These Fake Local News Sites Have Confused People For Years. (Buzzfeed) Found Out Who Created Them.

People who caught the sites plagiarizing began speculating about the motivations of whoever was running them. One person noticed that their Google Alerts for Julian Assange were flooded with results from the sites, leading them to warn that “cyber marketing tools are being used in the propaganda war against #WikiLeaks.” One researcher labeled the network of sites “a malicious information operation masquerading as a news aggregator.” Neither was the case. In fact,…

Over time, Google has made paid ads harder to spot

  In 2007, Google changed the long-standing shaded background indicating the ads section of the page from blue to yellow. In 2008, it then briefly tried a green background before reverting back to yellow. Google continued to test variations of background colors including bright blue and a light violet. In 2010, violet officially replaced the yellow, but only lasted about a year before yellow reappeared in 2011. In 2013, Google…

Outline of a female executive assistant seated at the front desk of a retro office, with a smiling male executive in a business suit waiting for her to finish her phone call so he can ask her something.

How 15 minutes I spent with a laptop in 1991 created 2 FT jobs and a promotion

In a section of my dissertation, I dove into office gender politics of in the late 1940s, in order to explore just what Arthur Miller’s original audiences would have thought about the wire recorder that appears in Death of a Salesman. In the play, Willy Loman’s boss Howard thinks of the wire recorder as a domestic plaything, but at the time it was marketed as more reliable for taking dictation…

Facebook exec erroneously cites The Lord of the Rings when comparing the social network to the One Ring

A Facebook executive, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, recently defended Facebook’s policies about political advertising, which critics say rewards politicians who spend a lot of money pushing lies to the slogan-chanting, meme-sharing masses (including the ones in red hats and the ones with the blue hats). Bosworth seems to suggest that for Facebook to tamper with its own money-making algorithm in the service of the truth would be like “Galadrial” [sic] claiming…

Long Live The English Major—If It’s Paired With An Industry-Recognized Credential

What does this simple question and its results tell us? It’s not the English major that’s the problem. It’s an industry-recognized skill attached to the English major that’s the opportunity. I’ve long advocated for a rebranding of the term liberal arts. Americans generally and employers more specifically value the elements of a liberal arts degree such as critical thinking and skilled communication. But the words “liberal” and “arts” get in the…