Interesting Links for 13-10-2015

• Supernovas and the history of life on Earth
  • (tags: space stars life prehistory )
• The strange rise of the 'hoverboard' and why you shouldn't ride them through traffic
  • (tags: technology transport cool )
• The gene that makes women pear-shaped
  • (tags: genes fat )
• The Lib Dems have set up an inquiry to find the best way to legalise cannabis
  • (tags: marijuana libdem politics legalisation )
• In Berlin, it's better to have a Belgian bank account than a German one
  • (tags: banking Europe OhForFucksSake Germany UK )
• The Little Printf. A story about a kid who wanted to be a Real Programmer
  • (tags: programming children life advice computers )
• People with hallucinations are just at one end of the "making assumptions" scale
  • (tags: hallucinations psychology )
• Against Against Autism Cures
  • (tags: autism )
• Meeting celebrities with celebrity-related t-shirts (I love the Minnie Mouse one)
  • (tags: celebrity t-shirts funny )
• Why gay people go to hell
  • (tags: funny LGBT comic )
• Chivalry Isn’t Dead, You Just Don’t Know What the Fuck it is.
  • (tags: behaviour morality history )
• Angus Deaton's badly misunderstood paper on whether happiness peaks at $75,000, explained
  • (tags: happiness Money )

Facebook don't know what they want

About an hour ago, I got a note from Facebook that one of my posts on my Facebook page for Andy Ducker's Links was proving more popular than most, and would I like to boost it?

And I haven't done anything like that since I spent £10 aaaaaages ago to see what would happen. But I figured that spending £3 (the suggested amount) to see how boosted posts worked would be interesting.

So I clicked the Boost button, and left it to be approved.

Which it wasn't. Because it has the word Fuck in it.

And you'd think that they'd check that kind of thing _before_ they suggested I boost it, and saved me wasting my time, and theirs.

I mean, if you have nice, standard, lists of words that aren't allowed then check against those automatically. It's not like this is rocket science, or Facebook is lacking in developers who are perfectly capable of a word search. Heck, do it at the point I hit the "boost" button, and tell me I can't submit it while the word "Fuck" is in the headline.

Bafflingly incompetent, that's what it is.