eponymousarchon

Well that was a nice way to start the day.
I'm sure I remember some of these ads from PCW and C&VG:

vintage geek t-shirt ads from the early 80's  (Nostalgia from vintagecomputing.com)

Thinkgeek needs to make reproductions. :)

What I did at the weekend:


"Carm orn - evveryfing's got ter gow! Goood prices!"

Okay - this is freaky [Update, I think I've partly figured this out - but it's still scary and possibly worse - see below]

One of Facebook's more-fun features (I find) is the 'Suggestions Friends' page, wherein Facebook looks at your friends and who they friend and looks for patterns that suggest people that you might know and want to friend. When it works, it's really good - and when it's bad, it is occasionally amusing. So like I say, it's fun.

Recently, they've also added a 'Suggestions' box to the main Facebook page which simply displays one of the recommendations in the same format and changes it when the screen refreshes.

Okay, that's enough background. Today, hand-coding for partially script-generated HTML pages was breaking my brain, so I was taking a five minute Facebook break (as people do) when the following popped up on my main Facebook page:



At this, I went *boink* but then thought for a moment. "Now, this is surprising, but not impossible" You see: Angela Melick draws a webcomic called Wasted Talent that I'm a regular reader of (really - it's very good) but I'm pretty sure Facebook doesn't know that. Eeek.


Okay - deep breath. I have other friends who are into or actually create, webcomics. It's not impossible that one of them has friended her and that that's what Facebook is picking up on. Okay, check this - go to Ms Melick's profile and check for mutual friends.



Buh?

Now that qualifies as spooky. I know that she has a seperate group for followers of the comic and keeps her main page to people she knows in real life - so I'm not actually surprised that there's no overlap. And I'm not a friend of her group or any of the other fan groups on there.

So how did Facebook make the connection?

Perplexed, I refreshed the page a couple of times to see if this was a freak error. A few refreshes later:



Now I know Facebook is screwing with me. Samantha Cherolis draws another webcomic: Random Assembly (Also very good - really, you should check these guys' comics out) Again, we have no friends in common:



...and she doesn't even have an 'followers group'. Facebook really doesn't know that I follow this person.

So how the hell are they pulling out this connection?

By this point I was seriously re-evaluating the semi-paranoid rumours I've heard about the alleged link between Facebook and the American FBI. Did I dare go down that mental  that rabbit-hole, was it true? But if so, then why would they make it obvious? It made no sense.

Then the penny dropped and it rasies different questions.

One thing both comickers have in common is that I've corresponded by email with them in the purchase of books and similar. And I let Facebook look at these once a few weeks back as part of its "Find people you know on Facebook via their email' feature. But that's supposed to be a one-off deal: It checks the list against the (normally hidden) emails and then dumps the list.

If it isn't dumping the list, it needs to flag this in b-i-i-i-g letters. If Facebook didn't keep the list, then how is it connecting us now? 

Hm, Except... Except that if Facebook did keep the list, then why did it only find them now and not at the time? These two guys are showing up pretty frequently in my 'Suggested' box, I'm pretty damn sure that they didn't show-up in the list of suggestions from Facebook that were generated as a result of the email list and I've checked my full page of suggestions (including the extras that don't appear until you start removing suggestions from the list) a few times since then (Look - it was a lunchtime at work - okay?)

Suggesting that Facebook kept my email results and two people that I know, and are in the same field, both decided to update their emails at roughly the same time and they both added emails that they've advertised on their respective websites for several years, but apparently hadn't added to Facebook a few weeks previously...

...is stretching credulity more than a bit. But that's the only answer.

I'm almost certainly missing an important piece of the puzzle, but I'm otherwise ferklempt here.

[ Update: See next post - Aha! What's actually happening: http://eponymousarchon.livejournal.com/121522.html - (Hint: Naughty Facebook, no cookie.)]

Discussion about my previous small ads post reminded me of this:

Previously, the local small ads paper had a regular customer who was trying to sell an unwanted Palm IIIc (the first colour Palmpilot) for around 300-400 quid if I recall correctly. They obviously felt the need to justify that price as they explained that this was the sale price of this ithem hich was an unwanted prize and had been stored for years - and hadn't been used since bought. I beleive that the Small Ads gave you extra weeks if you couldn't sell the item, so the seller wasn't spending too much on this - as believe me, it really wasn't selling.

What the seller wasn't getting was that the Palm IIIc did cost the figure they quoted, but that was (mumble mumble) years ago!

Since then, you could get a current spec Palm that had

• 4 times the pixel, count
• an orders of magnitude or two worth of extra colour depth
• 32-64 times the internalmemory
• a 10x (or more) faster processor
• An external card slot included
• Bluetooth included as well as IRDA.
• a Lithium Ion battery (and associated battery life instead of AA or AAA batteries

...for about half of the price that they wanted - brand new - and that was from Argos!

The ad was there for months and month and months. The inability of these sellers to work out what was wrong with their money making scheme was the cause of many exasperated conversations between myself and Kit.

Although it took months and months for them to work out that it wouldn't sell, but eventually one week the ad was conspicuous by its absence -- and the Friday Ads were never quite as annoying again.

I do hope they didn't manage to to sell it to some unfortunate person.

I often browse through the local Friday Ads small ads magazine. While I don't often buy things this way, I enjoy the range of items for sale. They also have a wonderful run of accidental (and often charming) errors and typos that raise a smile.

In the 90's, sellers had to phone-in their ad content to over-worked and non-technical call handlers.  This caused a continuous stream of 'Omega' computers and 'Epsom' printers advertised for sale. Now that most sellers submit their ads via email or text message, this kind of thing is much rarer (but usually much more mind-bending when it does happen).

Thankfully, there is still an old staple (ahem) of the Ad magazines to fall back on, untouched since the 80's. As a sales feature (and to aid browsing) the first two words of an ad are set in bold type - free of charge! The catch in this is that the typesetters embolden the first two words exactly. Whether you want this to happen to or not and without care of the consequences.

Unfortunately, the sellers don't always take this into account when providing ad copy:

Also: Just to prove me wrong, this week's issue has *two* printer cartridges for Epsom printers for sale. No Omegas though. Sadly.

Ah-hahahaha! I've been rumbled!

Today at 10:45. I cast another lure (all in the name of experimentation):



By 1pm I was getting ready to admit defeat. However, at 15:48 - Ding!



So, who have we got?

From Michael Nugent's twittter profile:

Michael Nugent

• Location Dublin, Ireland
• Web http://michaelnug...
• Bio Irish writer and activist. Bestselling books. Hit comedy musical play. Chair of Atheist Ireland. Happy, rational, ethical atheist.

...I've been rumbled!

So apparently it's not just the purveyors of Woo that grep the timeline!

As an added bonus, his photo is whole orders of magnitude less scary than the previous two:

Nice article on the latest entirely unbiased anti-science, psychiatry  'museum' - and it's not the creationists this time. :/

http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=7752

Choice quote from article: "Psychiatry is behind eugenics, all acts of genocide, the Holocaust, and terrorism."... "There are enormous posters of patients in restraints, and models of evil doctors weilding their implements of torture."

Gah!

And today's earworm is: "Ninety-nine per-cent  of gar-goyles look like  Bob Todd..."

Thank *you* Half-Man, Half-Biscuit.