You have been MIA for a few days and that normally gives me reason to be concerned about your well being. Fortunately you have not abandoned Twitter yet and I noted your posts there during your absence here. That was encouraging.
Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper I've heard people lament about the weather affecting their physical well being. Arthritics in particular claim storms, drops in barometric pressure, have a negative effect. Others claim the heat and humidity of Florida helps, which might explain why so many senior citizens live down there. I took note of all those comments but frankly none of it made sense. Still all those people are experiencing something that correlates with weather patterns at least some of the time. So, now, I myself have symptoms of arthritis. I can safely say that humidity and air temperature have a negligible effect upon my own symptoms. Heat is beneficial but that is due to the blood thinners I'm on. Since you are having problems breathing, I could understand how high humidity could irritate your condition. But, just the mere passing of a tornado or some such thing ... nahhh.
As far as inventory counts go, it didn't make sense to me at first. Then I learned about the costs associated with keeping an inventory and how all that might have an impact on bookkeeping and taxes. When you are dealing with millions of parts even a fraction of a cent per part makes a big difference in the bottom line numbers. I understand that places such as GM and Ford calculate the price of screws, for example, down to the .001 of a cent level. It means nothing for any given car off their production lines, but inventory of such things does have an impact.
Micro Robots
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Post a new topic to begin a chat.
Any topic is acceptable, and topic drift is permissible.
Re: Micro Robots
Interesting, considering I'm NOT on Twitter. I am as my pen name, but only share publishers posts about books. I do have a Twitter account I think, but have not been there in many years as me.
My son might me, his name is the same as mine. He would probably be posting about coupons or something he's into.
The reason for my absence for two days was totally unintentional. I didn't realize I forgot to come to this website until I saw the last date I posted a reply here. Even I was surprised I forgot! But then there was a lot going on too.
My brother from St. Charles, and my sister from Springfield, MO descended on my doorstep, so I couldn't ignore them.
Farcebook was also messed up, and my Farming Game has gone missing again on Farcebook.
My brother helped get my many boxes of Ham Gear out of my office, which turned it into a royal mess up here, and got those boxes down to my den, where they are currently sitting. I can't lift those heavy boxes myself, so getting everything cataloged is going to be a major chore. I'm hoping to sell everything in one sale to an individual who will resell them at a Hamfest. If I can find someone to take everything, they can have them for 1/2 the average selling price of the items on eBay and elsewhere.
If I have to sell them individually, I'll naturally ask the average price for them.
I have arthritis in my hands, one elbow, and starting in my shoulders. When it is getting ready to rain, I ache big time. But oddly enough, not so bad when it is in fact actually raining. Makes no sense!
I think one of the reasons I breathe better in my office is my humidity up here is lower than in the house, and I can adjust the temperature to where I'm most comfortable, which is too hot for the frau.
I'm to the point where my nose drips like a broken faucet now for right at two hours every morning, and a few times for around 15 minutes to 1/2 hour during different times of the day. None of the meds the doc gave me to use make any difference.
I take one Citrizine tablet in the morning, which may help get it to stop after about an hour. And at night before I go to bed I take a Dipenhydramine (Benedryl), which keeps me from dripping while I'm sleeping, at least most of the time. Only allowed one Citrizine per day, and my doc don't like me taking a Dipenhydramine, although I could take up to four of them, but not recommended with breathing problems. The box even says, do not use if you have emphysema! But then so do some of the meds my doctor has me on for other things.
When we took our final Inventory in 1984, we still had in stock, over 480,000 terra cotta pots under 3" diameter. We did almost all of our planting of plants we grow on to larger sizes in those smaller sized pots, so other than breakage, we never use them up per se. Some bedding plants were sold in clay pots because they did not do well in plastic trays, flats, or even individual plastic pots. But most bedding plants were sold in 6 pack trays in our later years, so the clay pots just didn't get used up. Now larger clay pots is what most of our larger plants were sold in, so we were forever buying new ones.
Now in the greenhouse, inventory of small items, of which there was a considerable amount, we used scales to weigh the loose items. Much faster than doing an individual count of those small things. But then we had so many different types and styles of things for example pot labels. Each companies labels had a different weight, some wood, some plastic, some were just thin film type of labels. So we had to know how many of each type were in an ounce or a pound on the heavier ones. And some labels have a wire tie wrapped on them as well. Inventory time in the greenhouses was like a nightmare.
You have to pay taxes on how much stuff you have amassed in inventory, which is why so many places try to run out of so much stuff before inventory time. Don't know how they can operate a business when they are out of things though.
My son might me, his name is the same as mine. He would probably be posting about coupons or something he's into.
The reason for my absence for two days was totally unintentional. I didn't realize I forgot to come to this website until I saw the last date I posted a reply here. Even I was surprised I forgot! But then there was a lot going on too.
My brother from St. Charles, and my sister from Springfield, MO descended on my doorstep, so I couldn't ignore them.
Farcebook was also messed up, and my Farming Game has gone missing again on Farcebook.
My brother helped get my many boxes of Ham Gear out of my office, which turned it into a royal mess up here, and got those boxes down to my den, where they are currently sitting. I can't lift those heavy boxes myself, so getting everything cataloged is going to be a major chore. I'm hoping to sell everything in one sale to an individual who will resell them at a Hamfest. If I can find someone to take everything, they can have them for 1/2 the average selling price of the items on eBay and elsewhere.
If I have to sell them individually, I'll naturally ask the average price for them.
I have arthritis in my hands, one elbow, and starting in my shoulders. When it is getting ready to rain, I ache big time. But oddly enough, not so bad when it is in fact actually raining. Makes no sense!
I think one of the reasons I breathe better in my office is my humidity up here is lower than in the house, and I can adjust the temperature to where I'm most comfortable, which is too hot for the frau.
I'm to the point where my nose drips like a broken faucet now for right at two hours every morning, and a few times for around 15 minutes to 1/2 hour during different times of the day. None of the meds the doc gave me to use make any difference.
I take one Citrizine tablet in the morning, which may help get it to stop after about an hour. And at night before I go to bed I take a Dipenhydramine (Benedryl), which keeps me from dripping while I'm sleeping, at least most of the time. Only allowed one Citrizine per day, and my doc don't like me taking a Dipenhydramine, although I could take up to four of them, but not recommended with breathing problems. The box even says, do not use if you have emphysema! But then so do some of the meds my doctor has me on for other things.
When we took our final Inventory in 1984, we still had in stock, over 480,000 terra cotta pots under 3" diameter. We did almost all of our planting of plants we grow on to larger sizes in those smaller sized pots, so other than breakage, we never use them up per se. Some bedding plants were sold in clay pots because they did not do well in plastic trays, flats, or even individual plastic pots. But most bedding plants were sold in 6 pack trays in our later years, so the clay pots just didn't get used up. Now larger clay pots is what most of our larger plants were sold in, so we were forever buying new ones.
Now in the greenhouse, inventory of small items, of which there was a considerable amount, we used scales to weigh the loose items. Much faster than doing an individual count of those small things. But then we had so many different types and styles of things for example pot labels. Each companies labels had a different weight, some wood, some plastic, some were just thin film type of labels. So we had to know how many of each type were in an ounce or a pound on the heavier ones. And some labels have a wire tie wrapped on them as well. Inventory time in the greenhouses was like a nightmare.
You have to pay taxes on how much stuff you have amassed in inventory, which is why so many places try to run out of so much stuff before inventory time. Don't know how they can operate a business when they are out of things though.
Re: Micro Robots
You may have heard about it, but I worked with it every day: JIT or Just In TIme delivery of materials. Apparently this system of manufacturing was invented in Japan, or at least that is from where we stole the idea. The goal is to have zero inventory other than the materials required to feed the work in progress on a given production line. This requires vendors to agree to deliver materials just a few hours, or minutes in some cases, before you need them to build your product. They delivered right to the production line in most cases. You would think this was something chaotic and vendors would not go for it. They bought into it given that Motorola was a huge customer. Not only did they agree to JIT, but they also had to give us a break in the cost of the material as well given they were our sole supplier for that part. Again, the incentive here is a steady customer buying huge amounts of material. For Motorola it meant no inventory costs to speak of which seemed to me was simply replaced by increasing the planning and scheduling department staff. Regardless, that is how cell phones were built.Don't know how they can operate a business when they are out of things though.
