> get lamp

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/03/etsy-users-irked-after-buyers-purchases-exposed-to-the-world.ars :

The controversy began last week when Etsy flipped the switch on People Search as part of its effort to make Etsy feel more like a social network. Now, when users run a search for a person's full name, that user's account will show up in the search results, even if that person is only a buyer. ... The problem is that, aside from a thread in Etsy's forums (which is almost entirely used by sellers, not buyers), Etsy has not notified users of the change in privacy settings or policy. Previously, users could search Etsy for seller names, but the names of buyers were not exposed as part of the search. Not only are buyers searchable now, they're even searchable by real name if that info is in their account profiles—this is not a required element of the registration process, but there's nothing to indicate that it's optional. ... Even better, people's Etsy profiles and their purchase histories (via the feedback they leave) are beginning to show up under Google results for their names. ... Those who do have accounts on Etsy can remove their real names from their profile pages, and there's also a way to make your purchase history private (Your Account > Settings > Privacy). However, most account holders aren't even aware of the change in the first place, and they're not likely to change their settings without some sort of prompt.

See also http://www.etsy.com/storque/handmade-life/rethinking-feedback-12472/ though.

news sez: We're pleased to announce the beta-launch of social games on LiveJournal. In partnership with i-Jet Media, an international game studio, we've released four new games--Farm Frenzy, Crazy Cars, Hospital, and City Gangs--with additional titles to be added. You can check out our games on the homepage or at the Games Center. For more information, check out this FAQ.

kistaro sez:

"LiveJournal has just partnered with a company not sufficiently unlike Zynga for my taste to provide micropayment-driven Facebookesque social games."

Oy vey. Great. All I can add in response, I think, is this:

Does anyone know what parts of LJ page content are served from l-stat.livejournal.com? I saw someone complaining in a comment on Dreamwidth today that s.dreamwidth.org was a horribly slow subdomain for them and did anyone know if icons or whatever were served from there as they were considering blocking it to speed up page load times. At work (works OK at home, so I conclude it's something peculiar about net traffic routing to/from this location) I feel the same about l-stat. I often see "Connecting to l-stat.livejournal.com..." for many seconds down there in the status bar before anything on the page loads at all (22 seconds in the case I just tested), and even after most of the content seems to have gotten served, I'll sometimes see it again/more, holding up the works. So I'm wondering what I'll miss if I try blocking this server somehow (hosts file, maybe?) so its content isn't even attempted.

( click for screenshot )

See where the content is? No? Well it's all crammed into that tiny bit on the right.

Coding FAIL. This is NOT what I call degrading gracefully. Look. I know that keeping font.size.fixed.x-western and font.size.variable.x-western cranked to 24 points and font.minimum-size.x-western at 22 points borks many website designs to a greater or lesser degree, and I cannot expect people to fully accomodate me. I am annoyed, but prepared to deal with it, when this quirk of mine means page elements overlap and I can't properly click on stuff. Usually things are at least readable if not pretty. (Don't start me on absolute-pixel positioning of paragraphs, though - it's literally alphabet soup on the screen.) Or if not, a quick trip into about:config to temporarily change the minimum size provides a fix good enough that I can get on with my day. (I still wish for an extension that will allow me to toggle between two font sizes on the fly without having to open a tab, type about:config, "wes", double-click, type a number, click OK, switch back to other tab.)

Not in this case: I had to change all three of them before the text was revealed. GAWWWWR. *snort*

Last night I managed to slip off the bed while stepping down off of it (enotsola's computer chair blocks the straight path from where I sit, so I commonly walk over the bed), and landed with my big toe bent underneath, so my weight fell on its "knuckle". Ow, frickin' ow. I figure I probably fractured something as there is certainly a bruise and the area seems swollen, and I can't really bend it. It's real fun sitting here at work with my leg sometimes awkwardly up on my computer and an ice pack balanced there, let me tell you.

I know that in *nix systems filenames beginning with a dot are hidden, but dang it's annoying when I'm trying to a) edit .htaccess in CPanel's online file manager from work, where I don't have a local copy of my website; b) download the existing .htaccess by FTP so I could edit it and reupload it; or c) even just see if I had a dang .htaccess file in a given subfolder in the first place!

arg.

