Why it’s too early to get excited about Web3
let’s focus on the interface between crypto and the real world that people live in
Solutions to America’s Local Journalism Crisis: Consolidated Literature Review
Printed newspapers are a manufacturing business.
Inside the NBA’s ambitious plans for a personalized streaming service for basketball fans
NBA executives outlined the league’s plans to bring the game even closer to fans, from virtual ads to biometrics.
Will the metaverse bring the second coming of Second Life?
In this age when we’re celebrating the “new” metaverse companies like Roblox, which has 43 million daily active users, it’s easy to forget that Second Life is still around. It has a $600 million annual gross domestic product (GDP). More than 2 billion user-generated assets have been created to date. It has 200,000 daily active users, and it processes more than 345 million annual transactions. It pays more than $80.4 million to creators annually.
NFT WTF
Primer on NFTs
Beyond Engagement: Aligning Algorithmic Recommendations With Prosocial Goals
Good primer and reading list on the intersection of recommenders with social issues such as addiction and polarization.
Opinion: Our constitutional crisis is already here
The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.
The death of Jabber
Why some esoteric technology never breaks into the mainstream.
Why Silicon Valley's Optimization Mindset Sets Us Up for Failure
The danger of treating everything in life is an optimization problem.
Predicting What Songs Phish Will Play Next with Deep Learning
Using machine learning to try and predict what songs Phish will play next.
The Invisible Hand Behind the Tokyo Olympics
Good backgrounder on Dentsu's history in general and specifics on their puppet-master role behind the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
End of the line for Uber
Uber is a bezzle ("the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"). Every bezzle ends.
A Framework for Ethical AI at the United Nations
An overview of the ethical concerns in artificial intelligence and the framework that is needed to mitigate those risks
'I f--ked up': How a pilot crashed a full passenger jet into the bay (and didn't lose his job)
Asoh's story has since been repeated in many leadership courses on how to accept responsibility for mistakes, including in this blog post on how "Companies must empower leaders to hold themselves accountable" and the How to Use the Asoh Defense training, which promotes “the power of admitting one’s own mistakes.”
Ken Doctor: Six months after launching a local news company (in an Alden market), here’s what I’ve learned
Consider our pricing: $17 per month or $187 a year, what we like to call fair value pricing. With a limited free access system in place for fewer than four months, we’re approaching 1,000 members paying that price. Of those, 76% have opted for annual membership.
You're Probably Not Using the Web's Best Browser
With endless new customization options like new email clients and a feed reader, Vivaldi 4.0 just got better.
Turbo Vax
TurboVax finds appointments from 53 city and state-run vaccine sites in the NYC area.
Is Substack the Media Future We Want?
The newsletter service is a software company that, by mimicking some of the functions of newsrooms, has made itself difficult to categorize.
The Promise That Tested My Parents Until the End
Couples pledge many things to one another. When my father grew ill, one promise tested everything about my parents' long and happy life together, and forced my mother to wonder how she would keep her word—and also whether she should.
The Silenced Majority
As the state has become increasingly dependent on Silicon Valley for many of its core activities—mapping, law enforcement, immigration control, warfare—it has betrayed many of the principles on which its legitimacy was previously based, such as privacy. Silicon Valley’s global influence is waxing just as America’s conventional imperial power wanes; there will certainly be those in government who would prefer to exploit the power of these monopolies than break them up.
Why Polling on The 2020 Election Missed the Mark
Polling now seems to suffer from some systemic problems, whic
How do you describe TikTok?
It’s not about casual browsing, not glancing at Twitter to see the latest news or checking your friend’s Instagram profile for updates. It’s a move directly toward an addiction that will be incredibly profitable for the company. And the more we trust that algorithmic feed, the easier it will be for the app to exploit its audiences.
How SmartNews is restoring balance to political polarization with News from All Sides
The 10 best news apps to stay informed without all the doomscrolling
This Japanese-based news aggregator uses machine learning to find top stories for its app. It's been popular in Japan and the U.S. for many years, with a focus on news from those two countries.
SmartNews’ U.S. app unveils new features for the elections, COVID-19 and local weather
At TechCrunch Disrupt today, SmartNews announced the release of major new features for the American version of its news discovery app, designed to make it easier for users to get updates about the elections, COVID-19 and the weather.
On The Perishingly Small Value of Scott Galloway’s Analysis of Higher Education
We feel quite confident that any good undergraduate at Clark, and certainly all of our graduate students, would have received the training in critical thinking, research, and analysis necessary not only to identify many, if not all, of the problems we point to here, but to conduct such an analysis in a more effective, productive manner.
USS University
Think about this. Next month, as currently envisioned, 2,800+ cruise ships retrofitted with white boards and a younger cohort will set sail in the midst of a raging pandemic. The density and socialization on these cruise ships could render college towns across America the next virus hot spots.
TikTok and the Sorting Hat
Insights into how TikTok succeeded in the US
Interviewing is a noisy prediction problem
The correlation between who did really well in the interview process and who performs really well at work is really weak.
What Do College Students Think of Their Schools’ Reopening Plans?
“Why try to make something that worked in the classroom work outside the classroom when you have access to something completely new outside?”