🚀 Do you think you could steal a rocket and return it without anyone noticing? (Birch Bark #79)
Hello and happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well and enjoy the issue!
The Big Links
Facebook - Privacy-Enhancing Technologies and Building for the Future
As we mentioned in a post last month, we believe personalization in marketing is the best possible experience for people and businesses. Without personalized advertising, businesses would be harder to start and grow, new products and services would be harder to discover and would cost more, and people would see less relevant, less timely and less interesting ads. The free and open internet, including the news people read, the ways they communicate and the entertainment they watch, would become less accessible to those who can’t afford subscription services.
Maybe controversial: I think personalized ads are a good thing for everyone involved. The details of how that data is collected and shared is important, but I’m always surprised how some people don’t seem to want to cede this point. The advertiser doesn’t need to know my name and address or anything, but they improve conversion when they show ads to a relevant audience. Similarly, the consumer benefits from seeing ads for things they’re actually interested in are clear as well. I don’t really want to be bombarded with ads for guns, MAGA hats, and the like when I’m browsing the web, but someone else would.
And here’s Mike Masnick with a brutal take down of a wild WSJ opinion piece:
But social media isn't just about transporting information from here to there. It's about hosting it -- forever. And that's why common carriage laws make no sense at all. They're also not interchangeable commodity services.
It’s quite the thing to see the party who fought tooth and nail to ensure that internet carriers are not “common carriers,” but that somehow that a couple social networks (of their choice, of course) are the real common carriers. 🤦🏻♂️
The Quickies
🎥 Streaming movies are great in many ways, but no one really knows what a hit is anymore since we don’t get numbers anymore
👶 Gen-Zers ask Baby Boomers questions, and it’s just kind of lovely
🦊 Firefox has lost about 46 million users (or 19% of their user base) in the past 3 years
📉 A study of US and German males shows Germans are doing pretty well compared to their fathers, but US males are not keeping up, and in many cases, are worse off
✍️ I use Obsidian at a very basic level and love it. Federico Viticci is going wild and he loves it too. I love that one app can work for such different use cases.
🚀 That one time the CIA stole a Soviet rocket and returned it before anyone noticed
Videos
“We know a carbon tax won’t happen, so we say we support it for the PR”.
I’m so looking forward to OlliOlli World, and the new customization options are just another thing I’m going to love.
This is the best desk setup video I’ve seen in a while.
Chef’s kiss.
As per the third vieo, a collection of setups (https://setups.co/) for your delectation