Are we supposed to be amused by the absurdity of medical xrays when he could have just opened the cloak?
Good point – and a new tag, ‘Absurd!’?
“It’ll pass” — because dead people are said to have passed away? And you pass kidney stones?
Also: How come WordPress isn’t remembering my name and email address anymore?
Simebody else is having the same issue, Powers — bit I’m pretty sure that’s a browser issue.
I’m also having the same issue as Powers. I don’t post frequently enough to have the necessity of re-entering be a big hassle, but it is a small one. (Windows 7 desktop running Firefox, if any of that matters.)
Ha! I thought it was just me having that problem.
It is not just you. There used to be a “remember me” checkbox, I’m fairly certain, which would load the information from a cookie.
Count me in.
Simebody else is having the same issue, Powers — bit I’m pretty sure that’s a browser issue.
Meryl was the first to report it that I noticed. I mentioned having the same problem over in the Random Comments thread.
Nothing changed on my browser.
“Also: How come WordPress isn’t remembering my name and email address anymore?”
!!!!!!DON’T!!!!!! attempt to click on the login with one of those items and press the create a wordpress account. It will create an unnecessary and unwanted Word Press account that you will then *ALWAYS* have to use to post. (That’s why Captain Haddock is cursing.)
Why would you always have to use the WordPress account?
I have a WordPress account anyway. (Two, actually.) My own blog, http://reasonablyliterate.com, is hosted here. Certainly when I came in with a fresh browser I had the option to post using all methods.
I didn’t change anything on my phone’s browser, but it stopped remembering my CIDU login as well.
I’m fine on my computer, though.
At the risk of jinxing myself, no problems here.
ON THE OTHER HAND… if it’s happening to so many people at once, that sounds a little fishy.
On the upside, incomprehensible WordPress issues sometimes vanish as mysteriously as they appear.
Just remember, I’m in the same boat y’all are (with the added complication that I can’t perform any admin functions from my phone (which, by the way, makes me slower to rescue comments from Moderation, including comments there for incomprehensible reasons)
Why can’t administrate from your phone? I have been doing it for years. Install the WordPress app.
“Why would you always have to use the WordPress account?”
Because I have to provide an email address. And if I provide my email address without logging into Word Press I will get a “That email address is associated with a WordPress user if you are that user log into your word press account”.
It’s not that horrible an error but it wasnt what I wanted to do and that I can’t go back and I hate creating yet another data account entry for no reason galls me and makes me unhappy. It makes me feel the world is big and messy and cluttered and we need to stake out blankets to sit down and remember where we put them and that makes me a sad woozy.
Ah. Thanks for explaining, Woozy.
I have an infinite number of email addresses, so if that were a problem I’d use one of the others. (I own several domains, so I can create as many email addresses as I like.)
If you’re using any major service (e. g. GMail) you can create multiple aliases of yourself that WordPress has never heard of.
“If you’re using any major service (e. g. GMail) you can create multiple aliases of yourself that WordPress has never heard of.”
BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO!
I would guess that WordPress has altered the behavior of the cookie they used to set to capture that information, probably in some misguided and unnecessary attempt to comply or prepare to comply with data retention laws. I use private browsing, so it used to be that every time I closed that browser, wordpress would forget who I was, and this would always throw me, because I tend not to close my browser all that often (which really tends to counteract using private browsing to begin with…), so I’d be confused for a moment till I remembered I had recently closed my browser finally and restarted it, ie, all the cookies had been flushed. So now it seems that the cookies are being flushed much more aggressively. I hope they just shortened the expiration time on the cookie (usually they’d be set for “never expire” or “expire sometime in the far distant future that may as well be never”); they could have just made them session cookies, which expire when you close you browser, but they didn’t, so my best guess is that they have the cookies expire in an hour or something like that, with the countdown being restarted if you post within that time period.
@lark: “my best guess is that they have the cookies expire in an hour or something like that, with the countdown being restarted if you post within that time period.”
Can’t swear to it, but I believe within the last couple of days I once posted two messages about ten minutes apart, and had to renter my info both times. Maybe I’ll try posting a follow-up immediately to this one. . .
@me: And here’s the follow-up, and yes, it wants me to enter everything again.
It may be a bit of a moving target, too. Right now it seems as if there is no cookie at all.
