Oregon tourism office promotes the state with game modeled after Oregon Trail
This is kind of awesome. Travel Oregon made a playable tourism game for the state modeled after the classic Oregon Trail game. You can play it here.
The Consumerist shuts down
Not a huge loss since its archives will be up indefinitely and most of their work still continues on over at Consumer Rerports. But as a name, it will be missed. I'm pretty sure that site is as old as this one.
YouTube is recommending violent videos to kids
There's been a lot of talk lately about how horrible YouTube's recommendation algorithm is, but none so far have really made me care that much until now. YouTube's own algorithm is putting violent videos right in front of kids' faces. Maybe letting a robot choose what videos we watch isn't such a great idea.
The videos in question pop up on the YouTube Kids app and are often disguised as cartoons. The article linked above shows an example that starts off pretty innocent looking but then turns into a shoot-out between characters.
DNAinfo and Gothamist are shutting down
This is very shocking news to me. DNAinfo and Gothamist are shutting down, just a week after their writers voted to join the Writers Guild of America East union.
For DNAinfo and Gothamist, the staff’s vote to join the Writers Guild of America East was just part of the decision to close the company. A spokesperson for DNAinfo said in a statement, “The decision by the editorial team to unionize is simply another competitive obstacle making it harder for the business to be financially successful.”
The decision puts 115 journalists out of work, both at the New York operations that unionized, and at those in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington that did not. They are getting three months of paid “administrative leave” at their full salaries, plus four weeks of severance, DNAinfo said.
The current homepages of both sites are as follows:
YouTube's recommendation algorithm is ruining 'Glove and Boots'
This very real announcement from Glove and Boots is so sad. I love this channel and to hearing that they need to stop making videos because of YouTube's stupid recommendation algorithm is shocking but comes as no surprise as many channels have been posting similar rants. Hope this gets sorted out.
INFOCHAMMEL IS BACK!
One of the weirdest and most entertaining YouTube channels is back after a 9-month hiatus! INFOCHAMMEL's completely bat-shit-crazy and nonsense "programming" is the stuff I would play on my restaurant's silent TVs (if I owned a restaurant).