An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: BuzzFeed is set to acquire HuffPost in a stock deal with Verizon Media, The Wall Street Journal's Benjamin Mullin and Keach Hagey first reported Thursday. Verizon will get a noncontrolling stake in BuzzFeed in return. In addition to the all-stock deal, Verizon is investing cash in BuzzFeed, according to The Journal. As a result of the deal, the two newsrooms will be able to syndicate each other's content and team up for advertising deals. Jonah Peretti, the BuzzFeed founder and CEO and a cofounder of The Huffington Post, will be in charge of the expanded media giant. The two newsrooms will continue to operate as separate entities, the companies said in a press release. "Verizon Media's strategy has evolved over the past two years to focus on our core strengths -- ads, commerce, content and subscriptions," Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan said in the release. "We've created a powerhouse ecosystem, built on a trusted network, that delivers an end-to-end experience for consumers and advertisers. The partnership with BuzzFeed complements our roadmap while also accelerating our transformation and growth." Peretti said in the statement: "We're excited about our partnership with Verizon Media, and mutual benefits that will come from syndicating content across each other's properties, collaborating on innovative ad products and the future of commerce, and tapping into the strength and creativity of Verizon Media Immersive. I have vivid memories of growing HuffPost into a major news outlet in its early years, but BuzzFeed is making this acquisition because we believe in the future of HuffPost and the potential it has to continue to define the media landscape for years to come," Peretti said. "With the addition of HuffPost, our media network will have more users, spending significantly more time with our content than any of our peers." Arianna Huffington, the HuffPost founder, tweeted: "So happy to see HuffPost and Buzzfeed coming together 15 years after Jonah Peretti started HuffPost with Kenny Lerer and me. Such exciting news and looking forward to all that's to come!"

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YouTube videos endorsing the false idea that there was widespread election fraud were viewed more than 138 million times on the week of Nov. 3, according to a report from an independent research project that has been studying misinformation trends on the video site. From a report:The report by the project, called Transparency.tube, looked at videos on YouTube that supported claims of voter fraud during the November elections, as well as videos that disputed such claims. Over all, the researchers identified 4,865 videos, viewed a combined 409 million times, that mentioned voter fraud. The YouTube videos supporting claims of voter fraud accounted for 34 percent of all views in the data set studied, while those disputing the voter fraud claims or remaining neutral accounted for 66 percent of views among the videos the research project identified. YouTube does not release data about the total number of videos uploaded to the site weekly. The company has said that 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Many of the largest YouTube channels can rack up millions of views each day. For example, CNN, which has over 11 million subscribers to its YouTube channel, uploaded 51 videos during the week of Nov. 3. Those videos were viewed 69 million times, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Some of the most-watched videos disputing the results of the election include two videos by the right-wing news outlet BlazeTV, which were viewed 1.3 million times. Videos by the right-wing news outlets Newsmax and OANN that spread claims of widespread voter fraud were also viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

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For the first time, advocates have tracked how animals in US waters are harmed by plastic pollution.

For the first time, advocates have tracked how animals in US waters are harmed by plastic pollution.

The Arecibo telescope's long and productive life has come to an end. From a report: The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today it will decommission the iconic radio telescope in Puerto Rico following two cable breaks in recent months that have brought the structure to near collapse. The 57-year-old observatory, a survivor of numerous hurricanes and earthquakes, is now in such a fragile state that attempting repairs would put staff and workers in danger. "This decision was not an easy one to make," Sean Jones, NSF's assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences, said at a news briefing today. "We understand how much Arecibo means to [the research] community and to Puerto Rico." Ralph Gaume, director of NSF's astronomy division, said at the briefing the agency wants to preserve other instruments at the site, as well as the visitor and outreach center. But they are under threat if the telescope structure collapses. That would bring the 900-ton instrument platform, suspended 137 meters above the 305-meter-wide dish, crashing down. Flailing cables could damage other buildings on the site, as could the three support towers if they fell, too. "There is a serious risk of an unexpected and uncontrolled collapse," Gaume said. "A controlled decommissioning gives us the opportunity to preserve valuable assets that the observatory has." Over the next few weeks, engineering firms will develop a plan for a controlled dismantling. It may involve releasing the platform from its cables explosively and letting it fall.