ME WANT COOKIE!
I think Kilby at some point had a bit of a rant about how Google was doing its best to make it seem as if its compliance to the European GDPR privacy rules was as big a drag as possible, instead of just not collecting data in the first place… THis change in wordpress, while not quite as purposely misdirected, seems equally unnecessary: the GDPR requires that you be able to review and ultimately delete any data a website might have on you — cookies fulfill that requirement just as they are, no changes needed. The data is stored on your local browser, which you can access at any time, and delete at any time. Yes, the website can read these cookies, but as long as they don’t keep and store the information they read (and I can’t see any reasonable reason why wordpress would have done this), then no change whatsoever is needed to comply with the GDPR.
(Some might argue that you need to inform users that the cookies are being used in the first place, to give them the option to opt out, which is why so many sites, especially in Europe, have those annoying disclaimers, and which might be why wordpres opted to just lose the cookie rather than blanket change all sites to display a stupid disclaimer, but I’m pretty sure such disclaimers aren’t warranted by the language of the GDPR for such simple and menial cookies as the type that was used here — these types of cookies have been around since basically the start in the mid 90s, and they don’t do anything nefarious, and they are not the type of data retention the GDPR was written for — these silly disclaimers are basically lawyers being way too over-cautious, and possibly nefarious if they aim to undermine the GDPR by making it seem too onerous when it really isn’t — just don’t track us in the evil ways you know full well are evil, and don’t pretend to confound a simple cookie with the 50 different tracker pixels and javascript loaded from 50 different sites that get loaded with each page that have nothing to do with the content of said page — you know exactly which ones I mean! Why look! No more cookie, but at least 4 damn tracker images from Google, Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress — why can’t THOSE be made to go away?)
@ larK – I think the object of my affliction was actually YouTube, but the alphabetic Empire is just the most prominent (and pervasive) example, and they aren’t even the worst offenders. There are several ways to avoid the data privacy obligations dictated by the European GDPR:
1) Simply block all access from European users.
2) Inform the user that cookies are required to use the site.
3) Provide an opt-out method that is so complicated that nobody will be able to figure it out.
Google’s method is a mixture of (2) and (3): it is possible (but tedious) to opt out, but you have to let them place a cookie so that they can tell who has opted out. That’s when I decided to dump Google.
P.S. My kid discovered a series of fairly entertaining game apps from an “ad-ware” company that has an incredibly annoying habit: every one of their games displays a lengthy opt-out page when the game starts (OK for adults to read, impossible for kids). The option appears to work, but then one of the periodic ads is a request to “Please support us by enabling data tracking.” I’m not going to name these twits because I don’t want to give them the benefit of any negative advertising.
P.P.S. Second on my list of “major providers that have idiotic (or illegal) data privacy conditions and should be avoided” is “Oath” a.k.a. “Yahoo”.
“Google was doing its best to make it seem as if its compliance to the European GDPR privacy rules was as big a drag as possible, instead of just not collecting data in the first place…”
Data is the product they sell in order to make a profit. They collect it in exchange for providing a number of useful services at no charge. How disgusting that they won’t just stop collecting it.
“Second on my list of “major providers that have idiotic (or illegal) data privacy conditions and should be avoided” is “Oath” a.k.a. “Yahoo”.”
AKA “Verizon”.
But Kilby they provide entertaining game apps for your children at no charge, in exchange for merely tracking them and advertising to them; data is the product they sell to make money — how disgusting you object to that!
[sarcasm off]
Being mad at a company for trying to make a profit, and not voluntarily offering to cut off 100% of their revenue, is dumb. If you don’t like them keeping data about how their services are used, don’t use their services.
King Midas has asses’ ears!
I was wond’rin’ a day or so ago how Google made any money; I use the search engine and the maps many times a day, but never seen an advert or anything . . .
Well, poor Amazon is doing so badly that they not only didn’t have to pay any taxes, they actually got a negative tax rate this year…
Yes, I posted about it. While I am using my new laptop, the details were remembered for the first couple of months and any changes to my computer were the ##@%%!! updates.
I had figured that I would be told that it was a way to convince people to sign in with one of the choices given to log in with instead of doing it at the bottom of the reply window.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Yes. Because that.
