If you attended the panel that this presentation was originally given at, then I'd like to say a big thank you. Nineworlds contained more than thirty three tracks this year, I was surprised so many people chose this panel to be part of their Saturday morning convention experience.
Here is the link to Google Drive folder containing my "Fanfic: Present" Presentation from the Nineworlds 2015 convention.
The download is available in the following formats:
On Friday 14th August there will be an additional document in the Google Drive folder with all the sources / citations I can remember and also any factual amendments / additional information.
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I find pinhole cameras interesting, and the seemingly infinite ways that people have invented to better take a selfie is - well also interesting but in an entirely different way.
I think this contraption which enables a person to take a selfie with a pinhole camera is well - stupid. But it's a breathless kind of playful stupid.
The pinhole camera Selfie device was created and built buy Ignas Kutavicius
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Kieron Gillen is a writer I pay attention to - particularly Phonogram the comic and Marvel's Kid Loki. Not only because I'm a fan of his work, but also because he's proven time and again to be unflinchingly honest about what life is like for someone who writes for living in these heady days, when it is very-dfficult-almost-impossible to make a living wage as a professional writer.
In other words, the problem is that I know exactly what videogames writing primarily involves, and I have little interest in being anyone’s story monkey. For me, writing is control. Videogame writers, on average, don’t have enough control for it to appeal.
I am not a professional writer and so I have never been a writer for hire. It never occurred to me that writing as part of a larger team might be so unfulfilling (unless you have some control over the team).
I can't imagine anyone aspires to being a story monkey, but I guess it pays the bills.
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Yahoo is the latest company ignoring Web users’ requests for privacy
Yahoo yesterday announced that it will stop complying with Do Not Track signals that Web browsers send on behalf of users who wish to not be monitored for advertising purposes.
Arstechnica reports that Yahoo will no longer honor any HTTP requests to not track user activity.
Yahoo noted yesterday that “users can still manage their privacy on Yahoo while benefiting from a personalized web experience. We encourage our users to tailor their online experience through the variety of privacy tools we offer within our own platform, accessible via our Yahoo Privacy Centre”
So Yahoo has taken it upon themselves to dicate what the best "web experieance' is for me, even when I explicitly tell them I do not want to interact with their services in this specific manner.
Nice to know that Yahoo knows what's 'best' for me.
Oh wait, they don't.
What Yahoo knows, is that by following the 'Do Not track' conventions, it makes it much harder for Yahoo to show me targeted advertising..
The larger problem is that Yahoo isn't the only large web company ignoring Do Not Track instructions: See here for a full list. Also bear in mind that;
Yahoo isn't an outlier here. Although Google's Chrome browser can send Do Not Track requests, a Google Do Not Track page that hasn't been updated since October 2012 says, "At this time, most web services, including Google's, do not alter their behavior or change their services upon receiving Do Not Track requests." The list of companies adhering to Do not Track is a short one, although some big names like Twitter and Pinterest are on there.
As turning on 'Do Not track' is a conscious choice you have to make whilst using the Net, then I'm guessing you are clued-up enough to not want to have your browsing behaviour tracked. I wish that not using any Yahoo services were an easy and simple way to illustrate to Yahoo why ignoring customer wishes is a bad business model, the trouble is that the list of Yahoo owned online services is quite extensive.
My own particular weakness here is Flickr, which Yahoo bought in early 2005.
Looks like I'll have to find (or self host) a different photo sharing platform from now, on because I don't support this latest move by Yahoo at all.
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