I write about issues going on in transition from traditional print media to on-line digital media in my posting Old media and digital media – part 1. This post is a continuation to it. The situation does not look too good for traditional media. Traditional media has been able to solve it’s challenges with aggregation or pay-wall. The future seems to be quite bad for traditional print media that can’t adapt to changed situation.
Despite two decades of trying, no one has found a way to make traditional news-gathering sufficiently profitable to assure its future survival. Only about a third of Americans under 35 look at a newspaper even once a week, and the percentage declines every year. A large portion of today’s readers of the few remaining good newspapers are much closer to the grave than to high school. Today’s young people skitter around the Internet. Audience taste seems to be changing, with the result that among young people particularly there is a declining appetite for the sort of information packages the great newspapers provided.
What is the future of media? There is an interesting article on future of media written in Finnish on this: Median tulevaisuus ja 13 trendiä – mitä media on vuonna 2030? It shows 13 trends that I have here translated to English, re-arranged, added my comments and links to more information to them. In 2030, the media will look very different than today.
The new gerations no longer want to pay for the media: Since the same information, benefits, entertainment provided free of charge, they are not prepared to pay. Older generations support the traditional media for some time, but they are smaller each year. Media consumption continues to rapidly change, and advertisers will follow suit digital and mobile channels, which will affect the media sales because advertisers no longer need the intermediary role of the media companies to communicate with their customers.
This does not look good for media companies, but situation even worse than that: When media personnel, production and distribution costs are rising every year and so the order than the ad revenue will be reduced year by year, deprivation twist to push media companies to the rest of the best authors, owners become impatient and expected returns are reduced. Companies are moving their marketing investment priorities for the purchased media.Corporate communications professionals continues to grow and the number of suppliers will continue to fall.
Technological developments enhance the above trends: Technology eliminates the barriers to entry to the traditional media sector and at the same time create new sectors. Technological media competition winner takes all because new scalable technology to create competitive advantages. Very many news writing tasks can be automated with near real-time and reliable enough translation technology The media world is undergoing a wholesale shift from manual processes to automated systems that strip out waste and inefficiency (The Future of Programmatic: Automation + Creativity + Scale).
Strong continuous technological change and automation mean that media consumption will continue to change for the next decade at least as strong as the previous ten years, whether we like it or not. Critical journalism makes searching for new alternative ways to do their work and to fund its work.
Media’s direction is sure to bring, and an ever increasing rate - in an increasingly digital, more mobile, more and more tailor-made … The newspapers will be read mostly on mobile devices. Information is obtained much earlier, in an increasingly digital and real-time. A lot has changed now already.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Facebook reinstates “Napalm Girl” photo, says it will adjust its review processes to allow future sharing of that photo
Facebook changes its mind, and says it’s okay to publish an iconic war photo, after all
“The value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community.“
http://www.recode.net/2016/9/9/12864670/facebook-photo-ban-changed
After removing several posts that used a famous photograph from the Vietnam War, Facebook has changed its mind and decided that it’s okay after all.
Facebook says that it’s acceptable for its users to see and share “The Terror of War,” a 1972 photo that shows a naked 9-year-old girl fleeing a napalm attack.
Earlier this week Facebook had decided that the image violated its community standards, and then deleted a Norwegian journalist’s post about the photo, triggering a chain of complaints from people including Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
As of yesterday, Facebook was insisting that this was a feature, not a bug, telling reporters that “it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others” — even when that Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph is one of the best-known images in the world.
Now Facebook has reconsidered. Perhaps because it’s embarrassing for one of the world’s most powerful companies to say they’re stumped by this kind of problem. Perhaps because Facebook leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Cox genuinely believe this is the kind of image Facebook should be sharing with its users.
Maybe both things are true.
Facebook says it will “reinstate the image on Facebook, where we are aware it has been removed,” which presumably means it will republish the posts it deleted.
It also says it might take a while
Tomi Engdahl says:
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Top EU court rules that linking to copyright-infringing content knowingly or for profit is direct infringement
European court says linking to illegal content is copyright infringement
The facts of the present case were egregious but the law created by the court is bad for the internet.
http://searchengineland.com/european-court-says-linking-illegal-content-copyright-infringement-258442
n a decision that is already controversial, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled in favor of copyright owners and against hyperlinks. The CJEU decision, though qualified, raises the strong possibility that publishers linking to infringing third party sites will also be liable for infringement.
Critics charge the CJEU decision amounts to judicial lawmaking and is an attack on the free flow of information online, contrary to the way the internet has operated to date. It also places a burden of investigation on the linking publisher to determine whether the linked content is authorized or infringing. In some cases that may be easy to determine but in many others it won’t be.
The facts of the present case were egregious but the law created by the court is bad for the internet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amtrak Customer Service Is Asking If You’re Still Stuck In An Elevator Eight Months Later
http://jalopnik.com/amtrak-customer-service-is-asking-if-youre-still-stuck-1786404986
Failed GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s former PR person Amanda Carpenter got trapped in an Amtrak elevator at Baltimore-Washington International Airport this past February. She tweeted at Amtrak saying that she was stuck, pleading for help. Amtrak’s official Twitter account came to the rescue—a mere eight months later!
Amtrak’s Twitter account seems to be a mix of strange robo-tweets and real people
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jasper Jackson / Guardian:
Google-backed First Draft’s new coalition network, which aims to help improve social media newsgathering, adds Twitter and Facebook as partners
Facebook and Twitter join coalition to improve social media newsgathering
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/13/facebook-twitter-social-media-newsgathering
Channel 4 News, Telegraph, New York Times, Washington Post and BuzzFeed have also signed up to network organised through Google-backed First Draft
Facebook and Twitter have signed up to a coalition of news organisations aimed at improving reporting from social media and tackling fake news.
Channel 4 News, the Telegraph, the New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, ABC News in Australia and Agence France-Presse are among more than 20 news organisations to have signed up to the partner network, which is being organised through Google-backed First Draft.
“The network will help Facebook showcase the products, tools and services we have built for journalists but also ensure we are constantly learning about how to improve them based on feedback from newsrooms,” she said. “We want to ensure we are building opportunities to learn from the industry and to ensure we continually hear their questions and feedback.”
The members of the partner network will develop guidelines for best practice, but the recommendations will not be binding.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aoife White / Bloomberg:
EU publishes proposals for new copyright rules which would allow news publishers to demand payment from aggregators like Google News
Publishers May Get Paid for Web News as EU Swipes at Google
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-14/publishers-may-get-paid-for-online-news-as-eu-swipes-at-google
Copyright plan may curb online use of news articles, content
EU also seeks to bolster rights of music performers, authors
Newspaper publishers would get the right to curb the online use of their content, allowing them to demand payment from Google News and other sites that use clips of their articles, under new European Union draft copyright rules published Wednesday.
Regulators are seeking to protect publishers and creators when their work is made available on the internet, often without payment. Publishers complain that Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., is free-riding by making profits from advertising shown next to their content.
While the EU’s draft rules aim to overhaul outdated and fragmented copyright rules for the digital age, they may harm internet companies’ ability to offer services in Europe. Google shut its news portal in Spain in 2014 after copyright legislation allowed publishers charge for content used by other websites.
“This proposal provides for a new right for press publishers aiming at facilitating online licensing of their publications, the recoupment of their investment and the enforcement of their rights,” the European Commission said in a text of the proposal published on its website. “Fair sharing of value is also necessary to ensure the sustainability of the press publications sector.”
The EU is also aiming to strengthen musicians in negotiations with publishers, which might allow them get extra payments from an unexpected bestseller.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kelsey Sutton / Politico:
Gallup poll: trust in mass media falls to 32%, eight points lower than in 2015, with only 14% of Republicans trusting it; overall level is lowest since 1972
Gallup poll: Public confidence in media falls to all-time low
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/09/public-confidence-in-media-falls-to-all-time-low-in-2016-228168#ixzz4KIpCNl53
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rebecca Stewart / The Drum:
Google launches YouTube Player for Publishers in Europe as part of Digital News Initiative, giving publishers more control over pre-roll and mid-roll ads — As part of its charm offensive on media owners, Google has unveiled YouTube Player for Publishers, a new video offering specifically tailored to the needs of the news industry.