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The Arecibo telescope's long and productive life has come to an end. From a report: The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today it will decommission the iconic radio telescope in Puerto Rico following two cable breaks in recent months that have brought the structure to near collapse. The 57-year-old observatory, a survivor of numerous hurricanes and earthquakes, is now in such a fragile state that attempting repairs would put staff and workers in danger. "This decision was not an easy one to make," Sean Jones, NSF's assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences, said at a news briefing today. "We understand how much Arecibo means to [the research] community and to Puerto Rico." Ralph Gaume, director of NSF's astronomy division, said at the briefing the agency wants to preserve other instruments at the site, as well as the visitor and outreach center. But they are under threat if the telescope structure collapses. That would bring the 900-ton instrument platform, suspended 137 meters above the 305-meter-wide dish, crashing down. Flailing cables could damage other buildings on the site, as could the three support towers if they fell, too. "There is a serious risk of an unexpected and uncontrolled collapse," Gaume said. "A controlled decommissioning gives us the opportunity to preserve valuable assets that the observatory has." Over the next few weeks, engineering firms will develop a plan for a controlled dismantling. It may involve releasing the platform from its cables explosively and letting it fall.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Arecibo telescope's long and productive life has come to an end. From a report: The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today it will decommission the iconic radio telescope in Puerto Rico following two cable breaks in recent months that have brought the structure to near collapse. The 57-year-old observatory, a survivor of numerous hurricanes and earthquakes, is now in such a fragile state that attempting repairs would put staff and workers in danger. "This decision was not an easy one to make," Sean Jones, NSF's assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences, said at a news briefing today. "We understand how much Arecibo means to [the research] community and to Puerto Rico." Ralph Gaume, director of NSF's astronomy division, said at the briefing the agency wants to preserve other instruments at the site, as well as the visitor and outreach center. But they are under threat if the telescope structure collapses. That would bring the 900-ton instrument platform, suspended 137 meters above the 305-meter-wide dish, crashing down. Flailing cables could damage other buildings on the site, as could the three support towers if they fell, too. "There is a serious risk of an unexpected and uncontrolled collapse," Gaume said. "A controlled decommissioning gives us the opportunity to preserve valuable assets that the observatory has." Over the next few weeks, engineering firms will develop a plan for a controlled dismantling. It may involve releasing the platform from its cables explosively and letting it fall.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joe Morrison: The first time I spoke with Jennings Anderson, I couldn't believe what he was telling me. I mean that genuinely -- I did not believe him. He was a little incredulous about it himself. I felt like he was sharing an important secret with me that the world didn't yet know. The open secret Jennings filled me in on is that OpenStreetMap (OSM) is now at the center of an unholy alliance of the world's largest and wealthiest technology companies. The most valuable companies in the world are treating OSM as critical infrastructure for some of the most-used software ever written. The four companies in the inner circle -- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft -- have a combined market capitalization of over six trillion dollars. In almost every other setting, they are mortal enemies fighting expensive digital wars of attrition. Yet they now find themselves eagerly investing in and collaborating on OSM at an unprecedented scale (more on the scale later). What likely started as a conversation in a British pub between grad students in 2004 has spiraled out of control into an invaluable, strategic, voluntarily-maintained data asset the wealthiest companies in the world can't afford to replicate. I will admit that I used to think of OSM as little more than a virtuous hobby for over-educated Europeans living abroad -- a cutesy internet collectivist experiment somewhere on the spectrum between eBird and Linux. It's most commonly summarized with a variant of this analogy: OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. OSM acolytes hate this comparison in the much same way baseball players resent when people describe the sport as "cricket for fat people." While vaguely truthful, it doesn't quite get to the spirit of the thing. OSM is incomparable. Over 1.5M individuals have contributed data to it. It averages 4.5M changes per day. The stats page on the OSM Wiki is a collection of hockey sticks. [...]

