read | Chris Aldrich

👓 How Many Genes Do Cells Need? Maybe Almost All of Them | Quanta Magazine

Read How Many Genes Do Cells Need? Maybe Almost All of Them (Quanta Magazine)

An ambitious study in yeast shows that the health of cells depends on the highly intertwined effects of many genes, few of which can be deleted together without consequence.

There could be some interesting data to play with here if available.

I also can’t help but wonder about applying some of Stuart Kauffman’s ideas to something like this. In particular, this sounds very reminiscent to his analogy of what happens when one strings thread randomly among a pile of buttons and the resulting complexity.

👓 This Is How a Newspaper Dies | Politico

Read This Is How a Newspaper Dies by Jack Shafer (POLITICO Magazine)

It’s with a spasm of profits.

This article outlines an intriguing method for plundering the carcass of a dying business to reap as much profit from it as it dies as one can. I suppose that if one is sure a segment is on its way out, one may as well exploit its customers to turn a profit.

I wonder how long it will take for traditional television and cable related businesses to begin using this model as more and more people cut the cord.

👓 GDPR will pop the adtech bubble | Doc Searls

Read GDPR will pop the adtech bubble by

Doc Searls (Doc Searls Weblog)

Since tracking people took off in the late ’00s, adtech has grown to become a four-dimensional shell game played by hundreds (or, if you include martech, thousands) of companies, none of which can see the whole mess, or can control the fraud, malware and other forms of bad acting that thrive in the midst of it.
And that’s on top of the main problem: tracking people without their knowledge, approval or a court order is just flat-out wrong. The fact that it can be done is no excuse. Nor is the monstrous sum of money made by it.
Without adtech, the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) would never have happened. But the GDPR did happen, and as a result websites all over the world are suddenly posting notices about their changed privacy policies, use of cookies, and opt-in choices for “relevant” or “interest-based” (translation: tracking-based) advertising. Email lists are doing the same kinds of things.

Some interesting thought and analysis here on the pending death of adtech with the dawn of GDPR in the EU. I’m hoping that this might help bring about a more humanistic internet as a result.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but it looks like some tremendously valuable links and resources embedded in this article as well. I’ll have to circle back around to both re-read this and delve more deeply in to these pointers.

👓 Want To Upend An Entire Industry? Change Its Revenue Stream | Co.Design

Read Want To Upend An Entire Industry? Change Its Revenue Stream by Ryan Baum (Jump Associates) (Co.Design)

By looking at the eight possible revenue models you can reinvent a business.

There may be an infinite number of variations a company can use to make money, but they really all boil down into eight types:

Unit sales: Sell a product or service to customers. GE uses this method when they sell microwaves.

Advertising fees: Sell others the opportunities to distribute their message on your space. Google uses this method with its search product.

Franchise fees: Sell the right for someone else to invest in, grow, and manage a version of your business. McDonald’s uses this method with its stores that are independently owned and operated as franchises.

Utility fees: Sell goods and services on a per-use or as-consumed basis. Most electric companies use this model when they charge customers only for the electricity they use.

Subscription fees: Charge a fixed price for access to services for a set period of time. Gold’s Gym charges a monthly or yearly subscription fee for people to access their gym.

Transaction fees: Charge a fee for referring, enabling, or executing a transaction between parties. Visa charges a transaction fee to retailers each time a customer purchases a product in their store.

Professional fees: Provide professional services on a time-and-materials contract. H&R Block makes money by charging customers for the time it takes to prepare their taxes.

License fees: Sell the rights to use intellectual property. Every time a customer buys a T-shirt or a hat with the logo of their favorite sports team on it, that team makes money from license fees.

Hat tip: Ben Werdmuller

👓 Why it’s as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cult | C Thi Nguyen | Aeon Essays

Read Why it’s as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cult by C Thi Nguyen (Aeon)

First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult

Something has gone wrong with the flow of information. It’s not just that different people are drawing subtly different conclusions from the same evidence. It seems like different intellectual communities no longer share basic foundational beliefs. Maybe nobody cares about the truth anymore, as some have started to worry. Maybe political allegiance has replaced basic reasoning skills. Maybe we’ve all become trapped in echo chambers of our own making – wrapping ourselves in an intellectually impenetrable layer of likeminded friends and web pages and social media feeds.
But there are two very different phenomena at play here, each of which subvert the flow of information in very distinct ways. Let’s call them echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Both are social structures that systematically exclude sources of information. Both exaggerate their members’ confidence in their beliefs. But they work in entirely different ways, and they require very different modes of intervention. An epistemic bubble is when you don’t hear people from the other side. An echo chamber is what happens when you don’t trust people from the other side.

A stunning essay that gives me hope that we’re not in a “post-truth” world. On the other hand, we’re going to need to do a lot of work …

hat tip: Ian O’Byrne

👓 Everything You Should Know About Karl Marx | Teen Vogue

Read Everything You Should Know About Karl Marx (Teen Vogue)

The anti-capitalist scholar’s ideas are often memed (and probably more prevalent than you think).

👓 A New Facebook Feature Shows Which Pro-Trump Facebook Pages Are Run From Overseas | BuzzFeed

Read A New Facebook Feature Shows Which Pro-Trump Facebook Pages Are Run From Overseas by Jane Lytvynenko, Craig Silverman (BuzzFeed)

The feature is called "Page History" but now it's gone.

👓 Webmention Plugin for Craft CMS | GitHub

Read matthiasott/webmention (GitHub)

Webmention Plugin for Craft CMS

Surprisingly interesting reading here. The Craft CMS has some interesting UI and settings that aren’t included in the WordPress plugin for Webmention. I do like some of the thoughts and ideas that were included in it. The tail end also gives a little snapshot of its history and antecedents, which I find nice for future historians.