Inside the Sony Hack

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2015/11/sony_employees_on_the_hack_one_year_later.single.html?utm_content=bufferf0f5e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Animation by Lisa Larson-Walker. Images by dotshock/Shutterstock, courtesy of Footage Island.

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-hacking-of-hollywood-51c25895512f#.kx70yi8lw

Virtual-reality devices - Ready, headset, go

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21678797-new-vr-headsets-are-being-launched-technologys-appeal-uncertain-ready-headset-go

... firms in other industries believe that virtual reality has potential to change their businesses and the way they interact with consumers. “People are valuing experiences more than things,” says Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing officer of MasterCard. The credit-card company is discussing how it might use virtual-reality technology to give customers insights into places they would like to visit and hotels where they could stay. Advertisers and even newspapers (see article) are thinking of how to use it to reach people in clever, attention-grabbing ways. Ford is using Oculus headsets to help its designers see what new cars will look like before they are built. Industries that train through simulation, from aviation to medicine, will derive clear benefits from virtual reality.

Is this the woman who killed off the lads' mag?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/is-this-the-woman-who-killed-off-the-lads-mag/

Latest figures show more than 33,450,000 web users a month are visiting the site, which is followed on Facebook by half of all British men aged 18 to 24, plus a growing number of 13- to 17-year-old boys. It has become one of the most visited websites in the UK, reportedly receiving more traffic than both LinkedIn and PayPal. In the week it was announced that publication of “lads’ mags” FHM and Zoo was being suspended, these figures are particularly significant.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/22/men-behaving-better-lads-mags-digital

Satellite wars

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/637bf054-8e34-11e5-8be4-3506bf20cc2b.html

A new arms race in our skies threatens the satellites that control everything from security to communications

The folly of Empire: how Star Wars menaced Hollywood

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/19/the-folly-of-empire-how-star-wars-menaced-hollywood

...for their $4.05bn, Disney did want something from George Lucas. The purchase had included the rights to Star Wars and so the fictional empire would be revisited. Why not? For just as Lucasfilm was the source of so much hi-tech movie-making, so it had inspired star fleets of franchises for mainstream cinema: the Harry Potter films, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean and so many other reiterations not quite as distinguished or so much fun, but all contributing to the principle that cinema now makes a world that never was and never could be. It’s even possible that the glory of Star Wars helped sustain that creaking dinosaur, James Bond.

Newspapers - Up against the paywall

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21678799-many-publishers-still-see-little-alternative-continual-cutbacks-up-against-paywall


Advertisers are keen to spend more on video and sponsored content, two areas in which readers’ attention is easier to hold (and which are not threatened by ad-blockers). But readers are not trained to expect video from their newspapers, and newspapers often lack the experience and resources to make them to a high enough standard. Some are making strong efforts, though. This month the New York Times released a “virtual reality” app, with a series of slick 360-degree videos that the newspaper says kept readers engaged for close to 15 minutes on average.

Measuring the global empathy gap

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/11/terrorism-and-empathy

The charge that Western mass media failed to report on the bombs in Beirut does not withstand a simple web-search. According to Google, 5,190 articles appeared on the subject on November 12th (the day before the Paris attacks). As of November 18th, 15,000 are available, with more than 400—including one in the New York Times—dedicated to comparing the treatment of the tragedies in the two cities. However, it is true that the attacks in Paris generated coverage on a different magnitude, yielding 2.5m stories on November 14th (although these figures probably overstate the disparity, since they count each appearance of wire-service reports that can be published hundreds of times). And after an initial surge in search traffic for “Beirut” following the bombings, the internet’s interest quickly waned, only to recover following the news from Paris. Even then, searches for “Beirut” did not reach even 1% of the maximum volume for “Paris”

FHM was a bible for normal men. It will be missed (even by those who campaigned for its death)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/fhm-was-a-bible-for-normal-men-it-will-be-missed-even-by-those-w/

The writing was on the wall for the lads mags with the introduction of widely available broadband internet around 2003, and, soon after, cheap smartphones. Men weren’t just consuming internet porn for free, but spending all their waking time fiddling with their phones. Those of us weathering the storm editing these titles during period after period of double-digit circulation decline knew print was a dead man walking.

Government data-requests to Facebook

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/11/daily-chart-11

FHM and Zoo magazines to suspend publication

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/17/fhm-zoo-magazines-suspend-publication

Both titles have seen steep declines from their heyday. FHM’s circulation fell to less than 67,000 for the first six months of this year, 20% less than in 2014, while Zoo was selling just over 24,000 copies, a fall of more than 12%. 

That compares to the more than 700,000 copies FHM was selling in 2000, while Zoo launched in 2004 with a circulation of 200,000 before peaking in 2005 at more than 260,000.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/12000809/FHM-and-Zoo-closure-Feminists-should-mourn-the-death-of-lads-mags.html

How Fox ate National Geographic

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/14/how-fox-ate-national-geographic