Death Is Bad

This will only be of interest to those of you who use Chrome. I wouldn’t normally post a how-to that’s basically a replication of other stuff on the net, but it turns out this is a two-step process and no one tells you that, which can lead to much frustration.

Those most-visited sites on the new-tabs page? You probably already know you can remove them permanently by hovering over one until a little ‘X’ shows up in the upper-right corner and you click it. But what happens if you accidentally clicked it for a site you use all the damn time, like Gmail? There should be a menu item under ‘Options’ that allows you to remove/edit that sort of thing, right?

Well yes, there SHOULD be. For something so easily mis-clicked, and of such usefulness, there SHOULD be a quick and easy customization option. At the very least a way to undo mistakes (or for when you change your mind). But there isn’t.

So Step One is to edit the Preferences data file manually. Taken from the Google Product Forums:

On Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR_USERNAME_HERE>\Local Settings\Application Data\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\
On Windows Vista: C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME_HERE>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\

You will need Hidden Folders enabled to find that directory. Otherwise, you can just substitute it into your address bar in Windows Explorer, and then hit Enter.

Once you find that folder, there should be a folder called “Default”. Browse into that folder, and look for a file simply called “Preferences”. We’ll be editing that file, so feel free to back it up just in case.

Now, open that file in Notepad, and find the section called “most_visited_blacklist”. You can press ctrl+f, and enter that term to find it quickly.

For example, you should see something like this (btw, this is what mine looks like):

“most_visited_blacklist”: {
“132dcb2a30d7da81d9b002347f6ffbdc”: true,
“c81fae6de8847f57a5b6cf80f083dbae”: true,
“df76891edd41a04f8fb44114885522dc”: true
},

Change it so it looks something like this:

“most_visited_blacklist”: {
},

In the newer version of Chrome you also have to find the text that says something like

“blacklistupdate”: {
“lastpingday”: “847363674885675”
},
and clear it also to look like this
“blacklistupdate”: {
},

 

At this point you might be tempted to shut down Chrome and restart it, to witness your success. Don’t do this. What no one tells you is that Google “conveniently” keeps a backup of all the sites you’ve blacklisted from your new-tabs page (along with much more, of course). And they will “conveniently” update your blacklist to match their records automatically on start-up. You’ll have to go back into your Preferences file and do all of this AGAIN. It feels almost like black magic the first time you go back into your Preferences file and see that nothing has changed, even though you explicitly remember having edited and saved it just two minutes ago. Has my memory of events been hacked? WTF?

Anyway, first you have to disable Google’s Syncing. Here’s how to do that, taken from C-Net:

To clear your sync data from the Google Dashboard, scroll to the Chrome sync section and click the link to “Stop sync and delete data from Google.” You’ll then be prompted to confirm the deletion.

You can also go directly to the Chrome sync settings page. There, you’ll see a grid layout of sync items and a count of how many of those items are being synchronized. Hovering over each section brings up a description of the type of data being synchronized. To clear your data, click on the “Stop and Clear” button. Again, you’ll be asked to confirm the deletion.

That’s it. Within several hours, all your sync data will be deleted from Google’s servers. To re-enable Chrome sync, go to Settings in Chrome, and use your Google account to sign in. Then, go to Advanced sync settings to choose the items you want to sync.

So, there you go. A simple menu option turned into manual file editing and disabling “nifty” features you didn’t know you had (or wanted!). Someone at Google dropped the ball on this one.

BTW, if you have the new Chrome New Tabs page as much as I do, you can revert back to the old one (at least for now). Hey Google – once the omnibar in the New Tabs page acts the same way it does on google.com – including auto-fill drop downs – then I’ll use it.

/frustration

Star Wars inserted into Kinkade. Awesome.

Dammit! I was tricked into rejecting Jesus by my toys! It’s all so clear now…
Glad they mentioned Smurfs. Those were a big scare in my church as a kid. My best friend’s younger brother was tormented by the smurfs that literally(!) jumped off his bedsheets and danced around the room at night, chanting and mocking him.
Sadly we can’t replicate this, they burned the bedsheet.

Maybe I just don’t have the energy for it today, but I didn’t get any schadenfreude out of this. Kinda feel bad for the bastard. Ron Paul’s Campaign Manager Died of Pneumonia, Penniless and Uninsured

I don’t…. what??

Fake pharma ad – “Vaccines. And now my kids don’t die.”

