States shouldn’t block personalized license plates

States shouldn’t waste taxpayer dollars paying workers to review and approve personalized or vanity license plates.
Politicians worry that license plates with offensive words or ideas would be seen as government endorsement of those sayings. The truth is: those words say everything about the person who buys the vanity license plate.
Governments don’t supervise bumper stickers or license plate holders, nor should they. The same should hold for license plates.
If people want to decorate their car with a vanity license plate that others don’t like, that should be their choice. Of course, they will face societal judgment and scrutiny for their decision.
This issue often becomes news when someone’s vanity license plate is recalled.
In May, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles demanded that a man send back his license plate, saying it violated state rules against plates that are profane, obscene or vulgar. His license plate reads “FTRU MPK.”
He admits he does not like President Trump, but says his plate is a play on “flunk Trump,” not the popular curse word that starts with F, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
Virginia should let people have whatever they want on a license plate, but raise the price of such a luxury. Virginia currently charges just $10 a year for personalized plates, plus a one-time plate fee of $10. That’s way too low for the extravagance. They could even auction off the more popular words to the highest bidder.

Related articles:

22 Vanity Plates That Will Make You Shake Your Head (HuffPost; Feb. 19, 2014)

State governments should cash in on vanity license plates, not censor them (Tech-media-tainment; Jan. 16, 2011)

Photo: “FTRU MPK” license plate. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Web browser makers address scourge of autoplay video and audio

Among the most annoying things on the internet today are websites with autoplay video and audio.
You go to a website or click on a weblink and a page opens with blaring audio and distracting videos. Web surfers have to mute the page or pause the video to stop the annoyance. Sometimes clicking the pause button opens the advertiser’s webpage.
Thankfully the makers of web browsers are starting to take action.
In June, Apple announced that the Safari web browser for macOS High Sierra, due out this fall, will block autoplay videos.
Also, Google is testing a feature for its Chrome browser that will allow users to block sound on a per-domain basis.
“A lot of awful things can happen on the internet, but few are as terrible as landing on a website that automatically plays videos with sound,” Android Police writer Ryan Whitwam said in a post. “Thankfully, this is something Google is addressing in a future update to Chrome.”
Your move, Firefox and Opera.

Photo: Mute setting on Google Chrome browser. (Google)

Magazine covers depict President Trump as warmonger, KKK member and mental patient

President Donald Trump has taken a lot of flak from the media for his saber-rattling comments towards North Korea and his confounding statements about the violent neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va.
What follows is a sampling of magazine covers depicting Trump since the last installment in my series on the subject on July 23.
Der Spiegel showed Trump wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood for its Aug. 19 cover to illustrate his alleged tacit support for alt-right, white supremacist groups.
The Economist showed Trump speaking into a megaphone that looks like a KKK hood for its Aug. 19-25 issue.
The New Yorker illustrated Trump blowing into a KKK sail to pilot a boat for its Aug. 28 issue.
The July issue of New Republic showed Trump as a mental patient in a straitjacket. The cover story was titled “The United States of Crazy: How Trump has turned us into a nation of crackpots and conspiracy theorists.”
The Aug. 5-11 issue of The Economist put the faces of Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. The cover line stated “It could happen.”
Newsweek put a general’s helmet on Trump for its Aug. 25 to Sept. 1 issue. The cover story was titled “Ready for … War?”
In other recent issues, Bloomberg Businessweek depicted Trump’s media influence, New Republic linked Trump to the Russian mafia, and Newsweek focused on Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Also, Newsweek called Trump “Lazy Boy” for his perceived lack of accomplishments in office.

How did Firefox get to be such a terrible web browser?

The web browser market used to be competitive. But Google’s Chrome has taken over. It seems like many software and internet companies are more interested in mobile apps than desktop web browsers today.
I used to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer before that company basically gave up on the web browser market. IE became so crash-prone that I had to switch to another browser.
My preferred browser became Firefox because I’m a big user of bookmarks and Firefox has a better system for viewing and managing bookmarks than main alternative Google Chrome.
But Firefox, at least on Windows 7 Professional, is terrible. It locks up, becomes inoperable or crashes so frequently that I have to keep Windows Task Manager open to force close it when it’s stuck. Firefox is so awful that it crashes multiple times per day. (I’m currently using version 55.0.1.) Firefox especially doesn’t like multiple tabs being open and running any pages with video or Flash.
I now keep Google Chrome open to do important tasks online. I use Firefox mostly for viewing news. (I’ve downloaded the Opera web browser, but haven’t really started using it yet.)
I don’t have a lot of hope that Mozilla can fix its Firefox browser at this point. But fingers crossed.

Phony photos in lying clickbait: North Korea, moments before tragedy, Civil War pics

Lying clickbait keeps appearing on news websites despite the national discussion about “fake news.”
Here are some of the latest examples I’ve seen.

