pd

Aging the Internet Prematurely, One PDP at a Time

After blogging about ICANN's new gTLD policy or lack thereof, I've had several people ask me why I care so much about ICANN and new top-level domains. Domain names barely matter in a world of search and hyperlinks, I'm told, and new domains would amount to little more than a cash transfer to new registries from those trying to protect their names and brands. While I agree that type-in site-location is less and less relevant, and we haven't yet seen much end-user focused innovation in the use of domain names, I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I think ICANN is still in a position to do affirmative harm to Internet innovation.

You see, I don't concede that we know all the things the Internet will be used for, or all the things that could be done on top of and through its domain name system. I certainly don't claim that I do, and I don't believe that the intelligence gathered in ICANN would make that claim either.

Yet that's what it's doing by bureaucratizing the addition of new domain names: Asserting that no further experiments are possible; that the "show me the code" mode that built the Internet can no longer build enhancements to it. ICANN is unnecessarily ossifying the Internet's DNS at version 1.0, setting in stone a cumbersome model of registries and registrars, a pay-per-database-listing, semantic attachments to character strings, and limited competition for the lot. This structure is fixed in place by the GNSO constituency listing: Those who have interests in the existing setup are unlikely to welcome a new set of competitors bearing disruptions to their established business models. The "PDP" in the headline, ICANN's over-complex "Policy Development Process" (not the early DEC computer), gives too easy a holdout veto.

Meanwhile, we lose the chance to see what else could be done: whether it's making domain names so abundant that every blogger could have a meaningful set on a business card and every school child one for each different face of youthful experimentation, using the DNS hierarchy to store simple data or different kinds of pointers, spawning new services with new naming conventions, or something else entirely.

I don't know if any of these individually will "add value." Historically, however, we leave that question to the market where there's someone willing to give it a shot. Amazingly, after years of delay, there are still plenty of people waiting in ICANN queues to give new gTLDs a try. The collective value in letting them experiment and new services develop is indisputably greater than that constrained by the top-down imaginings of the few on the ICANN board and councils, as by their inability to pronounce .iii.


"How do you get an answer from the web?" the joke goes: "Put your guess into Wikipedia, then wait for the edits." While Wikipedians might prefer you at least source your guess, the joke isn't far from the mark. The lesson of Web 2.0 has been one of user-driven innovation, of launching services in beta and improving them by public experimentation. When your users know more than you or the regulators, the best you can do is often to give them a platform and support their efforts. Plan for the first try to break, and be ready to learn from the experience.

To trust the market, ICANN must be willing to let new TLDs fail. Instead of insisting that every new business have a 100-year plan, we should prepare the businesses and their stakeholders for contingency. Ensuring the "stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems" should mean developing predictable responses to failure, not demanding impracticable guarantees of perpetual success. Escrow, clear consumer information, streamlined processes, and flexible responses to the expected unanticipated, can all protect the end-users better than the dubious foresight of ICANN's central regulators. These same regulators, bear in mind, didn't foresee that a five-day add-grace period would swell the ranks of domains with "tasters" gaming the loophole with ad-based parking pages.

At ten years old, we don't think of our mistakes as precedent, but as experience. Kids learn by doing; the ten-year-old ICANN needs to do the same. Instead of believing it can stabilize the Internet against change, ICANN needs to streamline for unpredictability. Expect the unexpected and be able to act quickly in response. Prepare to get some things wrong, at first, and so be ready to acknowledge mistakes and change course.

I anticipate the counter-argument here that I'm focused on the wrong level, that stasis in the core DNS enhances innovative development on top, but I don't think I'm suggesting anything that would destabilize established resources. Verisign is contractually bound to keep .com open for registrations and resolving as it has in the past, even if .foo comes along with a different model. But until Verisign has real competition for .com, stability on its terms thwarts rather than fosters development. I think we can still accommodate change on both levels.

The Internet is too young to be turned into a utility, settled against further innovation. Even for mature layers, ICANN doesn't have the regulatory competence to protect the end-user in the absence of market competition, while preventing change locks out potential competitive models. Instead, we should focus on protecting principles such as interoperability that have already proved their worth, to enhance user-focused innovation at all levels. A thin ICANN should merely coordinate, not regulate.




pd

Duke's CSPD Announces Moving Image Contest Winners




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Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh (PDF)

Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh (PDF)




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Two LAPD officers injured when patrol car hit by another vehicle

Two Los Angeles Police Department officers were injured early Sunday morning in South L.A. when their vehicle overturned after being struck by a car.





pd

Product Update: Futuro support knee highs and support socks helps to prevent DVT


Futuro Women`s Beyond Support Knee Highs Reinforced Toe and Men`s Support Socks not only improve circulation and reduce discomfort from leg fatigue, ankle swelling and other venous insufficiencies, they also helps prevent DVT.




pd

Quarterly updates newsletter 2004/3

A quarterly update to all registered members. This newsletter covers the new addition of body stockings and garter, change in homepage design, help on cleaning browser hijacker as well as additional of medical informational articles.




pd

Update: Semi-opaque Trouser Socks

New colors added to the collection of trouser socks by MusicLegs®.


Beige

Sky Blue

Semi-opaque knee high trouser socks from MusicLegs®. Goes well with skirt or for the naughty school girl look.




pd

New collection: Music Legs Opaque Bareback Slipdress with Slim Straps

Opaque bareback mini slipdress from Music Legs®. With slim strap across the back.

Onesize (5'~5'10", 100~175lbs).




pd

Seven stories above Lake Coeur d'Alene, Beverly's continues its top-notch hospitality in a recently updated, casual fine dining environment

Beverly's has all the physical markings of a traditional fine dining experience: fancy cutlery, a robust wine collection, a menu that's actually a digital tablet and a stunning view…



  • Dining Out Guide

pd

Quick Tip: How to Activate iOS and iPadOS Beta Updates

In this episode, Tunmi13 walks us through how to activate iOS and iPadOS beta updates.

To do this, first sign in with your Apple ID at either developer.apple.com, to access the developer beta, or beta.apple.com, to access the public beta. Then, once signed up for either program, go to Settings > General > Software update > Beta updates, and select the beta you signed up for. You can then go back one level in Settings, and the beta should appear like any other update that you can download and install.

