The change in the guidelines on original reporting also comes weeks after China replaced its chief internet regulator. Xu Lin, a former Shanghai propaganda chief who worked briefly with Xi during his half-year stint as Shanghai party boss in 2007, succeeded Lu Wei in June as head of the cyberspace administration.
This summer, Facebook could be seen grappling with its ambiguous position as both a co-edited family photo album and an outlet for information. It made two adjustments to the algorithm governing its News Feed, lurching bathetically between the local and the global. The first change came in late June, announced in an official blog post. “FRIENDS AND FAMILY COME FIRST,” a caps-locked subheading assured us; personal stories would be prioritized. But then, on August 11th, another blog entry appeared, this time explaining that “informative” posts would receive higher billing. The news was back, although Facebook intended to maintain the intimate tone. The News Feed, the company explained, would be improved through “global crowd-sourced surveys of tens of thousands of people per day.” To the layperson, this is one of Big Data’s stranger qualities—that the portrait of an individual emerges from the crunched crowd. And when the main criterion for relevance is general interest, the individual is left exposed to the two extremes of popularity—spectacular events and viral trivia. Just because most people like cat videos and most people care about terrorist attacks, it does not follow that most people want to experience them side by side.
"This combines two of my pet peeves," Robert Kosara, a research scientist with Tableau Software in Seattle, says. "Maps being used in weird ways, and rankings."
Genesys on Monday introduced G-Nine. "Think of G-Nine as the Genesys innovation framework that guides many aspects of our business -- product strategy being one of those," said Genesys CMO Merijn te Booij. "Within the G-Nine innovation framework, we have defined our themes related to technology and consumer trends that we'll focus on in the next two years."
Internet news Cortana can now help you score deals through Microsoft Edge By Parker Wilhelm Microsoft augments the Edge browser with another Cortana feature to save you a few bucks shopping. A fitting name for your website – finding the perfect domain name By Sponsored TechRadar Pro Finding the perfect name for your business just got much easier. Ethical hackers show that Windows 10 isn’t immune to WannaCry By Darren Allan Here’s why a future WannaCry-style assault could well hit even Microsoft’s most secure operating system. Apple cuts the cost for 2TB of iCloud storage in half By Michelle Fitzsimmons Flying under the radar of all the new hardware at WWDC 2017 is an iCloud price change. Samsung is about to launch a mesh Wi-Fi system of its own By Parker Wilhelm For those looking for a new home project, Samsung has announced pricing and release date for its new Wi-Fi hub. Google is adding an ad blocker to Chrome in 2018 By Michelle Fitzsimmons Tired of annoying ads? Starting next year, Google will remove all ads from sites that don't fall in line. Gmail gets new powers to fight phishing, ransomware and more By Darren Allan TechRadar Pro Google’s webmail service can now block malicious emails with an incredibly high accuracy. How to hide your identity from snooping ISP's By Sponsored TechRadar Pro ISP's have started tracking user data – but you can stop them if you encrypt your online activity. Twitter just changed the way you can receive Direct Messages By Michelle Fitzsimmons Want greater control over your DMs? Twitter introduces Accept and Delete for missives from users you don't follow. Google makes it easier to find your own stuff from the search box By David Nield In a significant update to its search engine, Google now helps you search your own content as well as the web. More news
“Current-affairs news” is a broad term in China and encompasses all news and commentary related to politics, economics, military, foreign affairs and social issues, according to the draft version of China’s online information law. The amended draft of the regulation is currently seeking public feedback on the CAC’s official website.
Facebook on Wednesday told its F8 conference audience about two new cutting-edge projects that could change the way humans engage with devices. Over the next two years, the company will work on a new technology that will allow anyone to type around 100 words per minute -- not with fingers, but using a process that would decode neural activity devoted to speech. What Facebook envisions is a technology that would resemble a neural network.
