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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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EU to Facebook: 'Drop Dead'

A leak from the European Data Protection Board reveals that the EU’s top privacy regulator is about to overrule the Irish Data Protection Commission and declare Facebook’s business model illegal, banning surveillance-based ads without explicit consent:

https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-declared-illegal

In some ways, this is unsurprising. Since the GDPR’s beginning, it’s been crystal clear that the intention of the landmark privacy regulation was to extinguish commercial surveillance and ring down the curtain on “consent theater” — the fiction that you “agree” to be spied on by clicking “I agree” or just by landing on a web-page that has a link to some fine-print.

Under the GDPR, the default for data-collection is meaningful consent, meaning that a company that wants to spy on you and then sell or use the data it gathers has to ask you about each piece of data they plan to capture and each use they plan to make of it.

These uses have to be individually enumerated, and the user has to actively opt into giving up each piece of data and into each use of that data. That means that if you’re planning to steal 700 pieces of information from me and then use it in 700 ways, you need to ask me 1,400 questions and get a “Yes” to each of them.

What’s more, I have to be given a single tickbox at the start of this process that says, “No to all,” and then I have to be given access to all the features of the site or service.

The point of this exercise is to reveal consent theater for the sham it is. For all that apologists for commercial surveillance insist that “people like ads, so long as they’re well-targeted” and “the fact that people use high-surveillance services like Facebook shows a ‘revealed preference’ for being spied on,” we all know that no one likes surveillance.

There’s empirical proof of this! When Apple added one-click tracker opt-out on its Ios platform, 96% of users opted out, costing Facebook more than $10b in the first year (talk about a ‘revealed preference!’) (of course, Apple only opted those users out of tracking by its rivals, and secretly continued highly invasive, nonconsenual tracking of its customers):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Properly enforced, the GDPR would have upended the order of the digital world: any argument about surveillance between product managers at a digital firm would have been settled in favor of privacy, because the pro-privacy side could argue that no one would give consent, and the very act of asking would scare off lots of users.

But the GDPR wasn’t properly enforced, thanks to structural problems with European federalism itself. The first line of GDPR enforcement came from privacy regulators in whatever country a privacy-violator called home. That meant that when Big Tech companies violated the GDPR, they’d have to account for themselves to the privacy regulator in Ireland.

For multinational corporations, Ireland is what old-time con-artists used to call a “made town,” where the cop on the beat is in on the side of the criminals. Ireland’s decision to transform itself into a tax haven means that it can’t afford to upset the corporations that fly Irish flags of convenience and maintain the pretense that all their profits are floating in a state of untaxable grace in the Irish Sea.

That’s because there are plenty of other EU countries that compete with Ireland in the international race to the bottom on corporate governance: Malta, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Cyprus, etc (and of course, there’s post-Brexit UK, where the plan is to create an unregulated haven for the worst, wealthiest companies in the world).

All this means that seeking Irish justice from a corporation that wronged you is like asking a court in Moscow to punish an oligarch’s commercial empire on your behalf. Irish regulators are either “dingo babysitters” (guards in league with the guarded) or resource-starved into ineffectual torpor.

That’s how Facebook got away with violating the GDPR for so many years. The company hid behind the laughable fairy-tale that it didn’t need our consent to spy on us because it had a “legitimate purpose” for its surveillance, namely, that it was contractually obliged to spy on us thanks to the “agreement” we clicked on when we signed up for the service.

That is, you and Facebook had entered into a contract whereby Facebook promised you that it would spy on you, and if it didn’t spy on you, it would be violating that promise.

Har.

But while the GDPR has a structural weakness — allowing corporations to choose to be regulated in countries that can’t afford to piss them off — it also has a key strength: the private right of action, that is, the right of individuals to sue companies that violate the law, rather than having to convince a public prosecutor to take up their case.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

The private right of action is vital to any privacy regulation, which is why companies fight it so hard. Whenever a privacy bill with a private right of action comes up, they tell scare-stories about “ambulance chasers” who’ll “clog up the system,” trotting out urban legends like the McDonald’s Hot Coffee story:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

But here we are, in the last days of 2022, and the private right of action is about to do what the Irish regulators wouldn’t do: force Facebook to obey the law. For that, we can thank Max Schrems and the nonprofit he founded, noyb.