I've grown accustom to our chats here and feel as if something is missing on those days we do not connect. I don't want you to feel obligated or under any pressure to be here. You certainly have enough to keep you busy off line. When you are not here, however, I need to find something to fill in the hour or so it takes me to reply to your messages. I happen to have two accounts on Twitter. One is my personal one where I follow thousands of people - much less now that EM has bastardized the site. The other account is for this website. It was intended to be a vehicle to inform our members of any outages or interesting developments on Brainformation. Well our members have dwindled down to you and me but I never dropped the official Twitter account. It is there were I see your daily posts under your publishing name. That happens because at some point in the distant past you decided to follow me, @brainformation. Every time you post to Twitter it appears in my live stream and because I only follow a few people there you always end up on the front page. When I see your daily tweets, I know you are well enough to post and probably have things under control.
I can only imagine what over 480,000 terra cotta pots looks like.
Re: Micro Robots
Well, in the flower business, where many of the cut flowers only have a three day shelf life, before they are considered to old to use in an arrangement, other than arrangements that only need to hold up for a day or two, like for funerals.
We had the same issues. However, after being in business for half a century, we knew almost exactly how much of each flower we used every single day, so had standing orders for those flowers that rarely changed.
Our flower coolers consisted of our sales cooler, our daily use cooler, and our storage cooler where new things went to first.
The sales cooler were flowers delivered that day, or the day before. The daily use cooler is what is left in the sales cooler when we move a new crop in and move the existing remaining flowers out.
Flowers from the sales cooler are what we used when designing flowers for private deliveries.
Flowers from the daily use cooler are what we used mainly for funeral flower arrangements.
We had one, sometimes two people that did nothing but tote a new bucket of flowers up to the sales cooler, and move the ones from the day before to the back or daily use cooler. Then another person who did nothing but unpack delivered bulk flowers and put them in water after cutting the stems and putting them in the buckets of water in the storage cooler.
Then to compound this chore, many flowers were seasonal. So we also had spring, summer, and fall assortments of flowers.
Even the most used flowers for large arrangements like gladiolus and all the greens we used had to arrive on time all the time, because they were the staple of our business. Plus we also raised most of our most used flowers ourselves, so when a crop came in, they had to be sorted into the amount we needed for ourselves, and the amount we would send to market.
And like many things, supply and demand dictated the distributor and wholesaler prices. A flower we sold at retail for a buck would only bring us 25 cents going to the market, and they in turn sold them for 50 cents to the other florists. But when too many hit the market at the same time, we may only get a dime for a crop if they take it, or nothing if they take it and it doesn't sell due to so much overage in their inventory. Albeit, in our case, ours usually sold first because they were a higher quality and fresher than those that were shipped in from out of state.
Technically, we were the only customer of John Tomosovich rose grower. Grandpa helped get them set up in business, provided they always supplied us first. And since they knew about how many we used each week, they geared their production to meet out demands. Only then, if they had some overage did they send their roses to the market, where they got top dollar for them, because they were the best of any grower within a 100 miles and locally grown.
Our roses would last well over a week in a flower arrangement or in a vase of just roses. Not too many florists could top that.
Also, they were the only grower in a 7 state radius who grew single stem sweetheart size roses, and we got ALL of those from them. Which also had to do with grandpa getting them to grow them for us.
We also had a few other growers that raised only for us, but normally for the plants in the greenhouses for resale.
Normally on Twitter, under my pen name, I only share books my book promoter adds to her feed. At one time, I was doing this on like 30 different book sales websites for her, but she cut back to only 12 websites now, and only adds a book or two a day to each one. She skips some of them on some days, and doubles up on her Farcebook pages.
I also hit like on many of the political posts of those I follow.
Elon Musk shared a copy of the nasty things Twitter did to the Republicans, by blocking over 70% of posts for Republicans while allowing nearly all Democrats posts. That surely was not fair dinkum by Twitter, and something Musk is correcting. And whether you know it or not Twitter is growing rather fast now, despite what the Democrat biased media keeps saying.
Of course there was a sudden drop when he took over, that is normal, but most of the advertisers who dropped Twitter are back again already. And you will see just as many Republican based posts as Democrat based posts now, a fair balance.
He's getting rid of all the spam accounts and bots, which is caused the member count to appear less. But neither of those account types were desirable.
Farcebook is the website losing customers hand over fist now. They keep making Farcebook harder to use. They took away our List feature almost two years ago now, as a means to force us to see the ads. Then they gave the Lists back, but in a different way which makes them virtually useless to mess with anymore.
Our pot storage sheds for small pots, up to 8 inches in diameter, was over 150 feet long and 6 feet deep.
Pots larger than that were stored inside in a different way, but still in pot storage areas, usually on pallets.
Outside of the pot storage sheds, the driveway there was nothing but broken terra cotta pots that crumbled when being driven on. Which actually made a very nice looking drive behind the front row of greenhouses.
As an aside: When you raise plants for a few years in clay pots, they get green slime on the outsides of the pots. These all needed to be cleaned so we had machines that took care of that chore. Many plants for resale were placed into new pots before being moved to the sales house. Others were just ran through the vertical pot washing machines. But normally, old pots for growing were kept just for that purpose and new pots were used for the sales house.
So we also had another type of washing machines for empty pots that we could feed an entire stack of pots in at one end, and they would come out the other end cleaned and restacked, and the smaller sized pots also had a sleeve around them to make it easier to move and transport them to potting benches as needed.
The vertical pot washers looked more like a potters wheel in something that looked sorta like a cotton candy machine, hi hi.
It spun fast with large empty pots, but very slowly with pots with plants in them. Water and spinning brushes moved in to clean the sides of the pots, along with a mild bleach solution to kill the algae from the pores of the pots. This was a one pot at a time device, so we had six of them lined up side by side and a conveyor.
The horizontal machines also did the pots one at a time while inside the machine, but took a pot from the dirty stack on an angled rack so they slid into the machine. Inside the machine, a pot was separated from the stack and a slightly conical brush sized for that size pot dropped down into the pot, and then as the pot moved down the line inside the machine, it would spin and other brushes and stronger bleach solutions would scrub the outside and bottom of the pot. Then at the end, it would tilt back upwards again and be fed out onto the outbound rack which was level. Paper or plastic sleeves could be slipped over this outbound rack and when 24 pots were in the sleeve, we would seal the end of the sleeve before we slid the pots off the rack and put them on the cart going back to the pot storage areas. We rarely if ever closed the other end of the sleeve, just folded it over is all.
Another aside: We got all of our pots from Ceramo Company over in Illinois. They only sold in whole tractor trailer loads. And after a couple pot distributors closed down, Ceramo sent us a heat shrink machine for packaging six pots to a sleeve, so they could send them to us, we packaged them, and sent them out to growers who wanted to buy smaller amounts after the distributors quit handling them.
We already supplied a few growers with products, but when Ceramo set us up to sell their pots in smaller quantities, it became an independent sideline business taken care of primarily by my cousin Richard, and cousin Thomas handled most of the other sales to other growers of materials. When Richard left the business and Thomas took over, it got merged back in with our normal wholesale business.
We really were a fairly large operation, employing over 250 people beyond the relatives who worked there, and they were plenty of those too. And that 250 didn't count the Horticultural Lab which we didn't really control all that much, we let them do their own thing, which I think I mentioned once before, hi hi.
We had the same issues. However, after being in business for half a century, we knew almost exactly how much of each flower we used every single day, so had standing orders for those flowers that rarely changed.
Our flower coolers consisted of our sales cooler, our daily use cooler, and our storage cooler where new things went to first.
The sales cooler were flowers delivered that day, or the day before. The daily use cooler is what is left in the sales cooler when we move a new crop in and move the existing remaining flowers out.
Flowers from the sales cooler are what we used when designing flowers for private deliveries.
Flowers from the daily use cooler are what we used mainly for funeral flower arrangements.
