Not exactly about books, but PG would bet that over 80% of those who read the books written by regular visitors to TPV (excepting authors of children’s and YA books) are college graduates. From The Wall Street Journal: We are at the end of an era in American higher education. It is an era that … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc. rolled out a substantial redesign of its website and mobile app, geared partly toward steering users to participate in more group conversations as the company strives to reduce abusive content and the scrutiny resulting from it. . . . . Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview that … Read more
From The Times Literary Supplement: An extract from Ian McEwan’s new novel Machines Like Me In an alternative 1982, our narrator, Charlie, has just purchased a limited-edition robot, Adam, “the first truly viable manufactured human with plausible intelligence and looks”. Upstairs, Charlie’s neighbour, Miranda, is preparing to come round for dinner… He stood before me, … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Lawyers for Eric Loomis stood before the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in April 2016, and argued that their client had experienced a uniquely 21st-century abridgment of his rights: Mr. Loomis had been discriminated against by a computer algorithm. Three years prior, Mr. Loomis was found guilty of attempting to flee police and operating a … Read more
From The Atlantic: It’s my holiday tradition to bring tidings of discomfort and sorrow to my colleagues in the news business. One year ago, I described the media apocalypse coming for both digital upstarts and legacy brands. Vice and BuzzFeed had slashed their revenue projections by hundreds of millions of dollars, while The New York Times had announced a steep decline in advertising. Twelve months later, … Read more
From Slate: H&M is good at making amazing frocks for the Met ball, but it’s less good at making money: The company’s profits for the first quarter of this year were down 69 percent, and it effectively ran out of cash in 2017. Cue the “pivot” headlines! The latest pitch from the fast-fashion retailer, covered as a “pivot” in the Wall Street Journal … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Amazon.com Inc. is pouring more resources into Alexa to maintain its edge as competition heats up among artificial-intelligence assistants, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. Amazon is adding hundreds of engineers to the Alexa program and giving it hiring preference over other divisions, the people said. It has also put … Read more