Hi folks. If you’re worried that Google is giving you biased search results when it comes to news, or just unsure which of the many search results to click on, then you might like The Factual’s news search engine, which I built with my co-founder, Ajoy.
We rank individual news articles for how informative and objective they are using a variety of signals that proxy expertise: depth and extent of research (links, quotes), neutral tone of writing, historical topic focus and ratings of journalist, and source reputation. We overlay political bias ratings and select multiple highly informative articles across the political spectrum on each topic. We also give additional context like read time, and make it easy to filter out paywalled articles.
Rats. 26 actually (scroll down) but bad presentation layer for sure. Our search engine doesn't do great on one-word search terms so "ukraine mariupol" shows 100+ articles.
To add to that there is something I find irksome in your language around "unbiased" which I interpret something like "it would be unbiased to have an equal number of articles from MSNBC and Fox News on topic X where MSNBC and Fox disagree". That is, "bias" is a question of left and right and that the truth is somewhere in between.
I'd say on topics like abortion the "truth is out there" just like it is in title sequence of the X files... That is, there is no truth at all. The main sin of this kind of news coverage is that it fills a very limited agenda and displaces other things, secondarily it stirs people up emotionally and keeps them watching, donating to candidates and political advocacy organizations and other things that ultimately disenfranchise and disempower people.
The #1 bias in the news media is "if it bleeds it leads", #2 is the proliferation of pseudo-events
1. We do not enforce an equal number of articles from all sides of the political spectrum. We use the political lean ratings only to help identify different framings on topics so people can see different angles to a story because issues are complex and no single article will have all the facts.
2. We agree that media skews towards outrage because it funds their advertising based business model. That's why our ratings emphasize the most objective and least opinionated writing. And thankfully, there is a lot of great writing that is trying to inform, rather than emotionally manipulate people. It's hard to find which is why we built such a search engine.
3. News orgs are eager to keep publishing stories even if the topics are not that important because they want more of your attention. That's why we group articles by topics on our site (factual.news) so that you can actually "finish reading the news". Oh, we're also ad-free and don't care to keep you longer than absolutely necessary.
On my iPhoneX I've had the touch screen get into a frozen state so many times and there is no way to unlock or dismiss apps. And then there's the face ID unlock issue when you're wearing a mask or not looking right at the screen... which is better solved with thumbprint unlock.
I get that you lose screen real estate with bringing back the home button but I think it's the right call.
I am not sure about iPhone X but I thought there was a new mode on the latest iOS that allows you to add a second Face ID unlock when wearing a mask? Its an additional setup you have to do I think?
They'll be back with the inevitable next major variant just like Delta and Omicron. Some countries always had enough mask usage to justify a feature like this.
Unless a new variant is more deadly, I'm not sure this is the case. Between vaccines, growing herd immunity, and new treatments, COVID is becoming less of a concern. Hospitalization rates for Omicron were already considerably lower than prior variants. In the near future, people not feeling well will be able to walk into their pharmacy, get tested, and walk home with pretty effective pills if positive.
No pandemic lasts forever. The diseases always become endemic and less deadly, with or without direct intervention.
The approach I'm trying to take with my kids is make mistakes while your mom and I are here to watch over you. Get this all out of the way now. Because after 18 we might not be around as much and that is not when you want the bulk of your stupidity to be tested.
My startup eschews ads and has a low cost subscription news service. However, both models work for different market segments.
1. The segment of users that doesn't really care about the quality of news and is happy to skim headlines is best served by ads. (This is the largest segment)
2. The segment of users who wants to be fully informed, as quickly as possible, is better served by a subscription.
I'm torn on this. No doubt money is important but how much is needed? I've been thinking about this for a while [1] and I think more important to drive innovation is to change our culture to admire people who dedicate themselves to solving big problems over a long period of time. And a close second would be a culture that prizes modesty and eschews material wealth.
I realize this may be a pipe-dream but it feels like a better long-term strategy than "pay researchers more than FAANG".
If you want to stop the brain drain from more worthwhile areas to less worthwhile areas, you need to at least pay better starting salaries in the more worthwhile fields.
Otherwise, you'll end up with potential Einsteins playing with spreadsheets in investment banks rather than discovering relativity, simply because they wanted a bit of disposable income.
I built a news app (The Factual) that sends only 1 notification per day for a morning briefing. And the newsfeed is consolidated by topic so that you can easily finish browsing what's newsworthy. The app has a small subscription and zero ads so we don't care how long you view or what you click on. I don't know if we'll succeed but trying to solve this problem.
I'm biased but you can check out TheFactual.com. We make it easy for people to get unbiased news on pressing topics. No ads. Affordable for the masses.
I don't know your background or what kind of work you like to do but if this sounds interesting drop me a line.
I did the Udacity courses on full stack web-dev in ~2 months. Really good though I have a CS background so I knew some of the concepts (haven't coded in 20 years though). The very first intro CS course is really well done and all exercises are in python. The rest are not as good but still worth going through.
Can someone help me understand if users saying they do not want to be tracked affects CPMs on Facebook? We've seen a large increase in CPMs and I'm wondering if the two are related. Thanks.
We rank individual news articles for how informative and objective they are using a variety of signals that proxy expertise: depth and extent of research (links, quotes), neutral tone of writing, historical topic focus and ratings of journalist, and source reputation. We overlay political bias ratings and select multiple highly informative articles across the political spectrum on each topic. We also give additional context like read time, and make it easy to filter out paywalled articles.
More on how it works here: https://www.thefactual.com/how-it-works.
Feedback/questions appreciated. Thanks!