The US has discovered Afrobeats music via Spotify, which of course means nobody had ever heard of it before. CC-licensed photo by Rich Anderson on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Rhythmic harmony. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Google Search really has gotten worse, researchers find • 404 Media
Jason Koebler:
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Google search really has been taken over by low-quality SEO spam, according to a new, year-long study by German researchers.
The researchers, from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, set out to answer the question “Is Google Getting Worse?” by studying search results for 7,392 product-review terms across Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo over the course of a year.
They found that, overall, “higher-ranked pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality … we find that only a small portion of product reviews on the web uses affiliate marketing, but the majority of all search results do.”
They also found that spam sites are in a constant war with Google over the rankings, and that spam sites will regularly find ways to game the system, rise to the top of Google’s rankings, and then will be knocked down. “SEO is a constant battle and we see repeated patterns of review spam entering and leaving the results as search engines and SEO engineers take turns adjusting their parameters,” they wrote.
They note that Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are regularly tweaking their algorithms and taking down content that is outright spam, but that, overall, this leads only to “a temporary positive effect.”
“Search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam,” they write. Notably, Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo all have the same problems, and in many cases, Google performed better than Bing and DuckDuckGo by the researchers’ measures.
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Human ‘behavioural crisis’ at root of climate breakdown, say scientists • The Guardian
Rachel Donald:
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One month out from Cop28, the world is further than ever from reaching its collective climate goals. At the root of all these problems, according to recent research, is the human “behavioural crisis”, a term coined by an interdisciplinary team of scientists.
“We’ve socially engineered ourselves the way we geoengineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper which proposes that climate breakdown is a symptom of ecological overshoot, which in turn is caused by the deliberate exploitation of human behaviour.
“We need to become mindful of the way we’re being manipulated,” says Merz, who is co-founder of the Merz Institute, an organisation that researches the systemic causes of the climate crisis and how to tackle them.
Merz and colleagues believe that most climate “solutions” proposed so far only tackle symptoms rather than the root cause of the crisis. This, they say, leads to increasing levels of the three “levers” of overshoot: consumption, waste and population.
They claim that unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plaster. “We can deal with climate change and worsen overshoot,” says Merz. “The material footprint of renewable energy is dangerously underdiscussed. These energy farms have to be rebuilt every few decades – they’re not going to solve the bigger problem unless we tackle demand.”
“Overshoot” refers to how many Earths human society is using up to sustain – or grow – itself. Humanity would currently need 1.7 Earths to maintain consumption of resources at a level the planet’s biocapacity can regenerate.
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Will growth in electric cars degrade California roads? • Los Angeles Times
Russ Mitchell:
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California drivers already rumble across some of the worst pavement in the nation, but the poor condition of the state’s roads and highways could get far worse in coming years as electric cars take over and gasoline cars fade away, according to state analysts.
That’s because money for road repair and maintenance depends on the state’s motor fuel taxes, and that revenue is expected to plunge. Electric vehicles don’t use gasoline, so EV drivers don’t pay the gas tax.
A new report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office warns that loss of state fuel tax revenues could have dire consequences for the upkeep of roadways. Taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel now total about $14.2bn a year. More than $4bn annually could disappear by 2035, when the state’s ban on the sale of new fossil fuel cars takes full effect.
The news comes at a time when the state is wrestling with a $37.9bn budget deficit that has forced cuts to climate programs and other services. The possible solutions outlined in the report are likely to prove unpopular: raise taxes, raise fees or slash spending on road repairs, maintenance and construction.
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This is the problem that any country or region which imposes fuel taxes faces. The answer is fairly simple – road taxes on vehicles. Possibly mileage-related, but then you have the challenge that some miles are more valuable than others (inside rather than outside cities, for example).
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A major climate force has been ignored for decades • The Atlantic
Bathsheba Demuth:
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On a gentle hillside near Toolik [in Alaska] sit three unobtrusive waist-high wire-mesh pens. One pen excludes all voles. The second previously held a large vole population, but now has only a few. The third—in which the duo was now speeding through grasses, mosses, stunted blueberry bushes, and the dozens of other plants that make up the tundra—was stocked with an exorbitant number of voles, caught with live traps on the surrounding hillsides.
…[Populations of] lemmings and voles both pulse and crash in three- to five-year cycles. In Utqiaġvik, a community 250 miles northwest of Toolik [in Alaska], Iñupiat Elders remember years so thick with lemmings that people had to actively avoid stepping on them. In other years, [the research group] Team Vole barely sees a single animal.
