coondoggie quotes a report from Networkworld: The Federal Trade Commission today said it issued a 10-page letter to eight leading players in the mobile communications arena requiring them to tell the agency how they issue security updates to address vulnerabilities in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Apple, BlackBerry, Google, HTC America, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung must provide the following: The factors that they consider in deciding whether to patch a vulnerability on a particular mobile device, detailed data on the specific mobile devices they have offered for sale to consumers since August 2013, the vulnerabilities that have affected those devices, and whether and when the company patched such vulnerabilities.
The crisis journalism is having now is the same one that the political parties are having, only a little quieter and more private.
What changed? Gatekeepers have much less power. This has been true ever since discourse moved to the net. Because networking is so cheap, you don't have to be a political insider to do it, and the reporters have to compete with everyone with a phone for getting the news.
Journalism has to make the same transition that politics has to make. I've been saying this, as has Jay Rosen, for a very long time. The journalists, like the major parties have resisted, so instead of the change coming gradually, it's a very rapid disruption.
Last time around the Repubs nominated Romney. This time Trump. It doesn't get much more discontinuous than that. They're both rich. Next time the Trump-equiv won't have to be so rich. Like Bernie Sanders.
Journalism had to open up to allow the readers to publish under their banner, with the help of professionals to turn it into a product that's usable. They didn't do it so Twitter and Facebook stepped into the void. So now news flows through them instead of the big news brands of the 20th century.
DIdn't have to be that way, for either politics or journalism.
What comes next, what will be different in 2020 and beyond? TV news will be online as well as the written word. Four years from now we won't be going to our set top box to watch the talking heads. And they won't be the same talking heads we're watching now.
An anonymous reader shared with us a BBC report on Uganda, where books are unbelievably expensive to afford. The publication reports that it almost feels like a black market for people looking to purchase a book in the landlocked country in East Africa. A book Nothing Left To Steal by South African journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika (less than $15 on Amazon.com), for instance, is selling in the country for 140,000 Ugandan shillings ($42). This might sound reasonable to most of us, but for a country with a poor economy, BBC reports, this amount can "buy a week's worth of groceries for a family." People, in fact, look for friends going on a foreign trip to help them buy books. Many books are simply not available to them, and the ones that are, they are too expensive in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. From the report: I did splurge once on a book by Guinea's revolutionary leader Ahmed Sekou Toure. It set me back $60 -- the pan-Africanist in me got the better of me that day. Waitresses in downtown Kampala barely earn $60 in a month.One of the encouraging things mentioned in the report is a growing desire among people to read books and wanting to share it with their friends and families despite the struggle. Someone named Rosey Sembatya has started the Malaika Children's Mobile Library. "My sister has four children now and I've been finding it very difficult to buy them books because they're quite expensive," she told BBC. The library is in the spare room of a two-bedroom house she rents. For a $30 annual fee, each child can borrow three books a week. It's an incredible read, and we urge you to read it in its entirety.
Today there was a leak through Gawker from reporters that were formerly employed by Facebook whose job it was to place items in the Trending Stories section on the Facebook home page.
"Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users."
There's a chorus of criticism from reporters who object to Facebook deciding what stories readers see.
I tweeted: "Reporters are concerned that employees of Facebook, a company, decide what we see. But this is the way news has worked for decades."
Who decides what goes on the front page of a newspaper, and what goes on the inner pages, and what isn't newsworthy enough to get reported on? Is there a non-subjective way to determine this? No, of course not. And on individual stories, who decides which points of view are repped and which are omitted? The very same people Facebook hired. But if Facebook hires them that's worse than the NY Daily News or MSNBC?
The reporters' complaint really is they used to be the gatekeepers and now they aren't. I understand that must be frustrating, but it's something we all have to deal with. It's the competitive market. This is why I've been saying for many years, over and over, that the news industry had to compete with Facebook, Twitter, etc. They couldn't assume the tech industry would manage the news flow the way they want them to. Instead, they thought they would appeal to the government for protection. I heard this said out loud on a panel at the UC-Berkeley journalism school in 2009.
The moderator, Susan Rasky, asked the panelists, if they were god what would they do. Hire lots of reporters, one panelist said. Get the new President to pay our salaries, said another. Tax these things, Rasky said, holding up a Macintosh laptop. And the batteries. One panelist said things aren't so bad and the Chronicle will continue to print for the indefinite future. Others said Bill Gates should pay, or Google
The same ideas are repeated again and again after future-of-news conferences around the world. It's ridiculous. You don't even try to compete, and you expect the rest of us to stand up for you, when the service you offer is exactly equivalent to the one being offered by Facebook? Did you think you had a monopoly? Why would taxpayers support that?
I don't like that Facebook controls this. But also don't like that reporters are aloof and condescending, and only listen to big companies, and rich investors, and other journalists, when it comes to tech, and to insiders and other journalists when it comes to politics. When you bet heavy on the established way things work in a time of great change, you have to expect to be obviated. Well now it's happened. It was totally foreseeable. That's the way it goes.
For sure, Facebook swore that it was all algorithmic. So they lied, or maybe the leaking ex-employees lied. Doesn't change the fact that journalism can be practiced by tech companies. Even if they said they wouldn't. There's no requirement that competitors have to tell you everything they're doing.
Opera has launched a new VPN app for iOS that is free to use and includes unlimited data. The app uses the US-based SurfEasy VPN service acquired by Opera last March. Opera is promising that its mobile VPN is free for life, with no subscription needed. For comparison, SurfEasy's standalone apps for Android and iOS do charge subscription fees. Opera says the app is "especially relevant on campuses and workplaces," where Wi-Fi provided by one institution may have limited access to "social media and video streaming websites." The software blocks ads and trackers, in addition to allowing users to access geo-blocked content by routing their internet connection through another country. You can download the app here.
Google may have plans to do a visual tweak to its search results. The company appears to be testing black search result links since the weekend, according to multiple reports. While some users are pleased with this tweak, many users have already posted their grievances on Google help forums. Some users note that it has become hard to tell which links they have already clicked. The Telegraph reports: Google puts a lot of thought into the exact colours it uses in its services -- and for a good reason. A few years ago its A/B test of different shades of blue -- nicknamed "50 shades of blue" -- earned the company an extra $200 million (£138 million). Designers at Google couldn't decide between two different blues, so they decided to test 41 shades between each blue to see which users preferred. In the test, Google showed each shade to one per cent of its users, and found that users were more likely to click on a slightly more purple shade.