My Little Pony – “What people think I watch Vs What I actually watch”
Just 3 more weeks ’till Season 4!

Sayeth Scott Alexander: “I made fun of how religious people say “because of human dignity” when something weirds them out but they have no argument against it. Some people doubted me, or thought I was making a pattern out of noise. To these people I present -” Three parent babies ‘incompatible with human dignity’

A tribute to the dead. The google maps link.

Radioactive Fox. This is (almost) as good as Smells Like Teen Spirit & Never Gonna Give You Up mash-up.

Can a clash of multi-billion titans do something to un-fuck patent law in this country? I dunno. I can hope. “Northern Telecom went bankrupt. Now Apple, RIM, Ericsson, Sony and MSFT want to use its assets to make your Droid phone more expensive.”

I despise Daylight Savings so freakin much. Article advocates getting rid of it and going to a 2-zone system in the US. I assume based on the theory of always asking for the outrageous so what you actually want will seem more reasonable.
“Research based on time use surveys found Americans’ schedules are determined by television more than daylight. That suggests in effect, Americans already live on two time zones.”

The Logic of Stupid Poor People.
“A hiring manager at my first professional job looked me up and down in the waiting room, cataloging my outfit, and later told me that she had decided I was too classy to be on the call center floor. I was hired as a trainer instead. The difference meant no shift work, greater prestige, better pay and a baseline salary for all my future employment.”

20th Century Headlines Re-written to Get More Clicks (but you already read xkcd anyway, right?)

A pertinent warning about The Internet, from the future. I’ve been getting less done than I want recently as well.

Less than a century later, it’s the Germans who are protecting Europe’s rights from a big-brother government while the American public are looking the other way and shrugging. Oh how quickly things change.
“Europe mulls sanctions against US over spying”

Oh. My. God.
There is a Tenacious D BLUEGRASS tribute band!!

I’ve been doing sex all wrong!

A trailer for a movie that I believe is actually real! :)

GOP state official quits after ‘Daily Show’ interview. So I guess even the GOP can tolerate only so much dumb-fuckery. Seriously, wow.

Send a note to your congress-person. Help stop the patent trolls.

Damn, China’s smog seen from space. You know what we need to do? Disband the EPA. Stupid job-killing bureaucrats! Think of all the jobs we could create in gas-mask manufacturing!

Robot Sign-Spinners. I suppose these are the sorts of mind-numbing jobs we’d want to automate first. But wasn’t the sign-spinner a reaction to the prohibition on billboards? These mannequins look to just be bringing that problem back, with the added bonus of foot-traffic congestion. I imagine it won’t be too long until they’re banned.

The Rat Park experiment. Drug abuse – it’s not so much about physical addiction as it is about life sucking. (also summarized in this cool comic).

The man who brought you Neoractionism In A Giant Nutshell has produced The Anti-Reactionary FAQ. It’s written with his traditional wit and humor and very informative. It is, again, on the long side. Might want to break it up over a day or two.

No link here, as this was a comment on a friend’s post. It made me die a little inside.
“We hired a football coach one year and then built a teaching schedule for him that included a math class, a science class, two English classes and a PE class. He was a PE major. Every day he borrowed my lesson plans. I saw him sketching Xs and Os on the back of a student paper once, and I teased him for doing that instead of grading the paper. He said to me, dead serious, “I will never be fired if Grand Junction’s English students are better than ours.” [Grand Junction is our crosstown rival]. On the other hand, they hired me to teach English over many more experienced candidates because I was going to be the new swim coach. The head of secondary education’s daughter was a swimmer.”

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?
I’m going to assume this is over-blown to sell eyeballs, but damn this sort of thing is awesome! (on an intellectual level) I want to read fiction set in this world. Watts hinted at it in Blindsight, but since most of the action was off-planet it wasn’t much explored.

More details here

Please take a moment today to not destroy the world.

In the interest of having backups, this is the full text of “9/26 is Petrov Day”, linked above.

Today is September 26th, Petrov Day, celebrated to honor the deed of Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov on September 26th, 1983.  Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, take a minute to not destroy the world.