The pen with the multitude of voles simulates a boom year. Even at a glance, the tundra inside the pen was transformed: the sedges pruned, the moss trampled, the blueberries nibbled. Here and there along their runways, the voles have piled sedge clippings six or eight inches high; the conical heaps provide food and shelter through the winter. One runway dead-ends in a trampled oval, vole droppings mounded in the middle. The overall effect is a kind of ramshackle coherence. Look close enough, and the tundra suddenly appears built. And not just on a small scale: Scandinavian researchers have tracked Arctic mammals’ transformation of the landscape in satellite images.
All of that construction alters the way that nutrients cycle through the ecosystem, which changes the tundra’s relationship to carbon. Voles cut plants when they’re green and nutrient-rich, so their hay piles are full of nitrogen and phosphorus that the plants would otherwise pull into their roots at the end of the growing season. Hay piles and latrines are basically tiny fertilizer depots. In boom years, they lace the soil with nutrients, allowing microbes to flourish. As the microbes digest, they respire the carbon stored in dead leaves and stems into the atmosphere. A reduced canopy of plants means there are fewer leaves to convert atmospheric carbon into tissue through photosynthesis. It might further boost decomposition by giving soils a hit of sun. In aggregate, Team Vole believes, a high vole year could make the tundra breathe out carbon.
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Apple Vision Pro hands-on, again, for the first time • The Verge
Victoria Song get her first try of Apple’s don’t-call-it-VR system:
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The virtual world inside the Vision Pro feels like a higher-resolution version of what Meta is trying to accomplish with the Quest but with a vastly more powerful M2-based computer to use inside. It’s neat that I can throw an app over to my upper right so I can look up at the ceiling and view photos if I want. It’s fun to rip the tires off an AR Alfa Romeo F1 car in JigSpace. There is a certain novelty to opening up the Disney Plus app to watch a Star Wars trailer in a virtual environment that looks like Tatooine. I did, in fact, flinch when a T. rex made eye contact with me. A virtual environment of the Haleakalā volcano surprised me because the texture of the rocks looked quite lifelike. This is all familiar stuff. It’s just done well, and done with no lag whatsoever.
Apple had us bring some of our own spatial videos and panoramic photos to look at inside the Vision Pro, and the effect was convincing, although it works best when the camera is held still.
…I spent a half-hour like a kid gawping at an alien planet — even though I’d never left the couch. But by the end of my demo, I started to feel the weight of the headset bring me back to the real world. I’d been furrowing my brow, concentrating so hard, I felt the beginnings of a mild headache. That tension dissipated as soon as I took the headset off, but walking back out into Manhattan, I kept replaying the demo over in my head. I know what I just saw. I’m just still trying to see where it fits in the real world.
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Of note is that Song was trying the headset with the back strap only, not the back-and-over-the-top strap Apple is also putting in the box. That could partly explain why she felt the weight of the headset. But it’s clear that Apple will have to reduce the weight in the next version, probably by removing the screen on the front, which is overspecified for what it needs to do (communicate to the rest of the world what state the wearer is in).
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Apple previews new entertainment experiences launching with Apple Vision Pro • Apple
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Apple today announced a series of groundbreaking entertainment experiences that will be available on Apple Vision Pro beginning Friday, February 2. With more pixels than a 4K TV for each eye, combined with an advanced Spatial Audio system, Vision Pro enables users to watch new shows and films from top streaming services including Apple Originals from Apple TV+, transport themselves to stunning landscapes with Environments, and enjoy all-new spatial experiences that were never possible before, like Encounter Dinosaurs.
“Apple Vision Pro is the ultimate entertainment device,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Users can turn any place into the best seat in the house, enjoy personal concerts and adventures with Apple Immersive Video, interact with lifelike prehistoric creatures in Encounter Dinosaurs, and even land on the surface of the moon using Environments. It’s unlike anything users have ever seen before and we can’t wait for them to experience it for themselves.”
…The viewing experience on Apple Vision Pro is unparalleled: When a user begins watching a video, the lights around them automatically dim as the content moves closer to them. Videos can be positioned anywhere in their space or placed in an Environment for the most cinematic experience. With Environments, users can scale videos beyond the dimensions of their room, so the screen feels 100 feet wide, all while preserving the frame rate and aspect ratio. And there is no need for a remote: Users simply invoke controls with their eyes, hands, or voice.
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I’m quoting directly from the press release to point out what Apple leans on as an expectation for the Vision Pro: entertainment. There’s a partnership with Disney and an emphasis on sports and 3D movies. No mention of sports using immersive video, but that’s sure to come; this is rolling the pitch.
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Why landing on the moon is proving more difficult today than 50 years ago • The Guardian
Ian Sample:
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While China and India have both placed robotic landers on the moon, Russia’s Luna 25 crash-landed last year, nearly 60 years after the Soviet Union’s Luna 9 nailed the first gentle touchdown. Landers built by private companies have a 100% failure record on the moon: the Israeli Beresheet lander crashed in 2019, while a Japanese lander built by ispace crashed last year. Peregrine makes it three out of three losses.