Google looks to woo European media owners with tailored YouTube ‘Player for Publishers’
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/09/14/google-looks-woo-european-media-owners-with-tailored-youtube-player-publishers
As part of its charm offensive on media owners, Google has unveiled YouTube Player for Publishers, a new video offering specifically tailored to the needs of the news industry.
The new tool gives audiences better viewing experiences, while offering publishers more options when it comes to monetising their content.
The Drum understands that publishers will have control over the number of pre-roll ads that appear before their videos, and provide news outlets the option for one pre-roll ad per video view as well as mid-roll ads on long-form content on their owned-and-operated sites and apps.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
YouTube launches beta of Community, which lets creators share photos, text, more into Subscriptions feed; subs can opt-in to new post notifications
YouTube Is Building Community—And It’s Not Just About Video
https://www.fastcompany.com/3063623/most-innovative-companies/youtube-is-building-community-and-its-not-just-about-video
Text, still images, and GIFs are now part of the mix that the service gives creators to keep their fans engaged.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steven Levy / Backchannel:
Profile of internet activist Carl Malamud, founder of Public.Resource.Org, who is being sued for publishing building codes, safety rules, more on his website
Carl Mulahud has Standards
https://backchannel.com/the-internets-own-instigator-cb6347e693b#.w5ibtv7xj
For the past 25 years or so, Carl Malamud’s lonely mission has been to seize on the internet’s potential for spreading information — public information that people have a right to see, hear, and read. “Heroes for me are ones who take risks in pursuit of something they think is good,” says Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and a frequent collaborator of Malamud’s. “He is in that category.”
Indeed, Malamud has had remarkable success and true impact.
If you have listened to a podcast, note that it was Carl Malamud who pioneered the idea of radio-like content on internet audio — in 1993. And so on.
has understood and exploited the net (and the power of the printed word, as well) for disseminating information for the public good.
Even if it gets him in trouble. Even if he does it by picking sometimes arcane, even bizarre, fights.
Such a battle is the one he is waging on August 8, 2016. His theater of operations is the American Bar Association’s annual meeting
It involves regulatory standards.
Do not yawn. True, the legality of electronically publishing building codes, plumbing regulations, and product safety rules for baby seats probably won’t be the subject matter for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s next musical.
Malamud is determined to make the barristers understand that the publication of these standards is a core American value, and allowing anything but totally free and open publication would leave a dark constitutional stain on the shag rug of liberty.
Indeed, for Malamud, the right to publish things like the annotated legal code of the state of Georgia and the European Union’s rules for infant pacifiers is an existential issue. Since 2007, he has been methodically publishing online—for free—the detailed codes for buildings, product safety, and infrastructure. These are often drawn up by private organizations, usually with the help of federal and industry experts. When legislators write regulations, they will often specify that these detailed codes are the blueprints that everyone must adhere to. The term for this is “incorporated by reference” (IBR). After this happens, the codes, every word of them, are the law. But the codes aren’t available on state or federal websites. To get to them, you have to go to the standards bodies, which often treat the codes like they still own them.
Malamud believes — and case law overwhelmingly seems to back him up—that no one can claim copyright on them, or limit access to them. Justice Stephen Breyer once remarked, “If a law isn’t public, it isn’t a law.”
Some of the nonprofit organizations that helped write the codes (they are called SDOs, short for Standards Development Organizations) are very unhappy with Carl Malamud. They do claim copyright on the codes, and gain revenues by selling them; they argue that if everything is published freely on the internet, the whole system of developing those standards will collapse.
After all, it argues that any government agency that adopts one of those IBR codes must make it “accessible, without charge, to members of the public.” That’s better than the voluntary system we have today.
If codes are “read-only.” You can’t copy them—not even to put a passage into a newsletter or a court filing. Blind users can’t get access to them. And you certainly are not permitted to republish them. But some SDOs view even this limited distribution of IBR codes as eroding the control they currently employ. So they are opposing the resolution as well.
As the discussion progresses, Malamud’s key point finally sinks in: a law isn’t a law unless it’s public. It’s so simple that even a lawyer can find it self evident. As Malamud leaves to pitch the Texas delegation, the Pennsylvania chair tells him, “You blew my mind.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kelsey Sutton / Politico:
AP condemns DOJ report, calls for practice of government impersonation of news media to end, demands to be included in official policy development — The Associated Press Thursday condemned a report from a Justice Department Inspector General that found that an FBI agent’s impersonation of an AP editor did not violate its policies.
AP: DOJ inspector general report ‘raises serious constitutional concerns’
http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/09/ap-doj-inspector-general-report-raises-serious-constitutional-concerns-004769
The Associated Press Thursday condemned a report from a Justice Department Inspector General that found that an FBI agent’s impersonation of an AP editor did not violate its policies.
“The Associated Press is deeply disappointed by the inspector general’s finding, which effectively condone the FBI’s impersonation of an AP journalist in 2007,” a statement from AP, released Thursday, read. “Such action compromises the ability of a free press to gather the news safely and effectively and raises serious constitutional concerns.”
The case involved an undercover FBI agent impersonating “Norm Weatherill,” a fake employee of the Associated Press who identified himself as an “AP Staff Publisher,” in 2007 in an effort to gather location data for a suspect
“Once again AP calls on the government to refrain from any activities involving the impersonation of the news media and we demand to be heard in the development of any policies addressing such conduct,” the statement continued.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/09/ap-doj-inspector-general-report-raises-serious-constitutional-concerns-004769#ixzz4KQOfT1KV
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
Politico:
The Guardian announces US job cuts that will reduce headcount by 30%, due in part to low ad sales and revenue shortfall — Company will reduce headcount by 30% in the U.S. — Executives from The Guardian announced today that there will be cuts at the British news organization’s U.S. operation …
The Guardian to make major cuts to U.S. news operation
Company will reduce head count by 30 percent in the U.S.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/09/guardian-us-cuts-004766#ixzz4KQOzqFjb
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
In an email to staff that was sent shortly after this story was initially published, Pemsel and Guardian editor in chief Kath Viner blamed volatility in the U.S. and U.K. media industries, where publishers are struggling to achieve digital advertising growth as Facebook and Google suck up more and more of the market share.
“It is inevitable that such seismic shifts in the business model are adversely impacting our revenues despite the Guardian’s strong US brand recognition,”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/09/guardian-us-cuts-004766#ixzz4KQP7HauZ
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Mode Media, publisher and ad network formerly known as Glam and once valued at $1B, shuts down; company was on track to generate over $100M in revenue this year — The company that used to be called Glam Media generated $90 million last year. Now it’s out of business.
Mode Media used to be worth $1 billion. Now it’s shutting down.
The company that used to be called Glam Media generated $90 million last year. Now it’s out of business.
http://www.recode.net/2016/9/15/12936470/mode-media-glam-shuts-down
Last year, Mode Media generated nearly $90 million dollars in revenue.
Now the company is closing its doors.
The lifestyle publisher and ad network told its employees it is shutting down today
It’s an abrupt end for a company that had previously cast itself as one of the web’s biggest publishers, enjoyed a billion dollar valuation and planned on going public.
Mode started out as Glam Media, a collection of sites aimed primarily at women
company was able to boast that it commanded significant web traffic
Earlier this year, comScore pegged Mode as the 10th largest digital publisher in the U.S., with 137 million visitors.
Today its business included a network of more than 12,000 “creators” whom Mode paid to pick and promote content
Billion Dollar-Valued Mode Media Shuts Down
http://www.wsj.com/articles/billion-dollar-valued-mode-media-shuts-down-1473970070
Tomi Engdahl says:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Behind Twitter’s efforts to move away from being known as a social network, rebranding itself as a central destination for news and live events instead
Game Time For Twitter: Jack Dorsey’s Big Bet On Live Events
https://www.fastcompany.com/3063032/twitter-jack-dorsey
Can the company’s move to stream major events right inside its app, including Thursday night NFL games, woo the masses?
Dorsey’s task? He must rekindle the promise of Twitter’s first several years, when the company aspired to be the first billion-user internet service. Dorsey was famously fired as CEO in 2008, returned as executive chairman in 2011, and succeeded Dick Costolo as CEO last year. (He also launched the financial services company Square and is still its CEO.) Now his role is widely, and uncharitably, seen as a rescue mission for an endangered institution.