The story begins on September 1st, 1983, when Soviet jet interceptors shot down a Korean Air Lines civilian airliner after the aircraft crossed into Soviet airspace and then, for reasons still unknown, failed to respond to radio hails.  269 passengers and crew died, including US Congressman Lawrence McDonald.  Ronald Reagan called it “barbarism”, “inhuman brutality”, “a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten”.  Note that this was already a very, very poor time for US/USSR relations.  Andropov, the ailing Soviet leader, was half-convinced the US was planning a first strike.  The KGB sent a flash message to its operatives warning them to prepare for possible nuclear war.

On September 26th, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the officer on duty when the warning system reported a US missile launch.  Petrov kept calm, suspecting a computer error.

Then the system reported another US missile launch.

And another, and another, and another.

What had actually happened, investigators later determined, was sunlight on high-altitude clouds aligning with the satellite view on a US missile base.

In the command post there were beeping signals, flashing lights, and officers screaming at people to remain calm.  According to several accounts I’ve read, there was a large flashing screen from the automated computer system saying simply “START” (presumably in Russian). Afterward, when investigators asked Petrov why he hadn’t written everything down in the logbook, Petrov replied,”Because I had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, and I don’t have a third hand.”

The policy of the Soviet Union called for launch on warning.  The Soviet Union’s land radar could not detect missiles over the horizon, and waiting for positive identification would limit the response time to minutes.  Petrov’s report would be relayed to his military superiors, who would decide whether to start a nuclear war.

Petrov decided that, all else being equal, he would prefer not to destroy the world.  He sent messages declaring the launch detection a false alarm, based solely on his personal belief that the US did not seem likely to start an attack using only five missiles.

Petrov was first congratulated, then extensively interrogated, then reprimanded for failing to follow procedure.  He resigned in poor health from the military several months later.  According to Wikipedia, he is spending his retirement in relative poverty in the town of Fryazino, on a pension of $200/month.  In 2004, the Association of World Citizens gave Petrov a trophy and $1000.  There is also a movie scheduled for release in 2008, entitled The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World.

Maybe someday, the names of people who decide not to start nuclear wars will be as well known as the name of Britney Spears.  Looking forward to such a time, when humankind has grown a little wiser, let us celebrate, in this moment, Petrov Day.

Trying to do these a little more frequently so they aren’t as long.

Cracked is a far better site than any of the professional news media. The 6 Weirdest Things We’ve Learned Since 9/11

Another *amazing* brilliant science-fiction piece from Ted Chiang is out. One of my favoritest authors ever.
“writing is a technology, which means that a literate person is someone whose thought processes are technologically mediated. We became cognitive cyborgs as soon as we became fluent readers”

Transdimensional Justice Monster – A flash piece by an extinctionist. Every now and then I find myself in danger of slipping back into this frame of mind.

MIRI’s Five Theses, rewritten with the xkcd-inspired Up-Goer Five text converter.

WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY
(and other fun facts)

Looks like almost every major crop can be altered to draw its own nitrogen from the atmosphere, which would drastically reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizer. Pollution and costs would drop dramatically. “It is anticipated that the N-Fix technology will be commercially available within the next two to three years.” :) (taken from Scott Alexander)

A thought-provoking take on minimum wages: Why We Need Minimum Price Laws Today

It’s Your P*ssy, You Can Do What You Want With It –
“It wasn’t until I realized I hated sex that I thought: what about me?
Then it was on like Donkey Kong.”

A video of Korean DOTA 2 announcers. Fun times :)

A British dude gets a toll-number for all those annoying cold-calls, surveys, and political calls you get – and actually makes a bit of money! Now I need to get a landline again :)

This will be vital for my plans. A Protein That May Help Explain Memory Loss In Old Age

A great dissection of the rhetoric Kerry used in his “We gotta attack Syria” speech.

It makes sense that a group that provides the same services to its community that a church does should get the same tax breaks a church does. Feds say OK to atheists on religion tax break.  I guess if you’re trying to build a case against special tax exemption for churches, doing awesome things for your community isn’t the way to go about it.

So mean, but still funny! A Japanese TV show (of course) pranks dogs. That last dog is a bad-ass!

A dinosaur prank too? Japan is dangerously close to winning the internet!

HAHAHAHA! “Pearsons did her best on Sunday to try to put a biblical spin on why the church had flip-flopped on its vaccination stance.” Vaccine-fearing Texas megachurch urges flock to immunize after measles outbreak

A great bit by Louis CK about aging – Incurable Shitty Ankle
(and while we’re on Louis CK, I now  know why Melissa wants to get married! She hasn’t had a divorce yet, so she’s missing out on the best part of life!)

