I’m Bob. Frankston on Facebook. Note that I usually post publicly, so there isn’t a strong need to friend me. So, I apologize in advance for my backlog of requests I haven’t responded to. Typically, nothing personal – just one more thing to think about.

It’s easier to post simple thoughts on Facebook than to create a formal posting. Eventually, I hope to consolidate these thoughts into formal essays. In the meantime, I’m providing a list of Facebook posts that might be of interest to others. Please forgive the typos and consider them mulls-in-progress.

Facebook does have the advantage of providing an opportunity for a conversation – something I haven’t implemented on my site.

I’ve done very little posting on Quora but plan to list any new postings here.

I’ll attempt to list these in reverse chronological order and, at times, any summary may be longer than the original post. I’m going to try to use * or † for posts I do want to follow up on in a longer essay or a column.

Direct pointers to Gripes, Fails

(Note some of these links aren’t getting properly converted – at some point I’ll figure out the bug)

Featured Posts

• Failing by doing everything right. Trying to figure out why my closet light wasn’t turning on.
• ATT #FailureFirst device.
• The Authoritarians.
• Terms and Conditions to use a stove.
• In praise of the command line!

Politics and the state of the Universe (& US)

No promises about getting this organized but I’ll try.

• AMA on Trump’s latest abortion.
• CNN: Trump Lies.
• Germany 1934 Football ban.
• Trump to pardon D’Souza.

