New tool helps stand guard against fake news | Boston Globe

See the NewsGuard site for details

"A high-stakes federal election comes up in less than a week, and on the Internet the digital lies are flowing as freely as ever. I wrote recently about scientists developing software to detect fake news stories, but their programs still aren’t ready to go.

Steven Brill isn’t waiting.

Brill, cofounder of American Lawyer magazine, has joined forces with former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz to develop NewsGuard, a browser-based tool that tries to fend off fake news using human brains, rather than silicon chips."

New tool helps stand guard against fake news | Boston Globe

Apple’s Aim to Please Event | 500ish Words

I'm guessing the MacBook (minus Air or Pro) will simply fade away -- or perhaps be rebranded as a smaller-display Air (hopefully not MacBook Air mini...)

"If you just stop to think about it, it makes almost no sense that both the MacBook and this new MacBook Air now exist. Previously, the MacBook Air was the low-cost Apple laptop, starting at $999. Now it’s up to $1199 — just $100 cheaper than the MacBook. A device which is smaller and lighter than the MacBook Air. I know I’m overthinking this: Apple has a winning brand in the MacBook Air, so they wanted to make a new one, knowing it would sell. But the branding makes no sense.²
Again, this shouldn’t ultimately matter — certainly not for the new Air. But it’s hard to see who buys the MacBook now. If you prefer just a slightly smaller device and/or screen? Or if you want fewer ports? Or don’t want TouchID?³ Want worse battery life? Hate recycling?⁴ Perhaps it’s slightly faster — there’s oddly only one processor choice for the new Air — but that’s impossible to know before the benchmarks.
We’ll see what they do with the MacBook next year. It’s clear that the line should be whittled to a MacBook (consumer) and a MacBook Pro (professional) duopoly, but instead we have something more like: MacBook Air (consumer), MacBook (prosumer?), and MacBook Pro (professional)?⁵ Again, it’s a muddled message that will undoubtedly hurt the MacBook."

Apple’s Aim to Please Event | 500ish Words

Press struggles with amplifying Trump's pre-midterms claims | Politico

Also see Exclusive: Trump says supporters demand his red-hot rhetoric | Axios

"The key to resisting that tactic, according to journalists and media experts, is not ignoring what the president says but adding context, even if it means taking longer to publish a story.

“Presidents often make proposals that may not have much chance of ever becoming law, sometimes to shape a campaign and sometimes just to generate a national debate on an issue they care about,” New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker said in an email. “That doesn't mean we shouldn't cover them. It means we should help readers understand the context in which the proposals are made and the circumstances that surround them.”"

Press struggles with amplifying Trump's pre-midterms claims | Politico

Apple’s Vertical Integration Shines with the New iPad Pro Line | Tech.pinions

See the full post for more on "the iPad's journey"

"For Apple, there is no question that the future of their computing experience is in the iPad Pro rather than the Mac. You just need to look at the latest products to see how much Apple owns the experience on iPad Pro from the silicon for both performance and intelligence, to the ecosystem of apps and services, to the accessories, pretty much everything they need to control the end to end experience.

It is interesting that when I look at Surface Pro, the sole iPad Pro competitor in my mind,  I see clearly that the lack of that vertical control is what is holding them back especially in the consumer segment. Ironically Microsoft is better than Apple at first-party apps that take advantage of what the OS and the hardware have to offer to drive their vision of new workflows, but the lack of custom silicon and the much weaker App Store makes it much harder for them to compete on equal footing.

Apple has been known to drive change even when the market does not seem to be ready. With the future of computing, they have the luxury of not having to rush. They have built a strong platform and they will continue to lead people to it without yanking away the safety net that Mac products provide to many."

Apple’s Vertical Integration Shines with the New iPad Pro Line | Tech.pinions

Alas, the Blockchain Won’t Save Journalism After All | NYT

It appears there is a chance blockchain is not a panacea...

"Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (which introduced blockchain technology to the world) and Ethereum are commodities — like gold, they fluctuate in value whether they are used or not. CVL tokens were designed to function as consumer items. In practice that means that Bitcoin and Ethereum have tempted even know-nothings to make a purchase in the hopes of getting rich quick. Civil is asking people to buy in for the privilege of enthusiastically participating in running a blockchain-media platform.

Or, as Mr. Iles put it: “We even think that we are going to be able to show people that it’s more fun, it’s more rewarding, to pay for the news using CVL tokens as opposed to cash.”

But many people aren’t willing to pay normal money for journalism.

