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12 votes
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A third of Wikipedia discussions are stuck in forever beefs
18 votes -
Advice for internet startup newbie
I might soon be part of an internet startup. We're talking with a relative about setting up a consultancy & business news service on a certain sector, and I've generated a part of the idea and...
I might soon be part of an internet startup. We're talking with a relative about setting up a consultancy & business news service on a certain sector, and I've generated a part of the idea and accepted to take on the technical/editorial side for a while (I've almost a year til when I start my master's, and will probably work up until when I start my thesis; so almost two years). If things work out, this might be a dream job (except academia) for me, and even very lucrative. But I'm fairly n00b in this space, both business and professional work, though I have the technical skills. Thus I'm seeking general advice on
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how to organise this thing: how to make sure we communicate well on dates and plans and how to make educated guesses when setting up an agenda
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how much will it cost: we'll start with making a database and running a sector-specific blog/news site as publicity (though I'll make sure the content is quite decent, not just a showpiece), but then later we'll introduce a tangential online service and a mobile app leveraging that crowd
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working with non-techies: I'll be the only techie in this startup and I need to help people with gathering, storing, organising and utilising historical data with certain variables, ensuring they keep an accurate record and can make quality queries easily; the 3 people apart from me will be non technical
I think quite a bit of you here have been involved in this sort of scenario, so maybe you could have some advice for me. I'd appreciate anything, examples of approaches, links to tools, what not, anything you think could be useful. Thanks a lot in advance!
13 votes -
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Curbing hate online: What companies should do now
8 votes -
In Iran, state sanctioned messaging apps are the new hallmark of internet nationalisation
4 votes -
China blocks website that revealed spyware and "re-education" camp monitoring
9 votes -
How do you view your participation on the Internet?
It’s no secret that the Internet has significantly changed even from just a decade ago. I’ve been thinking about online communities - particularly forums - and I’ve really begun to miss the sense...
It’s no secret that the Internet has significantly changed even from just a decade ago. I’ve been thinking about online communities - particularly forums - and I’ve really begun to miss the sense of discovery when finding a new one while browsing online. It was like lifting a rock and finding an entirely new collective of people writing to one another about anything (complete with graphic signatures). It was an internet subculture in progress. Something something Wild West.
Small forums like that did a number of things that I feel we haven’t been able to replicate. You got to know people over time. It wasn’t a feed you vaguely subscribed to, but a forum (in literal definition of the word) that you chose to participate in.
I often think about what probably defines a typical experience online for people these days and I feel that the smaller and more cozy feeling of actual community has been replaced by the digital equivalent of big box stores. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Netflix. Big corporate places with portals and algorithms.
These aren’t necessarily bad things in and of themselves (aside from the chasing of a world in which nothing is left unplanned), but I’m trying to hone in on the idea that the sheer randomness of this medium has more or less vaporized. The concept that anything and everything you do on the Internet wasn’t aggressively being tracked and developed into digital profiles to be traded, used, shared, and sold by ad companies and an array of other organizations was a fart in the wind compared to what it’s like online today. Websites simply didn’t have 5 megabytes+ of Javascript whereas now you need a half a dozen browser extensions to make the internet a halfway decent thing to be on.
My hunch is that once upon a time, people (at least those that even had access to it) had a kind of amateur desire of wanting to create an account at a website (particularly a forum). Coming up on 2019, I think long and hard before creating another account anywhere. There even was an expectation to introduce yourself in some introduction subforum at many of these boards.
A theme that has become completely domineering is the inflated ego linked to tribalism. I see people being so serious about everything; there can be no reciprocal discussion about anything.
I think it’s probably trivial to dismiss this as nostalgia but I feel there are some real truths to this. The Internet is something you had the choice of actually logging off and disconnecting but today, everyone is constantly connected. We are in the age of distraction and preoccupation. Think about it: how many times have you picked up your (smart)phone purely out of reflex, not even to check something with purpose? You see it everywhere in public, certainly. The constant stream of brightly colored iconography, beeps, alerts, buzzing, push/notifications, and beyond are endless. Everything demands your attention, and it is never enough.
