Craigslist Moves

Pretty much every apartment except the one I’m soon about to vacate after three years and two months I’d located, prospected, and signed leases for because of Craigslist.

Craigslist, while I can’t say I’ve been on it much lately, had been a big part of my life in my twenties. Sometimes it would be idle browsing, sometimes for job searches, and sometimes it would be for apartments.

Having decided I was going to not renew my lease this time around, I’d first went via Apartment Ratings (since that’s how I’d found where I am currently). Not finding ones that jumped out at me pretty readily, I went to old reliable Craigslist.

And now I’m moving. Oh, the 21st century.

Lifelogging, aka Them Making Money Off You?

It's not until I'd moved to Georgia that I'd really, really started hearing an almost hate for anything that would use your labor, however, inane, small, or otherwise not-so-energy-taxing/zapping, to make money.

I'm a lifelogger, which essentially means I'm able to go into an app and actually look back at where I've been for about 8 years now because I'd recorded my whereabouts. Looking back is nostalgic, and looking at the map of plotpoints is pretty cool, honestly. Still, it's free, and the companies (because there are multiple) are probably using this data to sell to companies who can use it to their devices.

And I don't mind that, really. Sometimes one hears of how many people go somewhere, or at what time, or during certain circumstances. It's pretty neat to hear, actually. These lifelogging tools partly make that possible. I'm also kind of helping artificial intelligence on its way in just a little way.

Because it's not like my life is oodles of fascination anyway...

To Post or Not?

So, I was reading a few Fox News articles that grabbed my attention, and meant to post them to my Flipboard… except for some interesting verbiage…

Now, the first was via the Apple News app, and then the second was the view from Safari. The only notable difference was that in Apple News, the ads were for, basically, Fox News products that had Apple syndication (an Apple Podcasts-based podcast, for instance). The web page view in Safari had a notable amount of "sponsored" ads, but they seemed to consolidate them at the article's end primarily. The Fox News app, though, seemed to split them up, and there was no apparent sign of the verbiage (which I took to mean one can share it elsewhere).

The answer may lie in Terms and Conditions… or as they put it, Terms of Use. I suppose that links are fine. It's when the actual content goes anywhere else, that's when one cannot do anything. It's interesting, though, that it includes archiving an article. One cannot archive a copy of an article at all according to the Terms of Use (so things like shenanigans that may occur within an article that they decide to delete and "web activists" who have copies of it to debate the shenanigans might be in the wrong).

Terms of Use/Terms and Conditions are fun… 😑

Developments

I was on Facebook looking at the "On This Day" feature, and one of the posts included a comment my sister had made asking about the name of a song I'd put in the background of a collage video I'd posted today seven years ago.

My response at the time was I'd no idea because I'd gotten it from an iPod that, maddeningly and aggravatingly, didn't have the name or artist of the song in its IME. Somewhere along the line years later I'd discovered it, but it wasn't until today I'd realized anyone else was actually looking for this information.

So, I'd written my sister via Facebook Messenger and informed her. Since she's probably at Bible Study, I probably won't get a response until later.

Still, though, going from a child who'd not grown up with a computer nor watching television, to someone who has a pretty powerful and versatile computer in a holster at his hip; who comes home and sits in front of a computer that has access to (more or less) more than a lifetime's worth of information, video, images, and music; who can turn on a *networked* television and watch entire movies at a whim... This is something.

It's exciting being in the intermediate generation who saw these things come into daily life and who put them into daily use, as well as a little frustrating sometimes being the in the generation who has to coach the previous generation who's still trying, in some cases, to figure out how to turn these contraptions on.

It's another mention of the hilarity at how in high school I'd written journal entries of how I didn't think I'd ever be able to make electronic journal entries, or how I'd never get a phone with a camera because I already have a perfectly good camera.

How things develop...

BBC News: 'WhatsApp child sex images' led to arrests

'WhatsApp child sex images' led to arrests

A total of 39 people have been arrested over child sexual exploitation images apparently shared via WhatsApp.

And it just does not surprise me. If there's anything the Internet is good for is rapid transmission of anything under the sun: pirated credit card numbers, passwords, to the even more illicit and illegal.

I've known the "Dark Web" and what it might have to offer. It's a really scary place, and I really don't trust it to a large degree. Free content, sure. It's slow and unpredictable, but it's rife with stuff. The pay parts I haven't even begun to try to scratch.

It has its merits, though, being a next-to-impossible traceable place where the "Underground" -- covert journalists, people fearing for their lives, and sexual minorities in places that shun and worse them -- can exchange information and communicate. This "Underground" seems to include pedophiles and ephebophiles too, and trading information on the Dark Web to facilitate Light Web transactions (where it's a lot speedier, but can still have a lot of encryption) I don't blame them for doing it.

It's probably an infiltration that eventually got them caught.

At least for now...