In the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook introduced a half-hearted fact-checking program to eliminate fake news on its platform. (Spoiler: It didn’t eliminate it, just slow down its dissemination)
It just recently announced that this fact checking program does not extend to ads created by or for politicians, even if they are blatantly lying about another candidate.
The big story behind this story is mentioned only in passing by the VOX article linked above - the Trump campaign tried to have their falsehoods aired by CNN, but the network refused to show the ad, because it saw no factual base in the ad.
So, while Facebook, YouTube and Twitter all cite “Free Speech” and a “no meddling” policy to allow obvious lies be told on their platforms, CNN took the stance of not showing something they know is not true.
I’m not taking sides here, as journalism has its own problems with bias and selection, and more than one conflict of interest.
But I am observing that this is a prime example of the rift that has torn through the media fabric in the last couple of years.
One of the major theories of communication is the Gatekeeper Theory. It tries to explain which information is published and which isn’t. A crucial role in this decision plays journalism as a ‘Gatekeeper’ who decides what gets through the “Gate”, the decision wether to publish something or not.
This works for better or worse.
The new powerful media giants (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) refuse to be gatekeepers in a traditional sense. As long as you have the money, they will keep the floodgates wide open, for you to send whatever you want downstream.
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Plants that can hear themselves being eaten
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Continuing with that paranoid theme, plants can hear themselves begin eaten.
"Appel and Cocroft used lasers to measure the minute leaf tremors that caterpillars make when they munch on (the plant) Arabidopsis. Next, they played those sounds back to one set of plants, and left the control group in peace. Finally, they let the caterpillars loose on both plant populations. Astonishingly, they found that the plants that had undergone audio training actually responded to the attack by producing much higher levels of mustard oil, their innate pesticide—which made them much less appetizing to the hungry caterpillars.”
Personally, I knew that plants could learn the moment I watched a flower visibly turn its head to follow the course of the sun. Which is a mildly disturbing view when you’re sitting between plant and sun, btw.
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Leaked A/B Testings of Big Companies
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A/B tests are the decision making process of the digital age. Should we put a button here? Test it. Should the image be full-width or boxed? Test it. Should our website automatically play music when people visit it? Hell no. What are you thinking?
Some companies run literally dozens of A/B tests each day, even minuscule design decisions put under scrutiny of performance testing.
Do you need some inspiration what to test or how to test it? Here are some interesting cases of high profile websites doing a/b testing.
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Test your Programming Fonts live before using them
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Old people argue about Vim vs. Emacs. (Disclaimer: I hated both. I used Pico if I had to use a console editor just to make a point)
Young people argue over which font to use in VS Code.
If you are one of those young people (or old people trying to impress young people) and want to know which font is the best font to use, here’s a nice website for it:
https://app.programmingfonts.org
In the screenshot above you see the GNU Unifont bitmap font. God, I hated that font.
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Does this make text easier to read?
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Bionic Reading claims that by using different font weights, reading comprehension and speed can be improved by guiding the eye through the text.
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It looks weird, and after trying it on a couple of texts, I’m unsure what it does.
Any thoughts on it?
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Find out how much of the Earth you already rode your Bike on
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The image above shows my personal Wandrer map (I removed the little bits of California I rode my bike on).
Wandrer is a fun project that takes your recorded rides from Strava and removes any duplicate roads you’ve taken - leaving you with a total “unique earth surface count” (my words) you already rode on.
But it’s not so much the competition that is intriguing (the leader is currently at 0.134% of earths surface, so nobody is really making any inroads anyway), but the patterns that evolve over time.
Take a look at that map of Vienna, where I spent most of my years as a cyclist (and Strava-uploader. Sorry, Salzburg).
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Looks like these are the nicest roads to ride on around Vienna. But there’s still so much where I’ve never been.
Or Vorarlberg, my new home:
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You see the clear tendency of riding everything in loops, trying to avoid going the same way back you came.
What I’d be interested in would be the ratio between “new” kilometers and roads you ride regularly, maybe even with a ranking (like x% ridden once, y% ridden more than 10 times etc.)
Give it a try, and let me know what interesting patterns you find in your riding!
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When I was celebrating my 30th birthday with my brother, Mojitos were all the rage. He bought all the ingredients, but forgot to buy straws. So we used Bucatini as straws (I have no idea why he didn’t have straws in his kitchen but Bucatini, but here you go). We called them “Nudelhalme”.
13 years later that is suddenly an idea to reduce plastic waste.
Who would have thought?
Here’s to being ahead of your time, this high-five goes out to all the Nudelhalm-users in the world! 🍝
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