We had one, sometimes two people that did nothing but tote a new bucket of flowers up to the sales cooler, and move the ones from the day before to the back or daily use cooler. Then another person who did nothing but unpack delivered bulk flowers and put them in water after cutting the stems and putting them in the buckets of water in the storage cooler.
Then to compound this chore, many flowers were seasonal. So we also had spring, summer, and fall assortments of flowers.
Even the most used flowers for large arrangements like gladiolus and all the greens we used had to arrive on time all the time, because they were the staple of our business. Plus we also raised most of our most used flowers ourselves, so when a crop came in, they had to be sorted into the amount we needed for ourselves, and the amount we would send to market.
And like many things, supply and demand dictated the distributor and wholesaler prices. A flower we sold at retail for a buck would only bring us 25 cents going to the market, and they in turn sold them for 50 cents to the other florists. But when too many hit the market at the same time, we may only get a dime for a crop if they take it, or nothing if they take it and it doesn't sell due to so much overage in their inventory. Albeit, in our case, ours usually sold first because they were a higher quality and fresher than those that were shipped in from out of state.
Technically, we were the only customer of John Tomosovich rose grower. Grandpa helped get them set up in business, provided they always supplied us first. And since they knew about how many we used each week, they geared their production to meet out demands. Only then, if they had some overage did they send their roses to the market, where they got top dollar for them, because they were the best of any grower within a 100 miles and locally grown.
Our roses would last well over a week in a flower arrangement or in a vase of just roses. Not too many florists could top that.
Also, they were the only grower in a 7 state radius who grew single stem sweetheart size roses, and we got ALL of those from them. Which also had to do with grandpa getting them to grow them for us.
We also had a few other growers that raised only for us, but normally for the plants in the greenhouses for resale.
Normally on Twitter, under my pen name, I only share books my book promoter adds to her feed. At one time, I was doing this on like 30 different book sales websites for her, but she cut back to only 12 websites now, and only adds a book or two a day to each one. She skips some of them on some days, and doubles up on her Farcebook pages.
I also hit like on many of the political posts of those I follow.
Elon Musk shared a copy of the nasty things Twitter did to the Republicans, by blocking over 70% of posts for Republicans while allowing nearly all Democrats posts. That surely was not fair dinkum by Twitter, and something Musk is correcting. And whether you know it or not Twitter is growing rather fast now, despite what the Democrat biased media keeps saying.
Of course there was a sudden drop when he took over, that is normal, but most of the advertisers who dropped Twitter are back again already. And you will see just as many Republican based posts as Democrat based posts now, a fair balance.
He's getting rid of all the spam accounts and bots, which is caused the member count to appear less. But neither of those account types were desirable.
Farcebook is the website losing customers hand over fist now. They keep making Farcebook harder to use. They took away our List feature almost two years ago now, as a means to force us to see the ads. Then they gave the Lists back, but in a different way which makes them virtually useless to mess with anymore.
Our pot storage sheds for small pots, up to 8 inches in diameter, was over 150 feet long and 6 feet deep.
Pots larger than that were stored inside in a different way, but still in pot storage areas, usually on pallets.
Outside of the pot storage sheds, the driveway there was nothing but broken terra cotta pots that crumbled when being driven on. Which actually made a very nice looking drive behind the front row of greenhouses.
As an aside: When you raise plants for a few years in clay pots, they get green slime on the outsides of the pots. These all needed to be cleaned so we had machines that took care of that chore. Many plants for resale were placed into new pots before being moved to the sales house. Others were just ran through the vertical pot washing machines. But normally, old pots for growing were kept just for that purpose and new pots were used for the sales house.
So we also had another type of washing machines for empty pots that we could feed an entire stack of pots in at one end, and they would come out the other end cleaned and restacked, and the smaller sized pots also had a sleeve around them to make it easier to move and transport them to potting benches as needed.
The vertical pot washers looked more like a potters wheel in something that looked sorta like a cotton candy machine, hi hi.
It spun fast with large empty pots, but very slowly with pots with plants in them. Water and spinning brushes moved in to clean the sides of the pots, along with a mild bleach solution to kill the algae from the pores of the pots. This was a one pot at a time device, so we had six of them lined up side by side and a conveyor.
The horizontal machines also did the pots one at a time while inside the machine, but took a pot from the dirty stack on an angled rack so they slid into the machine. Inside the machine, a pot was separated from the stack and a slightly conical brush sized for that size pot dropped down into the pot, and then as the pot moved down the line inside the machine, it would spin and other brushes and stronger bleach solutions would scrub the outside and bottom of the pot. Then at the end, it would tilt back upwards again and be fed out onto the outbound rack which was level. Paper or plastic sleeves could be slipped over this outbound rack and when 24 pots were in the sleeve, we would seal the end of the sleeve before we slid the pots off the rack and put them on the cart going back to the pot storage areas. We rarely if ever closed the other end of the sleeve, just folded it over is all.
Another aside: We got all of our pots from Ceramo Company over in Illinois. They only sold in whole tractor trailer loads. And after a couple pot distributors closed down, Ceramo sent us a heat shrink machine for packaging six pots to a sleeve, so they could send them to us, we packaged them, and sent them out to growers who wanted to buy smaller amounts after the distributors quit handling them.
We already supplied a few growers with products, but when Ceramo set us up to sell their pots in smaller quantities, it became an independent sideline business taken care of primarily by my cousin Richard, and cousin Thomas handled most of the other sales to other growers of materials. When Richard left the business and Thomas took over, it got merged back in with our normal wholesale business.
We really were a fairly large operation, employing over 250 people beyond the relatives who worked there, and they were plenty of those too. And that 250 didn't count the Horticultural Lab which we didn't really control all that much, we let them do their own thing, which I think I mentioned once before, hi hi.
Re: Micro Robots
While shopping at Schnucks the other day I stopped for a moment to look over their flower shop. It's nothing fantastic but I have purchased a few things from them in the past. It's hard to believe how all those flowers got to Schnucks. Your description of some back end operations is detailed enough to make it astonishing. The work and preparation that goes into making a bouquet of of roses available at my grocer is truly amazing. I am very impressed.
In addition to your observations here, Elon Musk also posted an elaborate story about moderation on Twitter. Musk used his proxy buddy to make the accusations because a lot of it was libelous and he didn't want to risk legal exposure for himself. I'm talking about the so called suppression by Twitter censors of the Hunter Biden nonsense. After much to do and a lot of finger pointing it turned out that the only things moderated were links to images of Hunter Biden naked. You and a lot of Republicans might have thought that to be manipulating the content of Twitter against conservative interests, but it was in fact normal review conducted by every social media on the Internet. The Brew HaHa was the failure of the Republicans to implicate the president in some kind of made up wrong doing. This Hunter Biden story has been around for a long time and it has not yet exhausted its appeal because there are promises and warnings that it will all be investigated come next year's congress. I have a very deep feeling that those investigations by congress will end up the same way as Elon Musk's revelations, i.e., a nothingburger.
The advertisers' return to Twitter that you cite is due to a personal phone call that Musk had with Tim Cook over at Apple, their biggest advertiser. That phone call was to offer Apple a 50% discount on advertising along with a 100% increase in exposure for their ads. The same kind of deal was presented to Amazon who also took the bait. As far as the robot accounts you think might be eliminated I can tell you something from my personal experience on Twitter. I get notifications every time somebody wants to follow me. Before Musk bought the place I got maybe three or four such notifications per year all from purveyors of porn. Since Musk assumed the CEO role at Twitter I have had more than two dozen requests from fake (robotic) accounts, and that is only during the last 4 weeks. If the number of robots is decreased, why am I seeing such a gigantic increase of fake accounts requesting my attention?
I've always thought Elon Musk had something on the ball because he is in fact a successful businessman and THE richest individual on the planet. You don't get all that by being a fool. However, looking at Elon's past shows he has never had control over a company involved in social media. His lack of experience in that type of business has been very obvious and detrimental to the Twitter corporation. He is doing some radical things that could tank the whole operation very quickly, but as I said he is no fool. Just stupid. It's too early to tell if his ineptness with social media will be his demise or not.