The company’s challenges are manifold. Since Twitter’s 2013 IPO, its stock price has halved. While Snapchat and Instagram have exploded in reach, Twitter has been unable to fix its intimidating learning curve that discourages new users. In its most recent quarter, it reported 313 million monthly active users, an uptick of only 3 million from the previous quarter. (Facebook, despite having more than five times as many users, added 60 million in the same period.)
Revenue for the quarter and Twitter’s estimate for the next one fell short of analysts’ expectations. And the platform has been dogged by charges that it is a haven for hatemongers and other miscreants. That’s led some well-known users to flee and commentators to publish think pieces with apocalyptic titles like “The End of Twitter.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Erik Wemple / Washington Post:
Interview with Joe Kahn, the new managing editor at The New York Times, on how the newsroom is changing, diversity, more
New NYT managing editor: ‘Would we have a staff left if we listened to Donald Trump?’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/09/16/new-nyt-managing-editor-would-we-have-a-staff-left-if-we-listened-to-donald-trump/?utm_term=.5133ce17b7ec
Journalism is now examining how it should treat Donald Trump. Shouldn’t we signal to readers high up in stories that he’s a liar? That he’s a racist?
The answer from the New York Times today appears to be yes. “Unwinding a Lie: Donald Trump and ‘Birtherism,’” reads the headline of a story written by reporter Michael Barbaro.
That’s what New York Times chief executive Mark Thompson said in the spring at a meeting of top New York Times managers. Editors received a warning that if they didn’t comply with diversity measures, they would be encouraged to leave or be dismissed. Given this latest move toward gender uniformity, perhaps Thompson himself is now on the hot seat.
And what about ideological diversity? In July, Public Editor Liz Spayd addressed the perennial rap against the allegedly left-leaning New York Times. “You get hit with complaints that we’re biased pretty much whenever you go out, especially at a Republican rally,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Glenn Greenwald / The Intercept:
The Washington Post editorial board calls for prosecution of Edward Snowden, the paper’s source for stories that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service — Three of the four media outlets which received and published large numbers of secret NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden …
WashPost Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer)
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/18/washpost-makes-history-first-paper-to-call-for-prosecution-of-its-own-source-after-accepting-pulitzer/
Three of the four media outlets that received and published large numbers of secret NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden — The Guardian, the New York Times, and The Intercept –– have called for the U.S. government to allow the NSA whistleblower to return to the U.S. with no charges. That’s the normal course for a news organization, which owes its sources duties of protection, and which — by virtue of accepting the source’s materials and then publishing them — implicitly declares the source’s information to be in the public interest.
But not the Washington Post. In the face of a growing ACLU and Amnesty-led campaign to secure a pardon for Snowden, timed to this weekend’s release of the Oliver Stone biopic “Snowden,” the Post editorial page today not only argued in opposition to a pardon, but explicitly demanded that Snowden — the paper’s own source — stand trial on espionage charges or, as a “second-best solution,” accept “a measure of criminal responsibility for his excesses and the U.S. government offers a measure of leniency.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Facebook says it overestimated average video viewing time metric by 60%-80% for 2 years, according to information Publicis Media says it obtained from Facebook — Social network miscalculated the average time users spent watching videos on its platform — Big ad buyers and marketers …
Facebook Overestimated Key Video Metric for Two Years
Social network miscalculated the average time users spent watching videos on its platform
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-overestimated-key-video-metric-for-two-years-1474586951
Big ad buyers and marketers are upset with Facebook Inc. after learning the tech giant vastly overestimated average viewing time for video ads on its platform for two years, according to people familiar with the situation.
Several weeks ago, Facebook disclosed in a post on its “Advertiser Help Center” that its metric for the average time users spent watching videos was artificially inflated because it was only factoring in video views of more than three seconds. The company said it was introducing a new metric to fix the problem.
Ad buying agency Publicis Media was told by Facebook that the earlier counting method likely overestimated average time spent watching videos by between 60% and 80%, according to a late August letter Publicis Media sent to clients that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The news is an embarrassment for Facebook, which has been touting the rapid growth of video consumption across its platform in recent years.
Due to the miscalculated data, marketers may have misjudged the performance of video advertising they have purchased from Facebook over the past two years. It also may have impacted their decisions about how much to spend on Facebook video versus other video ad sellers such as Google’s YouTube, Twitter, and even TV networks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MesoGlue will not replace solder
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4442738/MesoGlue-will-not-replace-solder?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160923&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160923&elqTrackId=e3a539608ddb4d79aa1619393c112b74&elq=03fe442e9be54fe99993f2c65e778018&elqaid=33998&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=29722
There has been a minor media frenzy over some very good scientific work at Northeastern University. Researchers discovered that you can put well-spaced silver nanowires on two surfaces you want to bond; one set of nanowires has an indium coating, and the other set has a gallium coating.
Now you have a room-temperature conductive metallic interface. Better yet, the indium and gallium will continue to diffuse until the alloy moves off its eutectic point, and then it becomes a solid at room temperature.
The non-technical media are ranting that this will replace soldering. This is what happens when PR departments and media treat a scientific breakthrough as an engineering breakthrough. It starts as a slick glossy abstract (PDF) by the researchers, no doubt with an eye out to department budgets and commercialization. Then the Northeastern University press office gets a hold of it and it might replace solder. A materials trade-paper (23M PDF) picks up on the press office release, and there is a bit more amplification on how this will change the world. Pretty soon the mainstream media pick up the story and its breathless headlines: “Will This Fancy Metallic Glue Kill Soldering?” I love the comment to one fan-boy article, “This seems like a game changer.” No, not really.
As a writer, I note that stories go from scientific jargon laced with passive voice to click-bait titles asking a rhetorical question. All are no-nos in good technical writing.
Engineering is science intersected with economics. That is why engineering is harder than science, and that is why it pays better. Engineering is also a continuum of solutions. We already have conductive silver-filled epoxy, and conductive nickel-filled epoxy, and I assume the boffins have whipped up conductive carbon nano-tube epoxies. Scientific papers don’t provide the context for the application.
Apparently, the researchers do not plate or deposit the indium and gallium.
There is little detail in this, I assume since they are furiously trying to patent anything they can. Universities are not bastions of pure research anymore. They are start-up incubators.
This also raises the engineering concern of process control. You have to ensure that the silver wires are the proper size and proper spacing
To the credit of the team at Northeastern, they use the process for the application of CPU cooling.
They state that the MesoGlue is 10- to 20-times more thermally conductive than thermal grease.
This CPU cooling application raises its own engineering questions.
There are a lot of good engineering principles on display here. After decades in the industry, I was astonished to learn that the thermal conductivity of copper is 8 times better than tin-lead solder. That is the brilliance of MesoGlue. It lets silver wires carry the heat, and the wires present a lot of surface area to the indium-gallium alloy to transfer the heat from one set of wires to the other.
Glue is great, no doubt. Glue is replacing spot-welds in cars.
With engineering, it’s always some complex interrelated set of compromises and tradeoffs. It’s another reason I consider engineering to be harder than science.
While I applaud the science of MesoGlue, it’s still not ready for primetime as an engineering breakthrough. When I can order it from Digi-Key or Arrow, and when its cost will justify the improvement, then it’s of interest to engineers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:
Facebook disabled the accounts of several prominent Palestinian journalists last week, then admitted the error and restored them, a continuing pattern
Facebook’s Suspensions Of Political Speech Are Now A Pattern
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/facebooks-suspensions-of-political-speech-are-now-a-pattern?utm_term=.fgJjW6X2k#.unRE5DKOy
The social platform’s temporary suspension of several Palestinian journalists’ accounts is its latest “error,” with no policy change in sight.
Facebook, a vital forum for online speech, can’t seem to stop removing significant political content from its platform.
Last week, the company disabled several prominent Palestinian journalists’ accounts, following user reports that they were violating Facebook standards. These weren’t small-time reporters — they’re people who manage pages followed by millions. Facebook later reinstated their accounts, blaming their removal on an error: “The pages were removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate,” a Facebook spokesperson said, using an excuse that didn’t need dusting off, since Facebook has offered variations of it at least four times in past six months.
“We sometimes get things wrong.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slashdot Asks: The Washington Post Says It Publishes Something Every Minute — How Much Is Too Much?