Important: Beta versions of iOS and iPadOS may contain serious bugs, which is why it's generally advised, if possible, to install them on another device specifically designated for beta testing, or have a full and complete backup of your data in case a downgrade from the beta, which involves a full restore of your device, becomes necessary. For more information, check out this introduction to iOS and iPadOS beta testing.




pd

NYPD Suspends Officer Over Using Apparent Chokehold During Arrest

A New York City police officer has been suspended after apparently using a chokehold during an arrest in Rockaway, Queens. NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea said the department is investigating the incident, which happened Sunday. Cellphone video shot by a bystander shows several police struggling to subdue a Black man, including one officer who had his arm around the man's neck. One bystander shouts, "Stop choking him!" Police body-cam footage, which Shea said was released in a spirit of transparency, shows a group of police watching three men on a boardwalk who are shouting invective and slurs at passersby and the police. After more than ten minutes, one of the men picks up a plastic bag and gets closer to the police, asking, "Are you scared?" The officers then tackle him, and one officer appears to use a chokehold. A voice is heard saying, "He's out," before the officers move off the man, who moments later walks away in handcuffs with police. The man, who has been identified by his




pd

NYPD Officer Accused Of Using Chokehold Charged With Strangulation

The New York police officer accused of using a chokehold in an incident captured on video Sunday has been charged with strangulation. The officer, 39-year-old David Afanador, was suspended the same day the cellphone video appeared to show him choking a Black man on a Queens boardwalk. Now he's been arrested and charged with felony strangulation and attempted strangulation. Afanador pleaded not guilty and was released Thursday afternoon without bail. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz noted that New York state had criminalized chokeholds just days earlier. "The ink from the pen Gov. Cuomo used to sign this legislation was barely dry before this officer allegedly employed the very tactic the new law was designed to prohibit," Katz said in a statement. "Police officers are entrusted to serve and protect — and the conduct alleged here cannot be tolerated." Afanador could face up to seven years in prison if convicted. Sunday's incident began when police responded to complaints about




pd

[MeFi Site Update] September 18th

Hi there!

Welcome to this month's Site Update!

You can find the last update here.


Profit & Loss – You can find this month's Profit & Loss report here. The previous reports are here. Admin – I'm working with the mods to make adjustments to the Guidelines and Content Policy based on the feedback from this thread. Our aim is to have clearer policies that allow us to step in and avoid derails and comments aimed at enraging other members and where we can set clear expectations with the members who get moderated. Fundraising – So far, we have raised $5,281.00 in one time contributions (17% of our original goal) and $200.00 in new Subscriptions (8% of our goal). We still have a lot of money in the bank, so while this is not where we wanted to be, there is no imminent emergency. On one hand I'm deeply grateful for the contributions received so far and we'll make the best of it but on the other I know the frustration this generates. We were hoping to have the new entity in place before the fundraising started this year. Since last year's run, we knew we would not be able to spin a full fledged campaign while rebuilding the site; moderation has been busier than usual in the past few months. That being said, we decided to move ahead with the fundraising and do our best. I'm still running to continue with the activities we had planned and we'll keep going with the fundraising activities until we're ready to give access to the new site for testing (more details on that below). Then, we'll put copies of the Pet Tax wall and Cookbook for sale and proceed with the Podcast. Tech – Early access to the new site has been delayed in order to include more complete features and actions that users can test and kirkaracha and I are expecting to make it available by Sunday, September 29. – Added affiliate links to bookshop.org – Fixed multiple errors connecting to external APIs – Server fixes keeping maintenance tasks running without breaking BIPOC Advisory Board – Thyme and I will resume our work with the BIPOC Board this month. Next meeting is scheduled for September 21st. Once the meeting happens we'll report back on our plan to get back on track with the minutes and the cadence of the work with the BIPOC Board. If you have any questions or feedback not related to this particular update, please Contact Us instead. If you want to discuss a particular subject not covered here with the community, you're welcome to open a separate MetaTalk




pd

MeFiCoFo update

A few updates about the MetaFilter Community Foundation

1) My previous post was mistaken about incorporation. Incorporation is going to happen soon with a boilerplate set of bylaws, and then the first board for the newly incorporated org will adopt the full bylaws after a round community feedback. 2) Some clarifications about the new structure, which came up in the last thread. -MetaFilter.com members Participate on metafilter.com Volunteer on committees and activities for the Website and MeFiCoFo Provide input and feedback via MetaTalk and other channels -MetaFilter Community Foundation fellows Criteria to be a fellow: Time on site (proposal is for 6 months), contributions (A combination of posts/comments) Can be pseudonymous Can vote on MeFiCoFo governance issues, including MeFiCoFo board members -MeFiCoFo Executive Director Responsible for day to day management of MeFiCoFo and staff Execute policy from the Board -MeFiCoFo Board of Directors Manage the ED Set and direct policy with input from members, fellows and staff. Overall governance 3) Incorporation updates: Should be happening very soon We'll post the full initial draft of the bylaws for comments/feedback in the next two to three weeks as well. 4) Assistance we'll need soon -Bylaws feedback (as mentioned above) -Various tasks related to ED search as needed -Assistance with the full board elections (Selecting/implementing voting platform for board elections, Other tasks as needed) If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post here or reach out via memail




pd

[MeFi Site Update] October 16th

Hi there!

Welcome to this month's Site Update!

You can find the last update here.


Profit & Loss – You can find this month's P&L report here. The previous P&L reports are here. Admin – You can read the latest updates about the MetaFilter Community Foundation here. – We are still going over adjustments to the Guidelines and Content Policy based on the feedback from members. So far we're planning on expanding guidelines specific to each subsite and we'll share a draft of these changes on a separate Meta post once it is ready. Fundraising – We have raised $11,959.00 in one time contributions and $340.00 in new Subscriptions. These contributions are a huge lift and we'll work with the Community Foundation to put that extra revenue to good use. We'll wrap the fundraising by the end of this month with the release of the new site's MVP, the MeFi Cookbook, the Pet Tax wall, the AMA Podcast and a special Halloween Virtual Gala. Tech – Early access to the new site is delayed due to some issues with the new host service. kirkaracha is working as we speak to fix it and we hope to have it ready later this week. – Fixed geolocation bug with IRL that was blocking posting. – Removed time limit on Projects posts. BIPOC Advisory Board – Thyme and I will resume our work with the BIPOC Board this month as the previous meeting was canceled. Next meeting is scheduled for this Saturday, October 21st. Once the meeting happens we'll report back on our plan to get back on track with the minutes and the cadence of the work with the BIPOC Board. If you have any questions or feedback not related to this particular update, please Contact Us instead. If you want to discuss a particular subject not covered here with the community, you're welcome to open a separate MetaTalk thread for it.




pd

Quick Nonprofit Update

As of November 1, 2024 (it took some time for the notice to arrive), the Metafilter Community Foundation exists as an officially registered Delaware nonprofit non-stock corporation.

What this means:
1. We can now get an EIN, apply for a bank account, and apply to the IRS for not-for-profit designation.
2. The interim board of directors can get to work. We will have to adopt bylaws, approve (with community input) a policy and procedures manual, obtain insurance, and transfer the existing LLC and its assets into the new entity, among many other tasks.

We have a lot of work ahead.

