Google will not implement fact-checking measures in response to the new European Union legislation.

 

Google has told the EU it will not comply with a forthcoming fact-checking law, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios. The company states that it will not be adding fact checks to search results or YouTube videos and will not use fact-checking data when ranking or removing content.

"Freedom of speech" discourse of tech bros (or big techs) is a lie. They are the ones who are going to enact their own censorship. Private censorship. Just some examples:

• Suchir Balaji, from openAI, after questioning ethics about chatGPT, "found dead";
• Barnett and Dean, two Boeing whistleblowers, also "found dead" after questioning company's safety concerns that possibly caused accidents;
• Elon Musk banning people from X just because of disagreeing with him (even by just saying "cis"), he also fired an engineer that once told him "people are just not interested on your posts);
• Zara Dar banned from LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft) after she told that she earns more money with their math videos from PornHub than Youtube;

People complain too much about "state censorship" but forget that big corporations are the one who de facto have held the power to control what people can and can't say, and now that the "tech bros and billionaires' mafia" took over that country, they want to do the same with the entire world.

Have your Google search results altered?

This has been a frequent topic and piece of known wisdom in techie circles for probably five to ten years already. Over time, Google (and other search engines) have slowly lost the war against SEO spam and gotten worse and worse at surfacing high quality, 'organic' content. Reasonable minds can disagree over to what extent this might have been allowed to happen versus how much they just weren't capable of stopping it, but the trend is clear. 

There has also been a simultaneous trend of intentionally designing Google to be less and less literal with search queries and trying to infer what the user 'really' wants, which probably does (or at least did) improve the average quality of results for unsophisticated users but also makes search much worse for power users and more precise queries.

The real problem is that the Internet has just changed since the early days of Google, and the algorithms that used to do a good job of finding quality results no longer work on the present-day Internet, and nobody has figured out better algorithms that do work (other than “google, but append ‘reddit’ to the query”).

Most people on the Internet these days don’t remember what search was like before Google invented the PageRank algorithm, but the TL;DR is that it sucked. People are so used to Google now (or at least, Google as it used to be) that everyone thinks of quality search results as being something that you just get automatically; if Google’s search results are bad now, it must because Google is intentionally not giving you the right results. But that’s not true! Getting quality search results is hard! (Consider the fact that searching for files on your hard drive (or even your Google Drive) has never worked as well as searching on the web. And corporate intranets invariably have terrible search result quality.)

The search engines before Google were quite poor at determining which pages effectively presented the information you sought. I recall that with AltaVista, the typical process was to initiate a search, and it would present several average results along with an interface for adjusting your search to indicate “more similar to this result, fewer like that result.” Users were anticipated to comprehend Boolean query terms (“python AND programming AND NOT (monty OR snake)”) and so on. Because search engines were poor and the Internet was considerably smaller, many people would locate sites via directories that organized websites into hierarchical categories rather than performing searches. (This is what Yahoo! initially was.) 

PageRank (Google’s algorithm for ranking search results by tracking which pages linked to which other pages) was a game changer; suddenly you could search for something, and Google would actually find exactly what you wanted on the first try! All of the older search engines basically went out of business immediately (or became wrappers around Google), and “google” became synonymous with “web search” (at least until enough of their patents expired that it was possible to compete with them).

And for a while, things were good.

The problem though, is that PageRank is not a “find exactly what a user is searching for in any data set” algorithm. It’s a “find exactly what a user is searching for in the 90s/00s Internet” algorithm. It depends on the idea that lots of people will link to good web sites and few people will link to bad web sites, in a way that was true of the 90s/00s-era Internet, with its personal home pages and fan sites and special-interest forums and giant hierarchical directories, but which is much less true on the present-day Internet, which is almost entirely dominated by people trying to make money and direct traffic only to other sites that they own.

And as a result, Google search has stopped working well. To some extent this is because there are fewer high-quality not-trying-to-sell-you-anything web pages out there to find results on, but it’s also because the basic “lots of people will link to good pages and few people will link to bad pages” assumption that is the foundation of PageRank is just completely not true any more. (To some extent, PageRank was even self-destroying: in the old days, you needed those giant Internet directories and such to point out the good data for people, and PageRank could consume that to figure out the good link destinations. But as everyone came to depend on search instead, there was less need for people to explicitly link to sites that they found useful, which in turn meant there was less data for PageRank to learn from.)

