Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Our messy unity will be our strength.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Republicans do not trust women.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Quick Tech Note and Open Thread

Quick Tech Note and Open Thread

by | 62 Comments

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Folks,
Due to many reports of resource issues, I changed the video ad back to non-secure. I suspect that making it secure (using https) was causing the resource drain issue. So hopefully if you had that issue recently, it should be solved.

I am still hoping to make a small tweak to the Read More function and such, but please use the Contact Form to report issues to me – I am not monitoring threads for reports.

Finally, I am not in charge of ads here, so please do not complain about them to me!

ETA: Should you be a collector, I just put up for sale a 1980’s never-used Dupont Chinese Lacquer lighter and will be soon selling two Parker Chinese Lacquer fountain pens. Feel free to use the contact form to let me know if you are interested or know a collector who would be. They are gorgeous!

ETA: Pix:

Parker Pen 2
Parker Pen 2
Parker Pen 1
Parker Pen 1
Dupont Lighter
Dupont Lighter

Open Thread

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    I’ve never had a resource issue with video ads — well, that I know of. But then I removed the first and only video ad I ever saw on this site with Adblock.

  3. 3.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah you may need to tweak things if it is unblocked because of what I did. When running, it seems to eat up resources in open tabs, especially in Chrome.

  4. 4.

    RaflW

    Right this second, it does seem to be stable on resource use issues in chrome. Will keep an eye on it, and if it kills tabs like it was before.

    Really appreciate Alain’s work.

    And I don’t begrudge Cole needing some ad revenue to keep the place up. Its just nice if it can not bog the site down.

  7. 7.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: Weird. I haven’t had that problem here (running uBlock Origin and some flash blocker or other). I did notice recently that KrebsOnSecurity had ballooned (heh) to about 1.5GB on one of my laptops running Chrome. I close that when it’s not being used because it has some ~ 30-70kB/s continuous memory leak. Balloon-Juice is rock steady for me in Chrome’s Task Manager (shift-Esc) at the moment.

    Thanks for working on this Alain!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  9. 9.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Mike J: toolbar or the instructions? I’ll get those instructions back soon, they slipped my mind.

    I ask because I see the b I link and block buttons like normal on desktop and mobile site.

  10. 10.

    schrodinger's cat

    I just got a haircut during my lunch break. The talk turned to elections, all the women in the salon (3 stylists and 2 patrons) were all uniformly disgusted with Trump and are voting for Hildebeast! So Trumpenstilskin is turning off women big time.
    Just thought, I should share my anecdata.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @Alain: Any chance you could share a photo of the DuPont Chinese Lacquer items? I’m not a collector but would love to see them.

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    @Mike J: I see the 4 buttons here in the gray bar under the “Leave a Comment” text. No “Help” button though, that I recall being around there somewhere.

    Have you tried holding the Shift key while clicking the Refresh button in your browser (to force a full download)?

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    TEL

    Thank you! That video ad was creating problems for me – I had to let the video start, then pause it immediately to fix it.

  17. 17.

    Hunter Gathers

    Certificate no good on Blackberry 10 OS. And yes, I am the only person in the entire galaxy who still uses a Blackberry.

  20. 20.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Hunter Gathers: I expect that’s on the BB side of recognizing the ssl cert we use but it’s a standard now. Let’s Encrypt is a very cool simple way to self-secure for privacy purposes, not for e-commerce purposes. Which this site isn’t! So hopefully BB will update its list of CAs.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    Oh, and could we have the HTML Tips button back? I think a lot of commenters found it useful.

  25. 25.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Could you fix it so that the people standing and smoking two inches from the “No smoking in this area” sign outside the building where I work can get zapped automatically by some sort of interplanetary ray that sends them to Proxima B? Much appreciated thanks.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    You know whom I find particularly annoying? The guys (it’s always guys for some reason, never women) who stare blankly at the no-smoking sign while they light up.

  27. 27.

    Gin & Tonic

    Since this is an open thread, this is absolutely great, and a perfect encapsulation of New Jersey. All taken from Twitter, so you know it has to be true.

    Some guy testifying in the Bridgegate trial said that Chris Christie blew up and threatened a Monmouth County (southern NJ) freeholder (a county legislator) who’d called Christie a “fat fucker” after Christie appeared on TV too many times post-Sandy. Christie reportedly called the guy, cursed him out and said “I will fucking destroy you.”

    Now comes the freeholder to correct the record. He wishes it to be known that he had actually called Christie a “fat MOTHER fucker.” I guess it’s important to get the degree of insult precise in NJ.

  28. 28.

    Jibeaux

    My 65 year old mom and her friend, total sweethearts, were talking to each other in a restaurant about voting for HRC, and some guys at the next table as they left told them to “get a fucking clue, ladies.” Men who were strangers to them. My mom was appalled at the rudeness. I was appalled that anyone might think that’s effective messaging, and the rudeness. Mom’s making calls for Hillary. Let’s win this thing for the non-assholes!

  30. 30.

    Amir Khalid

    @Gin & Tonic:
    I confess to unfamiliarity with The New Jersey Hierarchy of Insults. Is it worse to be a fat motherfucker than to be a fat fucker? If so, by how much?

  31. 31.

    Percysowner

    Want to have a tiny effect on the next debate? You can vote here to select the questions for the town hall debate. At least we can try to push decent questions to the top of the queue

  32. 32.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Amir Khalid: A part of me hates to be the one complaining but I quit many years ago and once you do it really smells horrific. It’s a highly-regulated and controlled building so I first complained to the security people standing around, they said oh maybe talk to environmental services, so I found that office, talked to a guy who was polite but not that enthusiastic, and he said well we can look into dealing with it, maybe with “more signage”, which didn’t give me a lot of hope.

