Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Report from Louisiana: The Social Dilemma

Posted: November 23, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin   

SHREVEPORT – Most of the time I feel like we are living in a dystopian universe.  If you watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix you might agree.  Absolutely terrifying.

Come sit in a high school classroom for any length of time and you’ll see the problem that is social media. In my school, the English teachers got together and decided to all take up phones before class each day. You put your phone in in the box before you enter class and they are returned at the end of class. Otherwise, I promise you, kids are staring at their phones and not doing their classwork. There are varying degrees of this truth depending on what school and how motivated the student population is in general.

The Social Dilemma docudrama makes the point that we have an entire generation of kids more anxious, more depressed than ever before due to social media. They are so bound up in that instant gratification from “Likes” and “Shares” that for so many their entire self-worth is connected to this. I see this daily.

This is a subject that has interested me for a long time; when Matt Richtel’s book, A Deadly Wandering, came out in 2014, I eagerly developed lessons around it, shared it with my students, and tried to reinforce its thesis, to no avail. Students thought it was crazy. It’s the “they aren’t taking to ME” syndrome: “I don’t have this problem.”

Social media is so insidious, so pervasive, so much a part of our lives, and we all know it. But we don’t stop. We are so absolutely dependent on it. It controls us.

Nearly everyone has had this experience, or something similar: you are driving by a store…say, Lowe’s, or Home Depot. You say out loud, “Oh, I need to go one day and get a new ladder!” What kind of ads show up on your social media feed next time you go online?

True story: I was outside one day with three friends. One person had a device around her neck with little fans at each end that blew air toward her face and she used this while gardening in our southern heat and humidity. Friend number two said something like, “Oh, that’s cool! Does it work well?” Friend no 1 assured her it worked great. End of conversation. I never uttered a word. What kind of ads were on my social media when I opened Facebook later that afternoon?  Why, ads for little fans you wear around your neck, of course.

Paranoid? Nope. This happens all the time.

Last week I saw one of those ads on Facebook for some shirt with a dragonfly design. I did not click on it. I did linger for a moment, looking at the photo. Now, dragonfly shirts are all over my feed.

This sort of thing is a tiny example of how social media controls and influences us. It is enough for me to want to pull a Travis McGee, unplug from everything, and go off the grid.

Now watch, Travis McGee books will be all over my feed.

Watch The Social Dilemma. It’s an eye opener.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Brave Dominion Runs away in PA (Update and locked out of Twitter AGAIN (6th time)

Posted: November 21, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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It’s very rare that I unfollow someone on twitter but when John McCormick referred to the problems with Dominion voting systems as a “conspiracy theory” I had enough.

While there’s not a big demand for programmers nearing 60 who haven’t written a line of code in decades these days I still know the principles that programming is based on. In fact I’m old enough to remember being laughed at when I warned a friend that if they were connected to the net the net was connected to them and they were better off shutting their machine down than leaving on and connected unintended overnight.

Of course you don’t have to go back that far to remember the days when the MSM had issues with Dominion voting machines, just back to last year…:

Chinese parts, hidden ownership, growing scrutiny: Inside America’s biggest maker of voting machines

Scrutiny of the U.S. election system, spurred by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, has put Election Systems & Software in the political spotlight.

Of course now that there are questions about a Democrat “victory” you don’t hear stuff like this from NBC instead you see people with a lot of digits in their twitter profile saying…

The real comedy is that they are still saying this AFTER Dominion decided to cut and run from a scheduled Pennsylvania hearing before the state legislature:

On Friday, Republican members on the State Government Committee slammed Dominion Voting Systems after Dominion company canceled a scheduled appearance to discuss voting irregularities.

The Pennsylvania House Republicans tweeted, “Transparency is key for our election security. Dominion Voting Software is asking us to give them only blind trust. We’re very disappointed in Dominion’s last minute cancelation in today’s hearing.”

spelling error in original

Deb Heine has more:

“Why would a vender of public goods fear discussing their product sold to the public for the public good? If Dominion’s products were successful and operated as they were supposed to, why wouldn’t Dominion take the opportunity to publicly review its success?” Grove demanded. “How hard is it to say, ‘our ballot machines worked exactly as promised and they’re 100 percent accurate’?”

“After weeks of accusations, why has Dominion Voting Systems not released any analysis of the success of its voting machines to the public in order to stop their accusers in their tracks? If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding from us?” he asked.

“Today I am saddened to report to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania and the 1.3 million voters who trusted Dominion Voting Systems with their ballots, that Dominion Voting Systems has hung you out to dry and slapped you in your faces.” the committee chair declared.

Because nothing says “conspiracy theory” like a vendor cutting and running before the hearing of a legislature that’s going to decide if they results they produced were valid.

Perhaps someone ought to tell the left’s enablers this, I’m sure we’ll try until of course twitter or facebook locks them out for it.

Unexpectedly of course

Update: the fellow in that tweet above took exception to what I was arguing so I gave him these links plus one from the BBC on how to spot vote fraud:

Every single one of those cases took place in this election but our exchange ended rather abruptly once guess why…

So of course I tweeted the link out again guess what happened?

I suspect my leftist friend will not mourn my lockout all that much.