“Look, we sometimes get asked, are we too early?” Mr. Iles said. “And the answer is absolutely yes. But you only are ever going to be too early or too late.”"

Alas, the Blockchain Won’t Save Journalism After All | NYT

How Mark Zuckerberg Became Too Big to Fail | NYT

Final paragraphs from a timely Facebook reality check; on a related note, see Facebook Could Be Unrecognizable by 2020 | The Atlantic

"One fix for Facebook might be to give the board greater power over the company. Trillium Asset Management, an investment firm, recently put forward a shareholder resolution supported by several state funds that would require Mr. Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook’s chairman, though he would still maintain majority voting control of the company.

“I think by taking the step to relinquish the position of the board chair, it’s a very important structural change so that he would not have a completely free hand to muscle his way through decisions,” said Jonas Kron, a Trillium senior vice president.

A Facebook spokesman said the company had not yet taken a position on the resolution. In the past, similar measures have been voted down by Mr. Zuckerberg and his allies.

Which leaves us here: Either Mr. Zuckerberg fixes Facebook, or no one does. That’s the choice we face, like it or not."

How Mark Zuckerberg Became Too Big to Fail | NYT

Father of Web says tech giants may have to be split up | Reuters

Later in the article: "“I am disappointed with the current state of the Web,” he said. “We have lost the feeling of individual empowerment and to a certain extent also I think the optimism has cracked.”" Tangentially, see From Silicon Valley elite to social media hate: The radicalization that led to Gab | The Washington Post

"“What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up,” Berners-Lee, 63, said in an interview. “There is a danger of concentration.”

But he urged caution too, saying the speed of innovation in both technology and tastes could ultimately cut some of the biggest technology companies down to size.

“Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market, but by the market shifting, by the interest going somewhere else,” Berners-Lee said."

Father of Web says tech giants may have to be split up | Reuters

In Apple’s new iPad Pro and MacBook Air, competing ways to get to work | NYT

Final sentence: "A decade ago when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs first introduced the Air by pulling it out of a manila envelope, he redefined the design of portable computers. If you want Apple’s vision today, look to the iPad Pro." For an overview of the product updates, see The biggest news from Apple's iPad and Mac event | Engadget along with Apple press releases for the new iPad Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini

"Two slabs of glass and metal, two different tales.

Apple shared its vision for the future of portable computers on Tuesday: A super-powerful redesigned iPad Pro you operate with fingers and a stylus. But in case you’re dubious a tablet can replace a laptop, Apple also unveiled a refresh of its classic MacBook Air.

That was the mixed message from the consumer tech giant’s product event in New York City, a follow-up to its September launch of new iPhones and Apple Watches. I had a chance to try both the $800 iPad Pro and $1,200 MacBook Air after Apple’s presentation. Each was given a beautiful new design, renewed purpose — and a 20 percent price hike."

In Apple’s new iPad Pro and MacBook Air, competing ways to get to work | NYT

I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It | NYT

From Kara Swisher's latest NYT column; on a related note, see The Internet Will Be the Death of Us | NYT

"So where are we now? Far too much of the money social media companies are using to host thugs like Mr. Sayoc and Mr. Bowers was paid for by thugs like Prince Mohammed. And, other than some tut-tutting about the horror of it all, there are no signs that the industry that considers itself the most woke on the planet is thinking of giving the money back or talking about not taking it in the future.

I cannot tell you how sad that is to write, because when I first saw the internet way back when, I hoped that it would help eliminate the attitudes that had fueled those horrible letters to me. I naïvely thought a lone man sending a reporter a missive of malevolence could not find such refuge on the wide-open internet, where his hate would be seen for what it was and denounced and exorcised.

I was obviously very wrong. Instead, the internet gave people like him the space to grow and thrive. Tech made no real rules, claiming the freedom from any strictures would be O.K. in what is the greatest experiment in human communications ever."

I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It | NYT

Facebook expects rising costs to combat scandals to moderate after 2019 | Reuters

For more details on Facebook's latest quarter, see Mark Zuckerberg's overview

"Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Tuesday relieved investors by forecasting that margins would stop shrinking after 2019 as costs from scandals ease up, sending shares up despite a second-straight quarter with record-low user growth.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg repeated the company’s warning that growing user interest in private messaging, video and safer content would cause costs to rise faster than revenue for “some time.” But he said he was focused on bringing them in line."

