Statista: “In an effort to increase transparency, Google disclosed American political groups’ expenses in advertising on its platform in the current election cycle. As our chart shows, organizations affiliated with both parties spend huge amounts of money to advertise their policies. Within the top 10 one can find six organizations with a direct link or… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
AI is bringing a new set of rules to knowledge work
Thomson Reuters – When things go digital, they start following a new set of rules. “The rules of the physical world are either not applicable or are severely diminished. Things move from sparsity to abundance, where consumption does not lead to depletion. To the contrary, the more an object is consumed, the more valuable it… Continue Reading
Automatic Transliteration Can Help Alexa Find Data Across Language Barriers
Alexa Blog: “As Alexa-enabled devices continue to expand into new countries, finding information across languages that use different scripts becomes a more pressing challenge. For example, a Japanese music catalogue may contain names written in English or the various scripts used in Japanese — Kanji, Katakana, or Hiragana. When an Alexa customer, from anywhere in… Continue Reading
Library Acquisition Patterns: Preliminary Findings
Library Acquisition Patterns: Preliminary Findings – Katherine Daniel, Joseph J. Esposito, Roger C. Schonfeld – July 19, 2018 . DOI: https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.307940 “Several years ago, we set out to better understand how both library acquisition practices and the distribution patterns of publishers and vendors were evolving over time. Within the academic publishing community, there is a… Continue Reading
One more time – No, Amazon Cannot Replace Libraries
Vice: “In Saturday, Forbes published an article titled “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money,” that elicited extremely strong backlash on Twitter from librarians and library patrons alike. The article has since been taken down, though the (extremely ratioed) tweet from the author about it remains. In the article, writer Panos Mourdoukoutas argued… Continue Reading
Bloomberg – Inside Google’s Shadow Workforce
About half of Google’s workers are contractors who don’t receive the same benefits as direct employees – “Every day, tens of thousands of people stream into Google offices wearing red name badges. They eat in Google’s cafeterias, ride its commuter shuttles and work alongside its celebrated geeks. But they can’t access all of the company’s celebrated… Continue Reading
Forbes “deletes” opinion piece by economist advocating replacing public libraries with Amazon
Quartz: “On Saturday morning Forbes published an opinion piece by LIU Post economist Panos Mourdoukoutas with the headline “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money.” It quickly received enthusiastic backlash from actual American libraries and their communities. As of around 10am US eastern time this morning, the story had nearly 200,000 views, according… Continue Reading
Firefox browser adds feature to block autoplaying web audio
Engadget: “Firefox is finally joining the ranks of web browsers that block autoplaying web sounds. Mozilla’s latest Nightly builds for Firefox now include an option to mute autoplaying audio, hopefully saving you from jumping out of your seat when an obnoxious video ad makes its presence felt. It’s finer-grained than Chrome’s recently removed automatic muting,… Continue Reading
Health Insurers Increasing Data Collection on Patients and Rates are Rising
Joint reporting – ProPublica and NPR: “Without any public scrutiny, insurers and data brokers are predicting your health costs based on data about things like race, marital status, how much TV you watch, whether you pay your bills on time or even buy plus-size clothing…With little public scrutiny, the health insurance industry has joined forces… Continue Reading
Bloomberg – Jeff Bezos is now the Richest Man in Modern History
Bloomberg News – “Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history. The Amazon.com Inc. founder’s net worth cracked $150 billion in New York on Monday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s about $55 billion more than Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest person. Bezos, 54, also has topped Gates in inflation-adjusted… Continue Reading
NYT – Amazon’s Curious Case of the $2,630.52 Used Paperback
“Many booksellers on Amazon strive to sell their wares as cheaply as possible. That, after all, is usually how you make a sale in a competitive marketplace. Other merchants favor a counterintuitive approach: Mark the price up to the moon. “Zowie,” the romance author Deborah Macgillivray wrote on Twitter last month after she discovered copies… Continue Reading
Inside Facebook, Twitter and Google’s AI battle over your social lives
CNET: “When you sign up for Facebook on your phone, the app isn’t just giving you the latest updates and photos from your friends and family. In the background, it’s utilizing the phone’s gyroscope to detect subtle movements that come from breathing. It’s measuring how quickly you tap on the screen, and even looking at… Continue Reading
