A few weeks ago, while our car honked its way through dense traffic in Delhi, I imagined an Onion headline: American Visitor Seeks To Explain What He’ll Never Understand About India. MORE
Power of the People is a great grabber of a headline, at least for me. MORE
This is what greets me when I go to the Washington Post site from here in Germany: So you can see it too, wherever you are, here’s the URL I’m redirected to on Chrome , on Firefox , on Safari and on Brave. All look the same except for Brave, which shows a blank page. MORE
In The Big Short , investor Michael Burry says “One hallmark of mania is the rapid rise in the incidence and complexity of fraud.” ” (Burry shorted the mania- and fraud-filled subprime mortgage market and made a mint in the process.). MORE
[Because it’s too @#$% hard to edit a long piece in WordPress (especially when one’s vision has not fully recovered from recent surgery), the latest edits of this are over here in Medium. Thanks.]. MORE
Take a look at this chart : CryptoCurrency Market Capitalizations. As Neo said , Whoa. To help me get my head fully around all that’s going on behind that surge, or mania, or whatever it is, I’ve composed a lexicon-in-process that I’m publishing here so I can find it again. MORE
I’ve been wanting to fly on the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” ever since I missed a chance to go on an inaugural junket aboard one before Boeing began delivery to the airlines. But three days ago I finally got my chance, aboard United Flight 935 from London to Los Angeles. MORE
Linux Journal is folding. Carlie Fairchild , who has run the magazine almost since it started in 1994, posted Linux Journal Ceases Publication today on the website. So far all of the comments have been positive, which they should be. MORE
My loyalty to Peet’s Coffee is absolute. I have loved Peet’s since it was a single store in Berkeley. I told my wife in 2001 that I wouldn’t move anywhere outside the Bay Area unless there was a Peet’s nearby. That pre-qualified Santa Barbara, where we live now. MORE
So I did some research, and Boston wins, big: Boston. Philadelphia. Minneapolis. Detroit. Middlesex-Somerset-Union, NJ. Oklahoma City. Baltimore. Nashville. New York. Pittsburgh. Kansas City. Dallas-Fort Worth. Nassau-Suffolk, NY. Chicago. San Francisco. Columbus. Atlanta. Denver. Washington DC. MORE
Personal data, that is. Because it’s good to give away—but only if you mean it. And it’s bad to take it, even it seems to be there for the taking. I bring this up because a quarter million pages (so far) on the Web say it “data is the new oil.” MORE
I’ve long thought that the most consequential thing I’ve ever done was write a newspaper editorial that helped stop development atop the highest wooded hilltop overlooking the New York metro. MORE
Here’s the latest VIIRS data, on the most active parts of the Thomas Fire, mapped on Google Earth Pro: That’s 1830 Mountain Standard Time, or 5:30pm Pacific. About half an hour ago as I write this. MORE
I should start by admitting I shot this picture with my phone. Also that on my rectangle with the rest of these people through most of this very typical subway trip yesterday. I don’t know what they were doing, though it’s not hard to guess. MORE
In Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? Justin Lee ( @justinleejw ) nicely unpacks how chatbots were overhyped to begin with and continue to fail their Turing tests , especially since humans in nearly all cases would rather talk to humans than to mechanical substitutes. MORE
Because I’m busy today, I’ll re-post what I wrote about my birthday five years ago. Here goes… I worked in retailing, wholesaling, journalism and radio when I was 18-24. I co-founded an advertising agency when I was 25-34. Among the things I studied while working in that age bracket were Nielsen and Arbitron ratings for radio and TV. Everything those companies had to say was fractioned into age brackets. MORE
I started calling online advertising a bubble in 2008. I made “ The Advertising Bubble” a chapter in The Intention Economy in 2012. I’ve been unpacking what I figure ought to be obvious (but isn’t) in 52 posts and articles (so far) in the Adblock War Series. MORE
Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine , by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times. MORE
MODIS fire data , plotted on Google Earth, current at 3:45pm today. You can see the Thomas Fire advancing through the back country,westward toward Santa Barbara, and already encroaching on Carpinteria: Those are fire detections. Radiative power data is also at that first link. MORE
The term “ fake news ” was a casual phrase until it became clear to news media that a flood of it had been deployed during last year’s presidential election in the U.S. MORE
This post continues the inquiry I started with Making sense of what happened to Montecito. That post got a record number of reads for this blog, and 57 comments as well. MORE
Who Owns the Internet? What Big Tech’s Monopoly Powers Mean for our Culture is Elizabeth Kolbert ‘s review in The New Yorker of several books, one of which I’ve read: Jonathan Taplin ’s Move Fast and Break Things—How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy. MORE