Yeah. And I’m not expecting a causal backstory.
Are we supposed to be amused by the absurdity of medical xrays when he could have just opened the cloak?
Good point – and a new tag, ‘Absurd!’?
“It’ll pass” — because dead people are said to have passed away? And you pass kidney stones?
Also: How come WordPress isn’t remembering my name and email address anymore?
Simebody else is having the same issue, Powers — bit I’m pretty sure that’s a browser issue.
I’m also having the same issue as Powers. I don’t post frequently enough to have the necessity of re-entering be a big hassle, but it is a small one. (Windows 7 desktop running Firefox, if any of that matters.)
Ha! I thought it was just me having that problem.
It is not just you. There used to be a “remember me” checkbox, I’m fairly certain, which would load the information from a cookie.
Count me in.
Simebody else is having the same issue, Powers — bit I’m pretty sure that’s a browser issue.
Meryl was the first to report it that I noticed. I mentioned having the same problem over in the Random Comments thread.
Nothing changed on my browser.
“Also: How come WordPress isn’t remembering my name and email address anymore?”
!!!!!!DON’T!!!!!! attempt to click on the login with one of those items and press the create a wordpress account. It will create an unnecessary and unwanted Word Press account that you will then *ALWAYS* have to use to post. (That’s why Captain Haddock is cursing.)
Why would you always have to use the WordPress account?
I have a WordPress account anyway. (Two, actually.) My own blog, http://reasonablyliterate.com, is hosted here. Certainly when I came in with a fresh browser I had the option to post using all methods.
I didn’t change anything on my phone’s browser, but it stopped remembering my CIDU login as well.
I’m fine on my computer, though.
At the risk of jinxing myself, no problems here.
ON THE OTHER HAND… if it’s happening to so many people at once, that sounds a little fishy.
On the upside, incomprehensible WordPress issues sometimes vanish as mysteriously as they appear.
Just remember, I’m in the same boat y’all are (with the added complication that I can’t perform any admin functions from my phone (which, by the way, makes me slower to rescue comments from Moderation, including comments there for incomprehensible reasons)
Why can’t administrate from your phone? I have been doing it for years. Install the WordPress app.
“Why would you always have to use the WordPress account?”
Because I have to provide an email address. And if I provide my email address without logging into Word Press I will get a “That email address is associated with a WordPress user if you are that user log into your word press account”.
It’s not that horrible an error but it wasnt what I wanted to do and that I can’t go back and I hate creating yet another data account entry for no reason galls me and makes me unhappy. It makes me feel the world is big and messy and cluttered and we need to stake out blankets to sit down and remember where we put them and that makes me a sad woozy.
Ah. Thanks for explaining, Woozy.
I have an infinite number of email addresses, so if that were a problem I’d use one of the others. (I own several domains, so I can create as many email addresses as I like.)
If you’re using any major service (e. g. GMail) you can create multiple aliases of yourself that WordPress has never heard of.
“If you’re using any major service (e. g. GMail) you can create multiple aliases of yourself that WordPress has never heard of.”
BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO!
I would guess that WordPress has altered the behavior of the cookie they used to set to capture that information, probably in some misguided and unnecessary attempt to comply or prepare to comply with data retention laws. I use private browsing, so it used to be that every time I closed that browser, wordpress would forget who I was, and this would always throw me, because I tend not to close my browser all that often (which really tends to counteract using private browsing to begin with…), so I’d be confused for a moment till I remembered I had recently closed my browser finally and restarted it, ie, all the cookies had been flushed. So now it seems that the cookies are being flushed much more aggressively. I hope they just shortened the expiration time on the cookie (usually they’d be set for “never expire” or “expire sometime in the far distant future that may as well be never”); they could have just made them session cookies, which expire when you close you browser, but they didn’t, so my best guess is that they have the cookies expire in an hour or something like that, with the countdown being restarted if you post within that time period.
@lark: “my best guess is that they have the cookies expire in an hour or something like that, with the countdown being restarted if you post within that time period.”
Can’t swear to it, but I believe within the last couple of days I once posted two messages about ten minutes apart, and had to renter my info both times. Maybe I’ll try posting a follow-up immediately to this one. . .
@me: And here’s the follow-up, and yes, it wants me to enter everything again.
