Snapchat: The King of Millennial Micro-Moments All Facebook In 2015, Snapchat put the world on notice that the app is an advertising force to be reckoned with — maybe the advertising force to be reckoned with. NamedAdweek‘s hottest digital brand, Snapchat commanded a reported $750,000 for brands to place ads, and the millennial darling reported more … Read more
The Most-Edited Wikipedia Pages Over The Last 15 Years FiveThirtyEight » Features by Andrew Flowers Wikipedia will turn 15 years old tomorrow. The free online collaborative encyclopedia has grown explosively: from fewer than 500,000 English-language articles in 2005 to more than 5 million in 2015. And as the site has grown, so have the edits to … Read more
Twitter’s Policy Reboot: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly EFF.org Updates by Wafa Ben Hassine January 12, 2016 Update: It is important to note that some of the language that was added to the Twitter Rules on December 30, 2015 is not entirely new and was recycled from other Twitter Help pages, such as the … Read more
181,000 drones have been registered with the FAA in just 14 days The Next Web by Matthew Hussey Over the holidays, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made drone owners register their vehicles. Since that announcement, more than 180,000 drones have been added to the FAA’s database, says CNN. Dutch reject ‘encryption backdoors’ BBC News | Europe | World Edition The … Read more
A Brief History of Debian – The Debian Manifesto debian.org [ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ A ] [ next ] Written by Ian A. Murdock, Revised 01/06/94 Debian Linux is a brand-new kind of Linux distribution. Rather than being developed by … Read more
IETF approves HTTP error code 451 for Internet censorship Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow The 451 HTTP error code, first proposed in 2012 as a tribute to Ray Bradbury’s classic novel is now an IETF standard and is the preferred error message for a server to send to a browser when content is blocked for legal … Read more
Top 10 Media Publishers for Nov. 2015: Billboard Dominates Twitter Engagement All Facebook In November, U.S. media publishers accounted for 1.4 billion total social actions (likes, comments, shares, retweets, dislikes), with 687 million from Instagram, 632 million actions from Facebook, 51 million from Twitter, and 13 million from YouTube (excluding views). The media publishing industry represents … Read more
New Study Shows Armchair Activists Actually Make a Difference – Social media “slacktivism” plays an important role in social movements. Upvoted by Gabrielle Canon In the wake of the devastating November terrorist attack that left 130 dead in Paris, Facebook photos around the world began appearing in the faded colors of the French flag: With just one click, … Read more
Bitcoin’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian Genius Wired Top Stories by Andy Greenberg and Gwern Branwen WIRED has determined that Bitcoin’s creator is probably Dr. Craig Steven Wright. Twitter warns of state-sponsored attacks for first time AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (IN DEPTH) Some users receive notice that state-sponsored hackers may have tried to obtain sensitive … Read more
French Ministry of Interior wants to ban open wifi, Tor Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow A leaked memo from the Ministry sets out new bills it would like to see introduced into the French Parliament as early as next month, setting out an ambitious plan to block privacy tools, something only technically possible by recreating China’s … Read more
Wikipedia is using artificial intelligence to get more actual humans writing articles The Next Web by Napier Lopez Better artificial intelligence is often associated with the detriment of a human workforce, but judging by some new practices by the team at Wikipedia HQ, it doesn’t have to be that way. Racist algorithms: how Big Data makes bias seem objective Boing … Read more
Signs Point to Unencrypted Communications Between Terror Suspects The Intercept by Dan Froomkin In the wake of the Paris attack, intelligence officials and sympathizers upset by the Edward Snowden leaks and the spread of encrypted communications havetried to blame Snowden for the terrorists’ ability to keep their plans secret from law enforcement. Yet news emerging from … Read more
EU official: all identified Paris attackers were from the EU Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Despite the rumors that tricked more than half the state governors in the USA into enacting racist anti-Syrian policies, there is no evidence that the Paris attackers came from outside the EU. (more…) VIDEO: Bataclan band: People died saving friends BBC News … Read more
Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies (top Nixon aides accused Daniel Ellsberg of being a Soviet spy and causing the deaths of Americans with his leak); it’s just the tactical playbook that’s automatically used. So … Read more
French cartoonist shares beautiful sketches that celebrate life in Paris Mashable! by Sam Haysom LONDON — In the wake of last Friday’s Paris attacks, a French cartoonist has been sketching scenes that celebrate life in France’s capital city. Resettling Syrian Refugees: An Alternative Slate Articles by Reihan Salam In the wake of the Paris attacks, a number … Read more