In addition to your observations here, Elon Musk also posted an elaborate story about moderation on Twitter. Musk used his proxy buddy to make the accusations because a lot of it was libelous and he didn't want to risk legal exposure for himself. I'm talking about the so called suppression by Twitter censors of the Hunter Biden nonsense. After much to do and a lot of finger pointing it turned out that the only things moderated were links to images of Hunter Biden naked. You and a lot of Republicans might have thought that to be manipulating the content of Twitter against conservative interests, but it was in fact normal review conducted by every social media on the Internet. The Brew HaHa was the failure of the Republicans to implicate the president in some kind of made up wrong doing. This Hunter Biden story has been around for a long time and it has not yet exhausted its appeal because there are promises and warnings that it will all be investigated come next year's congress. I have a very deep feeling that those investigations by congress will end up the same way as Elon Musk's revelations, i.e., a nothingburger.
The advertisers' return to Twitter that you cite is due to a personal phone call that Musk had with Tim Cook over at Apple, their biggest advertiser. That phone call was to offer Apple a 50% discount on advertising along with a 100% increase in exposure for their ads. The same kind of deal was presented to Amazon who also took the bait. As far as the robot accounts you think might be eliminated I can tell you something from my personal experience on Twitter. I get notifications every time somebody wants to follow me. Before Musk bought the place I got maybe three or four such notifications per year all from purveyors of porn. Since Musk assumed the CEO role at Twitter I have had more than two dozen requests from fake (robotic) accounts, and that is only during the last 4 weeks. If the number of robots is decreased, why am I seeing such a gigantic increase of fake accounts requesting my attention?
I've always thought Elon Musk had something on the ball because he is in fact a successful businessman and THE richest individual on the planet. You don't get all that by being a fool. However, looking at Elon's past shows he has never had control over a company involved in social media. His lack of experience in that type of business has been very obvious and detrimental to the Twitter corporation. He is doing some radical things that could tank the whole operation very quickly, but as I said he is no fool. Just stupid. It's too early to tell if his ineptness with social media will be his demise or not.
Re: Micro Robots
When Dierberg's wanted to add a floral department, they came to our company and offered me the position to oversee their new department. I turned them down, but pointed them in the direction of one of our designers who was working toward opening his own place. He was smart about business, and I'm sure he felt stuck working for us. Needless to say, he jumped at the chance and got the first store going, then the next, and the next, until all Dierberg's stores had a floral department.
He used to stop in the flower shop every so often, and always tracked me down to offer his thanks for my giving him that opportunity. He also usually had some questions for me, since he knew I had insight on places to buy floral items lower than all the other sellers. A lot of those sources had to do with bulk buying, and the fact my grandfather at one time helped them get going. He even came down to my Wonder Plants building a couple of times to see what I was doing there with my hydroculture plants, and even placed orders for some to be shipped to all the Dierberg's stores. Ironically, they were able to sell them for double the price, if not more, than we charged folks at our own stores for them.
The process of getting the Bots off Twitter is just now being implemented, so it will take some time before they track down and eliminate the bulk of them. I rarely get requests on Twitter and at one time I had 12,000 followers, which I've weeded down to just over 8,000. And under my own name on FArcebook, I hover right around their maximum of 5,000. Most of them clergy in other countries, but none of them ask for money else they get removed and blocked, hi hi.
How they came to select me probably had to do with some religious articles I used to write and publish which were sent and shared by many overseas readers.
So far on Twitter, I'm not getting any new requests from bots for anything. And I'm happy with the direction Twitter is taking. I now see a whole lot more favorable posts than ever before.
He used to stop in the flower shop every so often, and always tracked me down to offer his thanks for my giving him that opportunity. He also usually had some questions for me, since he knew I had insight on places to buy floral items lower than all the other sellers. A lot of those sources had to do with bulk buying, and the fact my grandfather at one time helped them get going. He even came down to my Wonder Plants building a couple of times to see what I was doing there with my hydroculture plants, and even placed orders for some to be shipped to all the Dierberg's stores. Ironically, they were able to sell them for double the price, if not more, than we charged folks at our own stores for them.
The process of getting the Bots off Twitter is just now being implemented, so it will take some time before they track down and eliminate the bulk of them. I rarely get requests on Twitter and at one time I had 12,000 followers, which I've weeded down to just over 8,000. And under my own name on FArcebook, I hover right around their maximum of 5,000. Most of them clergy in other countries, but none of them ask for money else they get removed and blocked, hi hi.
How they came to select me probably had to do with some religious articles I used to write and publish which were sent and shared by many overseas readers.
So far on Twitter, I'm not getting any new requests from bots for anything. And I'm happy with the direction Twitter is taking. I now see a whole lot more favorable posts than ever before.
Re: Micro Robots
I only shop two of the many Dierberg's in and around our area, and only one of the multiple Schnucks operations. Both stores offer nearly the same kind and quality of flowers, but Dierberg's added other gift items such as those you would find at a Hallmark greeting card store. I rarely need those kind of gift items so that my cut flowers are purchased in equal amounts from both stores. I would guess from your narrative that Schnucks was not the first chain to offer flowers, but they certainly are a good match for what Dierberg's is doing. Maybe the gifts bring in a few more potential customers, but I don't think that would increase the flower sales.
These flower shops inside the grocery store is something I never saw in Illinois. Likewise only a few grocers sold liquor, but every grocery store I've been in down here sells booze. In Illinois there are many more liquor stores and they are way better stocked than what I've seen around here. I can get at least six different brands of Chianti, for example, up north in any liquor store. Here I am lucky to find a single bottle on the bottom shelf and out of the way. I don't drink the stuff per se, but I do use it for cooking as well as a few other wines. On the positive side, Missouri has some great vineyards and their concoctions are readily available in most stores. My wife loves the wine from Stone Hill - probably because we have been there a time or two when the kids come visit.
As far as Twitter goes the traffic on my timeline had diminished noticeably. There are frequent dead times too, and at night only the Twitter algorithm is doing the posting now and days. You likely are seeing "better" posts because Musk is constantly tweaking what the algorithm puts out to emphasize conservative content, plus he has eliminated the content moderation function altogether. That last item has been cited by the regulators in the European Union who threaten to ban Twitter if they don't get their moderation act together. I don't follow as many conservatives as you do and thus have not noticed much of an increase in that kind of content. As I said I have seen less traffic presumably due to the liberal minded folks abandoning their accounts. If this particular trend continues, there will be little difference between Truth Social and Twitter. Well, Trump refuses to go back to Twitter in spite of Elon reinstating his account so that the Far Right may just stay with Truth Social.
These flower shops inside the grocery store is something I never saw in Illinois. Likewise only a few grocers sold liquor, but every grocery store I've been in down here sells booze. In Illinois there are many more liquor stores and they are way better stocked than what I've seen around here. I can get at least six different brands of Chianti, for example, up north in any liquor store. Here I am lucky to find a single bottle on the bottom shelf and out of the way. I don't drink the stuff per se, but I do use it for cooking as well as a few other wines. On the positive side, Missouri has some great vineyards and their concoctions are readily available in most stores. My wife loves the wine from Stone Hill - probably because we have been there a time or two when the kids come visit.
As far as Twitter goes the traffic on my timeline had diminished noticeably. There are frequent dead times too, and at night only the Twitter algorithm is doing the posting now and days. You likely are seeing "better" posts because Musk is constantly tweaking what the algorithm puts out to emphasize conservative content, plus he has eliminated the content moderation function altogether. That last item has been cited by the regulators in the European Union who threaten to ban Twitter if they don't get their moderation act together. I don't follow as many conservatives as you do and thus have not noticed much of an increase in that kind of content. As I said I have seen less traffic presumably due to the liberal minded folks abandoning their accounts. If this particular trend continues, there will be little difference between Truth Social and Twitter. Well, Trump refuses to go back to Twitter in spite of Elon reinstating his account so that the Far Right may just stay with Truth Social.
Re: Micro Robots
Our little town of Des Peres boasted more glass greenhouses than any other city, large or small, in the entirety of the U.S. of A. - Which is one reason it was known as the City of Flowers. However, to be fair, at the time it was known as The Des Peres Area, was much larger than the city limits established at the time the city itself was incorporated as a city. Back when the Census called us Rural, Central Saint Louis County, hi hi.
