The delayed-choice quantum eraser is finally debunked

Aractus 04, November, 2021

By Sabine Hossenfelder: Wait. Didn’t I say this a decade ago? Yes indeed I did, and admittedly I did get some things with my old analysis wrong, but I was 2/3rds of the way there which is a LOT closer than people who were saying “oh yes this experiment proves entanglement has effects going backwards […]

Announcement!

Aractus 09, December, 2020

There are some major changes to the blog I think everyone will like. Firstly, almost all content on the blog is now under a CC-BY-SA AU 3.0 copyright license (essentially the same license used by Wikipedia). Please read my new Copryright Policy in full. Note it doesn’t cover my theme, any media, or blog comments. […]

Sci-Hub – ethics

Aractus 19, November, 2020

I thought I might address why Sci-Hub exists, what it is, what it pretends to be, what it isn’t, and finally discuss the real ethical dilemmas with use of it. Academic opinion about it is sharply divided – and it should be sharply divided. On the surface it masquerades as a piracy tool, but as […]

ClassicPress

Aractus 12, March, 2019

My blog is now running on ClassicPress not Wordpress. I know what you’re thinking – it’s stupid to be an early adopter. Well, I’m going to flip that and propose that it’s stupid to be a late adopter. See what’s happened over the past 10 years is there has been a very strong shift away […]

Firefox adds scrollbar styling after 18 years

Aractus 13, December, 2018

From today, Firefox visitors will see a dark coloured scrollbar on the default theme. The plain theme, if you have Javascript enabled, will remain with the default scrollbar. And so ends an eighteen year wait for this functionality. The reason why this has never been supported before is because there was never an official CSS […]

Why websites need to STOP overusing Javascript

Aractus 04, August, 2018

When I created my blog’s redesign I was originally not intending to use any Javascript. Well other than the break-out-of frames script that I’ve always used, and the inline scripting that Wordpress inserts here and there. Notice I actually do not use the wp_head() function. However, I use some scripting, although not very much hence […]

New theme

Aractus 17, June, 2018

(Last updated 12/11/2020) This blog works best with FireFox. Welcome to the brand new theme for my blog. I spent the last two weeks creating it – completely from scratch, even the background images are unique (made from royalty-free images I found on the internet). The only thing that hasn’t changed just yet is the […]

US accuses NK of unleashing WannaCry

Aractus 20, December, 2017

And it’s probably bullshit. Here’s the first reason to think this was not North Korea… it made the hackers barely any money. In total only around 360 people or so paid the ransom. The hackers were not prepared to receive large numbers of payments as there was no way for them to immediately identify a […]

CSIRO-backed Flexi diet evidence review

Aractus 18, September, 2017

Introduction The diet industry is huge. And mostly it doesn’t work. Why is this? Well, it’s actually quite straightforward. People are set up for failure by an industry that thrives on people failing and coming back. They don’t really care whether their clients succeed or not, so long as they can profit from their efforts. […]

My 600-lb Life: Real or Fake?

Aractus 30, August, 2017

Fake. I like to be upfront, I saw for some reason a video come up on YouTube with a click-bait title “my 600 lb life exposed” where the lady claims she did her research and she’s concluded that it’s “real”. Well she’s wrong, and this entry will explain why she’s wrong. So first off let’s […]

Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who?

Aractus 18, July, 2017

I see that there’s a lot of discussion about the 13th Doctor’s casting. Much of it is focused on whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea to cast a woman in the role. As usual I’m here to address the questions that no one else will. Paul McGann nailed the role. And not […]

The future of the web is ad-free

Aractus 29, June, 2017

Your future and my future are certainly ad-free. We use uBlock Origin and the MVPS hosts file. I’m about to tell you what all those people on Youtube and other places have missed, when they cry foul of adblockers, or put up anti-adblock messages. Are you ready? It used to be that only the tech-savvy […]

What you weren’t told about WannaCry

Aractus 18, May, 2017

I pride myself on providing you, the humble visitor, with good information. Not always perfect because, well, I’m not a security expert. You can think of this post as an afterthought if you like to my previous post, what I am aiming to do here is complete the picture. Is Microsoft to blame? The US […]

World’s worst ransomware attack yet

Aractus 13, May, 2017

The recent WannaCry ransomware attack has been described as being the worst attack yet. The cybercriminals who created it have quickly become the world’s most wanted cyber criminals… but let’s talk about who’s responsible here, because the cyber criminals were armed whether intentionally or not by the NSA. By the way, I have been working […]

Why I’m Not Islamophobic

Aractus 30, April, 2017

This is a post I’ve been meaning to do for a while, it’s a direct follow-on to my 2010 post Hi, I’m an Islamophobic. On today’s Outsiders programme with Ross Cameron and Rowan Dean was one of the loveliest people I have ever seen on television. His name is Imam Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi (pictured), and […]

Google is building an adblocker into Chrome…

Aractus 28, April, 2017

Google is playing with fire. In fact so is Opera. So is ABP, Adblock, and PageFair. To understand where we are, we need to go back to the beginning. This will be a long entry, so grab yourself a coffee, install uBlock Origin if you don’t have it, and enjoy your time here. Ad blocking […]

World’s worst cyber criminal group identified

Aractus 18, April, 2017

The cyber espionage group known as Longhorn has been formally identified by Symantec as the CIA. Now, take a breath and get ready to learn the ugly truth behind this revelation. We live in the digital age, and underpinning that is the illusion of electronic security. Now I say illusion, but I wish to stress […]

Vietnamese Man Violently Thrown Off US Plane

Aractus 11, April, 2017

Post updated: 12/04/2017. Just when I thought the US couldn’t get any more inhumane, a story has broken about a 69 year old ethnically-Vietnamese American gentleman now identified as Dr David Dao being violently assaulted by aviation officers in the US. Here are the facts: United Airlines “overbooked” a Sunday flight from Chicago to Louisville. […]

Youtube Adpocalypse: Advertiser speaks out

Aractus 09, April, 2017

What started out as an ad boycott by several large corporations and governments, has quickly grown into something else entirely. Full disclosure: I encourage all my readers to install uBlock Origin immediately, if you don’t already have it installed, all all devices. It is a featured extension in Firefox. Adblockers are one of the best […]

The Great Youtube Ad Boycott of 2017

Aractus 05, April, 2017

Well by now you should know exactly what I think about internet advertising. Youtube represents everything wrong with the internet. And I must admit that I spend way too much of my time on it. UBlock Origin is now the recommended/featured ad blocker in FireFox. When you click on Get Add-Ons (about:addons in the address […]