Journalism and media

André Staltz – The Web began dying in 2014, here’s how

https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html Here are some key points from this long article: Before the year 2014, there were many people using Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Today, there are still many people using services from those three tech giants (respectively, GOOG, FB, AMZN). However, the underlying dynamics of power on the Web have drastically changed. Internet activity itself

Uusiteknologia magazine issue 2/2017

Newsest issue 2/2017 of Uusiteknologia magazine has been just published. The magazine has three technical articles written by me (Ethernet, Bluetooth Mesh and smart phone OS). The magazine is in Finnish language, but the technical articles have also short summaries written in English. You can read the magazine on-line or download in PDF format.  

Make the Web Better for Everyone – IEEE Spectrum

https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/make-the-web-better-for-everyone The Web has serious problems: peddler of unreliable information, haven for criminals, spawning ground for irrational conspiracy fears, and tool for destructive people to broadcast their violence in real time and with posted recordings But surely you agree that the Web disappoints as much as it delights. Now the hard part—what to do about

Are Facebook and Google the New Colonial Powers?

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.fi/2017/09/are-facebook-and-google-new-colonial.html?m=1 To qualify as colonial powers, Facebook and Google must effectively limit the choices and power of users, and punish or coerce those who question or resist their power. The phrase that captures this broad narrative is: When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. In other words, if you’re not

Error 404: A Look At Digital Decay

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/digital-decay/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare The internet is stitched together by an incalculable number of hyperlinks, but much like cells in an organism, the sources and destinations have a finite lifespan. Essentially, links can and do die. Most “link rot” is the result of website restructuring, or entities going out of business and pulling their website offline. This idea

AI Creates Fake Obama – IEEE Spectrum

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial-intelligence/ai-creates-fake-obama You can’t trust anymore what you see or hear in videos anymore.  Artificial intelligence software could generate highly realistic fake videos of former president Barack Obama using existing audio and video clips of him, a new study [PDF] finds. Essentially, the researchers synthesized videos where Obama lip-synched words he said up to decades beforehand. Such work could

Internet Stone Soup | TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/04/stone-soup/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook Writing changed as the Internet changed. In this article Internet Stone Soup the Techcrunch writer John Biggs describes his experience of what happened to media in the 21st century, it can begin to explain how we ended up in an era of intentional ignorance and with a truly broken media. The writer of this article

How Facebook News Feed Works | TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/06/ultimate-guide-to-the-news-feed/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook This is the ultimate guide to how Facebook chooses what to show in your News Feed, and how you can get your content seen by more people. Understanding how the News Feed works is tough because the algorithm is always changing.

Alternative Facts Are The Norm In Public Understanding Of Science

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/05/29/527892222/in-public-understanding-of-science-alternative-facts-are-the-norm?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170529 The notion of alternative facts was roundly mocked on social media.  But there are many alternative facts that are just as absurd from an empirical point of view but widely endorsed nonetheless: that dinosaurs once coexisted with humans; that vaccines cause autism; that genetically modified foods are dangerous to eat; that humans are not responsible for

10 Popular ‘Life Hacks’ That Don’t Actually Work

http://interestingengineering.com/10-popular-life-hacks-dont-actually-work/ The internet can be a fantastic wealth of information – some are trustworthy and reliable information – some are just fake. Some of the most popular bits of info floating around the web come as simple ‘life hack.’ Unfortunately many of them do not work as promised. Here are some examples of fake life