Schrems, you may recall, is the Austrian activist, who, as a Stanford law student, realized that EU law barred American tech companies from sending their surveillance data on Europeans to US data-centers, which the NSA and other spy agencies treated as an arm of their own surveillance projects:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/16/text-adventures-resurgent/#nein

Schrems brought a case against the Irish regulator to the EU’s top privacy authority, arguing that it had failed its duty by ruling that Facebook’s “contractual obligation” excuse held water. According to the leaked report, Schrems has succeeded, which means, once again, Facebook’s business model is illegal.

Facebook will doubtless appeal, but the writing is on the wall here: it’s the end of the line for surveillance advertising in Europe, an affluent territory with 500m+ residents. This decision will doubtless give a tailwind to other important privacy cases in the EU, like Johnny Ryan’s case against the ad-tech consortium IAB over its “audience taxonomy” codes:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/16/inside-the-clock-tower/#inference

It’s also likely good news for Schrems’ other ongoing cases, like the one he’s brought against Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out-here-everything-hurts/#noyb

Facebook has repeatedly threatened to leave the EU if it is required to stop breaking the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/22/uncivvl/#fb-v-eu

This is a pretty implausible threat, growing less plausible by the day. The company keeps delivering bad news to investors, who are not mollified by Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to rescue the company by convincing all of humanity to spend the rest of their lives as highly surveilled, legless, sexless, low-polygon cartoon characters:

https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/12/06/why-meta-platforms-stock-dove-today/

Zuckerberg and his entire senior team have seen their net worth plummet with Meta’s share price, and that means the company needs to pay engineers with actual dollars, rather than promises of shares, which kills the massive wage-bill discount the company has enjoyed. This is not a company that can afford to walk away from Europe!

Between Apple’s mobile (third-party) tracker-blocking and the EU calling time on surveillance ads, things are looking grim for Facebook. You love to see it! But things could get even worse, and soon, thanks to the double-edged sword of “network effects.”

Facebook is a network effects business: people join the service to socialize with the people who are already there — then more people join to socialize with them. But what network effects give, they can also take away: a service that gets more valuable when a new user signs up loses value when that user leaves.

This is beautifully explained in danah boyd’s “What if failure is the plan?” which recounts boyd’s experiences watching MySpace unravel as key nodes in its social graph disappeared when users quit: “Failure of social media sites tends to be slow then fast”:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html

Facebook long understood this, which is why it spent years creating artificial “switching costs” — penalties it could impose on users who quit, such as the loss of their family photos:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

This is why Facebook and other tech giants are so scared of interoperability, and why they are so furious about the new EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will force them to allow new services to connect to their platforms, so that users who quit Big Tech won’t have to lose their friends or data:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-acts-interoperability-rule-addresses-important-need-raises

An interoperable Facebook would make it easy to leave social media by removing the penalties Facebook imposes on its disloyal users, and the EU’s privacy framework means that when they flee to a smaller safe haven, they won’t have to worry about commercial surveillance:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

But what about advertising-supported media? Sure, being spied on sucks, but a subscription-first media landscape is a world where “the truth is paywalled, but the lies are free”:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/the-truth-is-paywalled-but-the-lies-are-free/

Ironically, killing surveillance ads is good news for ad-driven media. Surveillance-based ad-targeting is nowhere near as effective as Google, Facebook and the other ad-tech companies claim (these companies are compulsive liars, it would be amazing if the only time they told the truth is when they were boasting about their products!):

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

And consent-theater or no, targeted ads reach fewer users every day, thanks to ad- blockers, AKA, “the biggest boycott in world history”:

https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

And when a publisher does manage to display a targeted ad, they get screwed. The Googbook dupololy is a crooked affair, with the two tech companies illegally colluding (via the Jedi Blue conspiracy) to divert money from publishers to their own pockets:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/11/google-meta-jedi-blue-eu-uk-antitrust-probes/

