Tech-media-tainment
Entertainment, pop culture, personal technology and media
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Free web platforms are preserving digital artifacts … for now
Over the years, I have spotlighted 450 websites that I found to be useful, educational or entertaining. Many of the early websites have disappeared without a trace because they stopped paying services to maintain them.
But those that set up shop on free platforms such as Google’s Blogger or social media services like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X are still around, even if they haven’t been updated in years. That means the content on those sites is being preserved in a digital time capsule.
I can only hope that the companies behind those free, ad-supported services will continue to keep those websites alive, even when the creators are long gone. But there are no promises like that in the digital age.
Of the 450 websites that I’ve highlighted on Tech-media-tainment since late 2008, 117 are no longer reachable or the data is gone. Three of the websites have gone dark since the last time I checked in February 2025.
A good example of a website that is being preserved is the Twitter/X account of anti-Islam demonstrator Salwan Momika. He risked his life to speak out against the threat of Islamic culture to Western society. He was murdered on Jan. 29, 2025, during a live broadcast on TikTok. His Twitter/X account still exists thankfully. Hopefully his other social media accounts do as well.
It is important to preserve the voices and opinions of people from throughout the years. They are useful for tracking the progress of humanity and also for sentimental purposes.
I still keep voicemails on my iPhone from my mother, who died in January, just to hear her voice every now and then. I also keep old emails from friends and loved ones.
Photo: Salwan Momika burning the Quran in Stockholm on Oct. 21, 2023. (Photo by Frankie Fouganthin via Creative Commons.)
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Favorite websites in review, part 18
This is the latest roundup of websites spotlighted on Tech-media-tainment.
426. GooBing Detroit (goobingdetroit.com)
427. AARoads (aaroads.com)
428. Tourons of Yellowstone (instagram.com/touronsofyellowstone)
429. Snicker Cat (instagram.com/thesnickercat)
430. Steve Inman: Non-Essential Commentary (x.com/SteveInmanUIC)
431. Influencers in the Wild (tiktok.com/@influencersinthewild)
432. Passenger Shaming (instagram.com/passengershaming)
433. Mugshawtys (instagram.com/mugshawtys)
434. Rev. Ray Cistman (x.com/RevRayCistman)
435. The TV Answerman (tvanswerman.com)
436. The Sports Fan Project (thesportsfanproject.com)
437. Barry Butler Photography (x.com/barrybutler9)
438. Chicago History (x.com/Chicago_History)
439. Chicago Critter (x.com/ChicagoCritter)
440. SubX.News (x.com/SubxNews)
441. Chicago Contrarian (x.com/ChicagoContrar1)
442. Mark Weyermuller (x.com/publicpolicyman)
443. Libs of Chicago (x.com/Libs_OfChicago)
444. Goofies of Chicago (x.com/Chicago_Goofies)
445. X.com (x.com)
446. Thread Reader (threadreaderapp.com)
447. Press Gazette (pressgazette.co.uk)
448. Ed Zitron’s Where's Your Ed At (wheresyoured.at)
449. Layoffs.fyi (layoffs.fyi)
450. HeyJackass! (heyjackass.com)
Photo: 2025 Chicago Shot Clock (HeyJackass!)
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
Worthwhile websites on journalism, tech industry and Chicago
I regularly spotlight websites that I find interesting, useful or entertaining. Here’s the latest batch.
Press Gazette
The U.K.-based Press Gazette provides great coverage of the media industry. Its tagline is “Fighting for quality news media in the digital age.”
Of interest to me is the excellent job it does casting a critical eye on the impact of Google search algorithms and, more recently, AI summaries on news publishers.
Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At
Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At is a blog run by PR person and writer Ed Zitron. He isn’t afraid to call out bullshit when he sees it in the tech industry, especially when it comes to the recent AI boom.
“I've been railing against bullshit bubbles since 2021,” he said in a recent post. That includes the anti-remote work push, the NFT bubble, the made-up quiet quitting panic and problems with FTX several months before it imploded.
“I believe the AI bubble is deeply unstable, built on vibes and blind faith,” Zitron said.
Layoffs.fyi
Layoffs.fyi has been tracking tech industry layoffs since the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a personal project of Roger Lee, an internet entrepreneur based in San Francisco.
He also tracks government employees laid off by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). So far this year, DOGE has laid off 67,749 government employees
HeyJackass!
HeyJackass! Illustrates the violent crime problem in Chicago with charts and graphics showing shootings and homicides. It also sells funny Chicago-themed T-shirts and other merchandise.
Photo: Chicago Chalkie (HeyJackass!)
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Generative AI in the news business: Not to be trusted
As websites and online news operations try out generative artificial intelligence tools, they’re finding that the output can’t always be trusted.
Gen AI is great for some things such as providing quick definitions for technical terms and acronyms or summarizing information from a trove of government documents. But its habit of providing incorrect information and making things up (“hallucinations”) on some subjects make it not ready to supplant journalists.
One problem with AI chatbots is they present information as though they are certain about it. Chatbots may need to provide a certainty scale with the information they present while they’re in the early days of development.
They also do a poor job of citing they work. Users need citations to find out where AI is getting its information and to fact-check its work.
Already some people and business have committed to generative AI for creating articles and even supposed news websites.
NewsGuard has so far identified 1,271 AI-generated news and information sites operating with little to no human oversight. And it is tracking false narratives being produced by artificial intelligence tools.
