The next version of Chrome will patch a bug that lets websites detect users who are in incognito mode by by probing the Filesystem API; they've also pledged to seek out and block any other vulnerabilities that will let servers detect users in incognito mode. Read the rest
UPDATE: A Starbucks spokesperson tells Boing Boing, “We are always looking at what we offer our customers in our stores and making adjustments to our portfolio based on changing customer behavior. As part of our continuous efforts to enhance the overall experience in our stores for both partners and customers, we are removing select fixtures from our retail lobby in September. In addition to Newspaper Stands, we have also removed shelving fixtures that display whole bean coffee and different grab and go snacks.” Read the rest
Joël Franusic became obsessed with Krazy Kat, but was frustrated by the limited availability and high cost of the books anthologizing the strip (some of which were going for $600 or more on Amazon); so he wrote a scraper that would pull down thumbnails from massive archives of pre-1923 newspapers and then identified 100 pages containing Krazy Kat strips to use as training data for a machine-learning model. Read the rest
Sharon Ringel and Angela Woodall have published a comprehensive, in-depth look at the state of news archiving in the digital age, working under the auspices of the Tow Center at the Columbia Journalism Review; it's an excellent, well-researched report and paints an alarming picture of the erosion of the institutional memories of news organizations. Read the rest
That's some mighty fine headline writing from the New York Post for their rehash of Paul McCartney's GQ interview in which he reminisced about masturbating with John Lennon. Read the rest
Ithaca's free alt-weekly The Ithaca Times printed a New York State voter registration form on their cover this week. The medium is the message.
Read the restWe are using this week’s cover to provide all our readers with a fully functional New York State voter registration form. pic.twitter.com/9Lz1MVwYzE
— The Ithaca Times (@ithacatimes) August 24, 2018
Forty years ago, investigative journalists in Chicago hatched an audacious plan to create a fake tavern packed with hidden microphones, cameras, and reporters everywhere working as bar staff and customers. Their goal was to document local corruption. Topic has a great oral history of the project. Read the rest
Fort Lauderdale, Florida's Sun Sentinel daily newspaper published an ad for a gun show on the front page just below stories about a benefit for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and another article about the guilty plea of the man who killed 5 people last year at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport. After Stoneman Douglas families and others responded with WTF, the paper apologized and then later announced a moratorium on gun ads. From the Miami New Times:
"It's a mess. It's horrible," says Julie Anderson, the Sun Sentinel's editor in chief. "We're taking every step possible to make sure our editorial staff always see ads before publication so something like this doesn't slip through."
In her statement, publisher Nancy Meyer said, "We deeply regret placement of a gun advertisement on our front page Wednesday morning. It has been against our policy to run gun and other types of controversial advertising on our front page."
(Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)
Read the restLooks like the Sun Sentinel editor on this page failed. A story on the victims of gun violence and they put a gun coupon on the page. WTF!!! pic.twitter.com/JTEfnTo3s7
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) May 2, 2018
This fantastic t-shirt was born from a discussion at b3s, "an online community of designers and coders and other rad folks." All proceeds go toward the b3s hosting costs. Brilliant.
Friday's edition of German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel; this shot was everywhere this weekend, sadly unsourced! Read the rest
On this weekend's Meet the Press, WSJ editor in chief Gerard Baker said that even when he was clear that Trump had uttered a falsehood, his paper would not call that falsehood a lie, because to do so would ascribe "moral intent" to Trump; instead, the WSJ will call Trump's lies "challengeable" and "questionable." Read the rest
LA Times reports that a 113 year-old Japanese American newspaper is in danger of going out of business.
Read the restFor 113 years, the Rafu Shimpo newspaper has chronicled the story of the Japanese-American community in Southern California. It survived World War II, when writers and editors were shipped off to internment camps. Before leaving, they hid the paper's Japanese type under office floorboards. But if the money-losing paper doesn't raise about $500,000 in revenue-—by more than doubling its subscribers--it could close in December, marking the end of one of the last English-Japanese dailies in the U.S., and the oldest. "Some of the things we cover you can't get anywhere else," said Michael Komai, 64, the paper's publisher, whose family has run the Little Tokyo-based publication for three generations. "Some people aren't going to know they'll miss us until we're gone."
Digital commissioner Günther Oettinger (CDU – EPP) is joining with European Parliament president Martin Schulz (SPD – S&D) in pressing the European Commission to create a copyright interest in links, meaning that making a link to a Web-page that contains infringing material would expose you to liability for copyright infringement yourself. Read the rest
The McClatchy Company, a chain of more than 30 U.S. newspapers, is expected to close its foreign bureaus by the end of the year. The media giant's chief executive denies the rumors, but it kind of sounds like the closures are likely anyway. Read the rest
David Cameron tweeted it and the Telegraph published the letter on the front page, listing 5,000 businesses who endorsed the Conservative Party in the General Election, many of which weren't businesses, weren't supporting the Tories, were repeat entries, or were individual employees of businesses who were incorrectly presumed to speak for their employers. Read the rest
Peter Osborne was the head political writer at the Telegraph, a rock-ribbed conservative paper owned by the shadowy Barclay brothers; he quit after seeing the paper soft-pedal and downplay scandals involving its major advertisers, and broke his silence once he learned that the paper had squashed stories of illegal tax-avoidance schemes run by HSBC. Read the rest
