The Fight to Rein in Delivery Apps
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the business model of food-delivery apps went largely unconsidered by the diners who relied on them for midday kale salads and late-night taco feasts. Platforms such as Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub often charged restaurants commissions of up to thirty per cent per order, and they were evasive about how (and how much) their couriers were compensated. But for most restaurants delivery comprised only a fraction of total sales. Then the covid-19 pandemic turned virtually all restaurants into takeout-and-delivery-only businesses, and the brutal economics of the delivery apps became a matter of life-or-death urgency, for both the restaurants selling food and the couriers delivering it.
Do Streaming Release Strategies Even Matter?
The TV industry has been debating the wisdom of Netflix’s binge release model since that Super Bowl weekend back in 2013 when the streamer dropped the entire first season of House of Cards all at once. Netflix argues its approach is best because it prioritizes customers, and that younger audiences in particular want to feast on big batches of content all at once rather than have episodes spoonfed to them over a few months. Hollywood’s old guard makes the case that tossing out a full season in one day dramatically shortens a show’s pop-culture half-life and makes their art feel disposable.
The tricky trans politics of FX’s Y: The Last Man
The new series, airing on Hulu, is trying to make the very 2002 premise of the comic it’s based on work in 2021.
Streaming Video Betting Big on Legalized Sports Gambling
Live sports and gambling have a long co-dependent relationship, which is expanding beyond casinos to over-the-top video. The new field of dreams for incremental billions in revenue began in 2018 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal anti-sports-gambling law.
Source: Streaming Video Betting Big on Legalized Sports Gambling
Why improvisation is the future in an AI-dominated world
Machines have long excelled at activities involving consistent reproduction of a fixed object – think identical Toyotas being mass-produced in a factory. More improvised activities are less rule-based, more fluid, chaotic or reactive, and are more process-oriented. AI has been making significant strides in this area.
Source: Why improvisation is the future in an AI-dominated world
Lifestyles of the Rich and Gullible: Theranos and Ozy Edition
Average investors were not able to get in on the last decade’s start-up boom in private markets. Once that seemed unfair. Now it looks lucky.
Source: Lifestyles of the Rich and Gullible: Theranos and Ozy Edition
Ghost Kitchens is the future of fast food
I visited the first Ghost Kitchens restaurant in a New York Walmart. Ghost kitchen companies have exploded over the last year and a half as delivery grew. Virtual restaurants cut down on labor and real estate costs, making them appealing to owners.
The People Who Make Your Favorite Movies and Shows Are Fed Up
“If you watch television, if you watch films, you should think about who is making them and under what conditions.”
Source: The People Who Make Your Favorite Movies and Shows Are Fed Up
Squid Game: the real debt crisis shaking South Korea that inspired the hit TV show
Squid Game adds to other recent South Korean screen productions, most notably the 2020 Oscar-winning film Parasite, in providing a sharp critique of the socio-economic inequality that plagues the lives of many in South Korea. More specifically, it speaks to the deepening household debt crisis affecting the lower and middle classes.
Source: Squid Game: the real debt crisis shaking South Korea that inspired the hit TV show
Lesbian gamers say Twitch is failing them
Twitch has been widely criticized for an ongoing scandal involving “hate raids” aimed mostly at its BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ users. These attacks are carried out by bots programmed to spam streamers’ chats with offensive messages. The conditions became so bad that Twitch users started a campaign — #TwitchDoBetter — to push for change, and at one point arranged a digital “protest” where streamers boycotted the platform in solidarity with hate raid victims.
Facebook’s own data is not as conclusive as you think about teens and mental health
Researchers have worked for decades to tease out the relationship between teen media use and mental health. Although there is debate, they tend to agree that the evidence we’ve seen so far is complex, contradictory and ultimately inconclusive. That is equally true of Facebook’s internal marketing data, leaked by Haugen, as it is of the validated studies on the topic.
Source: Facebook’s own data is not as conclusive as you think about teens and mental health
Spotify Has Made All Music Into Background Music
Is the collapse of genre boundaries and the erosion of fervent musical loyalties a good thing?
Hey Siri, what happened?
Everyone who uses Siri has their own tales of frustration — times when they’ve been surprised not by the intelligence but the stupidity of Apple’s assistant, when it fails to carry out a simple command or mishears a clear instruction. And while voice interfaces have indeed become widespread, Apple, despite being first to market, no longer leads. Its “humble personal assistant” remains humble indeed: inferior to Google Assistant on mobile and outmaneuvered by Amazon’s Alexa in the home.
Source: Hey Siri, what happened?
How the Facebook outage crippled businesses and communication around the world
Estherina Bewintara, a 29-year-old mother and designer in Jakarta, normally processes orders for her online furniture shop once her baby is asleep, typically between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. But on Monday night, as she was coordinating a stock update over a WhatsApp call, she noticed something was wrong.
