(no subject)

[ellarien]

So the final word on that falling satellite seems to be that it came down overnight. Somewhere, most likely at sea. If it had fallen on anything important we'd presumably have heard about it by now.

Meanwhile, the Sun has been flaring away at a brisk pace -- one X-class flare today, and so many M-class that they're kind of merging together and the X-ray flux has barely been below the "M" level since noon today.

Facebook is utterly messed up and full of cranky people. Near as I can figure, they've rolled out way too many changes at once (but not consistently to everyone), and given people too many useless new buttons to twiddle while quietly taking away some useful privacy controls. By anecdotal evidence they may have managed to badly break privacy in the process, at least for some people some of the time by accident and probably by design for a lot more who don't realize the implications of tagging someone, for example. It all makes me even more wary of saying anything over there that isn't utterly innocuous, let along posting photos with actual people in them. (Not that I take a lot of those anyway.)

Comments

[lapswood.livejournal.com]

My FB seems to be untouched atm but I'm reading lots of complaints on my flist!

[ellarien]

Yes, it does seem to be patchy. (Which may explain some of the reported glitches.) I have the scrambled news feed but not the dreaded ticker, so far. In fact, I don't even have the most recent version of the right-hand chat bar. Yet.

[lapswood.livejournal.com]

I seem to spend 95% of my time on FB via my smartphone which seems to be free of all these layout changes. I do look at the pc version a couple of times a week. :0/

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

My interactions on FB are minimal. I have about 9 friends on the account I actually use and they're nearly all close family. I wouldn't be on there at all but daughter and son use it a little and it means I see photos of the grandchildren.

I have never liked the mutual friends aspect of FB and it seems to be full of trivia. Which is fine if I am close to people, but for a wider circle of friends I end up being told stuff I don't really want to know so I actually much prefer Google+.

I do think it's particularly stupid of Facebook to mess with the site just at the point where Google+ went live to everyone. Are they trying to drive people to the opposition?

[ellarien]

I've found it useful for keeping in vague touch with friends and colleagues around the world -- and for keeping tabs on stuff like NASA launches. But the new changes are offputting and may drive away some of the people I interact with most.

I suspect they're rolling out a lot of changes in an attempt to keep things looking fresh to compete with Google+, but in the rush they may have shot themselves in several feet at once.