All of the major video game developers, publishers and console hardware makers, as well as many retail buyers and the gaming press, will descend on Los Angeles for E3 2017 next week. The annual event -- a showcase for computer, video and mobile games and related products -- will kick off officially on Tuesday and run through Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
A phishing scam that surfaced earlier this week used Google Docs in an attack against at least 1 million Gmail users. However, that amounted to fewer than 0.1 percent of Gmail users were affected, according to the company. Google last year put the number of active monthly Gmail users at more than 1 billion. Google shut down the phishing scam within an hour, it said.
The agency instructed the operators of mobile and online news services to dismantle “current-affairs news” operations on Friday, after earlier calling a halt to such activity at Tencent, according to people familiar with the situation. Like its peers, Asia’s largest internet company had developed a news operation and grown its team. Henceforth, they and other services can only carry reports provided by government-controlled print or online media, the people said, asking not to be identified because the issue is politically sensitive.
In the biggest shake-up to provisioning since it launched fibre services in 2010, Zen Internet is offering a super-easy, self-install option across all its FTTC products. This gives partners and their customers the freedom to install fibre broadband on their own timescale, removing many unnecessary headaches and delays.
"Fake news" is the buzzword of 2017. Barely a day goes by without a headline about president Donald Trump lambasting media "bias", or the spread of "alternative facts". May 30, 2017 in Internet 10 5
Driving on open country roads can lull you into a false sense of security — with so few cars around, it's easy to stop paying close attention to the road. Luckily for this driver, that lapse didn't cost them.
Google Translate recognised the word as Samoan, though could offer no English translation. A BBC reader has written in to debunk any suggestion that the president is a secret Samoan speaker. Among many other reasons for this, the language does not even have a letter C.
Audioburst announced that it has secured series A funding of $6.7 million for its mission of automating the indexing, organization, and discovery of audio content. The company’s platform promises real-time analysis of an audio clip, which allows fast and easy searching of content. The metadata it applies to each audio clip guides the creation of audio streams personalized to a listener’s preferences and patterns. Continue Reading →
Comedian John Oliver, incensed over proposed changes to unravel Net neutrality protections for consumers, unleashed a torrent of criticism against the FCC and urged viewers to register their protest online. The response led to a digital meltdown on the agency's site Sunday night. Oliver targeted a proposal that would loosen Net neutrality regulations.
Arms, the highly anticipated fighting game for Nintendo's Switch, will be available next Friday, and based on the early reviews, the company just may have found the magic bullet. Nintendo's Switch console, launched earlier this year, has been something of a surprise success. Prior to its launch, it seemed like a risky play for the company, which has been bobbing and weaving in recent years.
At least 40% of Australian households now have at least one home "Internet of Things" device. These are fridges, window blinds, locks and other devices that are connected to the internet.
Video footage of a senseless murder in Cleveland, posted after the fact on Facebook Live, has attracted national attention to the role of the platform in criminals' minds. Authorities Tuesday morning announced that Steve Stephens -- the 37-year-old suspect wanted for the cold-blooded shooting of Robert Godwin Sr. -- shot himself to death after a short pursuit by Pennsylvania State Police.
Most people who spend time on the Internet will likely have asked themselves whether things are really getting worse, or whether it just feels that way. Constant online exposure to the world’s troubles no doubt encourages an end-of-days mood, but the consequences of using social media as a news channel are more complex than your run-of-the-mill existential dread. To blame “monotony,” a blasé description in the context of “people killing each other,” is to miss that the defining feature of social media is a mismatch of scale. The feed is where we go both to be informed about the world and to escape its violence. It is designed to accommodate the personal and the planetary, political awareness and head-in-the-sand retreat. These opposite poles of life are dressed in identical trappings, and we’re invited to react to them with a single, limited set of coded responses. The same thumb goes up when friends post photos of their Canadian camping trip and when they check in safe after an attack in Brussels or Nice or New York or Berlin. As a result, the social-media news cycle demands of us a bifocal gaze, one that comes with a particular emotional toll.