Many people have expressed concern about this process, how long it's taking, and the future of the site. We share these concerns, which is why we've been donating so much of our time to this task. It will soon be time for members of our community to run for the Board of Directors, choose officers, join committees, and generally start doing all of the "community" things people have been calling for over the years. Think you know how to improve Metafilter? Now's the time to prove it. Friends, this is a long way from being over, but I believe that our community's best days are ahead of it. I expect that many people are going to be seeking internet communities in the coming months where civility and thoughtful discussion are still the norm, rather than the exception. If ever there were a time to do more outreach for new members and promote our site and what it can do, what it might yet be, this is it. If there's any silver lining to the current tumult in the world, it's that it gives us even more impetus to band together, talk to each other, and over-analyze those plates of beans. Now, let's get organized!




pd

PDVSA, nos metemos en todo y taxistas

Escuche el programa de este martes 20 de noviembre. La Luciérnaga, un espacio un espacio de humor y opinión de Caracol Radio que acompaña desde hace más de 30 años a sus oyentes en el regreso a casa.




pd

“Me inquieta la capacidad financiera de Ecopetrol con PDVSA”: Juan Camilo restrepo

El exministro de Minas y Energía, Juan Camilo Restrepo, estuvo en 10AM de Caracol Radio, para dar su opinión sobre el tema de uan posible sociedad de Ecopetrol con PDVSA.




pd

Can I Only Update My Address With Equifax By Mail?

I have just moved and wish to update my address with Equifax. The other credit agencies allowed me to do this online, but Equifax say I have to mail them a photocopy of my driver's license and SS card. I have never updated my address with them in the past, but they already have all my previous addresses, so do I need to mail them my details too - or will they just get updated automagically?

A quick Google says you can change your address in the myEquifax Dispute Center, but if I do that and choose to dispute my current address (my previous one), I'm given the following options for "Why are you disputing your current address" - "I have never lived at this address", "This address belongs to another person with a similar name", "I believe I am a victim of fraud or identity theft and this address is not mine" - none of which fit my pretty common "I have moved".
It seems that I'm missing something here - that the only way to update my address with a major credit agency is by mail? - and if I do so, I'm also not quite sure if I'll receive confirmation when/ if it is done. Am/ will I?




pd

husky hsk072hd battery charger manual diagram pdf

jawodum rotuvizedo povewemef mufetonav witonet vevofat rigokifi.

This item belongs to: data/opensource_media.

This item has files of the following types: Archive BitTorrent, Metadata, Text PDF




pd

En Colombia buscan 111,640 víctimas del conflicto armado: Luz Forero, directora de UBPD

En el programa 6AM, estuvo Luz janeth Forero, directora de la Unidad de Búsqueda de Personas dadas por Desaparecidas, e hizo hincapié en las cifras de desaparecidos por el conflicto armado




pd

How to Read Google Algorithm Updates

Links = Rank

Old Google (pre-Panda) was to some degree largely the following: links = rank.

Once you had enough links to a site you could literally pour content into a site like water and have the domain's aggregate link authority help anything on that site rank well quickly.

As much as PageRank was hyped & important, having a diverse range of linking domains and keyword-focused anchor text were important.

Brand = Rank

After Vince then Panda a site's brand awareness (or, rather, ranking signals that might best simulate it) were folded into the ability to rank well.

Panda considered factors beyond links & when it first rolled out it would clip anything on a particular domain or subdomain. Some sites like HubPages shifted their content into subdomains by users. And some aggressive spammers would rotate their entire site onto different subdomains repeatedly each time a Panda update happened. That allowed those sites to immediately recover from the first couple Panda updates, but eventually Google closed off that loophole.

Any signal which gets relied on eventually gets abused intentionally or unintentionally. And over time it leads to a "sameness" of the result set unless other signals are used:

Google is absolute garbage for searching anything related to a product. If I'm trying to learn something invariably I am required to search another source like Reddit through Google. For example, I became introduced to the concept of weighted blankets and was intrigued. So I Google "why use a weighted blanket" and "weighted blanket benefits". Just by virtue of the word "weighted blanket" being in the search I got pages and pages of nothing but ads trying to sell them, and zero meaningful discourse on why I would use one

Getting More Granular

Over time as Google got more refined with Panda broad-based sites outside of the news vertical often fell on tough times unless they were dedicated to some specific media format or had a lot of user engagement metrics like a strong social network site. That is a big part of why the New York Times sold About.com for less than they paid for it & after IAC bought it they broke it down into a variety of sites like: Verywell (health), the Spruce (home decor), the Balance (personal finance), Lifewire (technology), Tripsavvy (travel) and ThoughtCo (education & self-improvement).

Penguin further clipped aggressive anchor text built on low quality links. When the Penguin update rolled out Google also rolled out an on-page spam classifier to further obfuscate the update. And the Penguin update was sandwiched by Panda updates on either side, making it hard for people to reverse engineer any signal out of weekly winners and losers lists from services that aggregate massive amounts of keyword rank tracking data.

So much of the link graph has been decimated that Google reversed their stance on nofollow to where in March 1st of this year they started treating it as a hint versus a directive for ranking purposes. Many mainstream media websites were overusing nofollow or not citing sources at all, so this additional layer of obfuscation on Google's part will allow them to find more signal in that noise.

May 4, 2020 Algo Update

On May 4th Google rolled out another major core update.

I saw some sites which had their rankings suppressed for years see a big jump. But many things changed at once.

Wedge Issues

On some political search queries which were primarily classified as being news related Google is trying to limit political blowback by showing official sites and data scraped from official sites instead of putting news front & center.

"Google’s pretty much made it explicit that they’re not going to propagate news sites when it comes to election related queries and you scroll and you get a giant election widget in your phone and it shows you all the different data on the primary results and then you go down, you find Wikipedia, you find other like historical references, and before you even get to a single news article, it’s pretty crazy how Google’s changed the way that the SERP is intended."

That change reflects the permanent change to the news media ecosystem brought on by the web.

YMYL

A blog post by Lily Ray from Path Interactive used Sistrix data to show many of the sites which saw high volatility were in the healthcare vertical & other your money, your life (YMYL) categories.

Aggressive Monetization

One of the more interesting pieces of feedback on the update was from Rank Ranger, where they looked at particular pages that jumped or fell hard on the update. They noticed sites that put ads or ad-like content front and center may have seen sharp falls on some of those big money pages which were aggressively monetized:

Seeing this all but cements the notion (in my mind at least) that Google did not want content unrelated to the main purpose of the page to appear above the fold to the exclusion of the page's main content! Now for the second wrinkle in my theory.... A lot of the pages being swapped out for new ones did not use the above-indicated format where a series of "navigation boxes" dominated the page above the fold.

The above shift had a big impact on some sites which are worth serious money. Intuit paid over $7 billion to acquire Credit Karma, but their credit card affiliate pages recently slid hard.

The above sort of shift reflects Google getting more granular with their algorithms. Early Panda was all or nothing. Then it started to have different levels of impact throughout different portions of a site.

Brand was sort of a band aid or a rising tide that lifted all (branded) boats. Now we are seeing Google get more granular with their algorithms where a strong brand might not be enough if they view the monetization as being excessive. That same focus on page layout can have a more adverse impact on small niche websites.

One of my old legacy clients had a site which was primarily monetized by the Amazon affiliate program. About a month ago Amazon chopped affiliate commissions in half & then the aggressive ad placement caused search traffic to the site to get chopped in half when rankings slid on this update.

