Semrush doesn’t care about how bad their product is, or the effect it has on the public. Here’s someone paying US$14,000 for junk, so imagine how bad the data must be for the free or lower-paying users. I would be surprised if this [...] Read More... from Semrush, according to a customer: ‘Their data made no sense’

    • Exporting with intent
      • As it’s the 50th anniversary year of ABBA’s win at the Eurovision Song Contest, I checked out Channel 5’s documentary on the subject. There was a lot I already knew from having visited ABBA the Museum in the summer, where one exhibit celebrated the milestone. As I wrote in Lucire, the pre-ABBA world for the [...] Read More... from Exporting with intent

    • Carry on designing
      • Journeys through time are fascinating. Earlier this week, I looked at some of the websites we liked from the Jack Yan & Associates links’ section. In many cases, it was a trip down memory lane, as some sites still had their 2000s layouts. Sadly, this could mean that a few of them will disappear in [...] Read More... from Carry on designing

    • Bringing the JY&A links’ pages into the 2020s
      • After 21–22 years, we’ve redone the links’ pages on the Jack Yan & Associates website. The old template dated from 2002, and, oddly, while cellphone browsers from a decade ago could by default enlarge the type to suit, modern ones can’t. (I’m still waiting for the software developers to incorporate the Bitstream technology from the [...] Read More... from Bringing the JY&A links’ pages into the 2020s

    • More disinformation sploggers point to Semrush
      • More disinformation sploggers have owned up and blamed Semrush, not that they are taking their posts down. The latest: Hope you are doing well. First of all we are extremely sorry for using the keyword related to your name. We only use this as a keyword. According to the semrush this keyword has potential of [...] Read More... from More disinformation sploggers point to Semrush

    • Online history lesson
      • It took a couple of days’ tweaking, but the Wordpress part of Jack Yan & Associates’ website now (nearly) matches the new template on the home page, T&Cs and contact page. This was a tricky one due to the conflicts between the BootstrapMade template and the standard Understrap one for Wordpress. Also debatable is [...] Read More... from Online history lesson

    • Jack Yan & Associates gets a new home page
      • Not really major news, since it’s virtually the same template as we used for JY&A Media earlier this year: Jack Yan & Associates has a new home page. Gone is the random image that headed the old page in favour of a photo I took in Dubai that I rather liked—one of the earlier [...] Read More... from Jack Yan & Associates gets a new home page

    • Time to go to each host and take down the disinformation websites
      • I’ve indulged these buggers for long enough: over the last few weeks, I began going to the web hosts of the disinformation writers. Hostinger has been excellent, giving the writers three days to prove what they wrote is genuine, and, of course, 100 per cent of them fail. A UK host called 20i has just [...] Read More... from Time to go to each host and take down the disinformation websites

    • Which medium makes us happy, where we absorb and we share?
      • Above: In 1995, the Mercury website was quite flash, and I recall seeing the 1996 Sable on there, as a transparent GIF, and being impressed. Unfortunately, that predates the Internet Archive, so there’s no record of that incarnation of the site. This press photo will have to do to remind me of that exciting moment [...] Read More... from Which medium makes us happy, where we absorb and we share?

    • At the dawn of the ’90s
      • More from the slimmed-down archives. Here’s a little item from 1991, when I was 19. St Luke’s Church in Wadestown, Wellington was holding a 1960s-themed dance and I designed and hand-lettered the tickets. You can see I was into Swiss modernism even then. The large type was drawn from memory: I didn’t go back [...] Read More... from At the dawn of the ’90s

    • Fake news fuelling riots? The warnings were there as bots industrialize disinformation
      • For anyone who has followed my battles with bot-written and bot-based junk this year, this should come as no surprise: The UK riots were fuelled by the same kind of website, with the same raison d’être. This one was in Pakistan, where, sadly, some of the disinformation sites about me have come from. [...] Read More... from Fake news fuelling riots? The warnings were there as bots industrialize disinformation

    • A positive report from one blind reader
      • Feeling positive about this feedback from a blind Mastodon user, Robert Kingett, when he checked out Lucire and Autocade online. I know lots of internal pages need proper alt text, but his cursory report is very good, and encourages us to do better. I generally hear positive things about the use of alt [...] Read More... from A positive report from one blind reader

    • Recycle time
      • Thirty-plus years of my files are being recycled. Only a last few years are left to go. I kept them, thinking they might be of some historical use—maybe future entrepreneurs might want to see the efforts I put in to get the country’s first digital font range known, or building up Lucire from nothing. As [...] Read More... from Recycle time

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