I just followed this link at Digg to Forbes , where I was met by the message above. Problem is, I don’t have an ad blocker installed. I have tracking protection. Three kinds, in fact. MORE
That’s the question asked by Quora here. I’ve camped on our planet for awhile now, so I wrote a few answers. Here they are: I doubt people learn the following lessons “most often” or “too late,” but I still hope they help. The purpose of life is death. MORE
I’ve hated rating people ever since I first encountered the practice. That was where everybody else does too: in school. Because rating people is what schools do, with tests and teachers’ evaluations. They do it because they need to sort students into castes. MORE
Nature and the Internet both came without privacy. The difference is that we’ve invented privacy tech in the natural world, starting with clothing and shelter, and we haven’t yet done the same in the digital world. MORE
Nothing challenges our understanding of infrastructure better than a crisis, and we have a big one now in Houston. We do with every giant storm, of course. New York is still recovering from Sandy and New Orleans from Katrina. MORE
And the same goes for California’s AB-375 privacy bill. The GDPR has been in force since May 25th, and it has done almost nothing to stop websites that make money from tracking-based-advertising stop participating in the tracking of readers. Instead almost all we’ve seen so far are requests for from websites to keep doing what they’re doing. Only worse. MORE
Here’s what I wrote about pirate radio in New York , back in 2013. I hoped to bait major media attention with that. Got zip. Then I wrote this in 2015 (when I also took the screen shot, above, of a local pirate’s ID on my kitchen radio). MORE
That was the view to the south over center of Greenland a few hours ago: a late afternoon aurora over a blue dusk. I departed London about four hours before taking this shot, and am writing this in Santa Barbara. MORE
Journalism is in a world of hurt because it has been marginalized by a new business model that requires maximizing “content” instead. That model is calle d adtech. We can see adtech’s effects in The New York Times ’ In New Jersey, Only a Few Media Watchdogs Are Left , by David Chen. MORE
Sometimes you get what you pay for. In this case, a good microphone in a bluetooth headset. Specifically, the Bose Soundsport Wireless : I’ve had these a day so far, and I love them. But not just because they sound good. Lots of earphones do that. MORE
Thinking today, with great appreciation, about my father, Allen H. Searls , who served twice in the U.S. Army, first in the Coastal Artillery and again in the Signal Corps , during World War II. As I put it in the caption under that photo , Pop hated not fighting in The War. MORE
In The Adpocalypse: What it Means , Vlogbrother Hank Green issues a humorous lament on the impending demise of online advertising. Please devote the next 3:54 of your life to watching that video, so you catch all his points and I don’t need to repeat them here. Got them? Every one of Hank’s points are well-argued and make complete sense. MORE
Two days ago, the New York Times said AT&T and Johnson & Johnson are pulling their ads from YouTube. They’re concerned that “Google is not doing enough to prevent brands from appearing next to offensive material, like hate speech.” ” Yesterday, Business Insider said “more than 250” advertisers were bailing as well. MORE
This photo of Utah is the dozens of thousands I’ve put on Flickr. it might be collateral damage if Yahoo dies or fails unload the service to a worthy buyer. Flickr is far from perfect, but it is also by far the best online service for serious photographers. MORE
Note the date on this map : That was more than a month before huge rains revised to red the colors in the mountains above Montecito. The LA Times also ran a story a week before last, warning about debris flows , which are like mud slides, but with lots of rocks. MORE
In Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking , @JuliaAngwin and @ProPublica unpack what the subhead says well enough: “Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names.” MORE
While I’m recovering more slowly than I’d like from some minor eye surgery, reading is too much of a chore; but searching for stuff isn’t. MORE
Doc Searls
MAY 12, 2018
In The Big Short , investor Michael Burry says “One hallmark of mania is the rapid rise in the incidence and complexity of fraud.” ” (Burry shorted the mania- and fraud-filled subprime mortgage market and made a mint in the process.).
Doc Searls
MAY 30, 2018
This is what greets me when I go to the Washington Post site from here in Germany: So you can see it too, wherever you are, here’s the URL I’m redirected to on Chrome , on Firefox , on Safari and on Brave. All look the same except for Brave, which shows a blank page.
Doc Searls
JUNE 7, 2018
In Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? Justin Lee ( @justinleejw ) nicely unpacks how chatbots were overhyped to begin with and continue to fail their Turing tests , especially since humans in nearly all cases would rather talk to humans than to mechanical substitutes.