“The rollout of generative artificial intelligence tools has been a boon to content farms and misinformation purveyors alike,” NewsGuard said in a report.
Some have described these generative AI sites as producing the equivalent of the meat industry’s “pink slime.”
News media are rushing into generative AI out of a “fear of missing out” (FOMO) on the next big thing. While AI has shown its usefulness in some journalist tasks, it is just a tool. It is simply too early to use AI as an automated front-facing application for news.
Related articles:
The good, the bad, and the completely made-up: Newsrooms on wrestling accurate answers out of AI (Nielsen Lab; Aug. 4, 2025)
Politico’s AI tool spits out made-up slop, union says (Semafor; June 8, 2025)
Business Insider recommended nonexistent books to staff as it leans into AI (Semafor; June 1, 2025)
How an AI-generated guide to summer books that don’t exist found its way into two newspapers (Media Nation by Dan Kennedy; May 20, 2025)
Bloomberg Has a Rocky Start With A.I. Summaries (The New York Times; March 29, 2025)
AI chatbots can’t be trusted, proves study, but Apple made a good choice (9to5Mac; March 11, 2025)
AI Search Has A Citation Problem (Columbia Journalism Review; March 6, 2025)
Photo: Pink slime (Wikipedia)
Sunday, August 3, 2025
AI summaries are the latest existential threat for news publishers
When I was studying for a print journalism degree in the mid-1980s, newspapers were already in decline. It didn’t deter me from that line of work but it was worrisome.
At the time, broadcast and cable television news were lessening demand for newspapers, especially in major metropolitan areas. It turned out to be one of a series of crises to face the news industry over the years.
When I graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1984, PCs weren’t yet commonplace. The early days of the internet with AOL, Yahoo and the like would create the next crisis for newspapers. But publishers adapted and shifted their operations to the web. And as the internet evolved, they learned how to attract readers and game the Google algorithm using search engine optimization. At the same time, advertising shifted to the web.
The immediacy of the web has great advantages over the dead-tree editions of the news. I imagine that as more Baby Boomers die off so will the newspapers they grew up with.
But now digital publications, including legacy newspapers, are facing their next existential threat from generative artificial intelligence. Google searches now generate AI summaries of news and information requests. And that has led to fewer clicks on weblinks back to the source of the news and information. The result is fewer readers, less advertising revenue and fewer opportunities to sell subscription services.
One recent study found that U.K. publishers are seeing click-through rates cut by nearly 50% because of AI summaries.
Google disputes the results, calling the study inaccurate and based on flawed assumptions, according to Press Gazette.
Still, publishers in the U.S. and elsewhere are seeing a decline in traffic. Many readers might get all the information they’re looking for on a subject from an AI summary.
This has led to a corresponding loss in advertising revenue. News publishers have responded by cutting journalism jobs. The Press Gazette has been tracking the layoffs.
Some publishers are demanding payment for use of their content to create AI summaries. But that would probably only help the largest news companies that have the legal resources to fight Big Tech.
AI summaries will need to do a better job of sourcing in their responses to encourage a click-through for more information.
Online publishers already are preparing for a day called “Google Zero,” when Google stops sending traffic to websites.
Related articles:
Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results (Pew Research; July 22, 2025)
News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google’s New AI Tools (The Wall Street Journal; June 10, 2025)
Google search algorithm changes hurting small publishers (Tech-media-tainment; March 1, 2025)
Photo: Online news illustration (Mike Licht via Creative Commons)
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Old newspapers need to be digitized
I recently tried to locate a newspaper article from the 1970s the old fashioned way – in a public library on microfilm. I was unsuccessful in my hunt.
The process was laborious and I eventually gave up after looking through several years’ worth of weekly newspaper issues.
I was trying to find an article that I had only a vague recollection about. When I was growing up in Libertyville, Illinois, a local newspaper did an article on my mother and her experiences raising seven children. The article by the Independent-Register newspaper was published sometime between 1972 and 1980.
The newspaper is no longer in operation. All that’s left are decades of print issues on spools of microfilm.
But trying to find an article with the broad time period that I had is extremely difficult. I even narrowed my search to around Mother’s Day for those years, figuring that was the reason the article was written. But I came up empty. I began to question whether the article even existed and somehow my memory was faulty. After all, I was in junior high or high school at the time.
If the newspaper had been digitized, the search could have been done in seconds. But who’s going to digitize some old suburban newspaper from microfilm? These publications are basically orphan works now.
Maybe one day, the cost for digitizing publications on microfilm will come down and some historical society will do the job. But they should do it before something happens to the microfilm libraries, otherwise the information within will be lost to the ages.
Photo: A publication on microfilm. (Microfilm Imaging Systems)
Sunday, July 27, 2025
Thread Reader app solves a problem with long post threads on X
One issue X users have with the social media service formerly called Twitter is following long “threads” of interconnected posts of interest.
Thankfully an independent app has stepped in solve the problem and make those threads easy to read. The app, called Thread Reader, organizes a person’s train of thought in chronological order.
To use the bot, you simply reply to any tweet in a thread and mention @threadreaderapp and the keyword “unroll.” Thread Reader then sends you a link back on X that you can share.
The Thread Reader app was created by a couple of software developers and went live in November 2017.
To see the threads I’ve created check out my page on Thread Reader.
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