Targeted ads are a cesspit of ad-fraud. 15% of all ad revenues are just unaccounted for:

https://twitter.com/swodinsky/status/1511172472762163202

The remaining funds aren’t any more trustworthy. Ad-tech is a bezzle (“the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it”):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/

As Tim Hwang foretold in his essential Subprime Attention Crisis, the pretense that targeted ads are wildly effective has been slowly but surely losing ground to the wider awareness of the fraud behind the system, and a reckoning is at hand:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

Experiments with contextual ads (ads based on the content of the page you’re looking at, not on your behavior and demographics) have found them to about as effective in generated clicks and sales as surveillance ads.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/29/taken-in-context/#creep-me-not

But this is misleading. Contextual ads don’t require consent opt-in (because they’re not based on your data) and they don’t drive users to install blockers the way creepy surveillance ads do, so lots more people will see a contextual ad than a surveillance one. Thus, even if contextual ads generate slightly less money per reader or viewer, they generate far more money overall, because they are aren’t blocked.

Even better for publishers: contextual ads don’t erode their own rate cards. Today, when you visit a high-quality publisher like the Washington Post, many ad brokers bid to show you an ad, but only one wins the auction. However, all the others have tagged you as a “Washington Post reader,” and they can sell that to bottom-feeder junk sites. That is, they can collude with Tabooleh or its rivals to offer advertisers a chance to advertise to Post readers at a fraction of what the Post charges. Lather, rinse, repeat, and the Post’s own ad revenues are drained.

This doesn’t apply with contextual ads. Indeed, none of the tech giants’ much-vaunted “data advantage” — the largely overstated value of knowing what you did online 10 or 20 years ago, the belief in which keeps new companies out of the market — applies to context ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/11/halflife/#minatory-legend

The transformative power of banning surveillance advertising goes beyond merely protecting our privacy. It also largely answers the case for “link taxes” (pseudo-copyright systems that let giant media companies decide who can link to them and charge for the privilege).

The underlying case for link taxes, snippet taxes, etc, is that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s content (by letting their users talk about and quote the news), when the reality is that Big Tech is stealing their money (through ad-fraud):

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content-a97306884a6b

Unrigging the ad-tech market is a much better policy than establishing a link-tax, like the Democrats are poised to do with their Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA):

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2022/12/06/jcpa-opponents-spring-into-action-to-block-ndaa-inclusion-00072602

It’s easy to understand why the monopoly/private-equity-dominated news industry wants JCPA, rather than a clean ad market. The JCPA just imposes a tax on the crooked ad-tech giants that is paid to the largest media companies, while a fair ad market would reward the media outlets that invested most in news (and thus in expensive, unionized news-gathering reporters).

Indeed, the JCPA only works if the ad-tech market remains corrupt: the excess Big Tech rents that Big News wants to claim here are the product of a rigged system. Unrig the system and there won’t be any money to pay the link tax with.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_%2841118883004%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A theater proscenium. Over the proscenium, in script, are the words 'Consent Theatre.' On the screen is an image of Mark Zuckerberg standing in front of the words 'Data Privacy.' He is gesturing expansively. A targeting reticle is centered on his face. The reticle is made of the stars from the EU flag.]

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iamjaynaemarie · 1 year

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Today is not the Day...

...and I am not in the mood. I have to spend yet another day trying to keep my writing empire from crashing into the ground because of some spoiled entitled little rich brat hellbent on ruining everything. And this time, I’m not talking about my family.

I just started another book series that can't be part of a book series. I have another book series to complete. And now, Enter Elon Musk and his kinky f*kery of f*king up Twitter and screwing with my fan base.

DISCLOSURE: I feel fine. I have a pounding headache because I live in a place that is devoid of any common sense or knowledge of basic nutrition the combat the early onset of migraine headaches, but I am fine. @fortunatelyclevercandy: Hi. I know you’re busy, but I’m just saying hi because you said hi last night while I was being cranky. LOVE YOU. (Moving on).