Doc Searls
MARCH 23, 2018
Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine , by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times.
Doc Searls
DECEMBER 14, 2017
The term “ fake news ” was a casual phrase until it became clear to news media that a flood of it had been deployed during last year’s presidential election in the U.S.
Doc Searls
AUGUST 8, 2018
A few weeks ago, while our car honked its way through dense traffic in Delhi, I imagined an Onion headline: American Visitor Seeks To Explain What He’ll Never Understand About India.
Doc Searls
NOVEMBER 11, 2017
That was the view to the south over center of Greenland a few hours ago: a late afternoon aurora over a blue dusk. I departed London about four hours before taking this shot, and am writing this in Santa Barbara.
Doc Searls
SEPTEMBER 16, 2017
I’ve been wanting to fly on the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” ever since I missed a chance to go on an inaugural junket aboard one before Boeing began delivery to the airlines. But three days ago I finally got my chance, aboard United Flight 935 from London to Los Angeles.
Doc Searls
SEPTEMBER 9, 2017
[Because it’s too @#$% hard to edit a long piece in WordPress (especially when one’s vision has not fully recovered from recent surgery), the latest edits of this are over here in Medium. Thanks.].
Doc Searls
JULY 3, 2018
This is the situation at Newark Airport right now: Those blobs are thunderstorms. The little racetrack in upstate New York is an inbound flight from Lisbon in a holding pattern. Follow the link under that screen shot.
Doc Searls
NOVEMBER 12, 2016
Nearly all the ads I see on Facebook are ones like these two, next to Mark Zuckerberg’s latest post : Besides being false and misleading clickbait, they are not from espn.com. They’re from [link] , and bait for a topic switch:to pitching a diet supplement called Alpha Fuel.
Doc Searls
APRIL 2, 2018
Nature and the Internet both came without privacy. The difference is that we’ve invented privacy tech in the natural world, starting with clothing and shelter, and we haven’t yet done the same in the digital world.
Doc Searls
JANUARY 26, 2017
Journalism is in a world of hurt because it has been marginalized by a new business model that requires maximizing “content” instead. That model is calle d adtech. We can see adtech’s effects in The New York Times ’ In New Jersey, Only a Few Media Watchdogs Are Left , by David Chen.
Doc Searls
OCTOBER 21, 2016
In Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking , @JuliaAngwin and @ProPublica unpack what the subhead says well enough: “Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names.”
Doc Searls
JUNE 21, 2017
Take a look at this chart : CryptoCurrency Market Capitalizations. As Neo said , Whoa. To help me get my head fully around all that’s going on behind that surge, or mania, or whatever it is, I’ve composed a lexicon-in-process that I’m publishing here so I can find it again.
Doc Searls
AUGUST 26, 2017
Who Owns the Internet? What Big Tech’s Monopoly Powers Mean for our Culture is Elizabeth Kolbert ‘s review in The New Yorker of several books, one of which I’ve read: Jonathan Taplin ’s Move Fast and Break Things—How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.
Doc Searls
JULY 3, 2018
And the same goes for California’s AB-375 privacy bill. The GDPR has been in force since May 25th, and it has done almost nothing to stop websites that make money from tracking-based-advertising stop participating in the tracking of readers. Instead almost all we’ve seen so far are requests for from websites to keep doing what they’re doing. Only worse.
Doc Searls
AUGUST 30, 2017
Nothing challenges our understanding of infrastructure better than a crisis, and we have a big one now in Houston. We do with every giant storm, of course. New York is still recovering from Sandy and New Orleans from Katrina.
Doc Searls
FEBRUARY 20, 2018
Power of the People is a great grabber of a headline, at least for me.
Doc Searls
DECEMBER 1, 2017
Linux Journal is folding. Carlie Fairchild , who has run the magazine almost since it started in 1994, posted Linux Journal Ceases Publication today on the website. So far all of the comments have been positive, which they should be.
Doc Searls
FEBRUARY 7, 2018
Sometimes you get what you pay for. In this case, a good microphone in a bluetooth headset. Specifically, the Bose Soundsport Wireless : I’ve had these a day so far, and I love them. But not just because they sound good. Lots of earphones do that.
Doc Searls
FEBRUARY 27, 2017
I’ve long thought that the most consequential thing I’ve ever done was write a newspaper editorial that helped stop development atop the highest wooded hilltop overlooking the New York metro.
Doc Searls
JANUARY 25, 2018
This post continues the inquiry I started with Making sense of what happened to Montecito. That post got a record number of reads for this blog, and 57 comments as well.