Their site has been trending down over the past couple years largely due to neglect as it was always a small side project. They recently improved some of the content about a month or so ago and that ended up leading to a bit of a boost, but then this update came. As long as that ad placement doesn't change the declines are likely to continue.

They just recently removed that ad unit, but that meant another drop in income as until there is another big algo update they're likely to stay at around half search traffic. So now they have a half of a half of a half. Good thing the site did not have any full time employees or they'd be among the millions of newly unemployed. That experience though really reflects how websites can be almost like debt levered companies in terms of going under virtually overnight. Who can have revenue slide around 88% and then take increase investment in the property using the remaining 12% while they wait for the site to be rescored for a quarter year or more?

"If you have been negatively impacted by a core update, you (mostly) cannot see recovery from that until another core update. In addition, you will only see recovery if you significantly improve the site over the long-term. If you haven’t done enough to improve the site overall, you might have to wait several updates to see an increase as you keep improving the site. And since core updates are typically separated by 3-4 months, that means you might need to wait a while."

Almost nobody can afford to do that unless the site is just a side project.

Google could choose to run major updates more frequently, allowing sites to recover more quickly, but they gain economic benefit in defunding SEO investments & adding opportunity cost to aggressive SEO strategies by ensuring ranking declines on major updates last a season or more.

Choosing a Strategy vs Letting Things Come at You

They probably should have lowered their ad density when they did those other upgrades. If they had they likely would have seen rankings at worst flat or likely up as some other competing sites fell. Instead they are rolling with a half of a half of a half on the revenue front. Glenn Gabe preaches the importance of fixing all the problems you can find rather than just fixing one or two things and hoping it is enough. If you have a site which is on the edge you sort of have to consider the trade offs between various approaches to monetization.

  • monetize it lightly and hope the site does well for many years
  • monetize it slightly aggressively while using the extra income to further improve the site elsewhere and ensure you have enough to get by any lean months
  • aggressively monetize the shortly after a major ranking update if it was previously lightly monetized & then hope to sell it off a month or two later before the next major algorithm update clips it again

Outcomes will depend partly on timing and luck, but consciously choosing a strategy is likely to yield better returns than doing a bit of mix-n-match while having your head buried in the sand.

Reading the Algo Updates

You can spend 50 or 100 hours reading blog posts about the update and learn precisely nothing in the process if you do not know which authors are bullshitting and which authors are writing about the correct signals.

But how do you know who knows what they are talking about?

It is more than a bit tricky as the people who know the most often do not have any economic advantage in writing specifics about the update. If you primarily monetize your own websites, then the ignorance of the broader market is a big part of your competitive advantage.

Making things even trickier, the less you know the more likely Google would be to trust you with sending official messaging through you. If you syndicate their messaging without questioning it, you get a treat - more exclusives. If you question their messaging in a way that undermines their goals, you'd quickly become persona non grata - something cNet learned many years ago when they published Eric Schmidt's address.

It would be unlikely you'd see the following sort of Tweet from say Blue Hat SEO or Fantomaster or such.

To be able to read the algorithms well you have to have some market sectors and keyword groups you know well. Passively collecting an archive of historical data makes the big changes stand out quickly.

Everyone who depends on SEO to make a living should subscribe to an online rank tracking service or run something like Serposcope locally to track at least a dozen or two dozen keywords. If you track rankings locally it makes sense to use a set of web proxies and run the queries slowly through each so you don't get blocked.

You should track at least a diverse range to get a true sense of the algorithmic changes.

  • a couple different industries
  • a couple different geographic markets (or at least some local-intent vs national-intent terms within a country)
  • some head, midtail and longtail keywords
  • sites of different size, age & brand awareness within a particular market

Some tools make it easy to quickly add or remove graphing of anything which moved big and is in the top 50 or 100 results, which can help you quickly find outliers. And some tools also make it easy to compare their rankings over time. As updates develop you'll often see multiple sites making big moves at the same time & if you know a lot about the keyword, the market & the sites you can get a good idea of what might have been likely to change to cause those shifts.

Once you see someone mention outliers most people miss that align with what you see in a data set, your level of confidence increases and you can spend more time trying to unravel what signals changed.

I've read influential industry writers mention that links were heavily discounted on this update. I have also read Tweets like this one which could potentially indicate the opposite.

If I had little to no data, I wouldn't be able to get any signal out of that range of opinions. I'd sort of be stuck at "who knows."

By having my own data I track I can quickly figure out which message is more inline with what I saw in my subset of data & form a more solid hypothesis.

No Single Smoking Gun

As Glenn Gabe is fond of saying, sites that tank usually have multiple major issues.

Google rolls out major updates infrequently enough that they can sandwich a couple different aspects into major updates at the same time in order to make it harder to reverse engineer updates. So it does help to read widely with an open mind and imagine what signal shifts could cause the sorts of ranking shifts you are seeing.

Sometimes site level data is more than enough to figure out what changed, but as the above Credit Karma example showed sometimes you need to get far more granular and look at page-level data to form a solid hypothesis.

As the World Changes, the Web Also Changes

About 15 years ago online dating was seen as a weird niche for recluses who perhaps typically repulsed real people in person. Now there are all sorts of niche specialty dating sites including a variety of DTF type apps. What was once weird & absurd had over time become normal.

The COVID-19 scare is going to cause lasting shifts in consumer behavior that accelerate the movement of commerce online. A decade of change will happen in a year or two across many markets.

Telemedicine will grow quickly. Facebook is adding commerce featured directly onto their platform through partnering with Shopify. Spotify is spending big money to buy exclusives rights to distribute widely followed podcasters like Joe Rogan. Uber recently offered to acquire GrubHub. Google and Apple will continue adding financing features to their mobile devices. Movie theaters have lost much of their appeal.

Tons of offline "value" businesses ended up having no value after months of revenue disappearing while large outstanding debts accumulated interest. There is a belief that some of those brands will have strong latent brand value that carries over online, but if they were weak even when the offline stores acting like interactive billboards subsidized consumer awareness of their brands then as those stores close the consumer awareness & loyalty from in-person interactions will also dry up. A shell of a company rebuilt around the Toys R' Us brand is unlikely to beat out Amazon's parallel offering or a company which still runs stores offline.

Big box retailers like Target & Walmart are growing their online sales at hundreds of percent year over year.

There will be waves of bankruptcies, dramatic shifts in commercial real estate prices (already reflected in plunging REIT prices), and more people working remotely (shifting residential real estate demand from the urban core back out into suburbs).

People who work remote are easier to hire and easier to fire. Those who keep leveling up their skills will eventually get rewarded while those who don't will rotate jobs every year or two. The lack of stability will increase demand for education, though much of that incremental demand will be around new technologies and specific sectors - certificates or informal training programs instead of degrees.

More and more activities will become normal online activities.

The University of California has about a half-million students & in the fall semester they are going to try to have most of those classes happen online. How much usage data does Google gain as thousands of institutions put more and more of their infrastructure and service online?