Facebook expects rising costs to combat scandals to moderate after 2019 | Reuters

Ian Small, former head of TokBox, takes over as Evernote CEO from Chris O'Neill | TechCrunch

Also see Inventing the Future: Greetings from Our New CEO | Evernote blog

"O”Neill had been Evernote’s CEO since 2015, when he took over the position from co-founder Phil Libin. Small previously served as CEO of TokBox, which operates the OpenTok video calling platform, from 2009 to 2014, and then as its chairman from 2014 to July of this year.

O’Neill’s departure as CEO is the latest significant leadership shift for Evernote, which has withstood several key executive departures over the last few months. In early September, we reported that the company had lost several senior executives, including CTO Anirban Kundu, CFO Vincent Toolan, CPO Erik Wrobel, and head of HR Michelle Wagner, as it sought funding in a potential down-round from the unicorn valuation it hit in 2012. According to TechCrunch’s sources, Evernote had struggled to grow its base of paid users and active users, as well as enterprise clients, for the last six years."

Ian Small, former head of TokBox, takes over as Evernote CEO from Chris O'Neill | TechCrunch

Billionaires Chase ‘SpaceX Moment’ for the Holy Grail of Energy | Bloomberg

Cash in fusion

"One of the most ambitious ventures is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a company founded last year by six MIT professors. Backed by some of the biggest names in business, they’re confident they’ll be able to produce a prototype of a so-called net energy reactor by 2025.

The startup raised $50 million in March from a group led by Italy’s Eni SpA, one of several oil producers preparing for a carbon-neutral world. And last month it secured an unspecified sum from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund seeded by Gates, Bezos and fellow tycoons including Richard Branson, Ray Dalio and Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

“The greater danger is not having anybody succeed than having everybody,” Commonwealth Fusion CEO Bob Mumgaard said by phone from Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We need more smart people driving very hard to crack this.”"

Billionaires Chase ‘SpaceX Moment’ for the Holy Grail of Energy | Bloomberg

China’s King of Internet Fluff Wants to Conquer the World | NYT

Might want to carefully read the end user license agreement, especially on data sharing

"A Chinese internet company that serves up homemade break-dancing videos, dishy news bites and goofy hashtag challenges has become one of the planet’s most richly valued start-ups, with a roughly $75 billion price tag. And it has big plans for storming phone screens across the rest of the globe, too.

You may not have heard of the company, Bytedance. You may never have used any of its breezy, colorful apps. But your nearest teenager is probably already obsessed with Musical.ly, the video-sharing platform that Bytedance bought for around $1 billion last year and folded into its own video service, TikTok."

China’s King of Internet Fluff Wants to Conquer the World | NYT

Twitter’s rumored killing of the “like” button highlights its misplaced priorities | Vox

What's not to like? Also see Twitter Should Kill the Retweet | The Atlantic and On Social Media, No Answers for Hate | NYT

"To be fair to Twitter, it has made changes designed to weed out hate speech. Its most sweeping action against bad actors on the site, an algorithmic change designed to remove them from public feeds, caused so much outrage from conservatives that Dorsey was not only pressured into to undoing the change but also had to testify before Congress in a bizarre day of political grandstanding. Yet because Twitter’s overall record has been one of inconsistency and waffling, it’s received little credit for the changes it has made.

All of this has impacted the way Twitter users reacted to the news about the potential removal of the “like” button. In that context, the idea of Twitter responding to the many problems plaguing it at the moment by removing the “like” — one of the few consistently positive forms of interaction on the site — might be the most bizarre example yet of Twitter zigging when its users are begging for a giant zag."

Twitter’s rumored killing of the “like” button highlights its misplaced priorities | Vox

IBM’s Old Playbook | Stratechery

I'm surprised IBM's stock is only down ~3% as I type this -- from a timely Stratechery reality check:

"The best thing going for this strategy is its pragmatism: IBM gave up its potential to compete in the public cloud a decade ago, faked it for the last five years, and now is finally admitting its best option is to build on top of everyone else’s clouds. That, though, gets at the strategy’s weakness: it seems more attuned to IBM’s needs than potential customers. After all, if an enterprise is concerned about lock-in, is IBM really a better option? And if the answer is that “Red Hat is open”, at what point do increasingly sophisticated businesses build it themselves?