Anyway, we’re coming back home thanks to Elon Musk. We’re going to be hanging around a lot. I’m going to be writing (as now that all I do 12-14 hours a day in at least 3 languages). So good morning. Or not.

#my god #why me #i have a headache #i mean #good morning #twitter deathwatch #rip twitter #social media #ewwww gross #not today satan

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mitchelldailygames · 8 months

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Heroes of Song Devlog Part 8: I've Played It!

It’s been a bit since I’ve posted anything on here, and even longer since I’ve talked about Heroes of Song. That was due to a combination of social media fatigue and working on other projects, so it’s just been a while since I’ve had anything to say about this game.

I finally opened the document back up again, loved what I saw, and organized my first playtest with other people for this game! It was great and gave me some clear direction. Before we get into all of that, let’s remind ourselves of the core design principals for this game.

The heroes are cute.

Kindness matters.

The world is weird.

Sometimes you don’t fight. Sometimes you do.

Health is hearts.

What Was Tested

This was a one shot for three Heroes. I ended up running Deathwatch Crypt (and now have more clear notes that could work as a step towards making this an actually published adventure). This is a dungeon with some clear combat opportunities, a couple of secret rooms, and some simple puzzle/problem solving. The playtest focused on character creation, the core dice mechanic, and combat.

The main puzzle of the dungeon is a chasm separating players from their core goal with the mechanism for lowering the drawbridge on the other side of the chasm. The “intended” solution involves a magic item in a side room in the dungeon. The scare quotes are in there because they came up with a different solution and I thought of even more potential solutions as we were playing. The players totally bypassed the magic item. We were under a bit of a time constraint, so I was maybe more ready to roll with them totally missing the Skip Dagger than I might have been for an hour longer session.

Overall, the test was a lot of fun, the players were great, and the feedback both during and after play was wonderful. Let’s get into what worked and what I’ll be reworking.

What Worked

Character Creation went great! The party included an Autsader Scamp, a Dikari Steward, and a Forj’d Bard. All the characters were great and had interesting angles to them. The character that most surprised me was the Forj’d Bard who was conceptualized as having a music box in their torso that used different spell cylinders to play music through organ-like pipes on their back. It was both “against type” for a Forj’d and was just a cool, unique character concept that I hadn’t imagined when I put all the options together. It really opened my mind up to what a Forj’d could be.

Look at Devlog 3 for a refresher on the Callings (Scamp, Steward, Bard) Devlog 4 for a refresher on the Folk (Autsader, Dikari, Forj’d).

The process went smoothly enough. Everyone seemed really comfortable tweaking their character and making the available choices for them.

The feedback I got on character creation was mostly for stuff that I already intend to include in the full game! The player with the Scamp was wanting to make more of a magical trickster, so I got to share that between growth options and things that could be picked up in play, that was totally possible. The Bard character said it would be cool if instruments could be infused with runes, so I got to share that that was already an intended growth option for Bards.

The Basic Mechanics seemed easy for players to pick up and understand. The inspired and discouraged systems also seemed accessible, and players liked how powerful being inspired (rolling three dice and taking the top two) felt. When stats are as broad as Tough, Quick, and Harmonic, I get a little nervous about knowing which one to tell players to use for the roll, but in play it actually felt pretty intuitive. The solutions to different types of problems were interesting, often unexpected, and fun.

Combat ran pretty smoothly and didn’t seem overly mechanically bogged down. Player feedback suggested that they felt the same. The dodge and focus mechanics didn’t come up very much, but players were interested and excited about the prospect. Players appeared empowered to be creative and paint a picture in combat. Part of that might be more about how I was running it than what the book actually says, so I think making sure the text actually encourages creativity is important, but it definitely was in the spirit of the game.

I could probably say more about what worked, it truly was a delightful time, but I’m just as excited to talk about what needs work!

