Newsletter Leaf Journal XCIV 〜 Newsletter with the black hat
The 94th newsletter features black hat seller tactics on Amazon, skunks, search engines, and a record 10 links from around the web.
Welcome to the 94th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. The last week was a busy one at The New Leaf Journal. Along with recaps of and links to our own new content, I have plenty of terrific links from around the web and other news and notes in store for you below. Without further ado, let's cut to the content.
Table of Contents
- Leaves From The Week That Was
- Leaves From Around The Web
- The Old Leaf Journal
- Most-Turned Leaves Of The Newsletter Week
- Notable Leaf Journal
- News Leaf Journal
- Taking Leaf
1. Leaves From The Week That Was
After having only three articles to share with you in the previous newsletter, we rebounded this week. Below, you will find recaps of our seven new full-length articles.
- Dialogue: "Skunks" in Staten Island Conspiracy | N.A. Ferrell | July 23, 2022 | Summary: Our resident fictional dialogue duo, Justin and Justina, discuss reports of "skunk" sightings in Staten Island.
- Reviewing FrogFind: A Search Engine For Vintage Computers | N.A. Ferrell | July 24, 2022 | Summary: FrogFind is a search engine for (use on) vintage computers. Read my review and then try it for yourself.
- Discovering Google Webmaster Integrates With Search | N.A. Ferrell | July 25, 2022 | Summary: A very belated discovery about Google's Webmaster Tools.
- Amazon Black Hat Seller Scenario | N.A. Ferrell | July 26, 2022 | Summary: I turned a few reports about black hat seller tactics on Amazon into a short story.
- Cheap USB-C Hubs and Short-Lasting Tech | N.A. Ferrell | July 27, 2022 | Summary: On cheap electronics that are effectively defective by design.
- Naver Webmaster Trials and Tribulations | N.A. Ferrell | July 28, 2022 | Summary: The story of my strange adventures in late 2020 or early 2021 in obtaining webmaster tools for Naver, one of South Korea's biggest search engines.
- Naver, Papago, and The (Korean) New Leaf Journal | N.A. Ferrell | July 28, 2022 | Summary: How to read The New Leaf Journal in Korean.
I also published six Leaflet microposts during the past week. Below, you will find links with very brief summaries:
- Another Review of Koko Analytics: I take a look at a short foreign-language review of our preferred analytics solution
- A Note on Seeing From Along the Ray: Studying a good quote from Along the Ray, a travel and writing blog
- Reports of Windows Start Menu Issues: Updates should not break the start menu
- Mullvad VPN is Available on Amazon: As a Mullvad VPN user myself, I consider this good news - although I will still purchase from Mullvad directly
- Coffee Bean Reviews at coffeebeans.fyi: An interesting new coffee bean review website
- Examining AlohaFind Search: While I was not particularly impressed by AlohaFind, its privacy policy is decent
2. Leaves From Around The Web
Let's see what's happening around the world wide web...
- Overengineering Coffee Bean Storage | Dennis Schubert on his Blog | January 7, 2022 | Thoughts: I am particular to a point about how I make my coffee, but this is a whole different level of intensity.
- For Centuries, English Bakers' Biggest Customers Were Horses | Sam Lin-Sommer for Atlas Obscura | July 22, 2022 | Thoughts: A comprehensive history of horse bread.
- Regulations Can Make Cities Hotter | Connor Harris for City Journal | July 29, 2022 | Summary: Giant parking lots not great, not the best.
- The History of 'Ampersand' | Merriam-Websiter | September 25, 2018 | One-Symbol Summary: &
- Amazon's Book Piracy Problem | Matt Harrison on his Blog | June 30, 2022 | Thoughts: It fits in well with my mid-week article on black-hat seller tactics on Amazon.
- LibreOffice vs OpenOffice: All You Need to Know? | Ankush Das for It's FOSS | July 28, 2022 | Summary: If you are using OpenOffice, you should stop doing that and install LibreOffice.
- Justices With Facial Hair | Josh Blackman for the Volokh Conspiracy | July 28, 2022 | Summary: A history of Supreme Court Justices and facial hair.