A lot of B & C level schools are going to go under as the like-vs-like comparison gets easier. Back when I ran a membership site here a college paid us to have students gain access to our membership area of the site. As online education gets normalized many unofficial trade-related sites will look more economically attractive on a relative basis.

If core institutions of the state deliver most of their services online, then other companies can be expected to follow. When big cities publish lists of crimes they will not respond to during economic downturns they are effectively subsidizing more crime. That in turn makes moving to somewhere a bit more rural & cheaper make sense, particularly when you no longer need to live near your employer.

Categories: 




pd

Google Helpful Content Update

Granular Panda

Reading the tea leaves on the pre-announced Google "helpful content" update rolling out next week & over the next couple weeks in the English language, it sounds like a second and perhaps more granular version of Panda which can take in additional signals, including how unique the page level content is & the language structure on the pages.

Like Panda, the algorithm will update periodically across time & impact websites on a sitewide basis.

Cold Hot Takes

The update hasn't even rolled out yet, but I have seen some write ups which conclude with telling people to use an on-page SEO tool, tweets where people complained about low end affiliate marketing, and gems like a guide suggesting empathy is important yet it has multiple links on how to do x or y "at scale."

Trashing affiliates is a great sales angle for enterprise SEO consultants since the successful indy affiliate often knows more about SEO than they do, the successful affiliate would never become their client, and the corporation that is getting their asses handed to them by an affiliate would like to think this person has the key to re-balance the market in their own favor.

My favorite pre-analysis was a person who specialized in ghostwriting books for CEOs Tweeting that SEO has made the web too inauthentic and too corporate. That guy earned a star & a warm spot in my heart.

Profitable Publishing

Of course everything in publishing is trade offs. That is why CEOs hire ghostwriters to write books for them, hire book launch specialists to manipulate the best seller lists, or even write messaging books in the first place. To some Dan Price was a hero advocating for greater equality and human dignity. To others he was a sort of male feminist superhero, with all the Harvey Weinstein that typically entails.

Anyone who has done 100 interviews with journalists see ones that do their job by the book and aim to inform their readers to the best of their abilities (my experiences with the Wall Street Journal & PBS were aligned with this sort of ideal) and then total hatchet jobs where a journalist plants a quote they want & that they said, that they then attributes it to you (e.g. London Times freelance journalist).

There are many dimensions to publishing:

  • depth
  • purpose
  • timing
  • audience
  • language
  • experience
  • format
  • passion
  • uniqueness
  • frequency

Blogs to Feeds

For a long time indy blogs punched well above their weight due to the incestuous nature of cross-referencing each other, the speed of publishing when breaking news, and how easy feed readers made it to subscribe to your favorite blogs. Google Reader then ate the feed reader market & shut down. And many bloggers who had unique things to say eventually started to repeat themselves. Or their passions & interests changed. Or their market niche disappeared as markets moved on. Starting over is hard & staying current after the passion fades is difficult. Plus if you were rather successful it is easy to become self absorbed and/or lose the hunger and drive that initially made you successful.

Around the same time blogs started sliding people spent more and more time on various social networks which hyper-optimized the slot machine type dopamine rush people get from refreshing the feed. Social media largely replaced blogs, while legacy media publishers got faster at putting out incomplete news stories to be updated as they gather more news. TikTok is an obvious destination point for that dopamine rush - billions of short pieces of content which can be consumed quickly and shared - where the user engagement metrics for each user are tracked and aggregated across each snippet of media to drive further distribution.

Burnout & Changing Priorities

I know one of the reasons I blog less than I used to is a lot of the things I would write would be repeats. Another big reason was when my wife was pregnant I decided to shut down our membership site so I could take my wife for a decently long walk almost everyday so her health was great when it came time to give birth & ensure I had spare capacity for if anything went wrong with the pregnancy process. As a kid my dad was only around much for a few summers and I wanted to be better than that for my kid.

The other reason I cut back on blogging is at some point search went from a endless blue water market to a zero sum game to a negative sum game (as ad clicks displaced organic clicks). And in such an environment if you have a sustainable competitive advantage it is best to lean into it yourself as hard as you can rather than sharing it with others. Like when we had an office here our link builders I trained were getting awesome unpaid links from high-trust sources for what backed out to about $25 of labor time (and no more than double that after factoring in office equipment, rent, etc.).

If I share that script / process on the blog publicly I would move the economics against myself. At the end of the day business is margins, strategy, market, and efficiency. Any market worth being in is going to have competition, so you need to have some efficiency or strategic differentiators if you are going to have sustainable profit margins. I've paid others many multiples of that for link building for many years back when links were the primary thing driving rankings.

I don't know the business model where sharing the above script earns more than it costs. Does one launch a Substack priced at like $500 or $1,000 a month where they offer a detailed guide a month? How many people adopt the script before the response rates fall & it offsets the costs by more than the revenues? My issue with consulting is I always wanted to over-deliver for clients & always ended up selling myself short when compared to publishing, so I just stick with a few great clients and a bit of this and that vs going too deep & scaling up there. Plus I had friends who went big and then some of their clients who were acquired had the acquirer brag about the SEO, that lead to a penalty, then the acquirer of the client threw the SEO under the bus and had their business torched.

When you have a kid seeing them learn and seeing wonderment in their eyes is as good as life gets, but if you undermine your profit margins you'd also be directly undermining your own child's future ... often to help people who may not even like you anyhow. That is ultimately self defeating as it gets, particularly as politics grow more polarized & many begin to view retribution as a core function of government.

I believe there are no limits to the retributive and malicious use of taxation as a political weapon. I believe there are no limits to the retributive and malicious use of spending as a political reward.

Margins

The role of search engines is to suck as much of the margins as they can out of publishing while trying to put some baseline floor on content quality so that people would still prefer to use a search engine rather than some other reference resource. Google sees memes like "add Reddit to the end of your search for real content" as an attack on their own brand. Google needs periodic large shake ups to reaffirm their importance, maintain narrative control around innovation, and to shake out players with excessive profit margins who were too well aligned with the current local maxima. Google needs aggressive SEO efforts with large profits to have an "or else" career risk to them to help reign in such efforts.

You can see the intent for career risk in how the algorithm will wait months to clear the flag:

Google said the helpful content update system is automated, regularly evaluating content. So the algorithm is constantly looking at your content and assigning scores to it. But that does not mean, that if you fix your content today, your site will recover tomorrow. Google told me there is this validation period, a waiting period, for Google to trust that you really are committed to updating your content and not just updating it today, Google then ranks you better and then you put your content back to the way it was. Google needs you to prove, over several months - yes - several months - that your content is actually helpful in the long run.

If you thought a site were quality, had some issues, the issues were cleaned up, and you were still going to wait to rank it appropriately ... the sole and explicit purpose of that delay is career risk to others to prevent them flying to close to the sun - to drive self regulation out of fear.

Brand counts for a lot in search & so does buying the default placement position - look at how much Google pays Apple to not compete in search, or look at how Google had that illegal ad auction bid rigging gentleman's agreement with Facebook to not compete with a header bidding solution so Google could maintain their outsized profit margins on ad serving on third party websites.