What Needs Work

The way the rules are written now, Heroes are inspired as long as they have three or more Spirit (the pool used for magic). In this game, this functionally meant most Heroes were inspired for the whole game. Inspired is so powerful that this sapped a lot of the challenge out of the game. There were maybe two failed rolls in the whole session. (Maybe only one).

This also unintentionally discouraged using Spirit and made other things that could make a character inspired (like the perfect dodge and focus moves) less appealing.

The rework I’m considering is to let Heroes be inspired for one roll after they’ve recovered Spirit. This would allow Heroes to start most adventures with an inspired roll in their pocket, encourage them to use Spirit, encourage them to seek out magical items, and encourage them to look for ways to regain Spirit while they play. Spirit would remain thematically connected to a character’s morale while not turning every character into an unstoppable force.

Lots of things just need clarification. I needed to give enough reminders during character creation that I think there should just be a little work on the character creation directions to help players not miss anything. The biggest areas in need of clarification were Moves and Songs. Do you need to spend your action to use certain moves? How long do songs like Inspire, Dread, and Ghoststep last? Do you need to make a roll to use a Song as an attack? When I dive back into the document, these are some of the things I’ll be shoring up.

I don't know if this needs work or not, but at character creation some options just allow so much more choice than others. The Dikari gets to choose their spore type. Bards and Sages have spell selection. The player making an Autsader Scamp was pretty much told exactly what to type into their sheet as far as special moves went. Maybe, that's just the way that option goes, but I don't want certain players to feel punished for making certain choices.

Next Steps

Beyond the changes above, I think I’m going to put together a quick gear list. That should make the game overall more test-able. I think there needs to be some restorative items (like hearts potions) clearly codified in the game too.

I want more exploration systems and guidance in there. I’m reminded that A Short Hike (and Haven Park) were both inspirations for this game, so what does fun and interesting exploration without combat look like? I think the region generator is part of it, but how do I deliver that feeling of stumbling across something interesting in a random inconspicuous nook? I think this is something that will end up feeling fairly essential to the game, so I should probably get to it sooner than later.

I think I’ll pick the search for an artist back up. I think art is going to go a long way selling the tone of the game.

I’ll be looking to do more testing, so join the Discord if you want a chance to jump on those.

Updates to the test doc might get done today or maybe a little later. I’ll put the date it was updated in the title so you know if there are any recent changes in there. Until next time.

The world is weird; kindness matters.

--Daily

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #ttrpg design #ttrpg dev #heroes of song #legend of zelda #roleplaying games #a short hike #haven park

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sometimesrosy · 6 years

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One of your anon's said that Kane will most likely die bc Henry Ian Cusick has another job. Is that true? If so, which show is he in?

IDK man. I have heard he had another show. But also that it’s not a main and he might be able to shoot around it? No guarantees. All guessing.

#the 100 #deathwatch #social media

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gorgosim · 6 years

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GET TO KNOW ME

rules: answer the questions and tag 10 people

nickname(s): Jed/Ivy gender: Female sign: Scorpio height: 5′8 time: 10:12 PM birthday: November 16th favourite bands: Korn, Seether, Metallica, soundgarden (SO many more but I can’t name them all here or else this would turn into an essay) favourite solo artists: jinsang and tomppabeats song stuck in my head: None at the moment last movie i watched: Honestly I can’t remember, I’m not much of a movie person last show i watched: Tattoo titan!!! when did i create this blog: About 1/2 weeks ago what do i post: Sims 4 gameplay/scenery screenshots what did i last google: [in the last 24 hours]: Bunny gifs (I love bunniesm I have one named Mokus ^^) other blogs: I have none, but I would like to make one to reblog CC

do i get asks: I do when I reblog an asks post from about 2 people~ (Ty for asking btw I really love interacting with other simmers ^^)

