Clif Graves – Just another guy doing WordPress, ClassicPress, and other things

Caught by reCAPTCHA?

The article on TheStoic.me There is no evil like reCAPTCHA (v3) Takes an interesting look at the value behind the "are you Human" testing that so many sites use. I have always had mixed feelings about the usefulness of these kind of tests. Presumably a computer cannot answer them but only us humans can....

Is Facebook just the new AOL?

I have has a website for ages. I have Facebook and Twitter. How do these all fit together. Back in the day, there was something called AOL. You logged into AOL and it was all there articles, messages to friends, interest groups, photos and videos. Then a strange thing happened. AOL let you access...

Is there protection against ransomware?

Is there protection against ransomware? The headline for June 27 is “Less than 1 week after Florida town pays ransomware gang ~$600K, another Florida town votes to pay ~$500K in BTC to ransomware gang” My point of view is paying the ransom “only encourages them”. So how does this work? The general idea is...

OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and MS Office -Confused?

OpenOffice, LibreOffice, and MS Office -Confused? A friend of mine recently posted that she was having problems with OpenOffice not working as well as it could. It surprised me that she was still using OpenOffice. I realized a lot of folks are confused about word processor choices. Here is my take on the history...

Clouded Judgment?

I saw a t shirt that said “The cloud really just means using somebody else’s computer” That just about says it all! The cloud has become a general term for just about any program or service that is not located on your local computer (local area network) and accessed over the internet. The part...

Electricity or Gas cooking?

I have been thinking about cooking. As a household we are starting down the rabbit hole of reducing packaging waste and carbon footprint. One way we can do that is to cook at home things we now buy in the store with a lot of associated packaging. And that comes in conflict with one...

Netflix, bigger than cable?

The headline on engadget is Netflix has more American subscribers than cable TV. It seems that between increases in Netflix subscriptions and a continuing decrease in cable subscribers Netflix with its 50.85 million US subscribers now has more subscribers than the US cable industry. Driven by both cost and original content the tide continues...

StartPage.com and your online privacy?

While it might be arguable that there is no such thing as privacy anymore, we have to keep trying. Some things we have clear control over. For example what we post to Facebook or other online sites is in our control. What is not under our control is what Facebook does with it from...

How Organic is Organic – Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up

In John Brunner’s 1972 Book The Sheep Look Up, The world he envisioned is not unlike ours, plagued by overpopulation as well as environmental and political problems. His world has the start of common use of electric cars and people worried about what is in their foods. And he has a factious food store...

Within 5 to 10 years Cable TV as such will be gone.

Here is my prediction. Within 5 to no more than 10 years Cable TV as such will be gone. We may will see a return of TV antennas. Local TV stations will be doing a combination of air wave and 'live' streaming over the Internet. The distinction between print newspapers and TV news online...

What Was I Thinking?