Navigate to “Italian Newspaper Creates Fake Restaurant to Prove TripAdvisor Sucks.” The story tells the story of a real journalistic operation which created a non existent restaurant. Then the real journalists contributed reviews of the vaporous eatery. TripAdvisor’s algorithms sucked in the content and, according to the write up,
declared La Scaletta the best restaurant in the town, beating out another highly-regarded restaurant with over 300 reviews (most of them positive).
Ah, real journalism, truth, and the manipulation of socially-anchored systems.
Jamestown Foundation China Brief Volume: 15 Issue: 13
EXTRACT
The phrase “winning informationized local wars” has appeared in the pages of the PLA’s newspaper, the Liberation Army Daily, only fifty times. But thirty eight, or 75 percent, of these references have occurred since mid-August 2014. The term first appeared on August 21, 2014 in an article announcing a new document published by the General Staff Department on improving the level of realistic training.
The US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) has closed a $9.1 million contract extension with Microsoft that the agency originally announced in April to further extend custom support for the venerable Windows XP operating system, as well as the Office 2003 suite and Exchange 2003 e-mail. According to a Navy contracting announcement, “Across the United States Navy, approximately 100,000 workstations currently use these applications. Support for this software can no longer be obtained under existing agreements with Microsoft because the software has reached the end of maintenance period.”
I am tired of answering questions about the alleged blockbuster revelations from a sponsored study and an academic Internet legal eagle wizard. To catch up on the swizzled search results “news”, I direct your attention, gentle reader, to these articles:
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I prefer the biases of Yandex.ru, the wonkiness of Qwant, the mish mash of iSeek, and the mixed outputs of Unbubble.eu.
Our leaders and media push time-worn nonsense about American innocence, while taking aggressive moves. Look out
EXTRACT
As of this week, leaders who know nothing about leading, thinkers who do not think and opinion-shaping poseurs such as Tom Friedman are confident enough in their case to sally forth with it: The Cold War returns, the Russians have restarted it and we must do the right thing—the right thing being to bring NATO troops and materiel up to Russia’s borders, pandering to the paranoia of the former Soviet satellites as if they alone have access to some truth not available to the rest of us.
American military bases encircle the globe. More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. still stations its troops at nearly a thousand locations in foreign lands. These bases are usually taken for granted or overlooked entirely, a little-noticed part of the Pentagon's vast operations. But in an eye-opening account, Base Nation shows that the worldwide network of bases brings with it a panoply of ills–and actually makes the nation less safe in the long run.
As David Vine demonstrates, the overseas bases raise geopolitical tensions and provoke widespread antipathy towards the United States. They also undermine American democratic ideals, pushing the U.S. into partnerships with dictators and perpetuating a system of second-class citizenship in territories like Guam. They breed sexual violence, destroy the environment, and damage local economies. And their financial cost is staggering: though the Pentagon underplays the numbers, Vine's accounting proves that the bill approaches $100 billion per year.
The book is available for pre-order now; all book proceeds will go to non-profit organizations assisting military veterans and their families and other victims of war and violence.
Links to Article, Chapters, & Media Coverage Below the Fold
