Interesting Links for 09-10-2019

[andrewducker]

Following the game plan: Merkel call latest pantomime act in No.10's Brexit's strategy

(tags:UK Europe Doom )

A physics lecturer in why humanities courses are better at teaching critical thinking

(tags:science humanities thinking academia )

I had no idea France was so deeply intertwined with the economies of its ex colonies in Africa

(tags:France Africa currency economics )

People Prefer Their Jobs To Be Taken By Robots, Not Other Workers

(tags:psychology jobs robots )

Reading this account of a woman stabbing her daughter, and am baffled there's no mention of mental health.

(tags:parenting mentalhealth wtf )

It's almost funny watching Johnson and Cummings flail about trying to find a way to defeat parliament. If it wasn't also so serious...

(tags:politics law UK )

Dominic Cummings memo reveals that he doesn't understand the EU

(tags:UK Europe Doom )

Artifact: What Went Wrong With Valve's Card Game?

(tags:design games fail )

Russia's Disinformation War Is Just Getting Started

(tags:Russia fraud socialnetworking disinformation )

'A masterpiece': Norwich council houses win Stirling architecture prize for being environmentally and socially aware

(tags:architecture housing design environment )

Unicef now accepting donations through bitcoin

(tags:bitcoin UnitedNations children charity )

The most credible banking phishing attempt I've seen.

(tags:banking fraud )

Brexit: Parliament to sit on a Saturday for first time in 37 years in last-ditch Boris Johnson bid to stop delay

(tags:uk europe politics )

China and Taiwan clash over Wikipedia edits

(tags:wikipedia china taiwan )

Obsessed fan finds Japanese idol's home by zooming in on reflections in her eyes

(tags:eyes stalking OhForFucksSake japan )

Dog owners are over 30% less likely to die from cardiovascular causes

(tags:heart death dogs )

Euromyths - 1992-2017

(tags:europe myths eu )

The Nobile Officium Cases - the way forward

(tags:law UK europe )

Comments

[miss_s_b]

Only white MEN who kill are allowed to have mental health problems, Andrew.

[andrewducker]

That would certainly explain it!

[elf]

Simple phone phishing block: If someone calls you saying "problem with your account" etc etc, tell them you're a bit busy right now and will call back in a few minutes.

(We really, really need legislation that penalizes spam, phishing, and robocalls. And yeah, robocalls are already illegal, but nobody's enforcing those laws.)

Recently found out that iOS 13 has a setting to silence calls from anyone in not in your contacts, a feature people have been asking for for years. It's not available for my phone, which is older.

[doug]

silence calls from anyone in not in your contacts

I would love to do this, including on my landline. I get between two and a dozen spam calls a day. Except there are people I really need to hear from that I don't have in my contacts, including - this week:

• Numerous tradespeople calling back (I don't add them to my contacts until they've got as far as agreeing to come round, and sometimes they call back from a different number e.g. because they're back in the office and using the landline; sending these to voicemail would be disastrous since the whole bloody point is to actually talk to them. Sorry, sore point at the moment.)
  
• The GP phoning about a test result (set to unknown or withheld, can't remember which)
  
• A relative calling from hospital using the hospital bedside phone.

I didn't get any calls from my clients this week, but they are spread over multiple locations in Europe (so I certainly don't have all the numbers they might call from) so a foreign number needs a polite and speedy first response.

The spammers are getting smarter, too: many of them present spoofed numbers now, including local ones and national ones belonging to legit outfits.

[elf]

I've set my phone to a "standard" ring that's a single, low-volume chime, and put a different ringtone for every person in my contacts list. When I add a person to contacts, I change their ringtone. It's a hassle, but at least it lets me know before I look whether it's worth picking up.

I've considered setting the standard ringtone to silence, but I'm not sure I want to not hear any of them. (Might be okay now; I have a new job starting soon. Didn't want to miss calls while I was job-hunting, even though most of them were spam.)

[doug]

Yeah, I do the same with a custom ringtone for common callers - it's easy on my mobile, fiddlier on my landline. So I can tell when it's someone I know ringing from a number I know. Although most people I know don't phone these days. And when it's the standard ringtone, I still don't know whether it's a spammer or someone I actually want to talk to until they start talking.

I would really, really like a way of not having to deal with the spammy ones.

[chess]

Something like https://www.truecall.co.uk/ which can be set up to wait for them to talk first and then play them a message and rings, can block many of the nuisance calls, which will just go away if they get silence rather than connecting you to one of their scamming personnel. If you don't know what number your clients are calling from, having to talk to the robot first might annoy them, though.