Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
On January 16, 2013, Deadspin published an exposé of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s fake dead girlfriend. The next morning, reality TV personality Donald Trump tweeted his congratulations. Fourteen minutes later, Deadspin tweeted back “Go fuck yourself.” This is the story of that tweet, as told by those who lived it. Barry Petchesky, Deadspin staffer:…
Popular online ad-blocking software Adblock Plus will soon include a feature allowing users to pay websites for content, which could help those sites recoup some revenue from visitors who choose to avoid ads. Thanks to a partnership with Sweden-based content-funding startup Flattr, Adblock Plus users will be given an option to specify how much money…
First Look Media has decided to discontinue funding of Reported.ly, a social media reporting and verification outfit. This has led the organization to announce it will suspend operations on Aug. 31. Besides Reported.ly’s editor Andy Carvin, four more staffers are affected by this decision and will be leaving First Look Media at the end of…
Oh well, looks like Facebook just got all anti-user · 2016-08-09 17:52 by Ben Williams Earlier today Facebook announced that it would start trying to circumvent users with ad-blocking software and show them ads. This is an unfortunate move, because it takes a dark path against user choice. But it’s also no reason to overreact:…
HEIST is a big DEAL Newly Discovered Exploit Should Trigger a Moratorium on Blocking Adblockers and a Retooling of AdChoices At this year’s BLACK HAT conference in Las Vegas, Belgian researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Tom Van Goethem demonstrated a newly discovered technique where JavaScript loaded by a third-party is able to circumvent the encryption of…
Black Hat Malicious ads can potentially masquerade as people online and grab their personal information from HTTPS-protected websites, two boffins have shown. The technique is dubbed HEIST – HTTP Encrypted Information can be Stolen through TCP-Windows – and it was devised by Tom Van Goethem and Mathy Vanhoef, both PhD researchers at the University of…
Twitter Inc. has listed 183,642 square feet of space in its Mid-Market headquarters for sublease, according to marketing materials and a source familiar with the property, as the company struggles to compete for advertisers and user growth has slowed. The social media company (NYSE: TWTR), which is San Francisco’s second-largest tech employer, has an immediate 78,792-square-foot availability at…
This is what Apple should tell you when you lose your iPhone Two weeks ago, I was on holiday in Turin, Italy and made a boo boo. I forgot my phone in our rental car for a two hour visit to a local outdoors spa (Acquajoy, great fun especially for the kids!). The end result…
Disaster stories involving the Internet of Things are all the rage. They feature cars (both driven and driverless), the power grid, dams, and tunnel ventilation systems. A particularly vivid and realistic one, near-future fiction published last month in New York Magazine, described a cyberattack on New York that involved hacking of cars, the water system,…
If Twitter can get more people tweeting about brands’ ads, then maybe brands will count those free tweets’ audiences as extra impressions and consider the social network’s ads more cost-effective. It’s a big “if.” But considering how Twitter’s ad business is hurting, it can’t hurt to try. Earlier this year Twitter introduced its conversational…