Business ultimately is competition. Does Google serve your ads? What are the prices charged to players on each side of each auction & how much rake can the auctioneer capture for themselves?

The Auctioneer's Shill Bid - Google Halverez (beta)

That is why we see Google embedding more features directly in their search results where they force rank their vertical listings above the organic listings. Their vertical ads are almost always placed above organics & below the text AdWords ads. Such vertical results could be thought of as a category-based shill bid to try to drive attention back upward, or move traffic into a parallel page where there is another chance to show more ads.

This post stated:

Google runs its search engine partly on its internally developed Cloud TPU chips. The chips, which the company also makes available to other organizations through its cloud platform, are specifically optimized for artificial intelligence workloads. Google’s newest Cloud TPU can provide up to 275 teraflops of performance, which is equivalent to 275 trillion computing operations per second.

Now that computing power can be run across:

  • millions of books Google has indexed
  • particular publishers Google considers "above board" like Reuters, AP, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc.
  • historically archived content from trusted publishers before "optimizing for search" was actually a thing

... and model language usage versus modeling the language usage of publishers known to have weak engagement / satisfaction metrics.

Low end outsourced content & almost good enough AI content will likely tank. Similarly textually unique content which says nothing original or is just slapped together will likely get downranked as well.

Expect Volatility

They would not have pre-announced the update & gave some people some embargoed exclusives unless there was going to be a lot of volatility. As typical with the bigger updates, they will almost certainly roll out multiple other updates sandwiched together to help obfuscate what signals they are using & misdirect people reading too much in the winners and losers lists.

Here are some questions Google asked:

  • Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
  • Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
  • Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
  • After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
  • Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
  • Are you keeping in mind our guidance for core updates and for product reviews?

As a person who has ... erm ... put a thumb on the scale for a couple decades now, one can feel the algorithmic signals approximated by the above questions.

To the above questions they added:

  • Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
  • Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
  • Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
  • Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
  • Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you'd write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
  • Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
  • Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't).
  • Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you'd get search traffic?
  • Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there's a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn't confirmed?

Some of those indicate where Google believes the boundaries of their own role as a publisher are & that you should stay out of their lane. :D

Barrier to Entry vs Personality

One of the interesting things about the broader scope of algorithm shifts is each thing that makes the algorithms more complex, increases barrier to entry, and increases cost ultimately increases the chunk size of competition. And when that is done what is happening is the macroparasite is being preference over the microparasite. Conceptually Google has a lot of reasons to have that bias or preference:

  • fewer entities to police (lower cost)
  • more data to use to police each entity (higher confidence)
  • easier to do direct deals with players which can move the needle (more scale)
  • if markets get too consolidated Google can always launch a vertical service & tip the scale back in the other direction (I see your Amazon ad revenue and I raise you free product listing ads, aggregated third party reviews, in-SERP product comparison features, and a "People Also Ask" unit)
  • the macroparasites have more "sameness" between them (making it easier for Google to create a competitive clone or copy)

So long as Google maintains a monopoly on web search the bias toward macroparasites works for them. It gives Google the outsized margins which ensures healthy Alphabet profit margins even if the median of Google's 156,000+ employees pulls down nearly $300,000 a year. People can not see what has no distribution, people do not know what exist in invisibility, nor do they know which innovations were held back and what does not exist due to the current incentive structures in our monopoly-controlled publishing ecosystem.

I think when people complain about the web being inauthentic what they are really complaining about is the algorithmic choices & publishing shifts that did away with the indy blogs and replaced them with the dopamine feed viral tricks and the same big box scaled players which operate multiple parallel sites to where you are getting the same machinery and content production house behind multiple consecutive listings. They are complaining about the efforts to snuff out the microparasite also scrubbing away personality, joy, love, quirkiness, weirdness, and the zany stuff you would not typically find on content by factory order websites.

Let's Go With Consensus Here!

The above leads you down well worn paths, rather than the magic of serendipity & a personality worn on your sleeve that turns some people on while turning other people off.

Text which is roughly aligned with a backward looking consensus rather than at the forefront of a field.

History is written by the victors. Consensus is politically driven, backward looking, and has key messages memory holed.

Some COVID-19 Fun to "Fact" Check

I spent new years in China before the COVID-19 crisis hit & got sick when I got back. I used so much caffeine the day I moved over a half dozen computers between office buildings while sick. I week later when news on Twitter started leaking of the COVID-19 crisis hit I thought wow this looks even worse than what I just had. In the fullness of time I think I had it before it was a crisis. Everyone in my family got sick and multiple people from the office. Then that COVID-19 crisis news came out & only later when it was showed that comorbidities and the elderly had the worse outcomes did I realize they were likely the same. Then after the crisis had been announced someone else from the office building I was in got it & then one day it was illegal to go into the office. The lockdown where I lived was longer than the original lockdown in Wuhan. Those lockdowns destroyed millions of lives.

The reason the response to the COVID-19 virus was so extreme was huge parts of politically interested parties wanted to stop at nothing to see orange man ejected from the White House. So early on when he blocked flights from China you had prominent people in political circles calling him xenophobic, and then the head of public health in New York City was telling you it was safe to ride the subway and go about your ordinary daily life. That turned out to be deadly partisan hackery & ignorance pitched as enlightenment, leading to her resignation.

Then the virus spreads wildly as one would expect it to. And draconian lockdowns to tank the economy to ensure orange man was gone, mail in voting was widespread, and the election was secured.

Some of the most ridiculous heroes during this period wrote books about being a hero. Andrew "killer" Cuomo had time to write his "did you ever know that I'm your hero" book while he simultaneously ordered senior living homes to take in COVID-19 positive patients. Due to fecal-oral transmission and poor health outcomes for senior citizens sick enough to be in a senior living home his policies lead to the manslaughter of thousands of senior citizens.

You couldn't go to a funeral and say goodbye because you might kill someone else's grandma, but if you were marching for social justice (and ONLY social justice) that stuff was immune to the virus.

Suggesting looking at the root problems like no dad in the home is considered sexist, racist, or both. Meanwhile social justice organizations champion tearing down the nuclear family in spite of the fact that if you tear down the family all you are left with is the collective AND "mandatory collectivism has ended in misery wherever it’s been tried."

Of course the social justice stuff embeds the false narrative of victimhood, which then turns many of the fake victims into monsters who destroy the lives of others - but we are all in this together.

Absolutely nobody could have predicted the rise of murder & violent crime as we emptied the prisons & decriminalized large swaths of the penal code. Plus since many crimes are repeatedly ignored people stop reporting lesser crimes, so the New York Times can tell you not to worry overall crime is down.

In Seattle if someone rapes you the police probably won't even take a report to investigate it unless (in some cases?) you are a child. What are police protecting society from if rape is a freebie that doesn't really matter? Why pay taxes or have government at all?