Source: How the Facebook outage crippled businesses and communication around the world
What is the metaverse, and do I have to care?
In recent months you may have heard about something called the metaverse. Maybe you’ve read that the metaverse is going to replace the internet. Maybe we’re all supposed to live there. Maybe Facebook (or Epic, or Roblox , or dozens of smaller companies) is trying to take it over.
When one pill kills
Many of those pills are being traded openly via social media, particularly on Snapchat, the most popular app among U.S. teens. Snapchat has been linked to the sale of fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills that have caused the deaths of teens and young adults in at least 15 states, according to The Partnership for Safe Medicines, a nonprofit public health group. NBC News independently confirmed deaths in 14 of the 15 states and identified five additional states not included in the research.
Source: When one pill kills
The Internet Is Rotting
Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.
Source: The Internet Is Rotting
Who scams the scammers? Meet the scambaiters
Police struggle to catch online fraudsters, often operating from overseas, but now a new breed of amateurs are taking matters into their own hands
9 Horrifying Facts From the Facebook Whistleblower’s New 60 Minutes Interview
Facebook’s algorithm intentionally shows users things to make them angry.
Source: 9 Horrifying Facts From the Facebook Whistleblower’s New 60 Minutes Interview
TikTok’s latest good news: its ads are sticky and effective, and rich people spend a lot of time there
TikTok is having a very good week, it seems. It started with a Reuters story saying the social video platform has passed the 1 billion user mark in a shockingly short time. Next came the Bytedance property’s hosting its own event, TikTok World, at which it announced several new innovations to attract advertisers , creators and influencers.
How Istanbul became the Silicon Valley of the mobile gaming industry
In March 2021, six of the Apple App Store’s top ten mobile games in the U.S. came from Turkish studios, including Basketball Arena, which asks players to steal the ball from opponents in head-to-head matches and go for slam dunks; the self-styled “super fun running game” Bounce Big, where players run around, collect items, improve the size of their backsides, and launch off pads (the winning player twerks at the end of each level); Deep Clean Inc. 3D, in which users scrub crusty iPhones and toilets; and Jelly Dye, in which players, well, inject dye into a jelly. And Istanbul has become a magnet for up-and-coming game developers.
Source: How Istanbul became the Silicon Valley of the mobile gaming industry
‘Squid Game’ Is, Unfortunately, the Perfect Show for Our Current Dystopia
The Korean survivor-game series skewers capitalism, chance, and base human instinct in a brutalizing modern parable. Naturally, it’s on track to be Netflix’s biggest hit in history.
Source: ‘Squid Game Is,’ Unfortunately, the Perfect Show for Our Current Dystopia
Climate Change Is the New Dot-Com Bubble
The free market has plenty of grandiose ideas about how to fix our broken planet. There’s just one problem: We can’t afford another bust.
Google search’s next phase: context is king
Google is going to begin flexing its ability to recognize constellations of related topics using machine learning and present them to you in an organized way. A coming redesign to Google search will begin showing “Things to know” boxes that send you off to different subtopics. When there’s a section of a video that’s relevant to the general topic — even when the video as a whole is not — it will send you there. Shopping results will begin to show inventory available in nearby stores, and even clothing in different styles associated with your search. will ask more detailed and context-rich questions.
America as an Internet Aesthetic
@berryianeits our first time omg everything was so aesthetic!! leave me starbies recs im new ˊᵕˋ)੭ ##aesthetic##aestheticsnacks##snackhaul##animecore##americancore
TikTok’s Americancore meme critiques cultural appropriation by exoticizing the familiar. Who has the last laugh?
Source: America as an Internet Aesthetic
How IBM lost the cloud
Insiders say that marketing missteps and duplicated development processes meant IBM Cloud was doomed from the start, and eight years after it attempted to launch its own public cloud the future of its effort is in dire straits.
Source: How IBM lost the cloud
Revolutionary type: Meet the designer decolonizing Chinese fonts
In 2020, type designer Julius Hui flew back to his native Hong Kong. The previous year, he’d quit his “too comfortable and steady” job at Monotype, one of the world’s largest type foundries, and moved to Munich. Now, forced to head home by the pandemic after only six months, he found himself with little paid work, but finally able pursue a passion project that he’d been sitting on for more than six years: Ku Mincho, a radical rethinking of Chinese type.
Source: Revolutionary type: Meet the designer decolonizing Chinese fonts
Gig workers are uncertain, scared, and barely scraping by
The platform work model is reshaping entire economies, sectors, lifestyles, and livelihoods.
Source: Gig workers are uncertain, scared, and barely scraping by
The Largest Autocracy on Earth
Facebook is acting like a hostile foreign power; it’s time we treated it that way.
Every book featured in HBO’s hit satire The White Lotus.
