Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog

Libriz’s Black Friday sale

Jack Yan & Associates — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 01:54:08 +0000

I believe Tesco Mobile and we are the only two businesses that I know of doing Black Friday specials on Black Friday, i.e. Friday the 13th—this Friday. Head to Libriz for 10 per cent off storewide with the code bf32026 at check-out, limit of two (I believe) uses per deal on the day. Sorry, we [...]

The “AI” pitches you can spot 1·6 km away

Jack Yan & Associates — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 01:45:06 +0000

I get “AI”-authored pitches multiple times a day and wow, they are annoying. They all have the same format, too, usually offering things we don’t need. [Subject line: editorial campaigns] Hi Jack, I saw Lucire has been running regular editorial campaigns across style and sustainability since 1997, and I imagine keeping each [...]

Letting Greg fight on another day

Jack Yan & Associates — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 09:11:13 +0000

For those WordPress users out there who love Greg’s High Performance SEO, and cannot find a substitute now that it’s incompatible with PHP 8·1 and up, there is an easy fix to the error: Deprecated: ltrim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in [your WordPress directory]/wp-content/plugins/gregs-high-performance-seo/ghpseo.php on line 264 [...]

The mean streets of the information superhighway

Jack Yan & Associates — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 09:52:11 +0000

Over the last week we’ve seen Meta suppress the US’s No Kings protests, and Lula won his case in Brazil proving that Meta had, indeed, amplified the messages of his rival, Bolsonaro, to the level of a celebrity, during their presidential elections. I said a decade ago Zuckerberg was palling around with fascists and the [...]

Reﬂection

Jack Yan & Associates — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:31:49 +0000

A fun memory from 2011. My dad was a believer in fixing things rather than replacing things, so when a supermarket trolley (we think) smashed the rear reflector on my previous Renault Mégane coupé, he used the red handle from a long-dead toothbrush (he kept them in case he needed to use them to clean [...]

Voting is not a marriage

Jack Yan & Associates — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 02:38:48 +0000

What a great reminder from Esther Schindler: A non-partisan reminder: Voting isn’t marriage. It’s public transport. You’re not waiting for “the one.” You’re getting on the bus. And if no bus goes exactly to your destination, you don’t stay home and sulk. You take the one that gets you closest to where you want [...]

WordPress sites potentially hacked through Optinmonster

Jack Yan & Associates — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 23:13:26 +0000

Unfortunately I could find no online references for this error, so here’s one. Two of our sites were hacked. If you see this text, log in to your WordPress installation now. It had appeared on the top of these two sites. === console.log('header!'); // Easy to add and display post grid on your website [...]

The uncanny valley got wider

Jack Yan & Associates — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:46:47 +0000

I have used some “AI” imagery on this site, and as our perceptions shift, it’s so interesting to see that that imagery, which a year or two ago would have looked convincing to me, now looks uncanny valley. Of the blog header images, the ones with real photographs look, well, real; the generated ones have [...]

I am not on Gmail

Jack Yan & Associates — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:10:53 +0000

It’s been strange to see emails addressed to me as well as jackyan@gmail.com. First it was just scammers who did this, but yesterday I came across a legit PR company that used it as well. I don’t know who’s at the Gmail address because they’re being unwittingly dragged in to my world, and they should [...]

Our government loves foreign corporations

Jack Yan & Associates — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 03:40:24 +0000

Yes, it would be nice to have greater competition in grocery shopping but once again the New Zealand coalition government has its priorities backwards. It proposes breaking up Foodstuffs, the New Zealand company that has about 53 per cent of the market here. Once again its actions seem misplaced, because it leaves the foreign competitor—Australia’s [...]