Appeal following fatal traffic incident on the M3 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We are appealing for witnesses following a fatal collision on the M3 yesterday morning (Monday 5 June). Fatal road traffic collision in Odiham 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We’re appealing for information following a fatal road traffic collision in Odiham. Bravery and dedication celebrated at our Chief Constable's Awards 2 Jun 2017 - General news From a dramatic rooftop rescue, to the brave capture of a knife-wielding robber - there was plenty to celebrate at the Chief Constable's Awards. Summer drink and drug drive operation 1 Jun 2017 - General news Too many people are still taking the risk to drink and drug drive and that is simply unacceptable – Superintendent Simon Dodds. Policing plan for a safe Isle of Wight Festival 2017 7 Jun 2017 - General news A dedicated policing plan is in place to ensure residents and visitors stay safe on the Isle of Wight during this year’s Festival season. Man given life sentence for assaulting officers 26 May 2017 - General news When police officers put on their uniforms, they don’t expect to end their shift lying in a hospital bed.
As the government extends its BDUK Super Connected Cities Scheme to March 2016, Zen Internet reaffirms its support as an approved supplier. The scheme, which covers 22 cities across the UK, provides vouchers to cover the set-up and hardware costs for new super-fast broadband installations, giving small businesses the opportunity to reap the benefits of high-speed connectivity, and embrace a new generation of online services. Designed to help local businesses develop, the scheme has received an additional £40 million of funding on top of the original £140 million, and will be extended to cover more cities from April 2015.
"While we cannot create this framework alone, it is for government, not private companies, to protect the security of people and ensure the fairness of the rules by which people and businesses abide," the document reads. "Nor do we agree that the risks of such an approach outweigh the potential benefits."
For all his criticisms, America's most celebrated architect wasn’t intrinsically opposed to cities. Instead, he urged us to examine what they had become and recognize that none of their failures were inevitable.
Facebook last week signed agreements with several content firms -- among them Vox, Buzzfeed, ATTN and Group Nine Media, according to reports. The deals are widely viewed as part of the company's strategy to attract millennials to its live-streaming Web content. Facebook will offer multi-tiered programming, according to a report that cited sources familiar with the plans.
Advertising helps fund our journalism and keep it truly independent. It helps to build our international editorial team, from war correspondents to investigative reporters, commentators to critics.
The public got a rare view into how Facebook tries to keep offensive and dangerous content offline in a report published Sunday. Leaked confidential documents exposed the secret rules by which Facebook polices postings on issues such as violence, hate speech, terrorism, pornography, racism and self-harm, as well as such subjects as sports fixing and cannibalism.
Close We've noticed that you are using an ad blocker. Advertising helps fund our journalism and keep it truly independent. It helps to build our international editorial team, from war correspondents to investigative reporters, commentators to critics. Click here to view instructions on how to disable your ad blocker, and help us to keep providing you with free-thinking journalism - for free. Thank you for your support. How to disable your ad blocker for independent.co.uk Adblock / Adblock Plus Click the Adblock/Adblock Plus icon, which is to the right of your address bar. On Adblock click "Don't run on pages on this domain". On Adblock Plus click "Enabled on this site" to disable ad blocking for the current website you are on. If you are in Firefox click "disable on independent.co.uk". Firefox Tracking Protection If you are Private Browsing in Firefox, "Tracking Protection" may cause the adblock notice to show. It can be temporarily disabled by clicking the "shield" icon in the address bar. Ghostery Click the Ghostery icon. In versions before 6.0 click "whitelist site". In version 6.0 click "trust site" or add independent.co.uk to your Trusted Site list. In versions before 6.0 you will see the message "Site is whitelisted". Click "reload the page to see your changes". uBlock Click the uBlock icon. Then click the big power button to whitelist the current web site, and its state will be remembered next time you visit the web site. Then reload the page. Close Thank you for supporting independent.co.uk Continue to our site
This vignette gets its bathetic comedy from the collision of two scales: the immensity of war and its mass casualties hitting against private comforts. Proust mercilessly shows how thinking small can trump thinking big, how a buttery morsel can dwarf life’s grandest horrors. Pope writes in his mock-guide for bad poets that their eyes “should be like unto the wrong end of a perspective glass, by which all the objects of nature are lessened.” Alas, Madame Verdurin’s sinking feelings are not hers alone, since who among us isn’t implicated in this moment of tactless pleasure? It is part of our hourly adventures in the News Feed, with its blithe slide show of photogenic pastries and bloodied refugees. This digital bathos, the deflating consequence of an amoral algorithm, no doubt contributes to our general sense of unease about the social-media project. For in these continual descents from the tragic to the whimsical, we are troubled both by the sufferings of others and by our own placid, treacherous consolations.