It may be a bit of a moving target, too. Right now it seems as if there is no cookie at all.
ME WANT COOKIE!
I think Kilby at some point had a bit of a rant about how Google was doing its best to make it seem as if its compliance to the European GDPR privacy rules was as big a drag as possible, instead of just not collecting data in the first place… THis change in wordpress, while not quite as purposely misdirected, seems equally unnecessary: the GDPR requires that you be able to review and ultimately delete any data a website might have on you — cookies fulfill that requirement just as they are, no changes needed. The data is stored on your local browser, which you can access at any time, and delete at any time. Yes, the website can read these cookies, but as long as they don’t keep and store the information they read (and I can’t see any reasonable reason why wordpress would have done this), then no change whatsoever is needed to comply with the GDPR.
(Some might argue that you need to inform users that the cookies are being used in the first place, to give them the option to opt out, which is why so many sites, especially in Europe, have those annoying disclaimers, and which might be why wordpres opted to just lose the cookie rather than blanket change all sites to display a stupid disclaimer, but I’m pretty sure such disclaimers aren’t warranted by the language of the GDPR for such simple and menial cookies as the type that was used here — these types of cookies have been around since basically the start in the mid 90s, and they don’t do anything nefarious, and they are not the type of data retention the GDPR was written for — these silly disclaimers are basically lawyers being way too over-cautious, and possibly nefarious if they aim to undermine the GDPR by making it seem too onerous when it really isn’t — just don’t track us in the evil ways you know full well are evil, and don’t pretend to confound a simple cookie with the 50 different tracker pixels and javascript loaded from 50 different sites that get loaded with each page that have nothing to do with the content of said page — you know exactly which ones I mean! Why look! No more cookie, but at least 4 damn tracker images from Google, Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress — why can’t THOSE be made to go away?)
@ larK – I think the object of my affliction was actually YouTube, but the alphabetic Empire is just the most prominent (and pervasive) example, and they aren’t even the worst offenders. There are several ways to avoid the data privacy obligations dictated by the European GDPR:
1) Simply block all access from European users.
2) Inform the user that cookies are required to use the site.
3) Provide an opt-out method that is so complicated that nobody will be able to figure it out.
Google’s method is a mixture of (2) and (3): it is possible (but tedious) to opt out, but you have to let them place a cookie so that they can tell who has opted out. That’s when I decided to dump Google.
P.S. My kid discovered a series of fairly entertaining game apps from an “ad-ware” company that has an incredibly annoying habit: every one of their games displays a lengthy opt-out page when the game starts (OK for adults to read, impossible for kids). The option appears to work, but then one of the periodic ads is a request to “Please support us by enabling data tracking.” I’m not going to name these twits because I don’t want to give them the benefit of any negative advertising.
P.P.S. Second on my list of “major providers that have idiotic (or illegal) data privacy conditions and should be avoided” is “Oath” a.k.a. “Yahoo”.
“Google was doing its best to make it seem as if its compliance to the European GDPR privacy rules was as big a drag as possible, instead of just not collecting data in the first place…”
Data is the product they sell in order to make a profit. They collect it in exchange for providing a number of useful services at no charge. How disgusting that they won’t just stop collecting it.
“Second on my list of “major providers that have idiotic (or illegal) data privacy conditions and should be avoided” is “Oath” a.k.a. “Yahoo”.”
AKA “Verizon”.
But Kilby they provide entertaining game apps for your children at no charge, in exchange for merely tracking them and advertising to them; data is the product they sell to make money — how disgusting you object to that!
[sarcasm off]
Being mad at a company for trying to make a profit, and not voluntarily offering to cut off 100% of their revenue, is dumb. If you don’t like them keeping data about how their services are used, don’t use their services.
King Midas has asses’ ears!
I was wond’rin’ a day or so ago how Google made any money; I use the search engine and the maps many times a day, but never seen an advert or anything . . .
Well, poor Amazon is doing so badly that they not only didn’t have to pay any taxes, they actually got a negative tax rate this year…
Yes, I posted about it. While I am using my new laptop, the details were remembered for the first couple of months and any changes to my computer were the ##@%%!! updates.
I had figured that I would be told that it was a way to convince people to sign in with one of the choices given to log in with instead of doing it at the bottom of the reply window.