I know I said no more Friday Faves until after NaNoWriMo – but I exceeded my first day’s word quota (you can follow my word count via the widget in the right column on my blog’s front page), so I’m taking a moment to share both a new Kickstarter project for Boston friends AND their warning about flying with data!
Tag Archives: warning
Tip/Warning: Long File Names in Bandcamp (and Other Zipped Downloads)
I recently purchased a new album as a zipped download from the site Bandcamp.com to my Windows PC at work (because the network connection there has a much bigger “pipe” than at home). The zipped file contained eight MP3 files which when extracted should have gone into a folder with the name of the band and the album title.
I clicked to “extract all’ the files, and the program did so… until it reached the eighth and final track. At that point it failed and gave me the error message:
I tried again and got the same error, “Path too long”. After some research I determined what was wrong and how to work around it, plus told the band – they fixed it so that other buyers will not have this problem:
Facebook Tip: Nothing Is Really Private
Just in case anyone still has any assumptions about privacy on Facebook:
A friend of my partner sent her a private FB message mentioning having a certain type of not-average medical procedure… and 24 hrs later I started seeing ads in my FB feed for variations on that same procedure, which had not been pitched to me previously.
Since we are both friends with that person, plus J and I are listed in our FB accounts as being in a relationship, this is an example of how FB targets ads based on what keywords they are seeing pass through ANY part of your account AND the accounts of people with whom you are connected.
This is also an example of what can be done while still probably adhering to a privacy policy. FB, Google, etc say that they don’t give identifiable information about individuals to advertisers – but I’m sure that use of that keyword in the message plus my being linked on FB to both people in that conversation resulted in my account ID # being lumped into a batch of IDs used to target an ad using that same keyword.
So again, a reminder: do not post anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want to see featured on the nightly news or in another public forum.
[Also check last week’s post on keeping your public FB posts private]
Facebook Tip: Beware of Privacy Slippage
Who can see what you post on Facebook is a tricky concept. After numerous complaints FB made a lot of changes to their privacy settings but it’s still complex, and not all of the settings are “sticky” – you may think you are fine but unknowingly did something that makes everything you subsequently post a LOT more visible than you thought.
The most dangerous privacy slippage I’ve seen recently is one that may be setting ALL your status updates to be publicly visible – including to job interviewers, co-workers, etc.