    Then about three weeks later I walked through the cloud of smoke as I exited and there, down the sidewalk a ways, I saw that same guy, smoking.

    So I’m not holding my breath. As it were.

    At least he wasn’t leaning on the sign, which I’ve seen, or as you say, staring at it.

  33. 33.

    Corner Stone

    @Jibeaux:

    and some guys at the next table as they left told them to “get a fucking clue, ladies.” Men who were strangers to them. My mom was appalled at the rudeness.

    “And then mom reached into her purse, pulled out That Mexican Thing, .357 style and said, ‘Say that one more fucking time. I dare you.’ As the ohsotoughguys shat themselves trying to see who could exit the place faster.”

  36. 36.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Amir Khalid: It’s similar to aviation. You didn’t hear Samuel Jackson becoming fed up with the fucking snakes on the fucking plane, did you? The “mother” modifier is essential for emphasis.

  37. 37.

    Miss Bianca

    @Amir Khalid: Is “No Smoking in public spaces” becoming a thing in Malaysia as well as over here? I know that when I travel to states that still allow smoking in bars and restaurants I have to fight the impulse to turn around and flee – I’ve become so spoiled.

  38. 38.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Miss Bianca: Are there states in the US where people still smoke in bars? I didn’t realize. Even Paris has forbidden it, for years now.

  39. 39.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jibeaux: In case anyone was wondering why there are no Clinton signs around them in red areas…

    I was just on the phone with the local coordinator for the HRC campaign, and he told me he was having a hard time getting people to canvass in my county – “they say they’re afraid of getting shot at.” I can believe people would say that, but I thought we only canvassed at residences that were identified as Dem or likely Dem voters, so I dunno how realistic this fear is. However, we are so rural, and so spread out, that canvassing would be tough anyway. Sounds like I’m going to be a phone bank leader – I’ll find out more at the central committee meeting next Monday.

  41. 41.

    Corner Stone

    Trump taking credit for winning the VP debate last night is like the most Trump thing I have seen in a while.

  42. 42.

    Punchy

    @Gin & Tonic: Wait… is that fat motherfucker, or fat mother fucker? Who’s fat, the mother or the fucker? God dammit, I come here for the important stuff.

  43. 43.

    ? Martin

    The Atlantic has concerns.

    In its founding statement, The Atlantic promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and our interest here is not to advance the prospects of the Democratic Party, nor to damage those of the Republican Party. If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement. We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.

  45. 45.

    Amir Khalid

    @Miss Bianca:
    It’s very much a thing here, and indeed has been for years. It’s streng verboten in all government buildings, in commercial office buildings and in shopping malls..I think the fine is a thousand ringgit.

  48. 48.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Miss Bianca: Only place I know you can smoke and drink is Brother’s in Canon City! Once I stopped smoking, I didn’t go there so much…go fig.

  50. 50.

    geg6

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Here in PA, you can smoke in private clubs (usually ethnic or veterans clubs, like the VFW or the Sons of Italy) and in bars that don’t make their main profit off food or who can completely close off the bar from any food serving areas.

  51. 51.

    chris

    Thank you, Alain. That video was truly a PITA, and it wasn’t stopped by AdBlock for some reason. I’ll turn the AdBlock off now.

    Oh yeah, Linux Mint 17.3, Chrome up-to-the-minute. Cheers

  52. 52.

    tarragon

    There’s a bar in town that everyone used to know as Johnny’s Smoke Free when it was smoke free by choice. Now that smoking in bars is banned the name changed to. But the real name is unremarkable so I keep using the old appellation when I mention it.

    I think it’s been several years since people knew what I meant without asking. I think it says something about me that I keep calling it that anyway.

  55. 55.

    debbie

    My iPad mini is too old for AdBlocker, so I can’t use it, but even so, the pages are loading more quickly now since you removed whatever it is you removed. Thanks!

  56. 56.

    Gravenstone

    @Alain the site fixer: That it does. This site has been borderline unusable for me from work, where I am obligated to use Chrome. Here at home, Firefox isn’t presenting any of the issues with slowing or freezing I see in Chrome. And I would note that after your post about resetting the autoplay abomination to non-secure, I was still having the same crappy site behavior. maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    Only video I see in right-hand column on front page is a quasi-random one from YouTube (changes occasionally if I refresh the front page), just above the word “Archives.” But no bother, as it isn’t playing, just a black screen with the title and a Play icon.

    Right this moment it is offering a video from the House of Commons.

  59. 59.

    J R in WV

    @Another Scott:

    I had installed U-Block on Chrome and it didn’t help, so I reported a problem with a site, and they did whatever, now it seems to work OK. I will confess I uninstalled it and got AdBlock-Plus instead.

  61. 61.

    J R in WV

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Missouri for sure, in truck-stop restaurants. I’m from WV, where there is NO smoking in public, and we were appalled when, after we sat down and ordered in an empty, big, nice restaurant, 30 seconds later a guy sat down right next to us, in an empty dining room, and lit up. We ate and left, and drove all the way out of MO before we stopped again.

    I also saw people smoking in the VFW in Arizona, but that’s a private club more than a bar. I hear it’s bad in Las Vegas, NV, although not in Las Vegas NM.

  62. 62.

    LighterGuy

    Alain, is this where I should be contacting you about interest in the lighter? (Yeah, I suck at this.)

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