av Mikael Winterkvist | mar 14, 2019 | Lästips
Facebook Is Not a Monopoly, but It Should Be Broken Up
ON FRIDAY, DEMOCRATIC presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren announced her plan to break up tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google. Her argument goes wobbly in places—does anyone really care that we have Bing in addition to Google?—but the overarching theme is the progressive one about big business getting too big for society’s good.
However, there’s one aspect of contemporary digital capitalism that I think many commenters and antitrust crusaders miss: Silicon Valley isn’t full of monopolists. It’s full of what are (technically) called monopsonists.
A monopsony is a market dominated by one buyer and many sellers; it’s the inverse of a monopoly, and requires entirely different antitrust remedies.
Källa: Facebook Is Not a Monopoly, but It Should Be Broken Up
av Mikael Winterkvist | mar 13, 2019 | Lästips
How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 (Not So Easy) Steps
In October 2017, a SWAT team descendHur ed on Jameson Lopp’s house in North Carolina. Someone — it still isn’t clear who — had called the police and falsely claimed that a shooter at the home had killed someone and taken a hostage. After the police left, Mr. Lopp received a call threatening more mayhem if he did not make a large ransom payment in Bitcoin.
To scare off future attackers, Mr. Lopp quickly posted a video on Twitter of himself firing off his Kel-Tec 12 gauge shotgun. He also decided he was going to make it much harder for his enemies — and anyone else — to find him ever again.
Källa: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 (Not So Easy) Steps
av Mikael Winterkvist | mar 12, 2019 | Lästips
Tim Berners-Lee uppfann webben, nätet så som vi känner det idag men han har delade känslor inför vad nätet har utvecklats till.
The Man Who Invented the World Wide Web Has Mixed Feelings About What the Internet Has Become
(GENEVA) — The inventor of the World Wide Web knows his revolutionary innovation is coming of age, and doesn’t always like what he sees: state-sponsored hacking, online harassment, hate speech and misinformation among the ills of its “digital adolescence.”
Tim Berners-Lee issued a cri-de-coeur letter and spoke to a few reporters Monday on the eve of the 30-year anniversary of his first paper with an outline of what would become the web — a first step toward transforming countless lives and the global economy.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, plans to host Berners-Lee and other web aficionados on Tuesday. “We’re celebrating, but we’re also very concerned,” Berners-Lee said.
Källa: Time
av Mikael Winterkvist | mar 10, 2019 | Lästips
The Making of the Fox News White House
Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?
In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.
Källa: The Making of the Fox News White House
av Mikael Winterkvist | mar 7, 2019 | Lästips
IF YOU CLICK enough times through the website of Saudi Aramco, the largest oil producer in the world, you’ll reach a quiet section called “Addressing the climate challenge.” In this part of the website, the fossil fuel monolith claims, “Our contributions to the climate challenge are tangible expressions of our ethos, supported by company policies, of conducting our business in a way that addresses the climate challenge.” This is meaningless, of course — as is the announcement Mark Zuckerberg made today about his newfound “privacy-focused vision for social networking.” Don’t be fooled by either.
Källa: Mark Zuckerberg Is Trying to Play You — Again
av Mikael Winterkvist | mar 7, 2019 | Lästips
Adios, Alexa: why must our robot assistants be female?
Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Home and other AI devices tend to be voiced by women, playing into the stereotype that serving is a woman’s job. But do robots need to be gendered at all?
Microsoft has Cortana, Amazon has Alexa, and Google has … well, Google Assistant. That last name doesn’t give it away, but get it talking and the common link between all three AI assistants is revealed: they are all supposed to be women.
Providing assistance has long been considered a woman’s role, whether virtual or physical, fictional or real. The robots that men voice, meanwhile, tend to be in positions of power – often dangerously so. Think Hal 9000, or the Terminator: when a robot needs to be scary, it sounds like a man.
Källa: Adios, Alexa: why must our robot assistants be female?