Clickbait purveyors continue to promote articles about life in North Korea with photos of sexy women from South Korea.
Sponsored articles from Kiwi Report and Semesterz each used the same headline and subhead: “N. Korea has been hiding this for 16 years: 47 rare photos of life in North Korea that will blow your mind.” Both appeared on Yahoo Finance pages.
The Semesterz post used a photo of a women’s sexy backside competition held at Blue One Water Park in Gyeongju, South Korea. (See articles by Branding in Asia and Koreaboo.)

The Kiwi Report post used photos of Clara Lee, an actress and model active in South Korea. (See photo at top. Also check out her website and Wikipedia page.)

A Taboola-sponsored clickbait post titled “Perfectly timed pictures taken before a disaster” used a photo of a young woman hanging by one arm from a rocky cliff. She’s fine. The photo is an optical illusion. She is hanging only a few feet off the ground from a big rock at Pedra do Telegrafo in Brazil. (See articles by the Daily Mail and Metro.)

Another Taboola-sponsored article titled “Gruesome Civil War photos released from government vault” featured a black-and-white photo of what appeared to be a soldier shot in the arm. The picture is old, but not from the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). It was taken during a reenactment in 1913. (See Getty Images.)

One clickbait article seen on Yahoo featured a photo of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with the headline “Breaking news: We say goodbye. Mark Zuckerberg is gone. Sad day for Facebook.” It falsely implies that he’s dead or has left Facebook. Of course, neither is true.

Finally, a clickbait post titled “Troubled news anchor does the unthinkable on air” included a photo of Olivia Newton-John’s daughter Chloe Lattanzi from an appearance on an Australian morning TV show. She is not a news anchor. She was a guest on the show and had a funny exchange over misunderstood slang term. No big whoop. (See articles by the Express and Mama Mia.)

Related articles:

Lying clickbait: Fake historical photos, fake North Korea photos, fake Titanic photos (March 19, 2017)

Fake North Korea photos: More lying clickbait (Jan. 31, 2017)

Lying clickbait: Close-but-no-cigar edition (Dec. 13, 2016)

Fake planes, fake yachts, real lying clickbait

Clickbait creators HistoryInOrbit and TheBrofessional are at it again using fake photos with their lying clickbait articles.
Here are a bunch of recent examples.

A Taboola-sponsored article from HistoryInOrbit carried the headline “Russia’s new helicopter is straight out of a sci-fi film.” Well, the photo is. The clickbait post used a photo of a quinjet from the 2012 movie “The Avengers.”

Another HistoryInOrbit article titled “China’s new fighter jet looks downright insane” used a picture of a fictional fighter jet from the 2005 sci-fi movie “Stealth.” (See related article by Snopes.)

Two other clickbait articles used conceptual art of airplanes.
TheBrofessional tried to pass off one rendering as a new Chinese stealth fighter. The picture is concept art titled “Gunship” by Romanian artist Alex Ichim. (See his work on ArtStation and DeviantArt.)

The other article, by HistoryInOrbit, used artwork by Al Brady showing a biologically inspired aircraft. (See article by Gizmodo.)

Finally, an article titled “Yachts more advanced than military ships” used art of a concept yacht called Epiphany by Andy Waugh. (See article by Robb Report and Andy Waugh Yacht Design.)

Related articles:

Websites that use lying clickbait (June 29, 2017)

Lying clickbait: Outrageous aircraft, freaky fish and other Photoshop fails (June 27, 2017)

Fake airplane photos and other lying clickbait (Feb. 19, 2017)

In space you can hear the last gasp of dying film franchises

When a movie franchise has no place left to go, producers sometimes decide to set their next installment in space, the final frontier.
That’s how we ended up with the Three Stooges, James Bond, Dracula and Jason Voorhees, among others, in space.
At the D23 Expo in Anaheim, Calif., earlier this month, Disney announced that it’s working on a new “Cars”/“Planes” animated feature that will take place in space. The still-untitled movie is slated for release in April 2019, the Hollywood Reporter said.
F. Gary Gray, director of “The Fate of the Furious,” the eighth installment in the “Fast and Furious” series, has discussed the possibility of the franchise traveling into space in future installments, Screen Rant says.
Producers of the X-Men movie series also have discussed setting a future installment in space, Screen Rant says.
The third film in the “Machete” series of grindhouse action films starring Danny Trejo is called “Machete Kills Again...In Space,” GeekTyrant says.

Related articles:

‘Game of Thrones’ in space, ‘Harry Potter’ in space, other space-set dramas coming (Jan. 21, 2015)

Movies where the setting was changed to ‘in space’ (April 21, 2013)

Photos: Promotional art for “Machete Kills Again … In Space” (top) and for unnamed Disney animated space vehicles movie.