why did i choose this url: My name in every game/social media account is Divlly, but since that was taken and I wanted to make a blog based on the sims, I chose SimDiv. following: 51, I would love to follow more! If anyone has any suggestions then feel free to tell me :D followers: 43, Thank you to everyone who has followed it means a lot <3 average hours of sleep: About 9 lucky number: 7 instrument: I used to play the violin, but eventually stopped because I lost interest what am i wearing: A black tanktop, pink and black plaid PJ pants and black fluffy socks dream job: I’m not exactly sure as of now, but probably something to do with art/animals/gaming favourite food: Everything Chinese and lots of seafood! last book i read: Deathwatch (I actually hate reading but I had to read this for a school project) 3 favourite fandoms: Tomb Raider series fandom, Overwatch, and the sims of course

tags: @plumite @tropicrue @kittyhazesims3 @katie3467 @s-i-m-ply @brindltonbay @felinenimus @cyber-simz @courtiepie567 @peachiepixels (If you already did this and I didn’t see it, sorry! (You of course don’t have to do it again)

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tecinfo · 4 years

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This time, without a doubt! Ars Technica's 2020 Deathwatch

Now and again, your motivation in life is to be a wake up call.

Stunning, that 2019, however. While we had any expectations of a shining new year as it started, it turns out the sparkle we saw rather was only the Cherenkov radiation from atomic fueled Russian doomsday torpedoes. Or on the other hand maybe it was the twinkling of the million–dumpster-fire walk that 2019 transformed into—with a portion of those dumpster fires lit by the organizations we respect here in our 2020 release of Ars Deathwatch.

Presently, it's an ideal opportunity to glance forward out of resentment—well, we're not so much furious, simply disillusioned, so we'll state "apathy"— at another new year, as has become our custom. We have taken the beat of our editors and perusers and divined the remains from every one of those stunning dumpster fires with an end goal to foresee the organizations, administrations, and items in the tech world that will lead 2020's unavoidable walk into shame. Also, we're not in any case going to make reference to the political race cycle, I guarantee.

To begin with, how about we get our typical disclaimer off the beaten path: in case you're a first-time Deathwatch player, this isn't an expectation of the real end of organizations or advancements. We realize that it takes a ton to really delete an organization or an innovation from the substance of the Earth nowadays—all things considered, huge numbers of our past Deathlisters have risen up out of Chapter 11 on different occasions before going into Chapter 7. Indeed, even the most noticeably awful thoughts and organizations frequently wait on through inactivity or get consumed by some other organization and metastasize in new and horrendous manners.

So when we state "Deathwatch," what we truly mean is that we are seeing tech-associated elements confronting a few (existential or not) financial, social, or legitimate danger. Organizations may confront difficulties that render them immaterial, cause them to be casualties of "drop culture," make them actually irrelevant, or render them as pal for sharks of obtaining, case, and different types of business hellfire.

While these guidelines are not written in stone, a contender for the Deathwatch is commonly an organization or item division of an organization that ought to have encountered in any event one of the accompanying:

An all-encompassing time of lost piece of the overall industry in their specific classification

An all-encompassing time of monetary misfortunes or an example of yearly misfortunes

Genuine administration, legitimate, or administrative issues that bring up issues about the plan of action or long haul methodology of the organization or product offering

There were hardly any real fatalities on a year ago's rundown, however some are at where our staff (I'm taking a gander at you, Ron Amadeo) didn't think they were even worth referencing any longer. (I'm certain Essential, the cell phone unicorn that proved unable, would likely be glad for the consideration.) So as opposed to go over our other battered survivors (goodness, that Facebook the executives shakeup expectation sure didn't age well), we're going to blast through our new rundown of unfortunate casualties—some of them showing up.

Here they are: 2020's… champs? First up, red-shirted (in reference both to university sports and Star Trek expendables) for 2020: that thing we used to call Oath.

- Sean Gallagher

Verizon Media (otherwise known as the Yahoo/AOL division)

Verizon's Yahoo/AOL division (once in the past called "Promise") was on our Deathwatch list a year back, and it hasn't done quite a bit of anything to get off death's doorstep from that point forward. Presently called "Verizon Media," the specialty unit comprising of previous Web monsters that lost their magic years before Verizon got them, it started and finished 2019 with cutbacks. The division had around 11,385 specialists toward the start of 2019 yet laid off almost 1,000 individuals.

