Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
ABC News was among the news outlets that received a pitch from Facebook to license their content. Photo: Kena Betancur/Getty Images Updated Aug. 8, 2019 4:31 pm ET Facebook Inc. FB 2.71% is offering news outlets millions of dollars for the rights to put their content in a news section that the company hopes to…
The California painter and critic Manny Farber extolled “termite art” as occurring “where the spotlight of culture is nowhere in evidence, so that the craftsman can be ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go-for-broke art and not caring what comes of it.” That need for art to be ugly, to go where it is not wanted,…
Laura Poitras, a co-founder of the Intercept, signed a letter protesting recent company decisions. Photo: Andrew Toth/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Fe Employees are worried that one of the nation’s largest and most prominent left-of-center media companies, First Look Media, has lost its way. After the company shuttered two marquee outlets, dozens of employees signed…
In the spring of 2018, I visited the offices of the millennial/Gen-Z-oriented website babe.net, a sunny loft space in Williamsburg, just around the corner from Vice. Babe.net — now shuttered — was then at the frothy peak of its existence. I made sure to wear my coolest pants. The site’s managing editor, Eleni Mitzali, a…
A harrowing scenario analysis of how human civilization might collapse in coming decades due to climate change has been endorsed by a former Australian defense chief and senior royal navy commander. The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, a think-tank in Melbourne, Australia, describes climate change as “a near- to mid-term…
A new study suggests suggest publishers only get about 4% more revenue for an ad impression that has a cookie enabled than for one that doesn’t. Photo: Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press May 29, 2019 5:59 p.m. ET Are creepy advertisements really necessary to support the free web? A new academic study suggests they aren’t. Behavioral advertising,…
The Washington Post is taking a proactive approach to digital display advertising issues with a new project that is set to fix bad code, while saving brands from code errors and cross-platform bugs in ad code. The Ad Performance and Safety Protocol (APSP) focuses on accidentally harmful ad behaviors to ensure a better user experience…
AirPods are a product of the past. They’re plastic, made of some combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and sulfur. They’re tungsten, tin, tantalum, lithium, and cobalt. The particles that make up these elements were created 13.8 billion years ago, during the Big Bang. Humans extract these elements from the earth, heat them, refine…
One jaw-dropping moment during the Senate’s hearing on Tuesday came when Sen. Ted Cruz asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “Does Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum?” Unsatisfied by Zuckerberg’s response that Facebook is a “platform for all ideas,” Sen. Cruz continued, “Are you a First Amendment speaker expressing your views, or are you a…
The Guardian is a weird newspaper. Most newspapers don’t have nearly two-thirds of their readers coming from outside the country they’re based in. Most newspapers don’t start in one city and then move to another one. Most newspapers aren’t owned by a trust that mandates it promote “liberal journalism both in Britain and elsewhere.” And…