Oh one note, every time I’m locked out and win my appeal the tweet still isn’t showing up in my timeline. They are keeping that link well hidden, just like Dominion but here is the link to the tweet that doesn’t work anymore

https://twitter.com/DaTechGuyblog/status/1330179637876547584

Update 2: Welcome Whatfinger readers, check out my podcast yesterday to hear what I had to say on these subjects and others and of course my magnificent seven writers.

I don’ t know if I’m on the pace to set the world record for most times locked out of twitter then restored with an apology (as I refuse to delete my tweets) but we’ll see it coming.

Update 3: The text of my appeal

For what is now the 6th time in under 20 days you have locked me out claiming that I was spreading intimate images when I was in fact each time tweeting out a link to a post on Benford’s statistical law which demonstrates the impossibility of Joe Biden’s magic ballots.

Moreover Every time I have appealed you have upheld said appeal apologized and claimed my lockout was an error. YET EVERY SINGLE TIME AFTER THESE “apologies” I HAVE RETWEETED THE VERY SAME LINK TO THE VERY SAME PIECE AND WAS LOCKED OUT WITH THE VERY SAME FALSE ACCUSATION AGAINST ME.

To say this is despicable and dishonorable is to not only repeat myself from previous appeals but to say something that is so apparent that it almost doesn’t need saying. That you still do this demonstrate why other alternatives like Parler are doing so well.

Bottom line you’re accusation is false and I’m not only not going to delete the tweet but after this appeal is won I will test to see if your upcoming “apology” and assertion of a “mistake” is worth any more than it was the last five times you sent them.

At least my next lockout for that same link will be lucky number 7.

Cryptocurrents

Posted: November 21, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

The Senate Judiciary Committee hauled tech titans His Most Serene and Excellent Kahuna of Twitter and Mark “I am not a Zeta Reticulan” Zuckerberg of Facebook to their Zoom cameras to testify about their policies for censoring conservatives on their respective sites this week. The Republicans on the Committee railed about how these businessmen were running their private companies the way they wanted to, which is wrong these days, while the Democrats cried out for more and better censorship- er, barriers against misinformation, which is typically information they wish everyone would miss.

But in a way, Twitter and Facebook are yesterday’s technology, anyway. More interesting developments took place in one of tomorrow’s technologies, that is, blockchains and cryptocurrencies. October 31 was the twelfth anniversary since a link to the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” appeared on a cryptography mailing list at metzdowd.com. A couple months later, Bitcoin launched — January 9, 2009. Two years later, one Bitcoin was worth 35 cents. On January 9, 2012, a Bitcoin was worth $6.65. Today, Bitcoin stands at $18,685, with some expecting it to hit $65,000, and has a market cap of almost $347 billion.

It’s a reflection of how cryptocurrencies are slowly but surely ingratiating themselves into the ecosystem. PayPal recently began facilitating the purchase of Bitcoin and one of the other leading cryptocurrencies, Ethereum. Both Mastercard and Visa offer cryptocurrency cards, and Visa has also partnered with leading crypto exchange Coinbase.

Cryptocurrencies exist on a digital technology called blockchains, which allows for secure, decentralized, and anonymous transactions beyond the reach of authorities. Which presents its own twists. Blockchains also allow complex financial transactions to take place in minutes, where the current system takes days, maybe a week.

And Friday, payments startup company Circle announced that it had partnered with the Venezuelan government-in-exile led by Juan Guaidó (recognized by the United States, Canada, Brazil and over 50 other nations as the legitimate Venezuelan government). In fact, Circle was also working with the U.S. government to essentially convert seized Venezuelan funds into a cryptocurrency called USDC – which is pegged to the value of one American dollar – to bypass financial controls imposed by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Of course, with any new technology, regulation in the blockchain world is thin (but thickening up), and the price ticker for bitcoin can look like the heart monitor of a tweeker going cold turkey. Caveat emptor,

But as the U.S. government buries the dollar in Marianas-level depths of debt – and this before the Democrat moves into the White House, promising to give out trillions more – there might be worse ideas than finding alternative forms of currency.

The fact that you can hide secret messages in the currency is just the icing.

Update, 11/21/2020 1:21 PM. Fixed a couple of the links.

Guess who is locked out of twitter again (this makes 5 times since the election) Update: Instantly let back on appeal in under a minute

Posted: November 19, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I’ll give them this they are getting smarter. They didn’t lock me for retweeting that 1st tweet, they locked me out for a new tweet with the same link

I’ll be appealing when I get home from work again

Update: The text of my latest appeal (forgot the save the one before it)

Well this makes five times that you’ve locked me out for tweeting about Benford’s law in connection to the election when claiming I’ve done something else untoward and the 4th time after apologizing for doing the very same thing.

One would think eventually some degree of shame might kick in or embarrassment both for the false accusations and for the idiocy of locking me right after apologizing and claiming to make a mistake, but as I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m dealing with dishonest and dishonorable people I’ve not come to expect better from you.

I am gratified that you are still afraid enough of the position of Mr. Biden that you’re still afraid of people reading that piece, given that nearly a 1/3 of DEMOCRATS believe the election was stolen your fear is justified.

But in the end your claims about me are patently false and I expect to win this appeal as I’ve won the previous five.

How many times to do intend to go though this charade before you stop?

The appeal was instantly approved, Unexpectedly of course

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