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/09/29/2110235/slashdot-asks-the-washington-post-says-it-publishes-something-every-minute—-how-much-is-too-much
The Washington Post is currently running a promotional offer — letting people get a six-month digital subscription for $10 (pretty good if you ask me). But the Washington Post also mentions that is now publishes a new piece of content every minute. That’s like 1,440 articles, videos and other forms of content in one single day. This raises a question: how much content is too much content? How many stories can a person possibly find time to read in a day?
News & Politics
The Washington Post Now Publishes Something Every Minute
https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/09/29/washington-post-now-publishes-something-every-minute/
Back in May, Robinson Meyer reported that the Post publishes about 500 original pieces of content and 1,200 other things–wire stories, what-have-you. “That’s more than one story every two minutes,” Meyer marveled. The newspaper has now grown that figure by 20 percent.
And your newsroom has around 700 staffers! Are they okay?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
BuzzFeed hacked by hacker group OurMine after publishing story identifying a member; group alters articles, claimed to have seized database, threatens release
BuzzFeed vandalized by hacking group after exposing alleged member
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/5/13172430/buzzfeed-hacked-by-ourmine-after-exposing-member
A number of BuzzFeed posts were vandalized by hackers this morning in apparent retaliation for a story that claimed to expose a member of their group. The hacking group, which goes by OurMine, changed the titles of several BuzzFeed posts to read “Hacked by OurMine” and replaced the body of some stories with a note not to “share fake news about us again.”
The hackers also claimed to have BuzzFeed’s “database” and threatened to publish it.
The hack comes the morning after BuzzFeed ran a story on OurMine, identifying a teenager who appeared to be a member of the group.
OurMine has taken responsibility for a number of prominent social media hacks in recent months, including taking control of accounts from the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter. It also broke into Variety’s website earlier this year
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT used for censorship and more
http://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2016/09/25/iot-used-for-censorship-and-more/
Why the silencing of KrebsOnSecurity opens a troubling chapter for the ‘Net?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Freddy Mayhew / Press Gazette:
The Guardian creates an in-house virtual reality team, composed of five editorial staffers led by Francesca Panetta as executive editor — Guardian News and Media has created an in-house virtual reality team, becoming one of the first UK news media publishers to invest dedicated resources in the emerging technology.
Guardian creates in-house virtual reality team
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-creates-in-house-virtual-reality-team/
Guardian News and Media has created an in-house virtual reality team, becoming one of the first UK news media publishers to invest dedicated resources in the emerging technology.
The team of five editorial staff will be led by Francesca Panetta as executive editor, virtual reality, and Adam Foley as commercial strategy director, who will focus on collaborations with advertisers.
The company said the pair would be supported by a “dedicated team who will produce an ongoing series of innovative and thought-provoking experiential projects”.
The Guardian, which is also experimenting with a Facebook chatbot, said: “The new team demonstrates an ongoing commitment to digital innovation in journalism and working with emerging technologies to create immersive and impactful storytelling.”
“As more people gain access to virtual reality, it becomes more important for media owners and advertisers to invest in their own presence on the platform and bring their brand to life.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jonathan Peters / Columbia Journalism Review:
FOIA Wiki, a free, interactive tool for reporters, has launched in beta, featuring forums, directories, and explainers focused on federal sunshine law
Just launched: A tool that will make life easier for FOIA reporters
http://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/foia_request_wiki.php
If confusion is the first step to knowledge, FOIA users must be geniuses. Fee categories. Pre-determination agency actions. Multitrack processing. Administrative appeals. Glomar responses. In some ways, the FOIA is as impenetrable as it is helpful, but a new resource wants to change all that: FOIA Wiki, which launched in beta today.
It’s a free and collaborative FOIA resource created by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, with support from the FOIA Project, MuckRock, FOIA Mapper—and soon users like you.
“FOIA is somewhat of a paradox,” says Adam Marshall, the Knight Litigation Attorney at the Reporters Committee. “On the one hand, the law exists for the use of the public—to promote democratic governance by keeping us informed about what our government is up to. But at the same time, FOIA is incredibly complex, making it difficult for the public to use effectively. The statute is dense and poorly organized, and there’s 50 years of case law interpreting it. Reporters, members of the public, and even lawyers need assistance.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:
Gawker Media’s liquidation plan reveals that Nick Denton, other Gawker execs may face claims of breach of fiduciary duties, with an investigation underway
Gawker.com to Be Liquidated After Being Excluded From Univision Sale
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/gawkercom-be-liquidated-being-excluded-934614
The bankrupt Nick Denton company also is proposing that two-thirds of Univision’s $135 million be allocated to its Hungarian affiliate.
If there’s to ever be a rebirth for Gawker.com, it won’t happen through Univision.
On Friday, it was revealed in bankruptcy papers that the sale of various Gawker Media properties to Univision for $135 million didn’t include the domain name and content of the company’s flagship website. The debtors are now seeking confirmation for a liquidation plan that includes the sale of Gawker.com upon the expiration of a non-compete with Univision.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rick Edmonds / Poynter:
US news organizations face increasing requests from individuals to take down old embarrassing stories and generally deal with issues case by case
Newspapers hit with a wave of requests to take down embarrassing archived stories
http://www.poynter.org/2016/newspapers-hit-with-a-wave-of-requests-to-take-down-embarrassing-archived-stories/432585/
Legacy news organizations have been trying for more than a decade to crack the code of what to publish digitally, where and when. Now they are fielding a different kind of urgent request from readers — can you “unpublish” that?
The cause is obvious — people routinely get Googled by potential employers, dating partners or the just plain curious. That 20-year-old drunk and disorderly arrest has a way of popping to the top of the list.
A remedy is less clear. Most newspapers have had a longstanding practice of removing published stories only under extraordinary circumstances. But does that still make sense in the digital era as the potential rises for damaging people’s reputations with long ago or out-of-context accounts of their misdeeds?
Though a judgment call for editors, these dramas play out against a complex and changing legal background.
In May 2014, the European Union’s highest court ruled that there is a privacy “right to be forgotten” — and that Google needed to respond to any reasonable request that information “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive” be removed.
The right to be forgotten concept has not yet made it across the Atlantic, but it is easy to imagine privacy advocates taking up the cause in state legislatures or Congress.
“This is getting scary,” Ryall told me. “We are responding to more and more of these…And when I checked with my colleagues at other Cox papers, I found they are too.”
Some of the callers are courteous, others belligerent, Ryall continued, but the concerns stick to several common themes:
It’s horribly embarrassing; I can’t find a job. You’re ruining my relationship with my wife.
A typical case might involve a story reporting an arrest on charges that later were dropped. Does adding an update to the digital file undo the damage?
“Newsrooms are guided to keep the bar high when considering removal of content from digital platforms. Our journalists strive daily to preserve the integrity of the published record, including publishing corrections or clarifications. We do so in the interest of the public’s right to know now – and in the future. Take-down requests are weighed on a case-by-case basis with senior editors, and some situations may require legal guidance.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
The Guardian, Wired, are turning to crowdsourcing to identify bad ads on their sites, encouraging staff, readers, to report them, in bid to defeat ad-blocking
To combat ad blocking, publishers ask staff and users to fight bad ads
http://digiday.com/publishers/combat-ad-blocking-publishers-ask-staff-users-help-weed-intrusive-ads/
Once or twice a week, Jen Soch, evp of commercial delivery for The Guardian, gets an email from a colleague alerting her to a problem ad on the site. It could be from anyone from a reporter all the way up to the North American CEO, Eamonn Store. They come by way of a special email address that the Guardian created a few months ago inviting the staff to report any ad they think might be slowing down the site. “The CEO and editor, they use it as frequently as the others,” Soch said.
Publishers are trying all sorts of things to combat the rising scourge of ad blocking, from blocking people from the site if they have an ad blocker turned on to working with advertisers to make sure ads don’t load too slowly or are interruptive, common reasons people say they ad block. But despite publishers’ best efforts, some offending ads make it through, usually through programmatic pipes.
Some publishers, like the Guardian, are democratizing the process of catching those ads.
Wired is another publisher that has encouraged users to help weed out bad ads.
The efforts are symbolic over how publishers frequently lack full control over the experience they give users, thanks in part to the complex ad delivery system that often allows bad ads to slip through safeguards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News work transition: the “meta editors” to finalize the text written by the machine
News Production changes when a routine delivery work is automated. VTT and the University of Helsinki have launched a project to find out how high-quality and interesting news computer is capable of producing.
