Worth Your Attention

Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched a new initiative to “fix” the web, called Contract for the Web. Some of the global internet’s most important organizations are backing it.
“Today, companies are taking users’ data and essentially using it as a product; they monetize it. The world can be very different if this is turned around and users maintain control of the data and get revenue from it.” From the NY Times profile of digital security expert Dawn Song and her new company, Oasis Labs.
New research from Stanford: “Our data suggest that Google’s search algorithm is not biased along political lines, but instead emphasizes authoritative sources.”
Hyperreal estate in places made of information: Walmart and Mattel lease “floors” in a virtual toy store.
Interesting changes to Apple’s website: a new privacy section explains what the company’s privacy-centric stance means for its customers. Also, product pages on the site no longer include customer reviews.
Everyday IA: After upgrading my laptop to macOS Catalina, I noticed an intriguing change to system-wide search.
GitHub is partnering with the Long Now Foundation to archive open source software for the long-term. Their strategy is based on Long Now co-founder Stewart Brand’s pace layer framework.
We take our (mostly) problem-free data syncing for granted — until it doesn’t work.
Leadership relies on one of the oldest technologies in the world: language.
A new post-Thanksgiving tradition for my family: Back Friday.

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