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Joe Morrison: The first time I spoke with Jennings Anderson, I couldn't believe what he was telling me. I mean that genuinely -- I did not believe him. He was a little incredulous about it himself. I felt like he was sharing an important secret with me that the world didn't yet know. The open secret Jennings filled me in on is that OpenStreetMap (OSM) is now at the center of an unholy alliance of the world's largest and wealthiest technology companies. The most valuable companies in the world are treating OSM as critical infrastructure for some of the most-used software ever written. The four companies in the inner circle -- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft -- have a combined market capitalization of over six trillion dollars. In almost every other setting, they are mortal enemies fighting expensive digital wars of attrition. Yet they now find themselves eagerly investing in and collaborating on OSM at an unprecedented scale (more on the scale later). What likely started as a conversation in a British pub between grad students in 2004 has spiraled out of control into an invaluable, strategic, voluntarily-maintained data asset the wealthiest companies in the world can't afford to replicate. I will admit that I used to think of OSM as little more than a virtuous hobby for over-educated Europeans living abroad -- a cutesy internet collectivist experiment somewhere on the spectrum between eBird and Linux. It's most commonly summarized with a variant of this analogy: OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. OSM acolytes hate this comparison in the much same way baseball players resent when people describe the sport as "cricket for fat people." While vaguely truthful, it doesn't quite get to the spirit of the thing. OSM is incomparable. Over 1.5M individuals have contributed data to it. It averages 4.5M changes per day. The stats page on the OSM Wiki is a collection of hockey sticks. [...]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joe Morrison: The first time I spoke with Jennings Anderson, I couldn't believe what he was telling me. I mean that genuinely -- I did not believe him. He was a little incredulous about it himself. I felt like he was sharing an important secret with me that the world didn't yet know. The open secret Jennings filled me in on is that OpenStreetMap (OSM) is now at the center of an unholy alliance of the world's largest and wealthiest technology companies. The most valuable companies in the world are treating OSM as critical infrastructure for some of the most-used software ever written. The four companies in the inner circle -- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft -- have a combined market capitalization of over six trillion dollars. In almost every other setting, they are mortal enemies fighting expensive digital wars of attrition. Yet they now find themselves eagerly investing in and collaborating on OSM at an unprecedented scale (more on the scale later). What likely started as a conversation in a British pub between grad students in 2004 has spiraled out of control into an invaluable, strategic, voluntarily-maintained data asset the wealthiest companies in the world can't afford to replicate. I will admit that I used to think of OSM as little more than a virtuous hobby for over-educated Europeans living abroad -- a cutesy internet collectivist experiment somewhere on the spectrum between eBird and Linux. It's most commonly summarized with a variant of this analogy: OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. OSM acolytes hate this comparison in the much same way baseball players resent when people describe the sport as "cricket for fat people." While vaguely truthful, it doesn't quite get to the spirit of the thing. OSM is incomparable. Over 1.5M individuals have contributed data to it. It averages 4.5M changes per day. The stats page on the OSM Wiki is a collection of hockey sticks. [...]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four years after offering special placement in a "top stories carousel" in search results to entice publishers to use a format it created for mobile pages, called AMP, Google announced last week that it will end that preferential treatment in the spring. "We will prioritize pages with great page experience, whether implemented using AMP or any other web technology, as we rank the results," Google said in a blog post. From a report: The company had indicated in 2018 that it would drop the preference eventually. Last week's announcement of a concrete timeline comes less than a month after the Department of Justice called Google a "monopoly gatekeeper to the internet" in a lawsuit alleging antitrust violations and as pressure mounts on officials in the European Union, which has already fined Google more than $9 billion for antitrust violations. "I did always think AMP posed antitrust concerns," said Sally Hubbard, author of the book "Monopolies Suck" and an antitrust expert with the Open Markets Institute. "It's, 'If you want to show up on the top of the search results, you have to play by our rules, you have to use AMP.'" Google spokesperson Meghann Farnsworth did not address the timing of the change but said AMP is not dead, saying the company is "fully committed to AMP as a technology." She said AMP continues to be required for certain features that "are not technically possible" without it, such as "swipe to visit" in Google Images, and that it's "preferred" in the "for you" feed in Google's news reading app, Google Discover.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four years after offering special placement in a "top stories carousel" in search results to entice publishers to use a format it created for mobile pages, called AMP, Google announced last week that it will end that preferential treatment in the spring. "We will prioritize pages with great page experience, whether implemented using AMP or any other web technology, as we rank the results," Google said in a blog post. From a report: The company had indicated in 2018 that it would drop the preference eventually. Last week's announcement of a concrete timeline comes less than a month after the Department of Justice called Google a "monopoly gatekeeper to the internet" in a lawsuit alleging antitrust violations and as pressure mounts on officials in the European Union, which has already fined Google more than $9 billion for antitrust violations. "I did always think AMP posed antitrust concerns," said Sally Hubbard, author of the book "Monopolies Suck" and an antitrust expert with the Open Markets Institute. "It's, 'If you want to show up on the top of the search results, you have to play by our rules, you have to use AMP.'" Google spokesperson Meghann Farnsworth did not address the timing of the change but said AMP is not dead, saying the company is "fully committed to AMP as a technology." She said AMP continues to be required for certain features that "are not technically possible" without it, such as "swipe to visit" in Google Images, and that it's "preferred" in the "for you" feed in Google's news reading app, Google Discover.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The iconic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico is to be shut down permanently.

Although COVID-19 is surging in the United States and around the world, Warner Bros. still plans to release "Wonder Woman 1984" on Christmas Day -- but its plans are are no longer limited to a theatrical release. From a report: Director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot both posted tweets last night announcing that in in the United States, the film will be released simultaneously in theaters and on WarnerMedia's streaming service HBO Max. "THE TIME HAS COME," Jenkins wrote. "At some point you have to choose to share any love you have to give over everything else. We love our movie as we love our fans, so we truly hope that our film brings a little bit of joy and reprieve to all of you this holiday season." A press release from HBO Max offers a few more details: The film will debut in theaters internationally on December 16, then launch in U.S. theaters and on HBO Max on December 25. It will be available to the streaming service's U.S. subscribers for one month at no additional cost.

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Mozilla has opened today a public comment and consultation period about the ways it could enable support for the controversial privacy-centric DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocol inside Firefox. From a report: The browser maker's decision to open a rare public consultation period comes after the organization faced criticism last year in the UK for its plans to support DoH inside Firefox. UK government officials, law enforcement agencies, and local internet service providers criticized Mozilla for developing and wanting to roll out DoH, a feature they said could have helped suspects bypass enterprise firewalls and parental controls blocklists -- even earning the browser maker a nomination for an "Internet Villain" award from a local ISP. All last year's hoopla was caused by DoH, a web protocol developed as an alternative to the classic DNS (Domain Name System). DoH works by encrypting DNS queries (which are normally sent out in clear text) and hiding them inside normal-looking HTTPS web traffic.

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