The problem for IBM is that they are not building solutions for clueless IT departments bewildered by a dizzying array of open technologies: instead they are building on top of three cloud providers, one of which (Microsoft) is specializing in precisely the sort of hybrid solutions that IBM is targeting. The difference is that because Microsoft has actually spent the money on infrastructure their ability to extract money from the value chain is correspondingly higher; IBM has to pay rent"

IBM’s Old Playbook | Stratechery

This Is How We Radicalized The World | BuzzFeed News

Also see Social Media Is a Weapon of War. How We Use It Is Up to Us | Motherboard

"The way the world is using their phones is almost completely dominated by a few Silicon Valley companies. The abuse that is happening is due to their inability to manage that responsibility. All of this has become so normalized in the three years since it first began to manifest that we just assume now that platforms like Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Twitter will exacerbate political and social instability. We expect they will be abused by ultranationalist trolls. We know they will be exploited by data firms. We wait for them to help launch the careers of populist leaders.

To be sure, populism, nationalism, and information warfare existed long before the internet. The arc of history doesn’t always bend toward what I think of as progress. Societies regress. The difference now is that all of this is being hosted almost entirely by a handful of corporations. Why is an American company like Facebook placing ads in newspapers in countries like India, Italy, Mexico, and Brazil, explaining to local internet users how to look out for abuse and misinformation? Because our lives, societies, and governments have been tied to invisible feedback loops, online and off. And there’s no clear way to untangle ourselves.

The worst part of all of this is that, in retrospect, there’s no real big secret about how we got here."

This Is How We Radicalized The World | BuzzFeed News

Clean energy is catching up to natural gas | Vox

From an extensive and encouraging clean energy market dynamics reality check

"The cost of natural gas power is tethered to the commodity price of natural gas, which is inherently volatile. The price of controllable, storable renewable energy is tethered only to technology costs, which are going down, down, down. Recent forecasts suggest that it may be cheaper to build new renewables+storage than to continue operating existing natural gas plants by 2035.

That means natural gas plants built today could be rendered uncompetitive well before their rated lifespan. They could become “stranded assets,” saddling utility ratepayers and investors with the costs of premature decommissioning."

Clean energy is catching up to natural gas | Vox

IBM to Buy Red Hat, the Top Linux Distributor, for $34 Billion | NYT

I'm guessing IBM's stock price isn't going up today; also see IBM Buying Open Source Specialist Red Hat for $34 Billion (Wired)

"The IBM cloud strategy is to supply both hardware and software for companies to build their own private clouds, and it also has a third-party public cloud offering.

IBM, analysts say, cannot really compete broadly with so-called hyperscale cloud companies — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — which tap their deep coffers to spend many billions of dollars a year to build more giant data centers.

But IBM and Red Hat say they are well placed to be leaders in helping corporations make the transition to cloud computing without getting locked into the technology of an internet giant."

IBM to Buy Red Hat, the Top Linux Distributor, for $34 Billion | NYT

Bytedance Is Said to Secure Funding at Record $75 Billion Value | Bloomberg

Funding secured; future tbd (later in the article: "Bytedance’s biggest potential risk may be China’s notoriously sensitive censors.")

"Six-year-old Bytedance, owner of news aggregator Toutiao and video sensation Tik Tok, has surpassed Uber Technologies Inc. to become the world’s most valuable startup, according to CB Insights, which values Uber at $72 billion. Having become a major player in China’s internet scene, it’s now planning to use its influx of cash to take on Western rivals. Its biggest overseas hit is a video service called Douyin -- known as Tik Tok beyond China -- that’s siphoning attention from the likes of Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Facebook Inc.
Bytedance is said to have earned $2.5 billion in revenue last year and had initially targeted 50 billion yuan ($7.2 billion) for 2018, but has yet to turn a profit. It started life as a producer of apps for sharing crass jokes before moving to its signature news aggregation service Jinri Toutiao, which means “Today’s Headlines.” It then spent years building up its user base and perfecting its recommendation systems. Toutiao’s now a hit among users who spend almost as much time on Toutiao as they do on WeChat, the Tencent super-app that acts as phone, social media and digital wallet for over a billion users."

Bytedance Is Said to Secure Funding at Record $75 Billion Value | Bloomberg

Can’t Get Enough Fox News? ‘Superfans’ Can Pay $65 a Year for More | NYT

Might be more profitable to go with a VHS option...

"In a first-of-its-kind test for the cable news market, Fox News said on Thursday that its stand-alone streaming service will debut next month, with subscribers paying about $65 a year.

The product, called Fox Nation and set to become available on Nov. 27, is a bid to bring the channel’s programming into the digital realm that has increasingly lured audiences away from traditional TV.

Whether Fox News devotees come along is an open question. The median age in the Fox News audience is roughly 65, according to Nielsen, a demographic that is more likely than younger viewers to stick with meat-and-potatoes cable and satellite packages."

Can’t Get Enough Fox News? ‘Superfans’ Can Pay $65 a Year for More | NYT