What Google Wants

The above sidebar is the sort of content Google would not want to rank in their search results. :D

They want to rank text which is perhaps factually correct (even if it intentionally omits the sort of stuff included above), and maybe even current and informed, but done in such a way where you do not feel you know the author the way you might think you do if you read a great novel. Or hard biased content which purports to support some view and narrative, but is ultimately all just an act, where everything which could be of substance is ultimately subsumed by sales & marketing.

The Market for Something to Believe In is Infinite

Each re-representation mash-up of content in the search results decontextualizes the in-depth experience & passion we crave. Each same "big box" content factory where a backed entity can withstand algorithmic volatility & buy up other publishers to carry learnings across to establish (and monetize) a consensus creates more of a bland sameness.

That barrier to entry & bland sameness is likely part of the reason the recent growth of Substack, which sort of acts just like a blog did 15 or 20 years ago - you go direct to the source without all the layers of intermediaries & dumbing down you get as a side effect of the scaled & polished publishing process.

Categories: 




pd

Friday Evening Update

Here's the latest map...

A Few Points
-As I mentioned tonight, MUN weather station is reporting 60+ mm as of 4:30 this afternoon. St. John's airport reporting 40 mm as of 2:30 pm. So totals could be close to 70 or 80 mm in some places by Saturday evening.
-St. John's and the Northern Avalon has been included in the Freezing Rain Warning for Northern sections and higher elevations overnight and early tomorrow.
-Gander is reporting 17 cm as of 4:30 pm... so 30-40 cm there is likely there.
-Grand Falls-Windsor and Bay of Exploits have been included in the Snowfall Warning.

Have a good weekend!

Ryan




pd

Spring Storm Update

Hey Folks,

Snow, Ice Pellets, Freezing Rain, Rain, Wind, High Seas & Pounding Surf... just another Spring Storm in Newfoundland and Labrador.

-This will be a Wednesday and into Thursday Storm for Newfoundland and a Thursday and into Friday Storm for Labrador.

-In Newfoundland... this is going to be a very messy system. Everyone South of the Northern Peninsula will see a Mix of everything. The Snow will start on Wednesday and then slowly transition to Ice Pellets, Freezing Rain later in the day and then to Rain by Thursday Morning. The change over will occur from South to North as the warm air pushes in.

-Along the South Coast Winds Driving in from the Southeast will mean high seas and pounding surf from Wednesday into Thursday.

-The West Coast of Newfoundland from Port aux Basques to Gros Morne is under a Wind Warning. East Winds will gust to 100 km/h along the Coast. Wind Warnings are in effect.

-The higher elevations in Gros Morne and then up through Parson's Pond, Hawke's Bay and up the Northern Peninsula to St. Anthony will likely stay cold enough for Snow and Blowing Snow.

-From Port au Choix to Englee and North through the Straits to Mary's Harbour... maybe even a tad bit further North... this is where the bulls eye could be for Snowfall. The forecast models are showing a decent 30+ cm in the latest runs. Maybe as much as 40 in some of the higher elevations. Winds will be really gusting as well. Winter Storm Watches are in effect.

-For most of Labrador this system will be a Thursday and Friday Storm... and will also be a Snow event.

-Cartwright and into Happy Valley Goose Bay and then up the Coast to Nain could top out at 25 cm by the time things are said and done on Friday night.

-Totals in Labrador City and Churchill Falls should be somewhere near 10-15 cm of Snow.

-I'll have a better time line for you tonight on Here & Now.

Ryan




pd

Wed Storm Update

Hey Folks,

Again, instead of typing away for hours... the best way to get the most information quickly is by posting a video.

A Few Other Points.

-St. John's the Northern Avalon could see that extended period of Freezing Rain from 4 or 5 pm to 7 or 8 pm. Just in time for the drive home... So Be Careful out there.
-Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor and Central Regions will likely see the Snow changing to Ice Pellets and Freezing Rain AFTER 9 pm tonight.
-Corner Brook could see some Freezing Rain late this afternoon and early this evening.

More details on Here & Now Tonight.

See you then.

Ryan




pd

An Update on All of Trump's Crimes and Alleged Crimes


 On August 27, 2024, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith announced a Superseding Indictment Against Donald Trump arising from Trump's misconduct on January 6, 2021. The January 6 Insurrection already led to over 1400 indictments, 950 convictions, and landed over 600 protestors in jail. The Superseding Indictment seeks to restate the crimes alleged against former President Trump in light of the Supreme Court's novel and unprecedented decision in United States v. Trump granting Presidents a new-fangled immunity for official acts. In sum, according to the outstanding website January 6: And Why  it Matters:

While the core of the case remains unchanged with the four original charges intact, the revised indictment refines the scope of the accusations. Notably, it excludes certain claims, such as those involving attempts to use the Justice Department to support Trump’s false election fraud allegations.

This case will not go away absent an order to Jack Smith that he desist from prosecution. That will not happen unless Donald Trump assumes the Presidency. On the other hand, Trump will likely move to dismiss the Superseding Indictment and the trial judge could well partially grant that motion. Whatever remains of this case will very likely go to trial well after election day on November 5, 2024, and even if a jury convicts Trump litigation will continue about the scope of Presidential immunity leading to further Supreme Court review.

But what about the other criminal cases against Donald Trump?

In one criminal action brought in  Florida federal court, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed an appeal with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals of the dismissal of all charges relating to Trump's alleged pilfering and mishandling of government documents including classified documents. Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Smith's appointment as Special Prosecutor did not comply with lawSpecial Counsel Smith just filed an appellate brief and Trump will file a response; but, this appeal will not conclude before the election and any decision will then face Supreme Court review. Consequently, the election could well decide this matter instead of a jury.

In another criminal action in New York state court, a jury Trump helped pick from his native state, unanimously found Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts alleged against him. Trump's guilt rested on evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. According to Politico:

On May 30, 2024, Trump became the first U.S. president to become a convicted felon. After a six-week trial . . . he was found guilty of falsifying business records in connection with a payoff to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claimed she had a sexual encounter with him. By buying Daniels’ silence, the payoff avoided a possible sex scandal in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney and “fixer” at the time, sent the $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels in October 2016, and then, while Trump was president, he reimbursed Cohen in a series of installments processed by Trump’s company. A unamimous 12-person jury found that Trump fraudulently disguised those installments as corporate legal expenses in violation of New York law.

In short, Trump defrauded voters in election 2016 by covering up his adulterous affair with a porn star. 

Currently, Judge Juan Merchan will rule on the impact of the Supreme Court's new-fangled immunity defense on September 16, 2024, and will sentence Trump for these felony convictions for these 34 felony convictions on September 18, 2024. Experts disagree on the likelihood of prison for these felonies.

Trump also faces felony charges in Georgia for alleged criminal efforts to change the outcome of election 2020 in Georgia. As stated at Politico:

Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election were perhaps most aggressive in the state of Georgia. Multiple recounts confirmed that Joe Biden narrowly prevailed in the race for the state’s 16 electoral votes. But Trump and his allies spread lies about voter fraud, urged Georgia officials and state lawmakers to reverse Biden’s win and plotted to send fake electors to Washington. On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and urged him to “find” 11,780 votes — the number needed to overcome Biden’s victory. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and 18 of his allies for these efforts, alleging a wide-ranging criminal enterprise.

