- Camera Industry is not healthy because they’re not selling the same number of units they did a decade ago, even though they they have steady demand currently.
- Traffic review is all about the change in visits not the number of visits. Which in his research is approximately the same number for both sites he compared even though they are not the same type of site, just the same area of interest.
I’m glad I stopped using Twitter once Elon Musk took over.
Nice write up by Mike Masnick at Techdirt about link spoofing on X (the platform formerly called Twitter) to spam users.
Always More.
My random hot take at 12:30 am on a Friday night.
Google and SEO didn’t “ruin” the internet. People “ruined” the internet, and they didn’t even ruin it, because it’s not ruined. It’s just more. More internet, more people, more ads, more scams, more SEO, to get more eyeballs, to get more money. More. More. More. More.
Always more.
Tech pundits and keyboard warriors all over the place want to blame someone - one - person, company, product, service. It’s always one’s fault. This time it isn’t one’s fault. It’s all our fault. We caused it. We let it happen. Only we can solve it. And it isn’t building the same silos and mega sites and caring about page views, or page ranks, or any of the other shit that has brought us here.
If you think the internet is ruined it is because you ruined it.
Because the internet is not ruined. You’ve just been sucked into areas of the internet you think are ruined. There’s untold websites out there that you know absolutely nothing about. It’s not Google’s fault. It’s not Facebook’s fault. It’s not Twitter’s fault. It’s not SEO’s fault. It’s not AI’s fault. It’s yours. Because you’re human.
We are not meant to know everything, be everywhere, hear everything, see everything.
Quit worrying about how the internet will be saved from big tech. Go build something on the internet that doesn’t involve big tech just to build something on the internet. Share it with your friends. Or don’t. Totally up to you. Quit blaming something for ruining something that is not ruined.
1,000 Migrant Children Still Separated
How’s this for a headline
The Biden Administration Is Still Looking For Migrant Families Separated Under Trump
And the kicker of the story
In 2021, the Biden administration set up a task force to reunify these families, estimating that a total of 3,924 kids had been separated under the Trump policy from 2017 to 2021. As of September, however, about a quarter of those children still hadn’t been returned to their parents.
A program that started in 2017 under extremely lax documentation. Just. I have no words.
It’s the cruelty. The cruelty is the point.
It's the GOP, stupid
Paul Krugman writing at The New York Times
Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it’s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes — but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.
Any decline in America’s perceived status on the world stage is at the hands of Republicans who have gleefully throw their support to full blown chaos in response to Obama’s presidency.
On Camera Market Analysis
This is a weird one to me. The analysis just doesn’t make sense for a remembrance post. But, Om is a Silicon Valley expert so, surely he knows more than I do.
Om Malik on DPReview being shut down
First of all, the camera industry is not healthy. Here are some sales numbers of digital cameras from CIPA:
Steady demand for multiple years is not a healthy market? Sure it’s less than the demand from a decade ago, but demand for cameras and lenses is not dropping off a cliff.
He then goes on to compare site visits for DPReview, a review site, and Petapixel, “another photography website that aggregates and publishes more “photography” related click-friendly content”. He determines that DPReview “wasn’t that good” with 1.9 million visits in January 2023 (down from 3 million in 2021) while Petapixel saw “its traffic surge” with 2.2 million visits in January 2023 (up from 1 million in 2021).
Om’s analysis:
Robert Reich starts off a substack with
By igniting a culture war over sex, the GOP is distracting attention from Jan 6,
He should know this culture war was been ongoing for decades.
Mike Masonic writing at Techdirt
I feel like I keep needing to write this, but once again, no matter who does it and no matter which company they’re targeting, it’s wrong for politicians to promise to punish companies for their speech. For some reason, many people’s position on this point changes based on whether or not they like or dislike the politician, and whether or not they like or dislike the company. But it’s wrong.
Completely agree.
Today in bad headlines
Maybe there should have a course, or ten, on how to write factual and accurate article headlines in Journalism School?
Today in bad headlines:
From the actual article
Vacation-home demand peaked in March 2021, Redfin said. That was two months after Freddie Mac’s average 30-year mortgage rate hit a record low of 2.65%. Borrowing costs have shot up since the end of last year, landing at 4.67% this week.
No mention of vacation homes in the title even though that is what the article focuses on. What is the basis for the claim that a 2% increase is the interest rate shooting up and climbing steeply?
Seth Godin on AI in business, apparantly
Your competition will do a lot of things you won’t.
You don’t have to do what they do.
That is what sets you apart from them.