The White Lotus may feel sympathy for some of its characters, but that doesn’t mean it excuses their faults. And while a show’s wardrobe can provide meaningful insight into a character’s personality and inner psyche, so can reading choices. The books that characters are seen reading act as an extension of their characters, speaking to relationship dynamics. An obvious example is college friends Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O’Grady), who carry books around like badges of honor and have a habit of reading Camille Paglia and Frantz Fanon by the pool. In the third episode, Shane (Jake Lacy) attempts to flirt with Olivia and Paula by teasing them about the books they’re reading. Olivia wryly replies, “No, they’re just props.”
Source: Every book featured in HBO’s hit satire The White Lotus.
Italian Arts and Music Events Streamer ITsART Set to Roll Out in Europe, U.S.
ITsArt , a new streaming platform dubbed the ‘Netflix of Italian Culture,’ is set to roll out across Europe in October and in the U.S. next year. Commissioned by Italy’s culture ministry, the ad-supported and transactional-VoD service providing access to Italian culture was conceived during the pandemic when Italy’s cultural institutions suffered from a drop in physical visitors and tried to react with various disparate forms of digital distribution.
Source: Italian Arts and Music Events Streamer ITsART Set to Roll Out in Europe, U.S. (EXCLUSIVE)
The Clickbaitification of Netflix
The same tricks that nearly destroyed online journalism now threaten to take over the streaming service.
Beyoncé, Jay-Z blasted over Basquiat painting in Tiffany & Co. ad
New York City’s preeminent power couple, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, are facing backlash online after appearing in a new Tiffany & Co. advertising campaign that features a never-before-seen painting by late NY artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Many critics are wondering how the anti-capitalist Basquiat would feel about having his work featured in a jewelry ad.
Source: Beyoncé, Jay-Z blasted over Basquiat painting in Tiffany & Co. ad
China proposes strict control of algorithms
China is not done with curbing the influence local internet services have assumed in the world’s most populous market. Following a widening series of regulatory crackdowns in recent months, the nation on Friday issued draft guidelines on regulating the algorithms firms run to make recommendations to users. In a 30-point draft guideline published on Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) proposed forbidding companies from deploying algorithms that “encourage addiction or high consumption” and endanger national security or disrupt the public order.
Source: China proposes strict control of algorithms – TechCrunch
Amazon will offer ‘buy now, pay later’ option via partnership with Affirm
Customers shopping on Amazon.com will be able to buy more products in monthly payments thanks to a new partnership with Affirm . The feature will be available for purchases of $50 or more. It’s rolling out to select customers now and more broadly in the coming months.
Source: Amazon will offer ‘buy now, pay later’ option via partnership with Affirm
Workers in the Global South are making a living playing the blockchain game Axie Infinity
Part Pokémon Go, part NFT economy, the online game has replaced regular jobs for many players
Source: Workers in the Global South are making a living playing the blockchain game Axie Infinity
Netflix in-app gaming initiative starts in Poland with ‘Stranger Things’
Netflix on Thursday sent up a trial balloon for its fledgling push into the mobile gaming market with the rollout of two Android games based on its popular “Stranger Things” series. Announced in a tweet from the official Netflix Poland account, the titles, “Stranger Things: 1984” and “Stranger Things 3,” are available to access within the official Netflix app for Android.”It’s very, very early days and we’ve got a lot of work to do in the months ahead, but this is the first step,” Netflix Geeked said in a follow-up tweet referencing the launch.
Source: Netflix in-app gaming initiative starts in Poland with ‘Stranger Things’
Trailers Use Slower and Moodier New Versions of Classic Songs to Lure Viewers
Says Brian Monaco, president and global chief marketing officer at Sony Music Publishing: “It’s called ‘trailerizing’ a song. That means changing every aspect of the song but leaving the lyrics. People know the lyrics. The goal is to catch people’s attention. Maybe they’re not paying as much attention to the trailer, and they start to hear the chorus of the song, and they go, ‘Wait, I know this song.’ They start paying attention, and now they’re watching the trailer.”
Source: Trailers Use Slower and Moodier New Versions of Classic Songs to Lure Viewers
Cash for kills: why are people paying for coaches to get better at video games?
A thriving new industry, matching people with pro gamers who advise and counsel, has exploded during the pandemic
Source: Cash for kills: why are people paying for coaches to get better at video games?
Inside Afghanistan’s cryptocurrency underground as the country plunges into turmoil
For many Afghans, this week has laid bare the worst-case scenario for a country running on legacy financial rails: A nationwide cash shortage, closed borders, a plunging currency, and rapidly rising prices of basic goods. In some ways, it’s a perfect test case for the usefulness of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. CNBC spoke with several Afghans who are using crypto to learn how they got into it, how it’s helping them, and barriers to further adoption.
Source: Inside Afghanistan’s cryptocurrency underground as the country plunges into turmoil