So it was not unusual for the larger grocers who added flowers to get their start doing so in and around the Des Peres Area first.
On the way to Rolla, MO, you will pass numerous vineyards along the way going down Hwy 40. Even more if you take the old original Hwy. 100, aka Route 66 before it was changed.
Personally, I don't drink, never did like alcohol nor wine.
I rarely go to the main news feed on Twitter, and even when I do, most of what I see are from folks I follow. But the number of garbage posts on the main news feed has dwindled down next to nothing now. Which is good in my opinion.
I have paid attention to the number of political posts no the main news feed, excluding those I follow which causes them to appear more often. The main news feed used to be dominated by Democrat posts and very few Republican posts. But in my own feed of folks I follow, since I don't follow but a couple Democrats, I see all the posts made by the Republicans I follow.
But back to the main news feed, it is very close to balanced now, about the same number of posts from each party.
I'm not into politics like many folks I know. I totally ignore what any of them have to say before an election. What I do instead is check to see who is running, then thanks to the Internet, I go back and see how they voted on issues for all the years they have been in office, or what their stance with community activities were if not yet in any office.
In other words, I want to know the history of the person, not what garbage they spew before an election.
Historically, Biden has been nearly everything important to the American People, and was part of many issues over the years that hurt us deeply. But I guess those who voted for him were blind to his past horrible actions.
So it was not unusual for the larger grocers who added flowers to get their start doing so in and around the Des Peres Area first.
On the way to Rolla, MO, you will pass numerous vineyards along the way going down Hwy 40. Even more if you take the old original Hwy. 100, aka Route 66 before it was changed.
Personally, I don't drink, never did like alcohol nor wine.
I rarely go to the main news feed on Twitter, and even when I do, most of what I see are from folks I follow. But the number of garbage posts on the main news feed has dwindled down next to nothing now. Which is good in my opinion.
I have paid attention to the number of political posts no the main news feed, excluding those I follow which causes them to appear more often. The main news feed used to be dominated by Democrat posts and very few Republican posts. But in my own feed of folks I follow, since I don't follow but a couple Democrats, I see all the posts made by the Republicans I follow.
But back to the main news feed, it is very close to balanced now, about the same number of posts from each party.
I'm not into politics like many folks I know. I totally ignore what any of them have to say before an election. What I do instead is check to see who is running, then thanks to the Internet, I go back and see how they voted on issues for all the years they have been in office, or what their stance with community activities were if not yet in any office.
In other words, I want to know the history of the person, not what garbage they spew before an election.
Historically, Biden has been nearly everything important to the American People, and was part of many issues over the years that hurt us deeply. But I guess those who voted for him were blind to his past horrible actions.
Re: Micro Robots
I can't say I've previously heard the term City of Flowers, but then I came here from some other world. LOL I can just imagine how lovely it must have all been. The only place close to old Des Peres that I have personally visited was Holland, Michigan. They are well known for their tulip displays in spring time. Unfortunately, when I was there the peak season had already passed. But, the town was gorgeous nonetheless. I guess the country of Holland is even better. If I ever went to Europe, that is where I'd go first to experience all those flowers.
Been using Twitter for several years and never came to the realization that they offer a main news feed. I'll have to look for it to see what you are talking about. I have a home feed which consists of all the people I follow. I break that down into six or seven lists and then use the Tweetdeck software to separate them out into six columns of tweets. I do occasionally see tweets from people I don't recognize and assume it's the famous Twitter algorithm playing it's games. There are some stories that appear constantly and I know the authors are not the ones re-tweeting them. That happens a lot after dinner time when the news is slow and people are watching television. The powers that be don't want me to think nobody is posting to Twitter so they have their robots sending out old news just to make it look good. Since the people I follow are a fairly good blend of all political inclinations, I can't say that I've seen much change in content, other than it being diminished. Then, too, apparently I'm missing that main news feed.
Been using Twitter for several years and never came to the realization that they offer a main news feed. I'll have to look for it to see what you are talking about. I have a home feed which consists of all the people I follow. I break that down into six or seven lists and then use the Tweetdeck software to separate them out into six columns of tweets. I do occasionally see tweets from people I don't recognize and assume it's the famous Twitter algorithm playing it's games. There are some stories that appear constantly and I know the authors are not the ones re-tweeting them. That happens a lot after dinner time when the news is slow and people are watching television. The powers that be don't want me to think nobody is posting to Twitter so they have their robots sending out old news just to make it look good. Since the people I follow are a fairly good blend of all political inclinations, I can't say that I've seen much change in content, other than it being diminished. Then, too, apparently I'm missing that main news feed.
Re: Micro Robots
You may not realize this, but all those pretty Tulip Fields you see in pictures about Holland, are very short lived, only a day or two, then all those blooms are cut off and turned back into mulch. This is to force the bulbs to grow larger for resale.
On Twitter, you do select the types of posts you want to see in your main news feed. And Twitter will then add others they think you will be interested in, and of course all the Sponsored posts. It's been years since I changed any settings on Twitter, and normally avoid the main news feed as it is.
FWIW: I had a very bad night last night. Unable to sleep all night for sitting up trying to breathe and always right on the edge of Panic Mode. I can get my O2 up, but am still suffocating from excess CO2 I have to try and alleviate. And doing pursed lip breathing requires energy to do, which also knocks your O2 down really fast. Very Scary. I think my hourglass is about out of sand Yogi. I hope not, but the way things are going lately, I cannot get up and walk even a few feet without my O2 crashing. Debi wanted to take me to the OR last night, or around 4am this morning and I just told here I couldn't make it to the car, just let me sit and I'll get over another spell soon. Even so, I ended sitting up all night, and didn't get off the edge of the bed until after 10 am this morning, and that was only to go straight to my O2 tanks in the kitchen.
On Twitter, you do select the types of posts you want to see in your main news feed. And Twitter will then add others they think you will be interested in, and of course all the Sponsored posts. It's been years since I changed any settings on Twitter, and normally avoid the main news feed as it is.
FWIW: I had a very bad night last night. Unable to sleep all night for sitting up trying to breathe and always right on the edge of Panic Mode. I can get my O2 up, but am still suffocating from excess CO2 I have to try and alleviate. And doing pursed lip breathing requires energy to do, which also knocks your O2 down really fast. Very Scary. I think my hourglass is about out of sand Yogi. I hope not, but the way things are going lately, I cannot get up and walk even a few feet without my O2 crashing. Debi wanted to take me to the OR last night, or around 4am this morning and I just told here I couldn't make it to the car, just let me sit and I'll get over another spell soon. Even so, I ended sitting up all night, and didn't get off the edge of the bed until after 10 am this morning, and that was only to go straight to my O2 tanks in the kitchen.
Re: Micro Robots
You could be right about the remaining sand in your hourglass . 
I wish I had some suggestions or meaningful advice, but all I can come up with is some heartfelt sympathy., It's encouraging that you are able and willing to come here and type up a few words. You told me once before that you are a stubborn ol' goat, but I think there is more to it when you must struggle just to take your next breath. It seems that you are well aware of the implications of your circumstances. As my daughter would say, you are lucid. That tells me you know what you are up against and have determined how to handle it. If you must go, you are going to do it with style. But, we can't really say if or when you are going anywhere. So, in the meantime we'll just carry on and take things as they come. One day at a time.
I think I know to what you are referring on Twitter. My use of Tweetdeck is technically bypassing the official Twitter software. Twitter is a constant stream of what would normally be text messages. At least that is how it was designed many years ago. Like browsers, Twitter's content has improved by leaps and bounds far exceeding the original Instant Messaging text format. It's now like HTML and CSS on steroids. Thus my Tweetdeck app is serving me content I choose to see and only that. Very few ads show up on Tweetdeck because it only displays the contents of my several lists. I am using the original software for the @brainformation account. It is in that stream that I see your pseudonym posts because you are one of the few people I'm following. However, there is an option to view "latest posts" in real time, or to see "popular posts" as Twitter's magic algorithm would have you view them. I knew from day one that I did not want to be fed by the algorithm and I chose to view only the latest posts from people I follow. Unfortunately, there are ads interspersed and no way to eliminate those. Needless to say I don't use that @brainformation account very much so that my Tweetdeck feed is pretty lean and mean with rarely an ad visible.