In theory, there might be some other algorithm that does a better job of extracting signal from noise on the present-day Internet, but at this point everyone has basically given up on trying to find it, and is hoping AI will save the day instead.

Overseas Anime demand surpasses Japanese Domestic Market

The anime industry has reached a pivotal milestone, with the international market surpassing domestic Japanese sales for only the second time in history. This shift, revealed in the latest Anime Industry Report by the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA), signals a new era for Japanese animation on the global stage.

Record-Breaking Revenue and Market Dynamics

The anime industry achieved unprecedented success in 2023, with total revenue soaring to 3.3465 trillion yen (US$21.27 billion), marking a 14.3% year-over-year increase.

This growth was primarily driven by the overseas market, which accounted for 51.5% of total revenue, reaching 1.7222 trillion yen (US$10.94 billion). In contrast, the domestic market contributed 49.5%, or 1.6243 trillion yen (US$10.32 billion).

The overseas market’s 18% growth rate significantly outpaced the domestic market’s 10.6%, highlighting the increasing global appetite for anime content.

The first graph below from the AJA shows the overall anime industry market value and trend from 2002 to 2023.

The second graph below details the domestic market (solid line) and the overseas market (dotted line)

AJA 2024 Anime Industry Report

Regional Powerhouses: North America and Asia

North America and Asia emerged as the primary engines of anime’s international expansion: These two regions collectively generated 72% of anime’s global revenue, amounting to US$14.3 billion.

North America led in streaming revenue, contributing US$2.2 billion or 41% of the global total. Asia followed closely, generating US$1.6 billion, representing 29% of streaming revenue.

Nevertheless, the future looks bright for anime. Industry projections suggest continued growth, with the market potentially reaching US$63.41 billion by 2034.

Source: Screenrant

Feeling satisfied with being better than most

I’ve been contemplating these ideas for several weeks, and this is the first occasion I’m writing about them. Recent objectives I’ve established and experiences in my life have led me to recognize a recurring issue: whenever I achieve a level above average in any area—even if it’s just marginally—I frequently fall into stagnation and complacency.

Although I keep reminding myself of my intense passion to excel in this area or hobby, once I reach a point of being clearly above average, I usually start to lose interest. I can hardly believe the numerous examples that have come to my mind lately:

At 31, I believe it’s now or never. I've concluded that being a jack of all trades isn't suited for me. I know what I want to achieve first, buy a house, get savings started. I aim to accomplish this objective and utilize it as a foundation for developing habits to attain my other ambitious objectives.

Have you ever felt like this, what are your thoughts ?

What led the tech industry to eliminate Adobe Flash?

Initially developed in 1996, Adobe Flash Player was a program designed for accessing multimedia content on the internet, including videos and online games. Flash Player could operate from a basic web browser or be used as a browser plug-in on a site.

In 2017, Adobe declared that it would cease support for Adobe Flash Player. This will take effect in 2020. To safeguard users, the software started to alert them to remove the program, and Adobe eliminated all links for downloading Flash installers. All major web browsers, including Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge, subsequently announced their decision to officially eliminate Adobe Flash Player from all sites starting in January 2021.

 Brief History

Flash needed a significant amount of access to many resources that you preferred not to grant in today's secure environment. Just like DOS allowed users to do whatever they wanted with the machine in the past, everyone was an "administrator" and could ruin their computer. Flash protocols were not solely for creating shapes and animations or (later) showing films... they functioned as complete systems within the larger framework, and plugins allowed these systems to communicate through your browser while bypassing numerous security restrictions (which were not in place at that time, and were added as the necessity arose). The same reason caused the decline of Java in web browsers. Java needed a plugin, a compatible browser, filesystem access through the browser, and so on. Consequently, it disappeared. JavaScript (quite distinct) lacks that feature and thrives in your browser.

Security is seldom simply a matter of "merely filling this gap in the dam." It often centers on the idea that "this dyke is intentionally made vulnerable to all threats; in fact, it's less expensive to demolish it entirely, reconstruct it, and improve it than to keep repairing it."

Netscape plugins were not "reimagined". They passed away.

ActiveX was not re-imagined, repaired, or updated. It has ceased to function. (Interesting tidbit: "Windows Update" was once an ActiveX control in your web browser that possessed complete authority to actually enhance every component of your Windows device).