As mundanity mingles with tragedy, we confront the inevitable Popian letdown: Do we care enough? Do we have the right to our local contentment? Our joys can seem at once shamefully full and depressingly empty. I have online friends on both sides of the Atlantic, and, looking down my News Feed, I’ve often felt the heedlessness of one continent in the face of the other’s torments.
Ian McEwan’s novel “Saturday,” from 2005, dramatizes the experience of the twenty-four-hour news cycle before the arrival of social media. In that post-9/11 period of increased news saturation, there was still the sense that the anxieties provoked by being informed could be separated from the humbler pleasures of everyday experience. In the novel, a teen-ager named Theo, worn down with grim tidings, frames the problem of modern optimism in terms of scale. “When we go on about big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible,” he says. “But when I think small, closer in—you know, a girl I’ve just met, or this song we’re going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto—think small.”
Reuters is the news and media division of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Learn more about Thomson Reuters products:
https://newsklic.com
Featured General news Witness appeals Missing people Your local area Campaigns Collections Get updates via RSS feed Appeal following fatal traffic incident on the M3 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We are appealing for witnesses following a fatal collision on the M3 yesterday morning (Monday 5 June). Fatal road traffic collision in Odiham 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We’re appealing for information following a fatal road traffic collision in Odiham. Bravery and dedication celebrated at our Chief Constable's Awards 2 Jun 2017 - General news From a dramatic rooftop rescue, to the brave capture of a knife-wielding robber - there was plenty to celebrate at the Chief Constable's Awards. Summer drink and drug drive operation 1 Jun 2017 - General news Too many people are still taking the risk to drink and drug drive and that is simply unacceptable – Superintendent Simon Dodds. Policing plan for a safe Isle of Wight Festival 2017 7 Jun 2017 - General news A dedicated policing plan is in place to ensure residents and visitors stay safe on the Isle of Wight during this year’s Festival season. Man given life sentence for assaulting officers 26 May 2017 - General news When police officers put on their uniforms, they don’t expect to end their shift lying in a hospital bed. See more news
This summer, Facebook could be seen grappling with its ambiguous position as both a co-edited family photo album and an outlet for information. It made two adjustments to the algorithm governing its News Feed, lurching bathetically between the local and the global. The first change came in late June, announced in an official blog post. “FRIENDS AND FAMILY COME FIRST,” a caps-locked subheading assured us; personal stories would be prioritized. But then, on August 11th, another blog entry appeared, this time explaining that “informative” posts would receive higher billing. The news was back, although Facebook intended to maintain the intimate tone. The News Feed, the company explained, would be improved through “global crowd-sourced surveys of tens of thousands of people per day.” To the layperson, this is one of Big Data’s stranger qualities—that the portrait of an individual emerges from the crunched crowd. And when the main criterion for relevance is general interest, the individual is left exposed to the two extremes of popularity—spectacular events and viral trivia. Just because most people like cat videos and most people care about terrorist attacks, it does not follow that most people want to experience them side by side.
"This combines two of my pet peeves," Robert Kosara, a research scientist with Tableau Software in Seattle, says. "Maps being used in weird ways, and rankings."
Genesys on Monday introduced G-Nine. "Think of G-Nine as the Genesys innovation framework that guides many aspects of our business -- product strategy being one of those," said Genesys CMO Merijn te Booij. "Within the G-Nine innovation framework, we have defined our themes related to technology and consumer trends that we'll focus on in the next two years."