In order to serve increasingly demanding audiences in a number of digital channels of media houses seeking to automate the delivery of routine work. This suppliers would continue to focus on making more challenging special stories and provide the public with more opportunities for immersion news more personal experiences.
“In practice, formed semiautomatics where the supplier is finalizing the text produced by the machine and determines the automatic news programs models of the future, all the suppliers are to some extent, such a meta suppliers.”, Says research professor Caj Södergård from VTT.
The degree of automation rises gradually
So far, have experimented with automatism news production big players such as the US news agency AP (Associated Press), for example, to write the balance sheet analysis. Economic the news, but also the sports news is already automatically around the world.
“It is expected that other news types can be automated to a certain extent, depending on the availability of certain data stricter journalism”
VTT project to find out how to automatically generated content affects the audience and what promotes or prevents empathy.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/uutistyo-muutoksessa-metatoimittajat-viimeistelevat-koneen-kirjoittaman-tekstin-6588634
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Haunting Last Day of Hot Metal Typesetting at The New York Times
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/08/the-haunting-last-day-of-hot-metal-typesetting-at-the-new-york-times/
The short film, Farewell — ETAOIN SHRDLU, produced in 1978 covers the very last day the New York Times was set for printing in the old way, using hot metal typesetting.
https://vimeo.com/127605643
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wikileaks founder Assange reveals his next target: Google
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/10/06/wikileaks-founder-assange-reveals-next-target-google/#gref
By now it should come as no surprise that Julian Assange isn’t a fan of Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t seem that he likes Google much, either.
Assange, the notorious founder of Wikileaks, detailed plans to unleash a fresh batch of leaked documents each week until the November 7 presidential election.
The documents are said to expose Clinton, the military, the oil industry, and Google.
Seriously. Google.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and its current chairman seems to be the lynchpin in Assange’s new master plan. In an excerpt from his 2014 book ‘When Google Met Wikileaks,’ Assange accuses Schmidt of having ties to the State Department when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and working closely with her campaign.
During this time, he reported, Google started to work more closely with the federal government.
Here’s why Wikileaks’ Julian Assange wants to take down Google
Wikileaks threatened to leak documents about the internet search giant yesterday morning.
http://www.recode.net/2016/10/5/13167726/assange-wikileaks-hates-google-clinton-leaks-hack
Julian Assange is no Google fan. He doesn’t like Hillary Clinton much, either.
And early yesterday morning, the founder of Wikileaks was supposed to unleash a fresh batch of leaked (or stolen) documents intended to upend Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects. Pro-Trump enthusiasts branded the announcement as a can’t-miss occasion that would change the tide of the neck-and-neck race.
But that didn’t happen
Assange’s problem with Google traces back to Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and current chairman of the board, and his ties to the State Department when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. The Wikileaks founder never liked Google, as a longtime advocate of a decentralized internet, and he’s also railed against digital surveillance for decades.
But Google became particularly suspect to Assange around 2009 when, according to Assange, the company seemed to be working more closely with the federal government.
“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad,” Assange wrote. “But it has. Schmidt’s tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of U.S. power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive megacorporation.”
Over the years, Assange has released diplomatic cables and emails that seem to link Google employees to operations in Afghanistan and Iran
But the leaked documents never really hurt Google
Wikileaks surged into the public eye in 2010 after Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. solider now serving a prison sentence for leaking classified documents
And Assange, being a longtime internet activist, began tracking Google’s ties to the State Department, which came into focus after a former Clinton staffer named Jared Cohen left to work for Google in 2010.
Wikileaks brands itself as a radical transparency organization, even if more recently it seems to be operating like an opposition research firm against Hillary Clinton after releasing nearly 20,000 private emails in July that led to the resignation of several key figures within the Democratic National Committee.
Assange admitted that he released the documents ahead of the Democratic National Convention in an attempt to turn the American public against Clinton. But that hasn’t exactly worked.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clinton Responds To WikiLeaks During Debate, And Blames Russian Hackers
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/10/10/0353242/clinton-responds-to-wikileaks-during-debate-and-blames-russian-hackers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
During Sunday night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, moderators asked a question based on WikiLeaks documents released Friday — to which both candidates responded. The leaked emails had included excerpts from Hillary’s paid speeches to Wall Street in which she reportedly said “You need both a public and a private position on certain issues.”
The question — based on the WikiLeaks release — was, “Is it okay for politicians to be two-faced? Is it acceptable for a politician to have a private stance on issues?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Be wary of: the Internet war is being fought on a daily basis
Internet history is a noble and academic. After the military starting points of our fathers internet was especially universities and research centers of communication bus. The first data on the waves surfing just academics also in Finland. Subsequent development is not as sublime.
At the same time when the Internet hit the web itself through earnest, Bill Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore had served as the cover image of the Information Super Highway project, the center of which was a matter of information and use of the information. The whole world was excited about the network of networks, which is promised to the world all the knowledge within the reach of every human being.
When we fast forward 20 years period, the visions have been realized. All knowledge of the world is indeed available to us. Unlike before, the data is also with us. Smart Devices will allow us to access the world’s data storage everywhere
At the same time, the technology has developed at a furious pace, academicians have left the network user groups to a small minority. The masses have discovered a network of knowledge and the ideal is buried below commercialism and entertainment.
Today’s network is full of semi-information: It is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, hoaxes, misrepresentation of information, propaganda and different impact on businesses. Instead, the information people share each other’s beliefs.
The distribution of peer-reviewed scientific publication so not accumulate likes: the inflation data favors entertainment.
The most significant part of the nonsense due to ignorance of users. Much more dangerous is the phenomenon of information warfare and affecting users thinking, where state actors using the network professionally propaganda distribution channel as well as a tool to obscure reality. The phenomenon is not new, but its volume has grown at a furious pace.
Each of us are victims of information warfare on a daily basis.
The most significant change is a problem in getting used to a new normal. In principle, most of us assume that the commentaries made a Facebook account in the tabloid news is given in good faith, and the online publication of news is done in accordance with the way of, for example, with regard to revision of the source of good journalistic information. We find it difficult to understand that the entire network media can be set up to share information due to obsolete and comments may write a monthly salary received.
Although everyone has heard the warnings of information warfare operations, governmental Internet troll factories and deliberate influencing opinion, the application of information network everyday situations is difficult.
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes formulated in his social Philosophy the concept of human natural state, where before there is a war of all social structures in the formation of all against all. The concept of who lived three hundred years ago thinker describes frighteningly well the current state of the Internet.
In network society in building readiness and ability to source criticism consist is extremely important. Understanding the value of information and harmfulness of misinformation is at the individual level is also important at the level of society as a whole.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/blogit/ole-varuillasi-netissa-sotaa-kaydaan-paivittain-6589252
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Pidgeon / Mediatel:
Guardian, in ad tech experiment, buys its own ad inventory, finds in some cases, it only gets 30% of the revenue — In worst case scenarios, for every pound an advertiser spends programmatically on the Guardian only 30 pence actually goes to the publisher.
Where did the money go? Guardian buys its own ad inventory
http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2016/10/04/where-did-the-money-go-guardian-buys-its-own-ad-inventory
In worst case scenarios, for every pound an advertiser spends programmatically on the Guardian only 30 pence actually goes to the publisher.
The revelation, announced by the Guardian’s new chief revenue officer, Hamish Nicklin, at the Automated Trading Debate on Tuesday (4 Oct), means a host of adtech businesses operating within the supply chain are extracting up to 70% of advertisers’ money without being able to quantify the value they provide to the brand.
“There’s leakage. The money that goes in is not the same as the money that goes out,” Nicklin said.
“There are so many different players taking a little cut here, a little cut there – and sometimes a very big cut. A lot of the money that [advertisers] think they are giving to premium publishers is not actually getting to us.”
Nicklin said the Guardian had purchased its own ad inventory to try and assess where the money was spent across the entire supply chain and saw, in some instances, that only 30 pence was making it back to the publisher.
“That’s not in every single case, but in worst case scenarios,” he said. “But the fact is it happens.”
“That makes life very difficult for marketers and we’re getting to this stage now where less and less dollars are actually going on working media, and that’s a major challenge because the idea is to simplify efficiency and effectiveness and we’re actually going the other way.”
