Category: Internet
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GDPR
No, I am not asking you to re-sign up to my website. You’re OK. But if you’re based in the EU like me, then you’ve probably been swamped with direct emails from businesses asking if I can confirm that I’m happy to continue to receive their missives. This Friday, GDPR comes into effect and appears…
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The Redundancy of Imploring Me To Change Things
I regularly receive emails of the following type: Hi, My name is XXXX and I’m writing to you on behalf of YYYY. We have noticed that you wrote about on your page . We have a new that would be helpful to your readers. We think you’re doing a wonderful job and everything you publish…
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Netflix, Independent Cinema, and Hollywood’s New Business Model
The other day The Ringer published a piece about Netflix and their original movie strategy. The piece, entitled Netflix and Shrill listed the original movies that Netflix has already released in 2018 and challenged readers to see how many they recognised. For most people, the most familiar title will have been The Cloverfield Paradox. This…
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Gaming Google
It’s widely understood that news organisations can find the going quite precarious in this digital age, with a reluctance on the part of consumers to pay for news, and advertising alone not bringing in enough revenues. So it’s perhaps not surprising that they should look at whatever advantages they can take, and some of these…
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Facebook Pixel Tracking
This morning Nieman Lab had a really good piece asking whether if there was a certain amount of hypocrisy coming from certain news organisations castigating Facebook for leaking data, when at the same time they’re helping Facebook collect more data on you. Recall yesterday, when I said that some of Facebook’s data was missing from…
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Is Netflix Quite As Smart As Everyone Says It Is?
That’s possibly a provocative title, but I’ve come to the conclusions that while Netflix is very good at some things, I’m not certain that its recommendation engine is entirely as linked up as you’d think it’d be. A couple of recent cases in point. I was really looking forward to the new Alex Garland film,…
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Netflix: $8 Billion and 700 NEW Shows?
How much programming is Netflix actually making? The answer is a lot, but I think that the widely reported numbers are a little misleading. Heavily retweeted earlier today was this: Wow. Fact of the day: Netflix plans to spend $8bn on content this year. That’s roughly 700 (!) new series and 80 films. Shows how…
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Critical Security Alert
Last week I got a worrying email in my Gmail account. Either this was a genuine Google email, or it was a phishing attempt. What’s especially worrying is that it suggests someone actually has my password! I wasn’t born yesterday, so the first thing I did was hover my mouse over the “Check Activity” button.…
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Administrative Note: HTTPS
I forgot to mention it when I switched it on recently, but this site is now HTTPS enabled. That should mean that in browsers like Chrome you see a nice green “Secure” label to the left of the URL. What did I need to do to get this to work? Not a great deal really.…
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If People Think It – Does It Matter If It’s Actually True?
In this week’s excellent episode of the Reply All podcast, Alex Goldman and PG Vogt explore the question Is Facebook Spying On You? In particular, a number of people are of the belief that the Facebook app is listening to what you’re saying and that’s the only way to explain why things you were talking…
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Facebook, Amazon and the Premier League
It’s nearly time for the money-go-round… sorry, merry-go-round, that is the Premier League rights auction for seasons 2019/20-2021/22. We’ve just started the second season of the current deal where Sky and BT between them have spent £5.1bn for the current round of rights. Recall that last time around, this represented a colossal 71% increase in…