53 votes -
The internet apologizes …Even those who designed our digital world are aghast at what they created. A breakdown of what went wrong — from the architects who built it.
32 votes -
The rise and demise of RSS
11 votes -
Internet hacking is about to get much worse - We can no longer leave online security to the market
22 votes -
Why are African governments criminalising online speech? Because they fear it.
8 votes -
The Internet Archive fixes nine million broken links on Wikipedia
16 votes -
Encrypting SNI: Fixing one of the core internet bugs
8 votes -
The European Union versus the Internet
12 votes -
Internet taxes are sweeping sub-Saharan Africa — and silencing citizens
9 votes -
The Bullshit Web
61 votes -
Controversial Copyright Directive approved by EU Parliament
27 votes -
Tomorrow, the EU will vote on the future of the internet (again)
10 votes -
Google AMP can go to hell
7 votes -
YouTube, Netflix videos found to be slowed by wireless carriers
20 votes -
California lawmakers pass nation’s toughest net neutrality law
14 votes -
Logged off: Meet the teens who refuse to use social media
39 votes -
We can't fix the internet (because we conflate social media with the entire internet)
13 votes -
How to design for the modern web
41 votes -
How does the internet work?
9 votes -
There should be ‘consequences’ for platforms that don’t remove people like Alex Jones, US Senator Ron Wyden says
12 votes -
An ISP based in Texas has complained to a judge that the music industry to trying to turn internet providers into the "copyright police."
16 votes -
Deplatforming works
10 votes -
Rising sea levels could knock out the Internet in 15 years
18 votes -
Can society scale? If you want to understand how group dynamics work online, look no further than Numtot.
8 votes -
The internet trolls have won. Sorry, there’s not much you can do
21 votes -
How the shared family computer protected us from our worst selves
11 votes -
Censorship 2.0: Shadowy forces controlling online conversations
9 votes -
El Paquete, Cuba's answer to digital content distribution
7 votes -
A generation grows up in China without Facebook, Google, or Twitter
7 votes -
Internet publication of 3D printing files about guns: Facts and what's at stake
7 votes -
Just an observation, Google Search is ready for replacement.
We're obviously being denied the benefits of so called advances in algorithmic search, as evidenced by the poor showing of Google Itself in unusual searches. For example, if you search images for...
We're obviously being denied the benefits of so called advances in algorithmic search, as evidenced by the poor showing of Google Itself in unusual searches. For example, if you search images for "runners wearing green hats -shamrock -st. -patrick" Guess how many runners wearing green hats you get?
So search is hard? I think it's more likely that Google and everyone else is more interested in selling you a hat than helping you find a picture of a runner in a green hat.
16 votes -
On the engineer's responsibility in protecting privacy (Paul Baran, RAND, 1968)
10 votes -
Truth, disrupted
8 votes -
Reddit reinvents the chat room with subreddit chat
31 votes -
On the future computer era modification of the American character and the role of the engineer, or, a little caution in the haste to number (1968)
7 votes -
Despite Chrome’s pending “mark of shame,” three major news sites aren’t HTTPS
18 votes -
What if people were paid for their data?
14 votes -
'Data is a fingerprint': why you aren't as anonymous as you think online - So-called ‘anonymous’ data can be easily used to identify everything from our medical records to purchase histories
7 votes -
How the Blog Broke the Web
25 votes -
Intellectual dark web psyop [part 1]
5 votes -
Law of new new media platforms
4 votes -
Wikipedia blacked out across Europe in protest against laws that could change the internet forever
18 votes -
Comcast starts throttling mobile video, will charge extra for HD streams and full-speed tethering
33 votes -
Solid: From Tim Berners-Lee, a project to decentralize the web
20 votes