The news comes as publishers face a host of threats born from the transition to online. July’s results from Guardian Media Group revealed its digital advertising was down despite growth in online readers, while almost all publishers are grappling with a growing threat from Facebook which is hoovering up online adspend by curating news content without carrying the burden of funding it.
However, the idea that adspend is not being delivered on the working media will almost certainly raise eyebrows at the opposite end of the market as those spending the money wonder where it’s actually going.
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Cook / Gizmodo:
Facebook policies force publishers to tag underwritten content as if it were produced “with” a sponsor, even when that isn’t the case — Most publishers of news and information have policies governing their relationships to advertisers.
How Facebook Extracts False Confessions From Publishers
http://gizmodo.com/how-facebook-extracts-false-confessions-from-publishers-1787674279
Most publishers of news and information have policies governing their relationships to advertisers. Generally speaking, these policies are tailored to suit the goals of those publishers and the expectations of their audiences. Some publishers feel comfortable working closely with advertisers to generate stories and videos that appeal to those advertisers, others, such as Gizmodo Media Group, do not.
Unfortunately, owing to a wrongheaded rule adopted by Facebook, you may occasionally see posts on the Facebook pages of our editorial properties—Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Lifehacker, Deadspin, and Jezebel—for stories or videos that were purportedly posted “with” some brand or another. It’s not true. We don’t do stories with advertisers. (Of course our award-winning Studio@Gizmodo team does fully disclosed sponsored content with advertisers all the time—hit them up!)
People return to our sites in part because they are a refuge from a digital news environment in which so-called “brands” and so-called “content” are blended into a sponsored slurry of news, opinion, jokes, listicles, and memes.
But in the current media climate, there are policies and there are Policies. The Policies belong to Facebook
holding our noses shut with one hand and shoving fistfuls of grass into our mouths when we open them to breathe with the other. Facebook has a quite literal monopoly
One such rule is Facebook’s misguided and preposterously blunt attempt to distinguish for its users between “branded content”—an ill-defined bucket that essentially includes anything with a paid-for reference to an advertiser—and “organic content.”
The “tagging” is also known as a “handshake”—a visual cue on Facebook that the publisher is posting the story with the marketer that is sponsoring it. Facebook intends that “with” to communicate to its users that the marketer is “collaborating” with the publisher.
while Facebook’s Policy may be adequate when it comes to distinguishing between “branded” and “organic” Lady Gaga content, it leaves much to be desired when it comes to describing the kinds of stories that Gizmodo Media does.
On occasion, for instance, we will produce a video or video series that is underwritten by an advertiser. When we do this, we agree to acknowledge that advertiser’s role in providing the funding for the series by way of a logo or credit in the episodes—and that’s it. We don’t collaborate with the advertiser, or discuss production details, or preview cuts of the episodes, or permit them in any way to influence the end result.
These are things—like Kotaku’s “Compete” video series—that we want to do because we think they will be good, and when we find an advertiser for them (in the case of “Compete,” it was Cheerios), we do them.
But just the presence of that logo or acknowledgement, by Facebook’s rules, constitutes “featur[ing] a third party product, brand or sponsor,” which makes it “branded content,” which means that if we want to use the Facebook pages of any of our sites to promote it—and if we don’t, we may as well not make the thing to begin with—we have to represent to our readers that we did it “with” an advertiser
What this means in practice is the publishers are required to lie to their readers, and—simply because of the obtuse nomenclature and unyielding rules adopted by Facebook—present editorial stories and video as produced “with” an advertiser that played no role in their creation.
Publishers who don’t comply with these rules risk having their posts taken down, a result that could be catastrophic to traffic.
We have reached out to discuss these rules with Facebook repeatedly, and gotten nowhere. According to Social News Desk, Facebook’s “grace period” for allowing publishers to learn the rules ended on September 1, 2016. From here on out, any violations will be punished with a removal of the offending post. Repeat offenders could, if Facebook treats the infractions the way they do copyright complaints and other violations, have their pages removed entirely.
As a result, our Facebook posts may include a disclosure that implies we are doing something that we do not do.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alan Rusbridger / The New York Review of Books:
The collaborative journalism that began with WikiLeaks and Snowden found new expression with the Panama Papers, pointing to future partnerships
Panama: The Hidden Trillions
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10/27/panama-the-hidden-trillions/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Someone is pulling pages off Google with bogus defamation claims
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/10/13234558/google-defamation-takedown-deindex-scam-reputation-management
Someone has perfected a playbook for pulling webpages off Google, according to a new post by UCLA lawyer Eugene Volokh. Volokh finds a series of unusual court cases that resulted in web pages being de-indexed by Google, making them unavailable to search or other services. In some cases, reputation management firms were apparently charging as much as $6,000 a month for the service.
Google will generally de-index pages if it receives a credible report that the page contains pirated content or defamatory statements. The reports are available in a public archive, and the vast majority of them concern pirated content. The standard for a successful request can be somewhat complex, but a legal injunction against the offending party is typically sufficient to de-index a site, making it effectively invisible to Google searches.
Volokh seems to have uncovered a way of gaming that system, giving bad actors the power to de-index any site they want. In the cases he describes, plaintiffs file lawsuits against dummy defendants who immediately agree to the proposed injunctions against them. The cases never see trial, and in many cases, the defendants themselves seem not to exist — but they exist long enough to get a court-approved injunction that can be sent to Google to de-index the site.
Dozens of suspicious court cases, with missing defendants, aim at getting web pages taken down or deindexed
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/10/10/dozens-of-suspicious-court-cases-with-missing-defendants-aim-at-getting-web-pages-taken-down-or-deindexed/?postshare=6791476107006382&tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.2751668f1e23
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news since firing its human editors
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/10/12/facebook-has-repeatedly-trended-fake-news-since-firing-its-human-editors/
As part of a larger audit of Facebook’s Trending topics, the Intersect logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly inaccurate. On top of that, we found that news releases, blog posts from sites such as Medium and links to online stores such as iTunes regularly trended. Facebook declined to comment about Trending on the record.
“I’m not at all surprised how many fake stories have trended,” one former member of the team that used to oversee Trending told the Post. “It was beyond predictable by anyone who spent time with the actual functionality of the product, not just the code.”
Our results shouldn’t be taken as conclusive: Since Facebook personalizes its trends to each user, and we tracked results only during work hours, there’s no guarantee that we caught every hoax.
Facebook’s Trending feature is supposed to serve as a snapshot of the day’s most important and most-discussed news, made possible by a combination of algorithms and a team of editors. One algorithm surfaces unusually popular topics, a human examines and vets them, and another algorithm surfaces the approved stories for people who will be most interested.
Without any piece of that process, Trending doesn’t really work — an observation readily illustrated by a Facebook product called Signal, which shows popular topics before and after they’re approved.
Last May, however, Facebook faced a torrent of high-profile accusations about political bias on the Trending editorial team — so much so that, in the aftermath, the company decided to tweak the role humans play in approving Trending topics. On Aug. 26, Facebook laid off its editorial team and gave the engineers who replaced them a much different mandate when it came to vetting news. Where editors were told to independently verify trending topics surfaced by the algorithm, even by cross-referencing “Google News and other news sources,” engineers were told to accept every trending topic linked to three or more recent articles, from any source, or linked to any article with at least five related posts..
At a recent conference, Adam Mosseri — Facebook’s vice president of product management — indicated that efforts were underway to add automated hoax- and parody-filtering technologies to the Trending algorithm, like those that exist in News Feed.
It’s worth noting, of course, that even Google News has been fooled before — all social platforms, not just Facebook, struggle with the complex and overwhelming task of identifying hoaxes and other sorts of misinformation. Still, Facebook is a special case: About 40 percent of all American adults turn to it for news, which — despite chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence that Facebook is “not a media company” — makes its handling of things like Trending really important.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jemima Kiss / Guardian:
Google News rolls out “fact check” tag for stories on web and mobile apps, starting in the US and UK
Google News introduces fact check feature – just in time for US election
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/13/google-news-fact-check-trump-clinton-us-election
Launched today, fact check will now appear as a label among news search results alongside other labels such as opinion, local source and highly cited
Launched today, fact check will now appear as a label among news search results, alongside other established labels such as opinion, local source and highly cited.