I wish I had some suggestions or meaningful advice, but all I can come up with is some heartfelt sympathy., It's encouraging that you are able and willing to come here and type up a few words. You told me once before that you are a stubborn ol' goat, but I think there is more to it when you must struggle just to take your next breath. It seems that you are well aware of the implications of your circumstances. As my daughter would say, you are lucid. That tells me you know what you are up against and have determined how to handle it. If you must go, you are going to do it with style. But, we can't really say if or when you are going anywhere. So, in the meantime we'll just carry on and take things as they come. One day at a time.
I think I know to what you are referring on Twitter. My use of Tweetdeck is technically bypassing the official Twitter software. Twitter is a constant stream of what would normally be text messages. At least that is how it was designed many years ago. Like browsers, Twitter's content has improved by leaps and bounds far exceeding the original Instant Messaging text format. It's now like HTML and CSS on steroids. Thus my Tweetdeck app is serving me content I choose to see and only that. Very few ads show up on Tweetdeck because it only displays the contents of my several lists. I am using the original software for the @brainformation account. It is in that stream that I see your pseudonym posts because you are one of the few people I'm following. However, there is an option to view "latest posts" in real time, or to see "popular posts" as Twitter's magic algorithm would have you view them. I knew from day one that I did not want to be fed by the algorithm and I chose to view only the latest posts from people I follow. Unfortunately, there are ads interspersed and no way to eliminate those. Needless to say I don't use that @brainformation account very much so that my Tweetdeck feed is pretty lean and mean with rarely an ad visible.
Re: Micro Robots
Ironically, I have this belief that if I can make it to my office, which on some days is really hard for me to do, once I'm up here and situated at my desk, I begin to feel better.
The only sad thing is, if I have to get up from my desk, even for something simple, like grabbing a soda from the fridge just outside my office door, it takes almost all of my energy and I'm back to sitting and getting my breathing going smooth again.
But as long as I stay in my chair, and get my breathing to a normal rate, on O2 of course, with some pursed lip breathing in between every few breaths, I can do good almost all day up here. While down at the house, even sitting, I don't always do as good as I do up here.
Old Cowboy's used to always say, they want to die with their boots on.
I'm not far from that, I want to die with my boots on, sitting at my desk in the office, doing what I love to do.
I've never tried TweetDeck, and the only real reason I'm on Twitter at all is to help my book promoter get a like from me on the books she posts. I do use Lists on Twitter so I don't see anything but those posts I want to.
I did the same thing on Farcebook until they screwed that up royally nearly two years ago now. And now that Farm Town is gone, I really have no reason to be there anymore either, except to see a couple relatives posts.
I had a good nights sleep for a change, and feel good today as long as I'm just sitting. It did take over a half hour after I made it up to my office to be able to do anything. I have a doctors appointment coming up on the 20th of this month, but I don't expect much to happen from going to that annual visit, since it is mostly for the medicare annual and also my usual visit one right after the other while I'm there.
The only sad thing is, if I have to get up from my desk, even for something simple, like grabbing a soda from the fridge just outside my office door, it takes almost all of my energy and I'm back to sitting and getting my breathing going smooth again.
But as long as I stay in my chair, and get my breathing to a normal rate, on O2 of course, with some pursed lip breathing in between every few breaths, I can do good almost all day up here. While down at the house, even sitting, I don't always do as good as I do up here.
Old Cowboy's used to always say, they want to die with their boots on.
I'm not far from that, I want to die with my boots on, sitting at my desk in the office, doing what I love to do.
I've never tried TweetDeck, and the only real reason I'm on Twitter at all is to help my book promoter get a like from me on the books she posts. I do use Lists on Twitter so I don't see anything but those posts I want to.
I did the same thing on Farcebook until they screwed that up royally nearly two years ago now. And now that Farm Town is gone, I really have no reason to be there anymore either, except to see a couple relatives posts.
I had a good nights sleep for a change, and feel good today as long as I'm just sitting. It did take over a half hour after I made it up to my office to be able to do anything. I have a doctors appointment coming up on the 20th of this month, but I don't expect much to happen from going to that annual visit, since it is mostly for the medicare annual and also my usual visit one right after the other while I'm there.
Re: Micro Robots
I saw an old man die once, and that event made a permanent mark on my soul. Back in Illinois about four of us had one acre lots adjacent to each other. The back ends were fairly well wooded and all four homes were built on the front end that touched the street. Any one of us standing in
our back yard could see all the way to the last neighbor's yard; each lot was just over 100 feet wide so that visibility was good. My neighbor two doors down was a dentist and he build his 5000 sq ft home with the help of his dad. Well, they hired a few sub-contractors along the way, but essentially he was his own general contractor. I never met his dad but did admire his work. I toured that house frequently as it was being built. The summer after it was completed there was a gathering at the dentist's house. I was looking at all the action from my back deck and saw his dad carrying his granddaughter on his shoulders pretending to be the horse she was riding. He fell unexpectedly. I never saw him get up and apparently that is how he died. He was doing exactly what he loved loved to do more than anything else here on earth. It was sad, but a most beautiful way to go.
You and I use social media for different reasons. At this point in my life it's basically a means to avoid total boredom. I was quite active many years ago which is how this website came into existence. It was pretty successful in the beginning and I got to know many people from around the world. Some, believe it or not, were even more conservative than you. LOL Twitter was the best I've ever seen in that it had a wide variety of participants in real time. I often read about major events published on Twitter by people who were witnessing them as it happened, and usually well before the news media in general even knew what was happening. The original app is quite a bit like Facebook now and days. I think Zuckerberg copied the heart of what Jack Dorsey was doing on Twitter but never could compete on the same level. Zuckerberg got involved with politics and did some nasty things that have yet to be fully revealed. That's why I stopped going there. The management became corrupt. Looks like Musk is going down the same path. It's a shame because Twitter WAS the best.
our back yard could see all the way to the last neighbor's yard; each lot was just over 100 feet wide so that visibility was good. My neighbor two doors down was a dentist and he build his 5000 sq ft home with the help of his dad. Well, they hired a few sub-contractors along the way, but essentially he was his own general contractor. I never met his dad but did admire his work. I toured that house frequently as it was being built. The summer after it was completed there was a gathering at the dentist's house. I was looking at all the action from my back deck and saw his dad carrying his granddaughter on his shoulders pretending to be the horse she was riding. He fell unexpectedly. I never saw him get up and apparently that is how he died. He was doing exactly what he loved loved to do more than anything else here on earth. It was sad, but a most beautiful way to go.
You and I use social media for different reasons. At this point in my life it's basically a means to avoid total boredom. I was quite active many years ago which is how this website came into existence. It was pretty successful in the beginning and I got to know many people from around the world. Some, believe it or not, were even more conservative than you. LOL Twitter was the best I've ever seen in that it had a wide variety of participants in real time. I often read about major events published on Twitter by people who were witnessing them as it happened, and usually well before the news media in general even knew what was happening. The original app is quite a bit like Facebook now and days. I think Zuckerberg copied the heart of what Jack Dorsey was doing on Twitter but never could compete on the same level. Zuckerberg got involved with politics and did some nasty things that have yet to be fully revealed. That's why I stopped going there. The management became corrupt. Looks like Musk is going down the same path. It's a shame because Twitter WAS the best.
Last edited by yogi on 10 Dec 2022, 21:19, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Micro Robots
My first wife and I were at a wedding of someone she knew her whole life. The grooms father was in the wedding, and looked fine. When he didn't show up at the reception, someone went to find him. His car was still at the church, and they found him on the floor of the side room where the men waited before the wedding. He had gone back in there to collect the things the boys left in there to take to the reception, this was apparently planned. He had everything in a box, and it was laying right beside him on the floor. The man who found him did summons an ambulance, but chose not to pass the info to the reception until after the reception was over. A lot of folks were mad they were not notified right away, but others saw the wise reasoning behind it too.