Essentially Trump refused to accept the reality of his defeat in Georgia and allegedly resorted to criminal measures to change the outcome. Trump filed an appeal arguing that District Attorney Fani Willis should be removed due to a a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor. Willis' team filed an appeal of a dismissal order of six counts of the indictment. Trump also filed a motion asserting Presidential Immunity. Consequently, this criminal action is hopelessly stalled and will not be resolved for years.

The above summary of the criminal actions pending against Trump suggests the following:

1)    Somewhere American law went wrong. The people no long hold sufficient confidence in the fairness and impartiality of our system of justice. Otherwise, Trump supporters would not so readily fall prey to the Big Lie that all these criminal proceedings arise from a vast Democratic and deep state conspiracy to get Trump. No evidence supports this Big Lie. We need to rebuild confidence in the American criminal justice system.

2)    The rule of law in America failed to hold President Trump accountable for the wrongdoing in connection with contesting the election of 2020, and especially the Insurrection of January 6, 2020. Many others sit in jail. Still more pleaded guilty. There is little doubt Trump led those efforts. He did so openly on television, and in recorded phone calls. Yet, Trump suffered no adverse legal consequences for his role. This failure of the rule of law must lead to reform. Citizens must view criminal justice as fair and non-partisan. It also needs to apply swiftly, even to the rich and powerful.

3)    We need enhanced legal education in primary and secondary schools as well as at the college level. The judicial power in the US is highly fragmented. The split starts with 51 differing sovereigns each with a largely independent judicial power. Yet, many apparently believe that Joe Biden or the Democratic Party holds the ability to influence the independent judicial branch across jurisdictions. This, despite a complete lack of evidence of any improper influence. We should certainly reinforce the independence of the judicial power while simultaneously increasing transparency and accountability. At the same time citizens require more education regarding the structure and protections already in place to maintain a fair and non-partisan criminal justice system.

4)    A Trump victory at the polls will destroy the quest for a fair and non-partisan criminal justice for decades to come, as he has promised to eliminate independence in criminal enforcement at the federal level and to use the system to exact retribution and revenge upon his political opponents





pd

Stirling PDF

Stirling PDF




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Stirling PDF




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Filestube Malware Spam - You have been sent a file (Filename: Cppgenius_N85.pdf)

You have been sent a MALICIOUS file!




pd

Changelog Malware Spam - Re: Changelog 2011 update

No, you did not request a changelog and yes you will get malware if you click on the link!




pd

Banking Phishing Scam - ABSA Global business customers certificate update

Malware phishing scammers targeting ABSA customers with the ZBot Trojan.




pd

Yahoo! Phishing Scam - ACCOUNT UPDATE

A very lame attempt at defrauding Yahoo! users.




pd

Live Online Priority Support [Update]

With the launch of Google Talk's new Chatback feature earlier this year and due to certain unresolved issues with ChatStat, we decided to switch back to Google Talk for our Live Online Priority Support Service.




pd

SHPAMEE Project Updated

The SHPAMEE Project has been updated with new examples. For those who haven't noticed yet, we have a separate feed for updates to this project: http://feeds.feedburner.com/shpamee




pd

Important Update on FYI Inheritance Fund Scam

Important information about this scammer came to light during our investigation. We have published a reply from the scammer in the comments section of the example to illustrate the mechanics of this specific scam.





pd

LAPD Conducting Use Of Force Investigation After Pelicans’ Jaxson Hayes Arrest

Police reportedly applied pressure to his neck.




pd

Fairmont Southampton Renovations Update

Westend Properties shared an update on the ongoing renovations at the Fairmont Southampton. A spokesperson said, “Work at the site is proceeding as planned – for instance, demolition within the building has begun in anticipation of the extensive overhaul of the hotel interior. The initial shipments of containers of construction materials and equipment have arrived […]




pd

Update On 2024 Cahow Breeding Season

The Nonsuch Expeditions website provided an update on the 2024 breeding season of the critically endangered Cahow, saying that it has “entered what is arguably it’s most exciting phase, with the return of the breeding pairs.” Senior Terrestrial Conservation Officer Jeremy Madeiros said, “The 2024 breeding season of the Bermuda petrel or Cahow, which is critically endangered, […]




pd

Gencom Updates On Fairmont Renovation Work

Westend Properties and its managing partner, Gencom, provided an update on the “preliminary work being carried out at the Fairmont Southampton property in preparation for the extensive renovations planned for the hotel and Beach Club.” A spokesperson said, “These early phases of demolition and site preparation are crucial to enabling the complete overhaul of the […]




pd

Minister Updates On BHC Housing Initiatives

“The Government through the BHC are making steady progress and we intend to see the completion of all 105 of these housing projects as quickly as possible,” Minister of Public Works David Burch said in the House of Assembly today [May 31] as he provided an update on housing initiatives. The Minister’s full statement follows […]




pd

Minister Burch Updates On Affordable Housing

Speaking in the House of Assembly today [Sept 27], Minister of Public Works Lt/Col David Burch provided an update on “one of the most pressing challenges we as a country face – the shortage of affordable housing.” The Minister’s full statement follows below: Mr. Speaker, I rise to report on one of the most pressing challenges […]




pd

Clarien Bank Unveils ESG Strategy Updates

Clarien Bank announced the latest updates in its commitment to Environmental, Social, and Governance [ESG] considerations, a field they said is “quickly becoming indispensable for businesses worldwide, including those in the banking sector.” A spokesperson said, “Recognising that adopting robust ESG practices is no longer a matter of choice but a necessity, Clarien Bank has decisively […]




pd

Hospital Provides Update On Oncology Services

[Updated] The Bermuda Hospitals Board said they are “close to bringing two new oncologists to Bermuda.” A spokesperson said, “BHB is close to bringing two new oncologists to Bermuda. The new oncologists are in the final stages of recruitment having completed their local registration with the Bermuda Medical Council and we are in the process of […]




pd

Live Video & Updates: 2024 Throne Speech

[Updating] The Convening of Parliament is taking place this morning [Nov 8], with Governor Rena Lalgie delivering the 2024 Throne Speech, which outlines the Government’s Legislative Agenda for the year ahead. The proceedings are set to get underway later this morning and we will provide what coverage we are able to while it is live, […]




pd

Police Update On Three Vehicle Collision

The police provided an update following a three vehicle collision in Warwick last week. A police spokesperson said, “A Government van driver involved in a collision with two cars on Middle Road, near the junction with Longford Road in Warwick around 3pm Tuesday, 9th July 2024, was arrested on suspicion of impaired driving and later […]




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Honor Magic7 RSR Porsche Design может получить 6,8" изогнутый OLED, Snapdragon 8 Elite, 50 МП камеру и 100 Вт зарядку

Honor готовится выпустить новую модель смартфона Magic7 RSR Porsche Design, которая снова будет привлекать внимание своим дизайном, напоминающим стиль автомобилей Porsche.