Verizon Media's Q3 2019 income of $1.8 billion was down two percent year over year. Work area publicizing income keeps on dropping, and versatile advertisements haven't sufficiently developed to counterbalance that decay. Verizon demands better days are ahead, with CFO Matt Ellis saying in an income approach October 25 that "Just because, we are seeing portable traffic increments outpace work area traffic decreases in our center claimed and worked items, including sports, fund, news, amusement, home and mail." But in an online-advertisement showcase commanded by Google and Facebook, Verizon Media appears to be bound to stay a piece player, best case scenario.

- Jon Brodkin

G/O Media

Alright, we concede: the main things that make G/O Media tech-related are its Gizmodo (once in the past lead) brand and the way that its distributions are conveyed by Internet parcels. Yet at the same time, G/O has been a quick consuming, self-immolation machine of a sort we haven't seen since the gas battle in Zoolander.

A while ago when it was Gizmodo Media Group, things were... all things considered, they were extremely unsure. Univision acquired Gizmodo and its sister destinations after Gawker Media's crumbling in the wake of the Hulk Hogan claim. Be that as it may, it immediately became evident that Univision executives had definitely no clue how to manage what they had purchased.

So when in April, (asserted) computerized news big shot Jim Spanfeller—already at Forbes, Ziff Davis, and Playboy—and the private value firm Great Hill Partners purchased Gizmodo, joined the gathering with The Onion and rechristened it all G/O Media, there was a lot of cheering.

Spanfeller vowed to restore the Web productions to benefit and said there was no requirement for cutbacks or anything. He rebranded the consolidated destinations as "an amazing distributing stage to draw in well-off and powerful Millennials." (Ok, boomer.)

Only two weeks after Spanfeller dominated, 25 of G/O's 400 staff members were laid off, including Gizmodo's publication chief. Spanfeller acquired administrators from his past organizations, distancing a few staff members since he pushed all the non-white-male initiative out in the process in the wake of promising to respect a guarantee to assorted variety. Deadspin ran an article about the developing malevolence among staff and the executives in August.

Presently, Deadspin Editor-in-Chief Megan Greenwell quit to accept a position at our sister production Wired after she said she was advised to stop non-sports inclusion on the site, refering to her own morals.

New G/O Media Editorial Director Paul Maidment at that point commanded that Deadspin scholars "stick to sports." They didn't, and supervisor Barry Petchesky was terminated. Deadspin essayists at that point chose to stop as a group in what may be the most Pyrrhic work activity in late media history.

The contention with staff, including the association, has cost G/O income in direct ways. Staff members composed posts requesting peruser input on a promoting effort from Farmer's Insurance that included auto-play recordings, and G/O executives requested the posts pulled down. The staff grumbled about the tales being pulled in a post by the association Twitter account. Ranchers at that point pulled the $1 million publicizing effort.

The administration issues likewise produced badgering claims by previous female officials who said Spanfeller made an unfriendly workplace for ladies. Maidment quit. Different executives have fled.

Thus, rather than putting out a seething tire fire, in only eight months Spanfeller's contention with the unionized staff has turned G/O Media into a furious inferno filled by cash and professions. Consider it a Boomer-Millennial battle in the event that you need; I'm a Gen-Xer, and I'm only here to watch everything burn.Symantec has gotten abhor for quite a long time from Ars perusers over its endpoint security programming. Also, let's be honest, work area against infection programming isn't actually a development showcase. With Microsoft basically giving both shopper and endeavor endpoint assurance away for nothing and the PC advertise contracting, security organizations have needed to do a great deal of rotating in the course of recent years. A lot of digital "unicorns" have additionally jumped up in the course of recent years, so there's a touch of union going on in the security programming space. In the most recent year, Webroot was obtained via Carbonite; Cylance was gained by BlackBerry; CarbonBlack was procured by VMWare; and Sophos is being procured by Thoma Bravo, the private value bunch that recently purchased Barracuda Networks, Veracode, and Imperva, among others.

