Management

TechCrunch reports: "When Florida-based Chetu hired a telemarketer in the Netherlands, the company demanded the employee turn on his webcam. The employee wasn’t happy with being monitored 'for 9 hours per day,' in a program that included screen-sharing and streaming his webcam. When he refused, he was fired, according to public court documents (in Dutch), for what the company stated was ‘refusal to work’ and ‘insubordination.’ The Dutch court didn’t agree, however, and ruled that “instructions to keep the webcam turned on is in conflict with the respect for the privacy of the workers’. In its verdict, the court goes so far as to suggest that demanding webcam surveillance is a human rights violation." Continue Reading →

The most significant event in the short history of Web3 will most likely occur on September 15, 2022. That’s when Ethereum, the largest smart contract blockchain (with the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap), is now scheduled to enact an existential operational change. If it fails, “The Merge,” as it is colloquially called, is almost sure to take the crypto markets down with it. But even if The Merge is 100 percent successful, it will come with profound implications regarding censorship, regulation, and the future of money. Continue Reading →

Each of these stories raises questions we all think we know the answers to. Where is the line between common sense and censorship? What lengths should the government go to to protect human lives? When is it appropriate for a platform or telecom carrier to block access to its network? Continue Reading →

There's a relatively new acronym in the media business: FAST. It stands for Free Advertiser-supported Streaming Television. For all practical purposes, FAST is good, old-fashioned broadcast television delivered over the public internet (as opposed to via an antenna or cable or satellite). In the not-so-distant past, this kind of delivery was called "over the top" or OTT, but the defining differences are that FAST is free (except for the cost of your internet access), and the programs are scheduled at specific times, exactly the same way linear, broadcast TV channels are scheduled. Does it matter how the signal is delivered to consumers? Think about this... Continue Reading →

Ever wonder how misinformation goes viral? Let's follow a typo made by CNBC as it propagates across the Web. The story quotes a post from Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner about the recent Instagram redesign. It's an object lesson about the truly revolting lack of journalistic standards that pervade our digital lives. Continue Reading →

First-party cookies are important. They help web publishers customize your experience. Third-party cookies are important for advertisers – and Google wants them gone. Continue Reading →

Elon Musk and Twitter are probably going to court over whether he should be forced to buy the social media company for $44 billion. He's trying to back out of the deal because he thinks Twitter is lying about the number of bots and fake accounts on the platform. But it's not just about the bots. Twitter has not had a substantial increase in users since 2016 – which makes you wonder why Elon ever considered buying the platform. But the story gets worse, because Twitter's woes are not even a little bit new. Continue Reading →

I know I'm supposed to weigh in on the Elon Musk/Twitter deal today. People who care about this fall into two camps: 1) Elon's just looking for a better price. 2) Elon never intended to make the purchase. Now it's going to court. As entertaining as the Elon story may be, my attention today is on James, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as some of the most important astronomical images ever taken will be released at 5 p.m. ET today. Continue Reading →

As we enter another crypto winter, it has become de rigueur for tech types to go on record espousing that Web3 is nonsense, that blockchain is a terrible technology, and that cryptocurrencies (all of them) are Ponzi schemes. There is seemingly no end to the tweets and blog posts from highly credentialed people about tulips and "The Emperor's New Clothes" and greater fool theory. It's as if the technocrats want to make sure that they know that you know that they know that all things Web3 are technologically inferior to all things Web2. Are they right? Continue Reading →

In World of Warcraft, a soulbound item, once picked up, cannot be transferred or sold to another player. It is this idea of “immutable, permanent binding” that inspired Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, to ask a question: What if NFTs could be soulbound? Continue Reading →