Flash, Java, "toolbars in your browser," etc., all ceased to exist because their design made it impossible to secure them adequately, and they inherently permitted actions that were risky.

They were substituted (and occasionally 3, 4, or even more times since we still made mistakes!) with items that essentially prevented you from doing those things. Your websites can no longer access your complete file system. Java and Flash made that possible! Your websites are no longer able to simply activate your cameras and capture your video. Browser permissions were implemented to prevent that, and the USER / BROWSER manages them, not the websites.

Java allows you to operate network servers within the browser and communicate over individuals' internal networks. You are no longer able to do that.

ActiveX was essentially a Windows application operating in your browser that communicated with websites and was fundamentally insecure. (However, Microsoft also created WMF graphics files, which were later found to be standard executable programs that could be altered into viruses). And each of them, at one point or another, attempted to "fix the imperfections" and protect them. And ended up failing terribly, since the sole method to ensure security was to halt functionalities that individuals were already dependent on, which would essentially "break" Java, etc. Consequently, they continued to patch it until one day the browser developers essentially declared it over, as they faced backlash for users exposing significant vulnerabilities in corporate networks with this garbage.

And what about when you're operating in a truly secure setting? It appears that you CANNOT run Flash, CANNOT run Java applications, can't utilize ActiveX, and many creations based on them simply cease to function.

In the end, browser-based Java had a control panel icon(!) solely for setting up Java's security since the browsers couldn't manage it, and everything occurred on the local machine. It's similar to needing a Windows Settings app these days to protect your streaming video, as firewalls and browsers allow it to operate freely. That all came to an end when browsers implemented security measures, and frankly, nothing important was missed. Individuals eventually embraced the idea, organized their tasks, and created appealing animations in your browser through secure methods that didn't necessitate full administrative rights over your computer.

This weekend, Apple TV+ will be available for free streaming

Image Credit - Pixbay

Apple is allowing everyone to experience its Apple TV+ streaming service for free this weekend, from January 3 to January 5. The company announced the information on Monday, along with a short video highlighting its best TV shows, including “Severance,” “Slow Horses,” “Shrinking,” and more.

It's important to highlight that this is the first instance where Apple has provided something of this nature. The announcement follows shortly after Apple TV+ started hinting at its intention to make its content available to non-subscribers.

A weekend provides ample opportunity to binge-watch several of Apple’s hit series, particularly “Severance,” making its much-awaited second season comeback on January 17. While Apple’s tweet regarding the promotion states that Apple TV+ will be free to stream on January 4 and 5, the official press release indicates it will be available for free from January 3 to 5.

By providing more access to its content, Apple is probably anticipating that viewers will discover its TV shows and subsequently subscribe to stay updated with the series or explore the entire library of the streaming service. The company mentions that Apple TV+ will be complimentary on any device supporting Apple TV+ and that an Apple ID is all you require to use the streaming service.

Modern Happiness is equivalent to being high on Sugar

In medical science, a "glucose spike" refers to the swift rise in blood sugar levels after eating sugary foods. While these spikes provide a quick burst of energy, they often lead to a decline, making us feel fatigued and craving more energy. Regular spikes can lead to insulin resistance, persistent fatigue, and possibly ailments like diabetes. The initial allure, though enchanting, hides a trend of dependence and decline.

Consider this comparison: what if many of the intense, joyful experiences we seek are akin to emotional “happiness peaks”? These brief instances of happiness—a trending post, the thrill of a budding romance, or the satisfaction of success—can leave us feeling restless and yearning for the next excitement. Could it be that, over time, the continual pursuit of these highs diminishes our ability to experience deep, lasting happiness? Are we developing an emotional equivalent to insulin resistance?

Nonetheless, increases in happiness aren't always detrimental. They bring energy and excitement to life, just as glucose energizes the body. Nonetheless, if we rely too much on these fleeting highs, we risk becoming numb, constantly needing more stimulation to feel the same joy. Social media exemplifies this perfectly: the thrill we experience from likes and shares fades quickly, making us yearn for more validation.

Just as nutritionists recommend balanced diets over sugary treats, we can prioritize regular, fulfilling sources of happiness. This could include fostering important connections, finding purpose in our work, or participating in activities that encourage a feeling of flow. These efforts may lack the instant excitement of a major achievement or viral phenomenon, but they offer something much more valuable: enduring contentment.

The next time you experience a wave of joy, pause for a moment to savor it.