Add Symantec to that blend... kind of. A couple of years back, as Symantec was blowing up itself, the organization procured the profound parcel sifting firm Blue Coat—from Thoma Bravo. Presently, after somewhat of a terrible time, Symantec is selling its venture centered bits to Broadcom, (which sold Veracode to Thoma Bravo). Also, the customer item bunch that remaining parts—you know, the Norton stuff, and so forth.— is perhaps going to be purchased by another private value firm.

To start with, about that "awful time." In 2014, at that point Senior Vice President for Information Security Brian Dye said that Symantec's antivirus programming was "dead" and "destined to disappointment" since it couldn't get present day malware. At that point Dye left to go work for Citrix before bouncing to Symantec's rival McAfee. As the organization attempted to un-dead its antivirus, it created different issues—the wormable adventure sort of issue. Deals did what you'd anticipate.

In any case, with cash to consume from each one of those long periods of Norton permit deals, Symantec purchased Blue Coat in 2017 for $4.6 billion—as executives attempted to escape from the declining PC commercial center and turn to greater ticket undertaking framework security.

Organization incomes flooded in 2018—generally in light of the fact that the organization offered its computerized declaration unit to DigiCert for $1 billion in the wake of getting nailed for mis-giving more than 30,000 SSL testaments. And afterward "representative concerns" (an informant report) about how Symantec had depicted its budgetary outcomes prompted an interior review and an abrupt drop in Symantec's stock cost. (Possibly it was an impractical notion for Symantec to begin its monetary year on April 1.) A survey found that Symantec's executives had booked one arrangement as $13 million, yet $12 million of that was re-assigned as "conceded" by the review.

Extremist investors have been pushing for some time for Symantec to part the organization HP-style, if just to shed the low-development shopper business (which presently incorporates the stunning LifeLock group of credit checking administrations

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mrmedia · 7 years

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Happy Birthday to Paul Gillin, creator of NewspaperDeathwatch.com! 2008 PODCAST INTERVIEW

https://mrmedia.com/2008/12/paul-gillin-newspaperdeathwatch-com-blogger-mr-media-interview/

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flyingbizdeals · 4 years

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Being on deathwatch as the corona body count goes up

There is something unnerving about an exponential count. This is not a kind of stock market streak that chases us down in a bull run; this has death staring us in the face. The numbers, the death tolls, are everywhere, sneaking up on you at all odd times. Apps, tickers, newspaper headlines, social media engagements, addresses by heads of state, bulletins drafted by health organizations, you…

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#business opinions #expert advice #market opinions #opinions

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wallpaperpainting · 4 years

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What Will Flowers Painting Be Like In The Next 16 Years? | Flowers Painting

It was 3:37 a.m. on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn aback Lewis Miller let out a of relief.

“Right actuality is my blessed place,” the 46-year-old florist and guerrilla artisan said. Afterwards zhushing a apricot peony and throwing in a few gerbera daisies, he stood aback to accede the framing of his six-by-four-foot orange-hued annual heart: atramentous pavement, white bridge lines, a “No Turns” sign, the covering of Barclays Center casting a adduce from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “The time is consistently appropriate to do what is right” — into the early-morning dark.

“We’re good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The affection was one of four “flower flashes” — Lewis Miller Design’s signature — that New Yorkers would deathwatch up to on June 16. Though he has surreptitiously placed these busy arrange for years, Mr. Miller’s pandemic-era flashes, about a hospital lamppost or in a midtown debris can, accept been met with accurate enthusiasm. Social media admirers from about the apple accept beatific him hundreds of ardent belletrist and fan art. Bette Midler acclaim about his ignment on Instagram.

“During acceptable times, flowers are awesome, we all apperceive that,” Mr. Miller said. “But now added than anytime we charge flowers in the city. Who isn’t attractive for a little joy?”

“This is the best admirable affair I’ve apparent in a continued time,” said an eyewitness who had ventured over from 4th Avenue, a broken pikestaff in anniversary arm.

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