Doc Searls
MARCH 23, 2017
Two days ago, the New York Times said AT&T and Johnson & Johnson are pulling their ads from YouTube. They’re concerned that “Google is not doing enough to prevent brands from appearing next to offensive material, like hate speech.” ” Yesterday, Business Insider said “more than 250” advertisers were bailing as well.
Doc Searls
MARCH 27, 2017
I should start by admitting I shot this picture with my phone. Also that on my rectangle with the rest of these people through most of this very typical subway trip yesterday. I don’t know what they were doing, though it’s not hard to guess.
Doc Searls
JUNE 12, 2017
That’s the question asked by Quora here. I’ve camped on our planet for awhile now, so I wrote a few answers. Here they are: I doubt people learn the following lessons “most often” or “too late,” but I still hope they help. The purpose of life is death.
Doc Searls
NOVEMBER 29, 2017
Here’s what I wrote about pirate radio in New York , back in 2013. I hoped to bait major media attention with that. Got zip. Then I wrote this in 2015 (when I also took the screen shot, above, of a local pirate’s ID on my kitchen radio).
Doc Searls
APRIL 11, 2017
I’ve hated rating people ever since I first encountered the practice. That was where everybody else does too: in school. Because rating people is what schools do, with tests and teachers’ evaluations. They do it because they need to sort students into castes.
Doc Searls
AUGUST 5, 2017
While I’m recovering more slowly than I’d like from some minor eye surgery, reading is too much of a chore; but searching for stuff isn’t.
Doc Searls
DECEMBER 10, 2017
MODIS fire data , plotted on Google Earth, current at 3:45pm today. You can see the Thomas Fire advancing through the back country,westward toward Santa Barbara, and already encroaching on Carpinteria: Those are fire detections. Radiative power data is also at that first link.
Doc Searls
MAY 29, 2017
Thinking today, with great appreciation, about my father, Allen H. Searls , who served twice in the U.S. Army, first in the Coastal Artillery and again in the Signal Corps , during World War II. As I put it in the caption under that photo , Pop hated not fighting in The War.
Doc Searls
JUNE 16, 2017
In The Adpocalypse: What it Means , Vlogbrother Hank Green issues a humorous lament on the impending demise of online advertising. Please devote the next 3:54 of your life to watching that video, so you catch all his points and I don’t need to repeat them here. Got them? Every one of Hank’s points are well-argued and make complete sense.
Doc Searls
DECEMBER 13, 2017
Here’s the latest VIIRS data, on the most active parts of the Thomas Fire, mapped on Google Earth Pro: That’s 1830 Mountain Standard Time, or 5:30pm Pacific. About half an hour ago as I write this.
Doc Searls
JULY 29, 2017
Because I’m busy today, I’ll re-post what I wrote about my birthday five years ago. Here goes… I worked in retailing, wholesaling, journalism and radio when I was 18-24. I co-founded an advertising agency when I was 25-34. Among the things I studied while working in that age bracket were Nielsen and Arbitron ratings for radio and TV. Everything those companies had to say was fractioned into age brackets.
Doc Searls
JUNE 23, 2017
My loyalty to Peet’s Coffee is absolute. I have loved Peet’s since it was a single store in Berkeley. I told my wife in 2001 that I wouldn’t move anywhere outside the Bay Area unless there was a Peet’s nearby. That pre-qualified Santa Barbara, where we live now.
Doc Searls
MAY 9, 2016
I started calling online advertising a bubble in 2008. I made “ The Advertising Bubble” a chapter in The Intention Economy in 2012. I’ve been unpacking what I figure ought to be obvious (but isn’t) in 52 posts and articles (so far) in the Adblock War Series.
Doc Searls
MAY 7, 2016
This photo of Utah is the dozens of thousands I’ve put on Flickr. it might be collateral damage if Yahoo dies or fails unload the service to a worthy buyer. Flickr is far from perfect, but it is also by far the best online service for serious photographers.
Doc Searls
OCTOBER 24, 2017
So I did some research, and Boston wins, big: Boston. Philadelphia. Minneapolis. Detroit. Middlesex-Somerset-Union, NJ. Oklahoma City. Baltimore. Nashville. New York. Pittsburgh. Kansas City. Dallas-Fort Worth. Nassau-Suffolk, NY. Chicago. San Francisco. Columbus. Atlanta. Denver. Washington DC.
Doc Searls
APRIL 15, 2016
I just followed this link at Digg to Forbes , where I was met by the message above. Problem is, I don’t have an ad blocker installed. I have tracking protection. Three kinds, in fact.
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