There are tons of social media sites that have come and gone over the years. So many I don't even remember half of their names anymore. A few of them are still around, but have a very low membership now. Diaspora, Calispora, plus many I've never been on, like Weebly and others.
Farcebook has gone downhill steadily all the years I've been on it. Some I used to be on shut down. I consider them major time wasters. But then so is playing games when I have work to do, but can't very easily, hi hi.
I wonder if anyone still uses Usenet? That is where I met a lot of folks, some of whom I'm still friends with. But the groups on Usenet I did belong to no longer exist. Nor the early websites I belonged to, some of them with an annual fee. All gone now.
Most of them had made changes nobody liked and that is a good reason for their demise.
Farcebook seems to get by with ruining the platform, all to get folks to see more of the ads we all ignore, hi hi.
There are tons of social media sites that have come and gone over the years. So many I don't even remember half of their names anymore. A few of them are still around, but have a very low membership now. Diaspora, Calispora, plus many I've never been on, like Weebly and others.
Farcebook has gone downhill steadily all the years I've been on it. Some I used to be on shut down. I consider them major time wasters. But then so is playing games when I have work to do, but can't very easily, hi hi.
I wonder if anyone still uses Usenet? That is where I met a lot of folks, some of whom I'm still friends with. But the groups on Usenet I did belong to no longer exist. Nor the early websites I belonged to, some of them with an annual fee. All gone now.
Most of them had made changes nobody liked and that is a good reason for their demise.
Farcebook seems to get by with ruining the platform, all to get folks to see more of the ads we all ignore, hi hi.
Re: Micro Robots
It took me a while to figure it out, but the obvious targeted advertising on Facebook was not the point of that site. The ads were the symptom and the cause was buried deep but eventually revealed to be the data collection that goes on there to this day. The games, FarmTown et al, were a huge source of income for Facebook but not for the reasons you might suspect. All the users' personal data was amassed and sold to third parties for huge prices. Facebook collects more data than Microsoft, if you can believe that, and they parse it to match the needs of individual advertisers all over the world. The kind of information Facebook collects for such huge demographics would knock your socks off. The way to understand the operations at Facebook is to realize that the purpose of everything they do is to gather personal information about you. Think about it. Everything you see there is owned by Facebook no matter who posted it, and a lot of what you find in personal profile accounts should not be published in public ever. That personal information is a gold mine, and Zuckerberg isn't too fussy about who he sells it to as long as he gets his price.
Twitter took on the form of a public utility. I'm not sure it was designed to become that, but people used it as a town square that spanned the globe. As such, some very high profile people were attracted to the site. Of course a lot of common folk used it as well which was great. Where else on the Internet could you actually have a conversation with the president of the United States, for example? Twitter suffered form a lot of the ailments you could find on Facebook in terms of wild ass people spreading deliberate lies just for the reaction. The difference was that Twitter had a superior moderating team that kept the bad guys in check. There has been some discussion lately about who exactly were those moderated bad buys, but that's irrelevant. The point is Twitter was about as clean as you could make a website that is used by billions of people. Well, the current owner doesn't believe in that kind of moderation.
You may have heard or read that what you and I see of the internet is barely 10% of what is actually out there. That remaining 90%, the Dark Web, is basically a version of usenet. So, to answer your query, yes, Usenet is still out there but is being used by a slightly different crowd of people than those who invented it many years ago. I can understand why you were happy in that kind of environment. Today's social media is not as simple.
I got involved with Diaspora as a result of the efforts put forth by our past friend Glenn. It was an interesting place at first, much like Mastadon is today. After going there a few times I found out who the admins were for the server Glenn liked, and a dozen red flags were raised. That place was being run by people who promoted and engaged in anarchy. If they still exist today, I'm certain they must be part of that Dark Web we hear so much about.
Twitter took on the form of a public utility. I'm not sure it was designed to become that, but people used it as a town square that spanned the globe. As such, some very high profile people were attracted to the site. Of course a lot of common folk used it as well which was great. Where else on the Internet could you actually have a conversation with the president of the United States, for example? Twitter suffered form a lot of the ailments you could find on Facebook in terms of wild ass people spreading deliberate lies just for the reaction. The difference was that Twitter had a superior moderating team that kept the bad guys in check. There has been some discussion lately about who exactly were those moderated bad buys, but that's irrelevant. The point is Twitter was about as clean as you could make a website that is used by billions of people. Well, the current owner doesn't believe in that kind of moderation.
You may have heard or read that what you and I see of the internet is barely 10% of what is actually out there. That remaining 90%, the Dark Web, is basically a version of usenet. So, to answer your query, yes, Usenet is still out there but is being used by a slightly different crowd of people than those who invented it many years ago. I can understand why you were happy in that kind of environment. Today's social media is not as simple.
I got involved with Diaspora as a result of the efforts put forth by our past friend Glenn. It was an interesting place at first, much like Mastadon is today. After going there a few times I found out who the admins were for the server Glenn liked, and a dozen red flags were raised. That place was being run by people who promoted and engaged in anarchy. If they still exist today, I'm certain they must be part of that Dark Web we hear so much about.
Last edited by yogi on 11 Dec 2022, 22:12, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Micro Robots
I'm sure that's how those websites make their money, and the main reason I have very little on my bio on there, and post next to nothing. I guess that is one reason I don't get very much in the way of spam e-mails.
Twitter was heavily biased against the Republican Party, and now that Musk owns it, he is posting all of their nasty little secrets.
But then I normally only see the posts of those I follow, and rarely go to the main feed.
When I Had LISTS on Farcebook, I saw nothing except an occasional post by the few I followed and added to certain lists I created. Farcebook then merged their basic lists with our lists and messed up the whole thing, and about the time we got it all straightened out again, they changed how the Lists work which rendered them useless for the purpose intended. We still have Lists, however, they do not show posts in the lists anymore, just who belongs to the List and you have to go to each of their profiles individually to see what they posted, if anything. The other option is to go to the main newsfeed and weed through the garbage.
Diaspora was several different websites, some with unique names. Calispora is the one I was normally on, and only in a couple of writers groups.
I was still getting a little bit of Usenet through my Thunderbird e-mail program, but only two groups because I had a couple of friends in each. Then there was only one in each, and then only one in one, and then there were none, so I never went back again, and I don't even know if the later editions of Thunderbird even have access to the newsgroups anymore. If they do, I turned off that feature so newer downloads of Thunderbird didn't show it to me.
Twitter was heavily biased against the Republican Party, and now that Musk owns it, he is posting all of their nasty little secrets.
But then I normally only see the posts of those I follow, and rarely go to the main feed.
When I Had LISTS on Farcebook, I saw nothing except an occasional post by the few I followed and added to certain lists I created. Farcebook then merged their basic lists with our lists and messed up the whole thing, and about the time we got it all straightened out again, they changed how the Lists work which rendered them useless for the purpose intended. We still have Lists, however, they do not show posts in the lists anymore, just who belongs to the List and you have to go to each of their profiles individually to see what they posted, if anything. The other option is to go to the main newsfeed and weed through the garbage.
Diaspora was several different websites, some with unique names. Calispora is the one I was normally on, and only in a couple of writers groups.
I was still getting a little bit of Usenet through my Thunderbird e-mail program, but only two groups because I had a couple of friends in each. Then there was only one in each, and then only one in one, and then there were none, so I never went back again, and I don't even know if the later editions of Thunderbird even have access to the newsgroups anymore. If they do, I turned off that feature so newer downloads of Thunderbird didn't show it to me.
Re: Micro Robots
Your comments about Thunderbird having a news aggregation service ring true. They used to back in the old days when RSS was popular. I didn't use Thunderbird for the purpose but did have two or three other aggregators that I liked. They all worked off the same type of database so that it was easy transferring my list of news sources from one to another using the same data in each. When Twitter was born and Farcebook abandoned it's college crowd RSS feeds lost their popularity. The software still existed, but the websites I favored dropped their RSS feeds. There soon became nothing worthwhile to aggregate. At that point I discovered the beauty of Twitter lists and abandoned all my RSS feeds. Well, the way Musk is trashing the site now and days I'll be looking for those RSS feeds again. I'm certain they no longer exist in most places so that a valuable resource for multiple news feeds has now become history.