Miscellaneous Posts

Pixel Delivery problems
USB-C Charging.
USB Fail to recognize.
Windows keeps resetting the lock screen.
Bruni on learning to type.
Oldest OS used. (via Quora)
SIMply terrible.
Strong typing (via Quora)
Captcha gone wild.
Surface Go first impressions.
Is Java over?
Ecological cost of the Trump Wall.
Via Quora – liberal vs conservative economies.
DirecTV Now UX Terrible.
Criminalizing Voting while on parole.
Google maps no longer flat earth
A lack of critical thinking.
China Hustle.
Unpaid family leave.
Question – Programming languages for CE – why C++ (Became a CLI discussion)?
• Useful https://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-svg
The Control Plane for self-driving cars.
NYT – The decade we almost stopped climate change.
Postal Neglect. (Infrastructure)
TD Bank was nice about currency exchange error.
Brian Valentine on Unbridled Capitalism.
Motherhood in the Age of Fear.
Kavanaugh on the separation of Church and State.
Schlitterbahn – no physics, no science.
How the press coverage of AI is unhinged.
• Colorado GOP Billboard
Tokyo Subways.
JAL 8 return flight.
Cat feces – the new wonder drug – gives you courage!
Agriculture Subsidies.
Temperature sensitive routing.
Google in Japanese?
Will Facebook steal my pictures?
T-Mobile in Japan and Google …
Flying JAL 7 to Japan.
Siberian Captured Supreme Court.
Law to hide Russian/NRA collusion.
Tax Returns?
Collins and Stephens on Trump etc.
Karl Schulmeisters on need to repudiate Trump.
In 30 years 8 states will have the majority of the population. Put that in your electoral college.
Al Franken on Kavanaugh.
Verizon 1Gbps offer.
Science by Jury?
Alex Beam on Nomenklatura.
SIMs and T-Mobile in Japan.
Kavanaugh – Censorship is Free Speech.
Scotus Question.
Camera phone suggestions?
An operational approach to teaching math.
Russians using Republican email for blackmail?
JAL and technology.
Collins and Murkowski should leave the GOP.
Kristof: We are Bambi to Hackers.
Chinese targeting trump base.
Trump’s Unamerican meeting.
Japan visit.
Weaponized speech and religion.
Spider.
Google Cloud point of failure.
TypeScript and fear of nulls.
You can’t ban abortions, you can only make them terrible
The story of sex.com.
Unevaluated expressions in JavaScript.
History of computer passwords.
The need to teach critical thinking.
The tainted reconstructionist court.
ICE Tweaks AI to recommend detention.
Civility and Nazis.
Weaponizing the First Amendment.
Cartoons form Trumpistan
Facebook made a video of me.
ML and the new “not a robot”.
I took a cab.
Boston Seaport growth.
John Oliver on China.
Man Fired by Machine
Thoughts, prayers and a space force!
What the airlines know
• danah boyd on the messy fourth estate.
• Romans 13
• Ingraham summer camp comment.
• Response on preppers.
• Google Pixel Nonsupport.
• Koch Brothers against public transit.
• Lands end unsubscribe.
• FB needs a subject line.
• Bork on Antitrust
• ATT gets CNN.
• Mission Accomplished (Trump/Un).
• Outfoxed in Singapore.
• Russian Airspace.
• Stupid Watergate.
• Brother can’t be bothered to update apps. †
• Web Assembly – the promise and the risk. †
• Schlage and product registration †
• Trump calls for Russia to rejoin G7.
• Credit card companies should offer subscription management.
• Why did think Vehicle should be spell-checked in French?
• QR code on Mass Vehicle Inspection Report.
• CSS Variables.
• Schlage API?
• Glacial legacy in NYC.
• Hubs API Outage.
• Supreme Court on no gay cakes.
• Andy Oram explanation.
• Zittrain on IoT.
• Tulsa race riot.
• Paying per device.
• Worries about stealing WiFi.
• Car dealers vs. computer tracking etc.
• 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline, Ph.D.)
• JavaScript Vulnerabilities.
• Everyday Racism NBC.
• Visiting ER gets you inundated by ads!
• Christian Project Blitz.
• A tale of two pings (windows/bash)
• What the MeWe? (https://mewe.com)
• Alex oversharing.
• How Geely saved Volvo.
• Responding to Brownsberger and Network Neutrality.
• GDRP and UX
• Microsoft Word spell check broken.
• Republican attempt to subvert the FBI.
• Infected routers. Russia?
• .child
• Crooked Trump’s insecure phone.
• Whitehouse.gov has gone feral
• Slate on Collusion – Cohen et al.
• Interpreting Xi Jing Ping Era. https://goo.gl/xynkbe Chinese Philosophy: Jiang Shigong on ‘Philosophy and History: Interpreting the “Xi Jinping Era” through Xi’s Report to the Nineteenth National Congress of the CCP’
• Got ES6 to work for home control!
• But sometimes .. LED traffic lights
• NN vs. Hiawatha
Warlock hunt
Boston-ready driverless cars.
The 9.9%
HoweyCoin
Cohen missing files.
Windows Graphic failures.
WhatsApp and the Indian Elections
European #Webfi.
Windows Connection sharing now standard. (Hot Spot in setup)
How cheap is too cheap? Shipping and logistics
Expressive programming (via Quora).
URLs for shipping notifications.
Framework reluctance.
Oculus Standalone.
LinkedIn tracking glances
NY Subway crisis and the power of active illustrations.
Trump always makes the wrong choice – Iran edition.
Real Estate and Volcanoes and global warming?
Index.php and Browser caching
My April Moments! No !
Alexa spam. Cinco de Mayo