- Living awhile in Cambodia | Michael Perry on his blog | July 28, 2022 | Thoughts: The post comes as advertised and with some good photos.
- 69-year-old Tokyo man arrested for driving without a license for over 50 years | Master Blaster for SoraNews24 | July 26, 2022 | Thoughts: The headline is mostly in context, but the story is better than the headline.
3. The Old Leaf Journal
Let's dig into our archive...
- Experiences in the Yandex Webmaster Portal | N.A. Ferrell | October 21, 2020 | Thoughts: Back in 2020, I published an article on Yandex webmaster tools. Note that one of my purposes for spending time on Yandex - that DuckDuckGo used it in lieu of Bing for certain queries - was rendered nugatory by the fact that DuckDuckGo no longer uses Yandex results at all (nevertheless, I received more referrals from yandex.ru in July 2022 than I did in any previous month).
- An Optical Audio Cable Packaging Story | N.A. Ferrell | October 10, 2020 | Thoughts: It was not a good week at The New Leaf Journal for strangely-named products from China being sold on Amazon. However, my random 2020 article on an optical audio cable from a strangely-named company on Amazon shows that sometimes products with strange names work just fine.
- Stop Saying Bob Dylan Can't Sing | V. Gurbo | July 23, 2021 | Thoughts: Victor set out to rile up his fellow Bob Dylan fans. He succeeded, although I questioned his framing as a tactical matter.
- The Quiet End of Google Bookmarks | N.A. Ferrell | July 30, 2021 | Summary: One year to the day, I covered the very quiet end of a Google service that Google itself may have forgotten about.
4. Most-Turned Leaves Of The Newsletter Week
I list our most-visited articles of the previous week in each newsletter. In keeping with our newsletter schedule, these “Newsletter Weeks” begin with Saturday and end on Friday. The statistics come courtesy of our local and privacy-friendly analytics solution, Koko Analytics - which I reviewed on site. The week of July 16-22 was the 29th Newsletter Week of 2022.
| # | Article | By | Date | 22Top5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei | NAF | 3.14.21 | 30 (20) |
| 2 | Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021) | NAF | 11.27.21 | 30 (7) |
| 3 | An Early Review of Pixelfed - Instagram Alternative | NAF | 11.13.20 | 4 |
| 4 | Installing Ubuntu Touch on an Asus Nexus 7 (2013) | NAF | 7.5.21 | 26 |
| 5 | The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis | NAF | 1.18.22 | 3 |
The previous week saw a continued flattening in our article view counts. The nearly perennial top two articles both had weak weeks while taking the top two spots, with my tsuki ga kirei article posting its first top ranking since June. While the top articles struggled a bit, the previous week was one of the deepest weeks on record with many articles posting solid weeks. One near surprise was my colleague Victor V. Gurbo's July 2020 article about the correct pronunciation of the word capo. It came in sixth place on the week and would have posted its first-ever top five if not for a very strong Wednesday showing by my 2020 Pixelfed review, which propelled it to its 2022-high ranking of third (maybe people really are annoyed about Instagram's UX changes).
5. Notable Leaf Journal
Link rot is a serious problem for people who save bookmarks or other links to return to later. Many websites disappear from the web or change their URL structures without setting proper redirects. While a good archive system moots the issue by saving local copies of important web pages, another solution is to find the archived or cached version of a page behind a broken link. For this purpose, I suggest the free and open source Web Archives extension, available for Chrome and Edge (and other Chromium-based browsers), Firefox, and Safari. For any web page, Web Archives provides a one-click path to finding the page on one of several archiving or caching platforms.
6. News Leaf Journal
I have no major news to report at The New Leaf Journal. I am still making progress on improving our blogroll and preparing Resources pages. I plan to make Resources pages for specific New Leaf Journal topics (e.g., all of my small search engine reviews and notes) to help people find content that interests them.
7. Taking Leaf
Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal and its parent publication,The New Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed our newsletter content and have not done so already, you can subscribe via email or RSS. I also syndicate the newsletter to my blog on Bearblog.dev, which has its own ATOM feed. I look forward to reporting back to you next Saturday with our first newsletter for August 2022.
Until next Saturday,s
Cura ut valeas.