How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.
Articles fromjason.xyz
The New Copycats: How Facebook Squashes Competition From Startups - W…
archived 27 Nov 2017 18:16:20 UTC
When Houseparty was at its most vulnerable, Facebook came knocking. Fidji Simo, head of Facebook’s video efforts, contacted Mr. Rubin, according to people familiar with the contact. She wanted to talk about live video, the people say. It was the first sign Facebook was scrutinizing Houseparty.
Mr. Zuckerberg is sensitive to anything that might disrupt Facebook, even the teeniest startup, say current and former executives and employees.
Houseparty, which has one-million-plus daily users, compared with Facebook’s 1.32 billion, is determined to beat Bonfire, he says.
After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel. The oligopoly has won.
Many companies have been trying to disrupt email by making it proprietary. So far, they have failed. Email keeps being an open protocol. Hurray? No hurray. Email is not distributed anymore. You just cannot create another first-class node of this ne
Information Foraging: A Theory of How People Navigate on the Web
To decide whether to visit a page, people take into account how much relevant information they are likely to find on that page relative to the effort involved in extracting that info.
In other words, if people have a question, they will decide which webpage to go to based on (1) how likely it is that the page will provide an answer to their question, and (2) how long it’s going to take to get the answer if they go to that page.
In layman terms, information foraging explains why people don’t scroll mindlessly or click on every single link on the page: because they attempt to maximize the rate of gain and get as much relevant information in as little time as possible.
For AOL, the World Is Next
We keep making the same mistakes with spreadsheets, despite bad consequences
Errors with spreadsheets are not only frustrating but can have serious consequences.
What do Americans want in a social media platform? | YouGov
Picture a world where social media platforms cater to the preferences of their users. A recent YouGov poll asked Americans about their ideal platform, including how positively or negatively they view various settings and options.
Here is what Americans are most likely to want in social media:
Platforms present content chronologically, displaying posts in the order they were published, with the newest posts appearing first.
Platforms Verify users' identity, with users given the option to use their real name or a pseudonym.
Human moderators verify the accounts of notable people, organizations, and businesses that meet certain criteria.
User information either is always private (only visible to approved users) or is private by default (with the option to make it public).
Human moderators identify and remove content that violates a platform's terms of service. Users also have the option to report such content for removal.
For revenue, companies rely on advertising and e-commerce rather than subscriptions and sales of user data to other parties.
Users have a dedicated space to explore new content and are being provided with personalized recommendations, trending content, and the ability to follow topics via hashtags.
Users have the option to comment on, react to, and share content, as well as the capabilities to join groups and send private messages to other users.
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Why we need a public internet and how to get one
“What if every library in the US had a social media server?”
Thoughts on Flash
“Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” by Anthony Bourdain
The late chef’s 1999 essay about working in Manhattan restaurants. “Gastronomy is the science of pain,” he writes. “It was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place.”
The Man Who Killed Google Search
This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it.
The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google’s head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then
Misleading vintage ads about the dietary benefits of sugar, 1950s-1960s - Rare Historical Photos
In the early 1950s until 1970s, sugar was marketed as a healthy substance that would help curb hunger and provide an energy boost.
King of the Hill animation help
Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users.
When Coca-Cola came to France, 1950 - Rare Historical Photos
In 1950, Coca Cola decided to start a big marketing campaign targeting the drink to the people of France.
Pepsi Logo Brand Guide
Computers as social actors
An Ode to Pen & Pixel Album Covers
Major labels got you art direction. Indie rappers got Pen & Pixel to photoshop them on to a pile of gold holding a Glock.
Curating on the Web: The Evolution of Platforms as Spaces for Producing and Disseminating Web-Based Art
By analysing a series of exhibition projects responding to central changes in web technology since its public unveiling (1991), this study identifies a historical trajectory for discussing the evolution of curating on the web. Such evolution highlights how curators have devised exhibition models that operate as platforms for not only displaying art specific to the web, but also for producing and disseminating it in a way that responds to the developments of web technology—and its socio-cultural and economic impact. With the massification of web tools, in fact, these platforms have generated distributed systems of artistic production free from the physical and conceptual limitations of the gallery and museum space. They have not only become spaces for displaying art, but also platforms that nurture its production, different modes of audience engagement and critique the canons of the institutionalised art world. Originating from the desire to reduce the historical fragmentation of this field of work and its partial mapping, this study follows a periodisation that starts from the early internet, with its BBS-enabled platforms such as ARTEX (1980), to introduce the 1990s experimentations with the web browser and the developments of projects like äda’web (1995). It then dives into the Web 2.0 when, with the platformisation of the technology, curators developed an array of approaches for adopting existing web services, as in the instances of CuratingYouTube (2007–present) and #exstrange (2017). Lastly, it outlines the trends of today’s web, which saw the birth of projects like the blockchain-enabled cointemporary (2014), to then draw conclusions about the relevance of this historical trajectory in the field of curatorial studies and the production of web-based and digital art.
The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
Why the dark forests of the internet — podcasts, newsletters, and other private channels — are growing, and why might that pose a problem
The World's First Costume Book: François Desprez's *Collection of Various Clothing Styles* (1562)
Desprez’s 121 engravings illustrate garbs supposedly found the world over in 1562, worn by humans and monsters alike.
Early Modern Memes: The Reuse and Recycling of Woodcuts in 17th-Century English Popular Print
Expensive and laborious to produce, a single woodcut could be recycled to illustrate scores of different ballads, each new home imbuing the same image with often wildly diverse meanings. Katie Sisneros explores this interplay of repetition, context, and meaning, and how in it can be seen a parallel to meme culture of today.
Every webpage deserves to be a place
Posted on Thursday 5 Sep 2024. 1,133 words, 5 links. By Matt Webb.
How to Monetize a Blog
A guide on turning your diary into dollars.
How Influencers and Algorithms Are Creating Bespoke Realities for Everyone
"People who are not Trump supporters might see him as clownish, but among the group that he's speaking to, they trust him." A disinfo researcher on how people's realities aren't shaped by facts, but by niche celebrities and online.
The Art of Finishing | ByteDrum
My endless battle with the "Project Hydra": why I can't seem to finish projects, and the strategies I'm exploring to finally complete what I start. A personal journey through productivity's thorniest challenge.
Jennifer in paradise: the story of the first Photoshopped image
One holiday snap has been manipulated thousands of times on thousands of computers. Gordon Comstock on how a woman on a beach in Bora Bora taught the world to tinker with pictures
Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson
The dangerous myth of the creator-entrepreneur. — Joan Westenberg
We have conditioned ourselves and each other to believe that artists, musicians, writers, inventors and creators must orient themselves as entrepreneurial go-getters - monetising their work into startups, small businesses or branded products. This myth of the creator-entrepreneur radically narrows d
An off-ramp from the digital IKEA maze
There is an episode of Star Trek where a character is for plot reasons trapped in a shrinking parallel universe. As time passes, people she knows one by one just vanish and she is the only one who seems to notice. Eventually it gets to an absurd point. She asks if it really makes sense if a ship made for a thousand people would have a crew of a few people, and everyone just sort of like shrugs and looks at her like she’s crazy.
Your Board of Directors is Probably Going to Fire You
One of my portfolio companies raised a round a few months ago and I left their board. So, for the first time in a long time, I am not on any boards of directors. Since I no longer have anyone speci…