I appeared on this week's Canadaland podcast (MP3) with Jesse Brown to talk about the promise of the internet 20 years ago, when it seemed that we were headed for an open, diverse internet with decentralized power and control, and how we ended up with an internet composed of five giant websites filled with screenshots from the other four. Jesse has been covering this for more than a decade (I was a columnist on his CBC podcast Search Engine, back in the 2000s) and has launched a successful independent internet business with Canadaland, but as he says, the monopolistic gentrification of the internet is heading for podcasting like a meteor.
How the diverse internet became a monoculture
- COMMENTS
- Audio
- big tech
- canadaland
- gentrification
- late stage capitalism
- monopolism
- podcasts
- spoken word
Run audio to speakers through your home's power lines
I like this gadget mostly because it will land with audiophiles like a bat to the head: running audio over your household power lines. No speaker cables necessary! Audio Cu… READ THE REST
Master recordings of 90s music on slowly dying media
The audio production industry website Mix Online reports that tons of major archives of music master recordings—mostly from the 90s—have been dying out and disappearing. The problem? Hard drives. For… READ THE REST
AI-generated spectrogram looks like a corgi and sounds like one too
Images that Sound are AI-generated spectrograms—visual representations of audio data—which look like the thing represented by the sound. It can be prompted, though there doesn't appear to be a public… READ THE REST
Two numbers, one phone, zero drama for $19.99
TL;DR: Keep your real number hidden with a lifetime subscription to Hushed Private Phone Line for only $19.99 with code SAVE20. Ever wished you had a second phone number without having to carry… READ THE REST
Drop your Dropbox subscription
TL;DR: Ditch your Dropbox or Google Drive subscription for cloud storage that's actually yours for life—Internxt's 10TB cloud storage plan is now $244.99 (reg. $2,999) with code STORAGE30. What do a bad… READ THE REST
Learn 14 languages at home with Babbel
TL;DR: Get lifetime access to Babbel's language learning app, featuring 10,000+ hours of content, 14 languages, and bite-sized lessons, for just $149.99 (originally $599)—only through January 25. Traveling the world is more… READ THE REST