Google News algorithmically connects fact-checking articles with live news stories partly based on an established process called Claim Review. Google says that sites meeting the definition of a fact-checking service can apply to have their service included.
Facebook, despite its increasingly critical role in the distribution of news, has yet to deploy any fact-checking feature. Research by the Pew Center in June 2016 found that Facebook was the primary source of news for 18- to 24-year-olds. After sacking their trending topics news team, the social media site was at the center of a storm when its algorithm started promoting fake news.
The timing of the new label is significant, contributing to an unprecedented US presidential election where both sides have been accused of misrepresenting facts. Some commentators have used the term “post-truth” to describe the current state of political discussion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Efe Kerem Sozeri / The Daily Dot:
How hacktivist group RedHack subverted the Turkish government’s notorious censorship tactics in order to release a government email archive
How hacktivist group RedHack gamed Turkey’s censorship regime
http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/redhack-gamed-turkey-censorship/
The Turkish government’s plan to hide a massive email leak completely backfired.
The Turkish government blocked Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and even Github to stop leaked emails of Energy Minister, Berat Albayrak, from spreading further—exactly how the hackers behind the email leak expected them to react, allowing them to spread the leak further using the Streisand Effect.
The Daily Dot previously reported that the Marxist hacktivist group, RedHack, has compromised the private email accounts of Minister Albayrak—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law—and leaked the 17GB email archive to a group of journalists, including the Daily Dot.
Two days ago, when Cemil Uğur, a reporter from the leftist daily Evrensel, was imprisoned for “making propaganda an illegal organisation,” RedHack threatened to leak the email archive publicly if Uğur and other jailed reporters are not released within a day. After the deadline, the group followed through its threat.
To overcome the Turkish government’s notorious censorship, the hacker group diversified sources, including with links on StackOverflow profiles and in the deep halls of the Internet Archive —prompting the Turkish government to ban them all one by one, including blocking the “archive.org” domain and banning access to the Wayback Machine along the way.
But RedHack said they have calculated the most impact by uploading the torrent file to the GitHub, forcing the Turkish government into a hard choice between blocking the world’s biggest source-code repository or facing the fact that the leak will be available to the public.
Within four hours of the leak, Turkey’s internet authority decided to issue a nationwide block on GitHub, which was lifted approximately 18 hours later—a period long enough to make headlines all around the world. Meanwhile, the content that RedHack uploaded on the GitHub was not removed at all; instead, the group is now uploading screenshots of emails to further circumvent Turkey’s censorship.
The ban on Google Drive was also lifted after 15 hours despite the re-uploaded torrent file still being accessible. The block on Dropbox has also been lifted.
While the Google Drive access problems halted many corporate services inside Turkey, the block on GitHub had collateral damages for the general public as well. For example, websites using Font Awesome were not displaying their content properly, and MacOS package manager system Homebrew was reportedly not working.
(“After cloud-based systems, #github is also blocked. Is this a joke? If we are trying to wipe out start-ups, we are on the right track”)
At the end of the day, all of Turkey’s blocking attempts to stop the world’s leading cloud services seemed to be in vain, as RedHack kept sharing the torrent file and magnet link that points to the 10.9GB compressed (.rar) archive of the email dump on all possible platforms, which was then downloaded and seeded by hundreds of people inside Turkey and abroad.
Turkish government’s increasing control of the domestic media is rightfully concerning. But its attempts to control the online world is evidently a failure when groups such as RedHack know how to turn the tables.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google to launch new mobile-only search index within months, says it will eventually become primary index, but a separate desktop index will still be maintained
http://searchengineland.com/google-divide-index-giving-mobile-users-better-fresher-content-261037
Within months, Google to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content
Currently, Google has a single index of documents for search. Google’s Gary Illyes announced they plan on releasing a separate mobile search index, which will become the primary one.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amanda Hess / New York Times:
Some celebrities are resorting to cyberbullying tactics like posting revenge porn, sharing secret phone recordings, and rallying online mobs for PR offensives
The Latest Celebrity Diet? Cyberbullying
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/arts/celebrities-twitter-instagram-cyberbullying-kardashian-swift.html?_r=0
Lately, celebrity feuds have taken on the contours of cyberbullying, with famous rivals integrating the tactics of online harassers into their P.R. offensives. What looks like a public display of immaturity can actually be part of a sophisticated image management strategy. Retweet counts and Instagram followers are the new Billboard 100, and celebrities can gin up their numbers by instigating feuds with one another in increasingly nasty or technologically intriguing ways. But the game can have a dark side, especially for the losers.
The modern celebrity arsenal incorporates these other digital bullying tools:
SECRET RECORDINGS
SEXUAL HUMILIATION
REVENGE PORN
MOB DEPLOYMENT
It’s no coincidence that a Kardashian fingerprint can be lifted from many of the most high-profile incidents. While most celebrities use the internet to promote their mainstream careers — movies, albums — Ms. Kardashian West’s core product is herself.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ecuador curbs Assange’s internet to halt US election ‘interference’
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37699410
Ecuador has acknowledged it partly restricted internet access for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is taking refuge at its London embassy.
It said Mr Assange had in recent weeks released material that could have an impact on the US presidential election.
Ecuador also said its move was not the result of pressure from Washington.
The US denied WikiLeaks accusations that it had asked Ecuador to stop the site publishing documents about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In a statement (in Spanish), the Ecuadorean foreign ministry said WikiLeaks’ decision to publish documents could have an impact on the US presidential election.
It said the release was entirely the responsibility of the organisation, and Ecuador did not want to interfere in the electoral process.
“In that respect, Ecuador, exercising its sovereign right, has temporarily restricted access to part of its communications systems in its UK Embassy,” the statement said.
WikiLeaks earlier said that Ecuador had cut off Mr Assange’s internet access on Saturday evening.
The site has recently been releasing material from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, including those from a hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With One Tweet, Trump Could Sabotage the Presidential Election
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/one-tweet-trump-sabotage-presidential-election/
This election cycle has seen so many terrifying moments—the violent Trump rally in Chicago, the recent firebombing of a Republican field office in North Carolina, the Russian-sponsored hack of the Democratic National Committee. But none of these is quite as scary as the fact that during the third and final debate Wednesday night, Donald Trump refused to say whether he would accept the results of November’s election.
With that answer, Trump effectively asserted to the American public that he has the power to call this election in November. And whatever the news networks—or god forbid the courts—have to say about it, some subset of the American electorate will take Trump’s word as law. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, Trump already has all of the networks he needs—be it Twitter, Breitbart, Reddit, or who knows, maybe even Trump News Network—to spread his election-undermining message to millions of people with a single click.
“I think it’s a potentially dangerous statement when a candidate of one of the two major parties at such a late stage calls into question the election procedures and the whole voting process in general,”
Now, a single tweet from Trump (see, for example, his tweets about Alicia Machado’s supposed sex tape) can dominate the news cycle for weeks. If a conspiracy like birtherism could take root and metastasize back then, what sort of power will Trump have now that millions of people voted to make him the most powerful man in the world?
for a presidential candidate to deny the results of an election is fairly unprecedented in the United States. But not so in countries where political instability is rampant
American elections, fragmented as they are among local governments, are essentially impossible to rig.
Trump is threatening to torpedo that tradition.
many of Trump’s supporters already believe the political system is rigged, and not in the metaphorical sense, says Tuman. “These are people who already didn’t accept the legitimacy of President Obama,” he says. “In that sense, I don’t know that it does much to change anything.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
RIP, David Bunnell, Founder of More Major Computer Magazines Than Anyone
https://it.slashdot.org/story/16/10/19/1957225/rip-david-bunnell-founder-of-more-major-computer-magazines-than-anyone
David Bunnell has passed away. He stumbled into a job at PC pioneer MITS in the 1970s and went on to create the first PC magazine and first PC conference — and, later on, PC Magazine, PC World, Macworld, and Macworld Expo.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ecuador cut Assange’s internet with a little push from the US
It wasn’t entirely Ecuador’s decision, after all.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/20/us-urged-ecuador-to-cut-assange-internet/
When Ecuador admitted that it cut off Julian Assange’s internet connection at its embassy in London, the country’s officials said it was their own decision. According to NBC News, though, the US might have something to do with it. American intelligence officials told the publication that the US urged Ecuadorian politicians to stop allowing Assange to do Russia’s bidding from within their territory. Assange, as you know, founded WikiLeaks, which has been publishing emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee’s computers. The government believes Russia has been orchestrating the cyber attacks and releasing sensitive data to influence the US presidential elections.