An amazing song by Touche Amore. You’ll probably like it even if you aren’t normally into Screamo. And two more great songs from them.
“And for my final trick I’ll make everyone who loved me disappear”

 

Looked up Captain Nintendo again on a lark. Is it just me or… is Mother Brain kinda a racist version of a black woman? Totally didn’t notice that as a kid.

Anime: Subs or Dubs? A more bitter fight than Kirk or Picard!

Good news on the “Hah, bit you in the ass didn’t it, you bastards?” front:
“potential spooks-to-be were tapped early (often while at school or university), vetted, then given a safe sinecure along with regular monitoring to ensure they stayed on the straight-and-narrow all the way to the gold watch and pension …
Gen Y has never thought of jobs as permanent things. Gen Y will stare at you blankly if you talk about loyalty to their employer …
This means the NSA and their fellow swimmers in the acronym soup of the intelligence-industrial complex are increasingly reliant on nomadic contractor employees, and increasingly subject to staff churn …
employees who lack instinctive loyalty because the culture they come from has spent generations systematically destroying social hierarchies and undermining their sense of belonging are much more likely to start thinking the unthinkable.”

For over a year I had almost no time to play video games. A few months ago I managed to find some free time again, so I finally played through Mass Effect 3, and now I’m working through Bioshock Infinite. I’m enjoying it while it lasts, because I may well soon lose extra gaming time again. :)

I’m not that far into the game yet, seems like less than halfway. For all its good points, one thing still bothers me – I’m playing a bit of a psychopathic murderer. I’m not referring to the whole “must atone for his violent past and poor life choices” plot line. He was a Pinkerton thug, and before that he “fought” at the massacre at Wounded Knee, and the story arc looks like it’s going to be one of redemption. That’s totally legit, and pretty good storytelling. What I’m referring to is the way the First-Person-Shooter motivation is handled.

Like most video games, the majority of the game play comes from killing tons of dudes. The motivation for this doesn’t have to be complicated – the other side is evil aliens, or mobsters, or Nazis, or even just soldiers from the other side. You’ve got an easy audience here – we signed up for a game were we run around killing tons of dudes, the simplest excuse will work.

Bioshock Infitine sets the stage for you before throwing the enemies at you. You get to walk around the city and meet its inhabitants, and get a feeling for them as people. They have hopes and worries, they gossip and complain. Their two biggest sins are that they are religious zealots, and they’re very racist. First, my parents are religious zealots, and I don’t think that makes them worthy of extermination. Second, this game takes place in 1912, where even people who weren’t bad were a bit racist. To overcome this, the game makes the racist to the point of absurdity. A conversation I overheard could be summed up in this exchange:

A: “Wow, I am so racist!”

B: “Not a racist as me! I’m more racist!”

A: “It sure is great being racist!”

B: “I love being a racist in a city of super-racists!”

A: “You know the best thing about being racist? All the racism!”

B: “God bless racism!”

It goes a bit far at times. Anyway, the infiltration part of the game ends when I have to choose to join in the stoning of an interracial couple or throwing the baseball at an authority figure ordering the stoning. There doesn’t look to be enough baseballs to kill the couple, this is one of those public-flogging types of events that will leave them beaten and bloody, and possibly permanently damaged. Obviously I’m not gonna join in so I chuck the ball at the evil authority figure. Naturally a nearby policeman tries to stop me, and I reply by… bashing his face in with a metal implement until he dies from it, then doing the same to his partner.

After that I take their guns and go on a murderous rampage while the cops try to stop my reign of terror. Call me crazy, but that seems like a bit of an overreaction.

The main objective of the game is to rescue a girl and take her out of the city. If I had her in tow and guys started shooting at me to try to stop me, I’d be ok with gunning them down. Yeah, maybe they think they’re stopping a kidnapper or something, but like I said – I’m an easy audience. I’m here to run around shooting guys, and the excuse of “they’re the security detail that’s stopping me from rescuing the girl” is good enough. That the writers added the “I’m here to kill all the racists” thing at the beginning really makes me uneasy. It has shattered my comfortable veneer of justification by trying to give me too much justification and failing to take into account that maybe I think racism is bad, but not death-penalty-worthy. It’s detracting from my enjoyment of the game. Something keeps bothering me, saying “Dude, wtf?”

But hey, I’m not that far into the game, maybe this was intentional and it’ll pay off.