Google Timeline reminder.
Spaces after the dot and kerning.
Boston Globe: Ripping off prisoners with phone charges.
Microsoft camera belch message.
New Coke lessons.
Free thought caucus.
TechAlter on why Europe has lost its tech companies.
Jeff Bezos interview.
TSA prudishness.
Hotel temperature controls. (Hilton Edition)
Hotel 6.6 vs TM 91/31 speeds.
Back East – NJ edition.
American Duma Russian Collusion Coverup.
Hertz lack of WiFi at SFO.
Zelle and open loop signaling.
Maintaining WiFi connectivity in Android.
Globe on paper checks.
Greenbacks and godless currency.
Samsung S3 features.
Globe – Economists like Free-Trade but Politicians don’t.
Facebook Messenger teensy window.
Microcenter squanders it’s advantage.
Comments on coding vs. Software. Also.
We have a Unicorn problem
NatGeo user QR for activation.
Elon University quoting me on the Internet.
• NY Times atmospheric Viruses.
• Contranym watch: Forge.
• In praise of YDI (You-Do-It Electronics).
• Why are we still using wired logic?
• Internet Privacy (with Doc Searls)
• DJT vs USPS.
• Apologies to 620, 510 area codes.
• NY Time fact check Zuckerberg
• Trump’s Caravan story.
• Tasteless Big3 Ad?
• DJT Defies his Generals.
• MadTwitterer roils markets.
• Competition was once considered good.
• Christie says Trump can’t help but lie.
• Trump Economy as a Drunkard’s Walk.
• Realignment in Politics.
• Evangelicals and Trump (WP)
• It’s tax time. And the numbers are inaccessible.
• Adobe tracking services,
• On Cambridge Analytica.
• Andy Clark in the New Yorker. (FB)
• The city of the future – 1930’s Robert Moses style.
• Prisoner of Linear TV waiting for 60 minutes.
SFO/AMW Visit.
• The London Garroting Panic. Fake news is not new.
• Paying for infrastructure by harvesting our data isn’t confined to Facebook. It’s at the heart of smart cities and so much more... †
Cloud Act. Pro and Con
T-Mobile Foibles.
Pretty backyard.
Eversource Scam.
Family Values, Banning child marriage in America: An uphill fight against evangelical pressure
Is LinkedIn sneaky in making it too easy to accept?
The rise of the #Stupidocracy. Why smart people lose, and stupid people rule.
• The conspiracy to manufacture conspiracy theories.
• Why can’t I get a URL to a TV show?
• Thinking of giving in and using Google Photos.
• Cloud storage for web page app. Looking for suggestions
• Arming teachers. A thread on how bad the idea is.
• The brain is not a computer. Why are we having such a pointless debate?
• Taking responsibility for climate change. A sarcastic take on the idea that we have to solve our problems without government’s help.
• Pence as President? Uh-oh.
• Notifications. They’ve gone from feature to plague! *
• FB copies. This means you can track down and correct shares, among other problems.
• Recovering my PC. Trick to getting windows to clean itself is using media creation tool to reinstall the existing version.
• Conservatives vs. Reality. The conflict with an inherent truth mindset and a complex/ Ambiguous world
• 10 Bizarre Things Americans Believe According to Studies
• Last Post before TKR (Total Knew Replacement). [spoiler alert – I’m now back home and recovering]
• Globe Story on TKR
• Fossil Foolishness. The administration seeks to blacken our future because it can hide in darkness?
• Using coins to pay for parking now seems strange.
• Trying VR/MR on Windows.
• Gigs vs Jobs in response to a discussion on Uber/Lyft vs Curb (which uses medallioned cabs).
• Google’s Anticipatory Meltdown Moment. The effort to provide answers before I ask them is an annoying over-optimization.
• Porting my number. Trying to move from a landline to using VoIP is a reminder of how antiquated the design point of our phone system is.
• Watching Obama and Letterman. A reminder of a time when had adult supervision.
• Smart-assed Cities. Smart cities are like smart networks providing limited solutions rather than creating opportunity.
• Credit Card Harvesting. An example of what can be done by injecting code client-side.
• Bible Museum. The Museum of the Bible Is a Safe Space for Christian Nationalists.
• Texas judge interrupts jury, says God told him defendant is not guilty.
• Uber UI.
• Fred Turner on Don’t Be Evil.
• JetBlue Pod Experience
• Windows Explorer Languishes. The folder metaphor is powerful, but it is underutilized.
• Birkenstock Vs. Amazon.
USPS/Amazon Synergy.
Medicare site woes. Makes things worse as an excuse to make things worse. An anti-virtuous cycle.
Spooky Tracking. A reminder of how much Google knows.
明年在上海 (Next Year in Shanghai). Jewish Christmas.
Got API. Comments on https://rmf.vc/GotAPI.
Apps demanding location. Why do apps claim they need my location just to use Bluetooth?
Apple Besties. iTunes for Windows is more helpful than I want.
• USB-C Woes. USB-C had such potential but …
• Multi-homing at home. It’s close to transparent.
• Fast Algorithm Overlords. Better isn’t necessarily better.
• Cowering In Place.
• Home Control Resilience.
• Welcome to the Theocracy.
• Anyone Can Make it in America (and other lies told by the rich).
• Takeover of the Judiciary.
• Apostrophe in peril!
• The disconnect between wealth and wisdom. Rich preppers. [2017-01-17]