American intelligence also believes that Assange knows the emails he’s been posting come from the Russians. However, they don’t think he actively played a role in the cyber attacks against the DNC. As one senior intelligence official explained: “The general view is he is a willing participant in the Russian scheme but not an active plotter in it. They just realized they could use him.”
Ecuador granted Assange asylum back in June 2012, and he’s been living in its London embassy ever since.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook plans to show more images and stories with graphic content, including violence and nudity, if they’re “newsworthy, significant or of public interest”
Facebook plans to reduce censorship, show more offensive but newsworthy content
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/21/uncensoredbook/
Facebook will soon display more graphic content including violence and nudity that would normally violate its policies as long as the imagery is newsworthy or important enough.
Facebook’s VP of global policy writes “Our intent is to allow more images and stories without posing safety risks or showing graphic images to minors and others who do not want to see them.”
The move comes after criticism of Facebook’s temporary censorship of the famous “Napalm Girl” nude photo of a child from the Vietnam War, which was shared by a Norwegian journalist and later by the newspaper he works for.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T:
AT&T announces a half-stock, half-cash deal to acquire Time Warner, valuing the company at $85.4B — – New company with complementary strengths to lead the next wave of innovation in converging media and communications industry. —Combination unlike any other …
AT&T to Acquire Time Warner
http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_time_warner.html
New company with complementary strengths to lead the next wave of innovation in converging media and communications industry.
-Combination unlike any other — the world’s best premium content with the networks to deliver it to every screen, however customers want it
-The future of video is mobile and the future of mobile is video
-Time Warner is a global leader in creating premium content, has the largest film/TV studio in world and an unrivaled library of entertainment
-AT&T has unmatched direct-to-customer distribution across TV, mobile and broadband in the U.S., mobile in Mexico and TV in Latin America
Combined company positioned to create new customer choices — from content creation and distribution to a mobile-first experience that’s personal and social
New York Times:
AT&T-Time Warner deal will likely face tougher regulatory scrutiny and higher political hurdles than earlier Comcast-NBCUniversal deal — A cable and internet provider decides to buy an entertainment conglomerate. — The merger is met with skepticism by industry analysts and outrage …
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/business/dealbook/regulatory-microscope-lies-ahead-for-att-and-time-warner.html
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Why AT&T would want to buy Time Warner: content packaged with data connections, a shrinking DirecTV business, and competition with Verizon, Facebook, and Google — AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is busy, so we’ll answer for him. — More than 16 years ago, AOL bought Time Warner for $160 billion …
http://www.recode.net/2016/10/21/13358928/time-warner-att-deal
Kara Swisher / Recode:
Resistance from Time Warner execs like Jeff Bewkes, head of HBO at the time, doomed the AOL merger, which raises questions about the prospects of the AT&T deal — The 2000 merger with AOL made Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes nauseated, so what’s different now? — In the end, I guess you could finally say Steve Case was right.
http://www.recode.net/2016/10/23/13369308/aol-time-warner-att-deal-history
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kevin Marks / Backchannel:
How a design trend to reduce the contrast between text and its background, driven by Apple’s and Google’s guidelines, is making text harder to read online — I thought my eyesight was beginning to go. It turns out, I’m suffering from design. — It’s been getting harder for me to read things on my phone and my laptop.
How the Web Became Unreadable
I thought my eyesight was beginning to go. It turns out, I’m suffering from design.
https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781ddc711b6#.ymtjqlg9k
It’s been getting harder for me to read things on my phone and my laptop. I’ve caught myself squinting and holding the screen closer to my face. I’ve worried that my eyesight is starting to go.
These hurdles have made me grumpier over time, but what pushed me over the edge was when Google’s App Engine console — a page that, as a developer, I use daily — changed its text from legible to illegible. Text that was once crisp and dark was suddenly lightened to a pallid gray. Though age has indeed taken its toll on my eyesight, it turns out that I was suffering from a design trend.
There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background, making type harder to read. Apple is guilty. Google is, too. So is Twitter.
Typography may not seem like a crucial design element, but it is. One of the reasons the web has become the default way that we access information is that it makes that information broadly available to everyone. “The power of the Web is in its universality,” wrote Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web consortium. “Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
But if the web is relayed through text that’s difficult to read, it curtails that open access by excluding large swaths of people, such as the elderly, the visually impaired, or those retrieving websites through low-quality screens.
We should be able to build a baseline structure of text in a way that works for most users, regardless of their eyesight
It wasn’t hard to isolate the biggest obstacle to legible text: contrast, the difference between the foreground and background colors on a page.
To translate contrast, it uses a numerical model. If the text and background of a website are the same color, the ratio is 1:1. For black text on white background (or vice versa), the ratio is 21:1. The Initiative set 4.5:1 as the minimum ratio for clear type, while recommending a contrast of at least 7:1, to aid readers with impaired vision.
Google’s guidelines suggest an identical preferred ratio of 7:1. But then they recommend 54 percent opacity for display and caption type, a style guideline that translates to a ratio of 4.6:1.
The typography choices of companies like Apple and Google set the default design of the web. And these two drivers of design are already dancing on the boundaries of legibility.
It wasn’t always like this. At first, text on the web was designed to be clear. The original web browser, built by Berners-Lee in 1989, used crisp black type on a white background, with links in a deep blue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:
Many publishers say an AMP pageview generates half the revenue of a pageview on their full mobile website due to reliance on standardized banner ad units
Google AMP Gets Mixed Reviews From Publishers
Some publishers aren’t generating as much ad revenue as they had hoped
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amp-gets-mixed-reviews-from-publishers-1477648838
Google is stepping up its efforts to serve speedy content to mobile internet users with its Accelerated Mobile Pages, but the initiative is getting mixed reviews from publishers as some worry about its impact on their advertising revenue.
Google unveiled AMP about a year ago and hundreds of companies are now publishing AMP versions of their articles, including the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Hearst, The Guardian, the New York Times, Vox Media and many others.
In recent months Google has begun including many more links to stripped-down AMP pages in its mobile search results. This has directed more traffic to those AMP pages and less to publishers’ full mobile websites. Google said in a Sept. 21 blog post that AMP search results would be introduced across search engine results pages worldwide “in the coming weeks.”
For some publishers that is a problem, since their AMP pages do not currently generate advertising revenue at the same rate as their full mobile sites. Multiple publishers said an AMP pageview currently generates around half as much revenue as a pageview on their full mobile websites.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg:
At least 17 firms have marketed surveillance products to law enforcement agencies and oppressive regimes using Twitter’s Firehose data — If you ignore all the self-promotion, ranting, and frog memes, it’s possible to see the Twitter that Jack Dorsey likes to talk about.
How Despots Use Twitter to Hunt Dissidents
Twitter’s ‘firehose’ of a half billion tweets a day is incredibly valuable—and just as dangerous.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/twitter-s-firehose-of-tweets-is-incredibly-valuable-and-just-as-dangerous
If you ignore all the self-promotion, ranting, and frog memes, it’s possible to see the Twitter that Jack Dorsey likes to talk about. It’s a “people’s news network,” he wrote in a memo earlier this year—a digital town square that connects voices from around the world. Taken together, the hundreds of billions of tweets that have been created over the past 10 years represent a constantly updating corpus of human conversation.
Nowhere was the promise of Twitter more fully realized than in Saudi Arabia, where the service was embraced as a way to get around government censors. “People do not trust the official media,”
“The only way for us to discuss these issues is through social networks like Twitter,” Aldosari says. “It allows us to create groups of like-minded people.”
But if Twitter provides a rare outlet for criticism of repressive regimes, it’s also useful to those regimes for tracking down and punishing critics. In September 2012 a Saudi Twitter user named Bader Thawab was arrested for tweeting “down with the House of Saud.”
For years, Twitter has offered access to its “Firehose”—the global deluge of tweets, half a billion a day—to a number of companies that monitor social media. Some of those companies resell the information—mostly to marketers, but also to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Some of these authorities use the data to track dissidents, as Bloomberg Businessweek has learned through dozens of interviews with industry insiders and more than 100 requests for public records from law enforcement agencies in the U.S.