(I did solve the problem I was trying to solve, it was just hard to do while not at home.)

If anyone is pissed off enough at the Facebook/Twitter Connect thing that they would like to test the waters at Dreamwidth, I have a bunch of codes. You can also usually find codes for the taking at dw_codesharing. Their journal importer is pretty good - it'll even import the comments on all your posts. (Unfortunately that feature doesn't yet work on communities IIRC.) And you can set up the crossposter to crosspost back to LJ/IJ if you want (to be clear: that's all it does, is let you post copies of your posts to your accounts on other journal sites; a free account gets 1 such crosspost, paid gets 3 - "paid premium", a level that doesn't exist on LJ, probably gets more), and when you edit a DW post it'll automatically edit the remote copies. I've actually been posting everything to my three accounts from DW for some months now - you just can't really tell because I don't have it set up to put an identifying footer on the remote posts.

BTW, my own policy on this: I don't have a Twitter account. I have a Facebook account, but I don't actually make use of the thing. I will never crosspost any of my posts or comments to either site. And please for $DEITY's sake I hope you will not post any comments you may make in my journal or on anything I've posted in a community there either.

via maewyn:

Opt-Out Required to Prevent Your Yahoo! Mail Contacts From Being Used for Social Network

See hir post for more at http://maewyn.dreamwidth.org/1137604.html, but here's the meat (pasted from the article):

To opt-out of the new program, go to http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/updates/ and uncheck the box next to Share My Updates. In addition, to opt out of sharing authorized by your friends, you need to go to http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/permissions, and uncheck "Allow my connections to share my information labeled 'My Connections' with third-party applications." While on this page, you should review your settings, and adjust the privacy levels as appropriate. This page also allows [you] to hide your profile entirely.

To control your privacy on the newly introduced Yahoo! Pulse, go to http://pulse.yahoo.com/y/settings and click on "Manage privacy settings." A pop-up window will appear, with a list of checkboxes. Here you can opt out of sharing a variety of information, and choose to hide your profile. To maximize privacy, everything should be deselected, except the last option "Hide my profile." [My strikeout. Note: To maximize privacy, you probably should check "Hide my profile", so that not even your friends can find you. If you want your profile to stay visible (like it has been for the last 10 years or so) but you still want to opt out of everything, none of the boxes should be checked.]

Next, select the link "my updates" from the first line of text in the pop-up. This will bring you to the Updates page, where you can uncheck "Share my updates." If you have previously followed our opt-out instructions, this should already be unchecked.

Note: Yahoo! is doing a slow rollout. The link to http://pulse.yahoo.com/y/settings may not work for you yet. If that is the case, use the old instructions for now.

Personally, some of it is not working for me; attempting to save preferences (such as unchecking "share my updates", not that I actually send out any updates on Yahoo or use it for anything other than a spamtrap address and subscribing to Yahoo groups) often nets me the oh-so-helpful error message "something seems to be wrong". I am also annoyed to be totally at a loss in their new system as to where to change the details of my "alias" profile (you can have multiple profiles and choose which is visible to what groups) and indeed the main profile I'm working on doesn't seem to be equivalent to what I used to think of as the main one which was identified with the Yahoo id. *frustrated*

via rm, amberite:

An Iranian actress will be executed if she's deported from the UK, and they're just standing by and letting it happen. Sign a petition. If you're in the UK, you can probably take more direct political action than this.

-----

More specifically, a quote from the article: "According to legislation in Iran, the punishment for lesbian sex is 100 lashes. If the act is repeated three times and punishment is enforced each time, the death sentence will apply on the fourth occasion. But the Home Office refused her request for asylum earlier this month, despite acknowledging her appeal was legitimate."

http://evilpuppy.livejournal.com/365126.html

I don't even know how to sum up this horror story of a young disabled woman getting absolute shit treatment from United Airlines, not only re: issues getting wheelchairs and handling her carry-on bag (which she could not lift overhead), but the total crap sandwich she was fed when she tried to complain about it. Just, wow.