Closed Groups

Mainly so I can find them

LucidCam

• File Transfer

Pending

• PODJT Thoughts on accidental winning.

Misc.

• Defending Trump’s policies

By Topic

Quora

Const in programs. (FB)

#Gripes

• Long DHCP leases are evil.
• WiFi disconnectivity.
• Synchronous Support.
• Social media as an opiate.
• Community Forums are not a substitute for support.
• Printer Paper Weight.
• Messages that don’t provide enough info. Like a hex address instead of a device description.

Gripes in progress

Windows File Explorer

• So much potential
• View by attributes (but only some)
• Thumbnail manipulation
• Illusion for Windows
• Windows 95 compatibility
• Hard to write managed extensions
• Legacy of WinCE file transfer protocol
• Lack of PaperPort capabilities
• Vs. Internet Explorer
• Failure to embrace the metaphor
• OneDrive online
• OneNote tec.
• Perhaps for file system extensions
• RemoteApp

#Fails

I'm going to start to use the tag #Fail for some posts. Partially to avoid having too many marked #gripe but also to be about more specific encounters.

Lyft (and Uber) fail.
• UA record splitting.
• Uber stuck at SFO.
• Tizen/Eclipse installation. (-vm{nl}c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_161\bin)
• Hulu and Netflix #fails on Roku.
• Passwords on guest WiFi connectivity.
Canadian Rail tiny popup.
Printing tiled images should default to single-sided.
Bitrot as sites start to require security and other corporate practices.
Uconnect, Sirius and …

Software, Programming and Disconnectivity

To a degree the concepts behind software pervade my writings so this isn’t a distinct category, but I’ll attempt to group some of the appropriate writings here.

JerryScript – a very small JavaScript engine.
• Connectivity as a Vital Consumer Service.
• The risks of As a Service and cloud dependency.
• Networking to Opportunity. Post for https://rmf.vc/nto.
• Complexity of Firewalls! Etc.
• IoT ET al are not ready for prime time.
• Getting SQL server working with TCP. (w/LINQ pointer)

The DNS (Domain Name System)

• The DNS is a rent-seekers dream. Price rise in .net
• DNS Price Jacking. Companies take unfair advantage of their ability to extract rent thanks a DNS (Domain Naming System) that holds your name and scared honor hostage.

Telecom Legacy

• Another 5G BS show on BBC.
• Telephone History Museum.
• 5G The super toll road
• Trump administration is thinking about nationalizing 5G mobile network.
• The Dead Hand of 5G. Why a new infrastructure for each new technology.
• Missed calls from my physician because T-Mobile labelled them Telemarketing.
• Telcos and the Façade of Modernity.
• A rant on the Google phone app. How do such things happen?

Programming and Software

• My new home server. Commodity platforms are increasingly inexpensive.

Home Control

• Connected my Nest Hello!
• The high price of Nest Aware.

CES 2018

• Disconcertingly real city backdrop at Ford at CES .
• Google Assistants. Or storm troopers or?
• Cox Lame Wifi at CES.

Politics

A lot is politics, so I may not always list here.

• Not Infrastructure. Trump proposal to swampify society
• House Republicans declare Trump above the law WRT to Russia.

Groups

Real History of Online

• Multics Emulator

Other’s posts

• Steve Bellovin debunking security nostrums.
• Curt Schilling’s crazy on Q Anon.
• Black Scholes and other Formulas. Class match mixed with questionable models for finance and other modern attempts to assume an ordered world. [Thanks Lynn Wheeler and comments by Lisa Toinen Mullin]
• Karl Schulmeisters on Privacy and FB.
• GUI for connecting microservices.
• Gmail “.” Attack. (Karl Schulmeisters) Shared.
• Dave Berlind Discussion of printers and networks.
• Ruth Balser / Kunster event.

Others on Medium

• Michael Jordan on AI.
• Beating the odds at the track.
• Two spaces – Josh Bernoff
• Religion vs. Science via Enriquez.

Pretty: Pictures and the like

• A CES sewer spouts beauty.
• Grand Canyon Tour.