Gongol.com Archives: December 2015
December 27, 2015
Cat-and-mouse game between consumers and advertisers continues
Ad blocking is on the rise, and that's going to push advertisers to stuff more advertising into unexpected places than before -- particularly in pictures. First there were banner ads, then there were pop-up ads, then there were pop-under ads, then there were autoplay commercials. Then there was "content advertising", embedded links, and advertising-supported apps. Funny thing: When radio was new, it was often supported solely by individual companies (like WHO-AM in Des Moines, which was a tool of the Bankers Life Company, or WLS-AM, which was an arm of Sears -- the "World's Largest Store"). In other times, individual companies have supported entire publications (as the Bell System did back in the day, or as Shell does today with "Impact" and Chevron does with "Next"). Aside from tricks like stuffing ads into visual media, there's been a modern revival of the house publication -- the content website, like AT&T's "Thread". Of course, the content has to be useful, interesting, and also somehow profitable for the company producing it.
Why not direct democracy all the time?
Among other reasons, because "Arrested Development" only lasted three seasons on television, but "Big Brother" has made it to 17, totaling 585 episodes of complete, mindless junk. But seriously: Direct democracy is fine on a tiny scale with limited scope, but once any real complexity becomes involved, people are unwilling to invest the time and effort required to come up with good decisions. That's why a democratic republic is the only way to go.
Local news: How about less hype and more analysis?
What we package as "news" is really a combination of news, events, and information, along with elements of entertainment, opinion, and analysis. News is anything that materially changes our understanding of the status quo. If it doesn't do that, it's probably an event or information. Those things can be valuable, but they're not news.
Brazen crooks ask makers of Raspberry Pi to install malware for pay
The Raspberry Pi is an ultra-cheap computer, and the thought that crooks would so openly seek to corrupt any system they could ought to make us all a little uneasy
Huge landslide discovered months later thanks to satellite photos