One fundamental challenge, says Jan Wörner, a former director general of the European Space Agency (Esa), is weight. “You are always close to failure because you have to be light or the spacecraft will not fly. You cannot have a big safety margin.”
Added to that, almost every spacecraft is a prototype. Apart from rare cases, such as the Galileo communications satellites, spacecraft are bespoke machines. They are not mass produced with the same tried and tested systems and designs. And once they are deployed in space, they are on their own. “If you have trouble with your car, you can have it repaired, but in space there’s no opportunity,” says Wörner. “Space is a different dimension.”
The moon itself presents its own problems. There is gravity – one-sixth as strong as on Earth – but no atmosphere. Unlike Mars, where spacecraft can fly to their destination and brake with parachutes, moon landings depend entirely on engines. If you have a single engine, as smaller probes tend to, it must be steerable, because there is no other way to control the descent.
To complicate matters, the engine must have a throttle, allowing the thrust to be dialled up and down. “Usually you ignite them and they provide a steady state thrust,” says Nico Dettmann, Esa’s lunar exploration group leader. “To change the thrust during operations adds a lot more complexity.”
And yet, with the first lunar landings back in the 60s, it can be hard to grasp why the moon remains such a tough destination. Moon mission records provide a clue: soon after the Apollo programme, lunar landers fell out of favour.
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Related, and interesting, from last July: guess what percentage of Americans in 1969 thought landing on the moon was a worthwhile endeavour. 10%? 33%? 50%? 66%? 90%? Have a think before you read.
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How Spotify helped Afrobeats go global • Rest of World
Damilare Dosunmu:
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Afrobeats has become one of the most popular music genres globally over the past few years. Several artists have sold out big arenas — including stadiums — in the US, the UK, and Europe. There has also been a rise in collaborations between Afrobeats artists and Western pop stars. Much of this success is due to the growth of digital music-streaming platforms, especially Spotify.
Between 2017 and 2022, there was a 550% increase in the number of times Afrobeats songs were streamed on Spotify, according to data released by the company. In 2023 alone, Afrobeats was streamed more than 14 billion times on the app, with London, Paris, and Nairobi ranking among the top five cities.
“[Spotify] has been the largest bridge to connect African talent with the world, and they’ve also been the largest metric for communicating the success and growth of Afrobeats to the rest of the world,” Jude Abaga, rapper and former CEO of Chocolate City, one of Nigeria’s biggest record labels, told Rest of World. People use Spotify’s metrics to define the success of their music and that of the entire industry, he said.
The success of Afrobeats on Spotify is the result of years of on-the-ground work that the company has done in Nigeria, including hiring local staff, according to Nigerian pop culture analyst and consultant Ayomide Tayo. “Spotify has boots on the ground [and] don’t have a standoffish approach,” Tayo told Rest of World. “It doesn’t feel like you are talking to somebody from Berlin, New York, or London. They’ve made Nigerian hires of people with authority, prestige, [and] influence. They’ve also shown that they’re ready to put their money where their mouth is.”
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My impression is that Afrobeats has always had strong presence in the UK because of – admit it – the colonial past. So maybe this breakthrough is more about the US, where there perhaps hasn’t been much since Paul Simon’s “Graceland” in 1986.
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Red Ventures explores sale of CNET • Axios
Sara Fischer:
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Red Ventures, the digital media and marketing juggernaut based in Fort Mill, South Carolina, has approached strategic buyers about offloading tech news and reviews site CNET, five sources familiar with the effort told Axios.
Why it matters: Red Ventures acquired CNET, along with a few smaller websites, from ViacomCBS, now Paramount Global, in 2020 for $500m. It’s hoping to get at least half of that for CNET alone.
…Red Ventures acquired CNET six months into the pandemic when the digital media ecosystem was reeling from pullbacks in advertising and affiliate commerce revenue.
The private equity-backed firm took on debt to fund the deal. (Red Ventures has in the past used debt to facilitate major deals, such as its 2017 acquisition of Bankrate and its 2019 acquisition of HigherEducation.com.)
It hoped to grow CNET’s business by integrating it into the revenue engine that it uses to fuel its other assets, including Bankrate, The Points Guy, and more. (As part of that effort, it redesigned CNET in 2022 and announced expansions to its editorial coverage and commerce opportunities.)
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The graph attached to the story tells its own tale: monthly global unique visitors to CNet (according to Similarweb) have dropped from about 130m in December 2018 to 36.7m in December 2023. CNet is a husk, especially since it screwed up on AI-generated “news” and dumped 10% of its staff.
Just like The Messenger, CNet isn’t going to please the ventures capitalists. Who’d pay $250m for 36m monthly users, monetisation potential unknown?
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 