Author: DOuG pRATt

Be Careful What You Lick or Click

Here is an example of where AI software could be of some direct benefit, but it has yet to be applied. At least I hope not, otherwise we’re already in big AI trouble.

I’ve been looking for something Disney-related on YouTube, and this ad appeared.

Watch the Barbie movie… for free?? Gosh, it must be a Christmas promotion or something! It can’t be a scam, can it? I mean, Google allowed it on YouTube, right? But, just in case, I’d better check the official Barbie movie site.

Hmmm… there’s nothing there at all about watching the movie for free. So where is that YouTube ad coming from?

BULGARIA?? RUN AWAY………… !!!

Fireplace Burns

This photo from Christmas, 1939 was taken in the living room of George Burns and Gracie Allen, with their adopted children, Ronnie and Sandra.

That is the second photo of the Burns living room I have seen. The first was the one my mother had. It was taken in late 40’s or early 50’s.

Mom’s dear lifelong friend Ted, who was gay, was George and Gracie’s personal secretary for almost 20 years. After Gracie died in 1964, George financed Ted’s successful interior decorating business.

In 1996, when my parents were preparing to retire in Arizona, Ted, who was retired in Tucson, took my mother house shopping. One of her visits had to be postponed because George Burns had died, and Ted was in charge of the memorial service, as well as some matters of the estate. After my father died, the Sun City West, AZ house I sold in 2018 was the one that Ted helped my mother find.

Rodney Theodore “Ted” Montague on the left, with a boyfriend

Facebook AFU

Weirdest damn problem. Facebook is working on my Verizon phone over Verizon FiOS Wi-Fi, but Facebook isn’t working from any browser on three different PC’s, connected over the same router. Extremely strange, and it isn’t a browser vs. app issue, because Facebook’s Windows app is likewise blank. And it isn’t a DNS problem.

C:\Windows\System32>nslookup facebook.com
Server: Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: facebook.com
Addresses: 2a03:2880:f172:81:face:b00c:0:25de
157.240.245.35

Doesn’t appear to be a routing problem either.

C:\Windows\System32>tracert facebook.com

Tracing route to facebook.com [157.240.245.35]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     6 ms     5 ms     6 ms  Fios_Quantum_Gateway.fios-router.home [192.168.1.1]
  2     8 ms     7 ms    18 ms  lo0-100.bstnma-vfttp-354.verizon-gni.net [96.237.232.1]
  3    13 ms    57 ms    16 ms  b3354.bstnma-lcr-22.verizon-gni.net [100.41.13.102]
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5    15 ms    17 ms     9 ms  65.208.14.250
  6    13 ms    16 ms    15 ms  po101.psw02.bos5.tfbnw.net [129.134.32.39]
  7    10 ms    16 ms    15 ms  173.252.67.53
  8    39 ms    17 ms    18 ms  edge-star-mini-shv-01-bos5.facebook.com [157.240.245.35]

Trace complete.

The outage is widespread, apparently on the east coast, and it’s also on MacOS. Facebook on Google Chrome on my phone is also a no-go. I never received a code for 2-factor authentication. It’s as if Facebook is now restricted to their phone apps.

Update: The service is back. All I did was refresh the Facebook page for the umpteenth time. This time it came up. Whatever was wrong was totally on Facebook’s end.