The Lair

I’m more than a little late to this party - but it’s a pet peeve and I feel the need to vent. So here we are… yet another instruction on why trusting personal details to a random startup is a bad bad idea. Gather around, kids. This is fun.

Part 1: Ceiling cat Facebook employees are watching you. They know what’s on your profile, they know which profiles you’ve been visiting and it’s apparently a perk to be able to stalk people. Discount the last as Valleywag hyperbole (although no one seems to be rushing to deny it) and you still have an interesting picture. Surprised? People actually seem to be.

Part 2: People on your friendlist can be co-opted for targeted advertising. (More commentary here and here).

Surely that can’t be legal, you cry indignantly. Well, it is - if their terms of service hold up in court. They can pretty much do whatever they want according to that document (remember clicking I agree on that?). It’s their data. There is also an argument in the Slashdot comment thread about Facebook’s deletion policy for profiles - they seemingly promise to resurrect all the data if you should return from your fit of pique.

But I’m being both misanthropic and cynical about this. I no longer consider it my personal crusade to tell people to hide personal information (date of birth? permanent address? good grief, people! how many banks rely on your date of birth for one step of authentication?) on their profiles. There are two reasons for this - first is that it’s amusing to have articles on how to make out like a bandit with FB (translated - thx R for both links). The second reason is that people with lots more information out in public are low hanging fruit for the data miners and criminal elements that are undoubtedly going to invade. Cynically, it’s sort of like staying next to a herd of slow, limping zebras when the lions turn up looking for lunch.

If some inventive dataminer figures out a way to tie in Scrabulous stats to personal information though, I’m pretty much screwed.

People insist that it’s not the cover of the book that matters, but the content. But that’s not true. It’s not the content, it’s the typeface. It doesn’t matter what you type, so long as you choose the proper typeface.

All of you guys are idiots. Really. Just go away.

You just blinked at that and kept on reading, amirite? Ha! First anecdotal point proven. Well, not really.

This then, is my somewhat dramatic introduction to a programme I saw last night. The programme was a mini-feature named Helvetica - all about the Helvetica typeface or in lay terms, the Helvetica font. Why is it that an entire film has been made about the history of this still ubiquitous and surprisingly popular font? Because of its influence on subsequent font design, partially - and also because it gives a fascinating insight into the psychology and the thought processes behind the design of a type face. The feeling of a pure message, of calmness, of neutrality - all of those things can be (and were) purveyed by a simple choice of typeface for a sign or advertisement.

I really like this font. Not sure why.

See, the choice of font for any project is not straightforward. I too feel that there is a correct typeface for every job and strangely enough, my eternal search for the ideal programmers font coincides with the birth of this belief. The font that you choose to stare at for hours on end (be it on screen or on paper) has a huge influence on your perception of what is being read, on your general feeling of comfort (I hate handwriting fonts because they’re hard to read) and a general feeling of symmetry.

That last point is a little bit hard to explain - fonts need to feel right when displayed on the screen. Not all of them do - for example, this one doesn’t work for me. nor does this one. I also dislike the practice of using monospaced fonts for my editor, regardless of what the best practice may be. Sans-serif (with the rounded edge) works best.

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First there was the political compass (where I am completely and utterly smack dab in the center), now there is apparently the new political compass. We were discussing the right-wing, left-wing nature of posts and topics in the lkblagozphere (term used without permission) and I displayed my usual bipartisan tendencies. I call this being a centrist. Those less kindly call it flip-flopping. We might both be right.

So we all collectively decided to do the new political compass test. Post your results in the comments kthxbai.

FWIW: I couldn’t decide what my country of residence was, since I’ve lived in the UK for a few years now. So I picked the UK. Perhaps that was an error. Perhaps not. I have no idea.

My scores:
Left/Right (This axis is quite like the familiar left/right political division. It mixes economic issues — varying from laisser faire to interventionist perspective — and social or “moral” issues such as recommending the death penalty to punish criminals. We choose to give “the right” positive values on this axis)
-3.6613 (-0.2204)

Pragmatism (This axis is much less important than the first. It represents a combination of philosophies you could call “pragmatism”, “utilitarianism” and so forth, mixing social, religious and economic issues. We have chosen to give an atheist, utilitarian perspective positive values on this axis)
+5.3560 (+0.3224)

So, to my slight surprise - I’m a little bit more far left than I expected. I thought I’d be closer to the center. To my complete lack of surprise, I’m utilitarian/atheist/pragmatic/whatever you want to call it. Again, though - the values -3 and +5 respectively aren’t very far from the dead center of the chart; so at least I’m consistent in that way.