Two views on fake news, an East Coast plan for Elon Musk's Hyperloop and a projector that's actually worth getting excited about. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for February 19, 2018. (Darrell Etherington is taking the day off for Canada's Family Day. But for some reason, I'm still working.) 1. Fake news is an existential crisis for social media So says TechCrunch's Natasha Lomas. One of the jumping off points for her analysis was a study by PR firm 89up; the study found that the impact of a Russian disinformation campaign around Brexit was much larger than either Facebook or Twitter has admitted. On the other hand, columnist Jon Evans argues that fake news and the tech platforms that propagate it are just symptoms of a larger historical shift, where "the engineer's mindset has been replaced by the lawyer's mindset." 2. Trump cites Facebook exec's comments downplaying Russian ad influence on election Speaking of fake news and Facebook, President Donald Trump hauled out his favorite phrase to criticize the media once again. He also quoted Facebook VP Rob Goldman, who said the majority of Russian ad spending on Facebook happened after the election. 3. Elon Musk's Boring Company gets preliminary permit for NYC-D.C. Hyperloop A 29-minute trip from D.C. to New York may seem too good to be true, but that isn't stopping Elon Musk. 4. The CC Aurora is actually pretty fun, as far as projectors go The CC Arora seems like the perfect package for the apartment dweller: it's compact, self-contained with a built-in speaker system and plays nicely with mobile devices. 5. Engineering against all odds, or how NYC's subway will get wireless in the tunnels There is in fact a startup working on the problem, Transit Wireless. The company was formed in 2005 to respond to a request for proposals from the MTA, and it's filled with veteran telecom executives. 6. Podcasts? Podcasts! Newsletter readers probably know that Darrell and I are both fans of the new Black Panther movie. We got to share some of that enthusiasm on the most recent episode of the Original Content podcast. Meanwhile, the team at CTRL-T has some thoughts about Boston Dynamics robots and an interview with the co-founder of a marijuana incubator. |
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