I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook, playing that Farm Game in fact. A lot of my buddies where there and I saw what they posted in the main feed. I can't recall ever making a list, but Facebook made one for me which was basically all my friends. Then they added to that all the crap ads and other propaganda they wanted me to see, which is when I lost interest in what they are doing there. I will continue to run the Facebook Group for this website, but as you know I don't appear there very often. Other than that group there is nothing useful to me in Zuckerberg's world.
Diaspora was indeed a decentralized network of servers just as is Mastadon today. I like the idea but there are some serious shortcomings built into the structure, mainly the lack of consistency administrating all the individual instances. That's how the shady characters took hold of Diaspora. They basically operated under the radar. I had to be invited before I could join the server Glenn promoted.
I used to spend a lot of time on Facebook, playing that Farm Game in fact. A lot of my buddies where there and I saw what they posted in the main feed. I can't recall ever making a list, but Facebook made one for me which was basically all my friends. Then they added to that all the crap ads and other propaganda they wanted me to see, which is when I lost interest in what they are doing there. I will continue to run the Facebook Group for this website, but as you know I don't appear there very often. Other than that group there is nothing useful to me in Zuckerberg's world.
Diaspora was indeed a decentralized network of servers just as is Mastadon today. I like the idea but there are some serious shortcomings built into the structure, mainly the lack of consistency administrating all the individual instances. That's how the shady characters took hold of Diaspora. They basically operated under the radar. I had to be invited before I could join the server Glenn promoted.
Re: Micro Robots
Well, so far, I like everything Musk is doing with Twitter. I'm seeing more of what I want to see, and less of the garbage.
I never bothered with using RSS for anything. It seemed annoying to me, about like the Notifications on Farcebook and Twitter.
A lot of folks on Farcebook got roped into play the lousy games written by Zynga, like FarmVille, etc. Not a single one of their games worked right, and Zynga never fixed their underlying engine they used to run all of them. Plus they started adding idiotic stuff to their games, made them sickening to play.
Farm Town on the other hand has an excellent engine, and they were always improving how the game worked. They do have some minor bugs they have never addressed since day one, and they could be easily fixed too.
The switch from Flash Player to that LOUSY WebGL reaped a lot of havoc, and they had to rewrite many parts of the game just to get them to work properly, so my hats off to them for going the extra mile.
Now Farcebook, with all their problems, keeps blaming them on everybody else except themselves. Rather than fix a problem, they shut down our game until the game developer changes to a different entry point than what Farcebook made them use. The glitch is on Farcebooks end for sure. I know, because even not playing the game I hit the same glitch at least 5 or 6 times a year with what little I do on Farcbook itself.
You CAN turn off seeing posts from the games easily enough. And there are a few ways to do it too. If you see a post for a game, you can hit the HIDE posts from this application on your newsfeed. I do that for a lot of things. But it doesn't work well for content placed in images.
If Farm Town moves to its own social media site they created for the game players, I probably would only check Farcebook to see if a friend posted or not.
I think I either looked into or joined Mastodon for about a week, then never went back.
I never bothered with using RSS for anything. It seemed annoying to me, about like the Notifications on Farcebook and Twitter.
A lot of folks on Farcebook got roped into play the lousy games written by Zynga, like FarmVille, etc. Not a single one of their games worked right, and Zynga never fixed their underlying engine they used to run all of them. Plus they started adding idiotic stuff to their games, made them sickening to play.
Farm Town on the other hand has an excellent engine, and they were always improving how the game worked. They do have some minor bugs they have never addressed since day one, and they could be easily fixed too.
The switch from Flash Player to that LOUSY WebGL reaped a lot of havoc, and they had to rewrite many parts of the game just to get them to work properly, so my hats off to them for going the extra mile.
Now Farcebook, with all their problems, keeps blaming them on everybody else except themselves. Rather than fix a problem, they shut down our game until the game developer changes to a different entry point than what Farcebook made them use. The glitch is on Farcebooks end for sure. I know, because even not playing the game I hit the same glitch at least 5 or 6 times a year with what little I do on Farcbook itself.
You CAN turn off seeing posts from the games easily enough. And there are a few ways to do it too. If you see a post for a game, you can hit the HIDE posts from this application on your newsfeed. I do that for a lot of things. But it doesn't work well for content placed in images.
If Farm Town moves to its own social media site they created for the game players, I probably would only check Farcebook to see if a friend posted or not.
I think I either looked into or joined Mastodon for about a week, then never went back.
Re: Micro Robots
You and i get pissed off at different things. LOL Facebook writes it's own software and that is why it can make the rules. If the rules need changing they can dedicate a development team to update the software, and they have done that very thing many times before my very eyes. The bugs and glitches you see along the way are pretty normal. I used to write code at Motorola and understand clearly how software development is a never ending job, even for that which is considered stable. So, none of that bothered me much on Facebook, and I knew all about Zinga so that I never did expect much from them. They never fixed what seemed like basic errors in the software because end user enjoyment was not the purpose of having those games as part of the Facebook experience. They did make some money off internal game sales, but the big bucks came from information gathering. Once I learned about what Zuckerberg is really doing over there, I lost interest in his cause. I go there for the same reason most other people go there, which is to interact with friends and family. Well I graduated from that. All the conversation and picture swapping can be done easily using MMS or SMS as instant messaging. There are no ads on instant messaging and a smartphone is not always required. Thus I'm not attracted to the gimmicks Facebook uses to lure sheep to their flock.
Game developers were knocked for a loop when Adobe stopped support for Flash. It's their own fault too because Adobe gave years of notice about their intentions. They encouraged developers to find alternate methods, but when you have a cash cow grazing in places like Facebook the motivation to update the software is lacking. Plus, some of the crazy stuff that Flash could do was not available in any other programming language and for good reason. Flash overrode the kernel in many instances and that turned out to be a major security issue. If your game developer ignored the warnings and dismissed the security threats, then they deserved to crash and burn when support for Flash was withdrawn.
Game developers were knocked for a loop when Adobe stopped support for Flash. It's their own fault too because Adobe gave years of notice about their intentions. They encouraged developers to find alternate methods, but when you have a cash cow grazing in places like Facebook the motivation to update the software is lacking. Plus, some of the crazy stuff that Flash could do was not available in any other programming language and for good reason. Flash overrode the kernel in many instances and that turned out to be a major security issue. If your game developer ignored the warnings and dismissed the security threats, then they deserved to crash and burn when support for Flash was withdrawn.
Re: Micro Robots
Farm Town did not fail, and were not down when Flash ended. They had their new program nearly ready and converted over to WebGL, but some of the features took a while to get back working the way we were used to how they worked on Flash Player.
Everything, including all the features are back and the game runs great, within the limits of WebGL of course, which doesn't affect game play one iota. The only thing it really affects is with Flash Player you could have 50 tabs open at once, and with WebGL 8 is the limit for that feature of the game. To get some of the features back working again, they used a program called UNITY, which must be some type of developer platform for game writers. Which to me is like saying, OK, instead of doing it ourselves, lets use another 3rd party app that might fail or get shut down like Flash did.
We have several old games here that Debi has bought over the years, and to keep them working, they have the version of Flash they used now embedded into the programs game engine itself.
And what happened to all the Alternatives to Flash Player that we used instead of Flash, or were they really just Flash Player?
Everything, including all the features are back and the game runs great, within the limits of WebGL of course, which doesn't affect game play one iota. The only thing it really affects is with Flash Player you could have 50 tabs open at once, and with WebGL 8 is the limit for that feature of the game. To get some of the features back working again, they used a program called UNITY, which must be some type of developer platform for game writers. Which to me is like saying, OK, instead of doing it ourselves, lets use another 3rd party app that might fail or get shut down like Flash did.
We have several old games here that Debi has bought over the years, and to keep them working, they have the version of Flash they used now embedded into the programs game engine itself.
And what happened to all the Alternatives to Flash Player that we used instead of Flash, or were they really just Flash Player?