Business as usual at Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg comes forth, tells us nothing we didn’t already know

22.03.2018/21.40

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg came out and made a statement on Facebook that had no apology (though he gave a personal one later on CNN) and, at a time when people demanded transparency, he continued with opaqueness. First, he told us nothing we didn’t already know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Secondly, he avoided […]

In the ‘I told you so’ file: Google Plus could be stripped for parts, says Quartz

03.03.2015/05.28

Quartz reckons Google Plus is going to be stripped for parts: it’s going the way of Google Wave and Google Buzz. I was consistent from the start about Google Plus, unlike a good part of the tech press, which drank the Google Kool-Aid and talked about how it would be a Facebook-killer. The […]

Time for a rewatch: Reza Aslan interviewed on CNN about Muslim violence

14.01.2015/05.00

Found on my wall today. While it’s over three months old, the responses from Prof Reza Aslan of the University of California Riverside address a lot of the comments that have surfaced post-Charlie Hebdo head-on—which shows that we continue to go round and round the same arguments and not making an awful lot of progress. […]

MH370: the simplest explanations are probably the best

18.03.2014/09.08

I have followed very little mainstream media coverage of Malaysian Airlines’ flight 370, apart from National Radio. It seems that not paying attention to mainstream media has made me clearer about what might have happened to it. All those way-out theories never held any sway for me. Or the idea about tracking cellphones or […]

Ricky Gervais offends … actually, I don’t know whom

23.01.2011/04.54

Normally I think Piers Morgan is a plonker, and the time Jeremy Clarkson punched him at the BAFTAs remains one of entertainment’s best stories. However, I have enjoyed Life Stories, and he has been a worthy successor, in my mind, to Larry King. Of course it’s not the same show, but the important thing […]