Question Minor bug report, quick messages

and I do mean minor.

I just sent a quick message to someone, and when I hit the send button it changed to "Loading".

That just might make people worried when they see that. Probably should be sending.


I realize that it was referring to loading the next page, but it did take a moment of thought.

Speaking of bugs that have nothing to do with you, I've spotted one of the ads displaying an error rather than an ad twice now.

Speaking of ads... well, of course the ads are georeferenced, so I'm getting Brazilian-targeted ads. For instance, right now the right-hand one is for a special promo a motorcycle maker is doing in Brazil.

But the funny thing is... I have been getting quite a lot of ads for a rather well-known bar here in São Paulo... and the reason this place got so well-known is because from the start it was set up as a place for very high-end escorts to make themselves available for customers.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. I just wonder about the ad-serving algorithms... why these particular ads, why in this particular website? Are we tagged as a "sex" site?

Probably just a dearth of local adds for you. I get everything from Asian dating sites to Singapore Jazz clubs, there's even an add for Uber currently.

Hmm I tend to get adds from sites I've visited or products I've searched ebay for.

Does it put up ads based upon others browsing history? Just asking because I get a lot of ads for "Meet (blank) Singles" and that's not something I have ever searched. Or are those just random filler ads?

The escort-bar ads aren't actually sex ads -- they are quite subtle, featuring mostly the bar's logo and something like "have a fun night at...", leveraging its name recognition. But, like the "meet singles" ads Valentine mentioned, well... these are Google ads, aren't they? Even if you aren't registered as an 18+ site, Google is very good at profiling -- which they do as a matter of course to increase clickthrough rates -- and it seems to have profiled the site's visitors, if not as p__n consumers, at least as "singles in need of companionship."

I'm amused that despite spending most of my life logged into Google, their advertising division hasn't built up a decent personalised profile of me yet - across the 7 tabs I've currently got open for this site, I'm being peddled:

Adobe Creative Cloud for Teams
Dorrance Publishing Co
Easy Fundraising (dot org dot uk)
Giffgaff (Mobile Virtual Network Operator)
Grammarly
HYVE Managed Hosting
Kayak dot com (travel search engine)
Legal & General Home Insurance (£30 M&S voucher incentive)
Medicins Sans Frontiers
Next Careers in IT (Next plc, clothing store)
SalesforceIQ CRM
Thai Matches (sorry folks, I'm not interested in a Thai Bride!)
Toyota RAV4 (their SUV, now with a hybrid option)
Trading 212 (a CFD trading site)
Virgin Media (UK's only cable TV provider, flogging "ultrafast" cable broadband)