Internet news Cortana can now help you score deals through Microsoft Edge By Parker Wilhelm Microsoft augments the Edge browser with another Cortana feature to save you a few bucks shopping. A fitting name for your website – finding the perfect domain name By Sponsored TechRadar Pro Finding the perfect name for your business just got much easier. Ethical hackers show that Windows 10 isn’t immune to WannaCry By Darren Allan Here’s why a future WannaCry-style assault could well hit even Microsoft’s most secure operating system. Apple cuts the cost for 2TB of iCloud storage in half By Michelle Fitzsimmons Flying under the radar of all the new hardware at WWDC 2017 is an iCloud price change. Samsung is about to launch a mesh Wi-Fi system of its own By Parker Wilhelm For those looking for a new home project, Samsung has announced pricing and release date for its new Wi-Fi hub. Google is adding an ad blocker to Chrome in 2018 By Michelle Fitzsimmons Tired of annoying ads? Starting next year, Google will remove all ads from sites that don't fall in line. Gmail gets new powers to fight phishing, ransomware and more By Darren Allan TechRadar Pro Google’s webmail service can now block malicious emails with an incredibly high accuracy. How to hide your identity from snooping ISP's By Sponsored TechRadar Pro ISP's have started tracking user data – but you can stop them if you encrypt your online activity. Twitter just changed the way you can receive Direct Messages By Michelle Fitzsimmons Want greater control over your DMs? Twitter introduces Accept and Delete for missives from users you don't follow. Google makes it easier to find your own stuff from the search box By David Nield In a significant update to its search engine, Google now helps you search your own content as well as the web. More news
“Current-affairs news” is a broad term in China and encompasses all news and commentary related to politics, economics, military, foreign affairs and social issues, according to the draft version of China’s online information law. The amended draft of the regulation is currently seeking public feedback on the CAC’s official website.
Facebook on Wednesday told its F8 conference audience about two new cutting-edge projects that could change the way humans engage with devices. Over the next two years, the company will work on a new technology that will allow anyone to type around 100 words per minute -- not with fingers, but using a process that would decode neural activity devoted to speech. What Facebook envisions is a technology that would resemble a neural network.
All of the major video game developers, publishers and console hardware makers, as well as many retail buyers and the gaming press, will descend on Los Angeles for E3 2017 next week. The annual event -- a showcase for computer, video and mobile games and related products -- will kick off officially on Tuesday and run through Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
A phishing scam that surfaced earlier this week used Google Docs in an attack against at least 1 million Gmail users. However, that amounted to fewer than 0.1 percent of Gmail users were affected, according to the company. Google last year put the number of active monthly Gmail users at more than 1 billion. Google shut down the phishing scam within an hour, it said.
The agency instructed the operators of mobile and online news services to dismantle “current-affairs news” operations on Friday, after earlier calling a halt to such activity at Tencent, according to people familiar with the situation. Like its peers, Asia’s largest internet company had developed a news operation and grown its team. Henceforth, they and other services can only carry reports provided by government-controlled print or online media, the people said, asking not to be identified because the issue is politically sensitive.
In the biggest shake-up to provisioning since it launched fibre services in 2010, Zen Internet is offering a super-easy, self-install option across all its FTTC products. This gives partners and their customers the freedom to install fibre broadband on their own timescale, removing many unnecessary headaches and delays.
"Fake news" is the buzzword of 2017. Barely a day goes by without a headline about president Donald Trump lambasting media "bias", or the spread of "alternative facts". May 30, 2017 in Internet 10 5
Driving on open country roads can lull you into a false sense of security — with so few cars around, it's easy to stop paying close attention to the road. Luckily for this driver, that lapse didn't cost them.
Google Translate recognised the word as Samoan, though could offer no English translation. A BBC reader has written in to debunk any suggestion that the president is a secret Samoan speaker. Among many other reasons for this, the language does not even have a letter C.
Audioburst announced that it has secured series A funding of $6.7 million for its mission of automating the indexing, organization, and discovery of audio content. The company’s platform promises real-time analysis of an audio clip, which allows fast and easy searching of content. The metadata it applies to each audio clip guides the creation of audio streams personalized to a listener’s preferences and patterns. Continue Reading →
Comedian John Oliver, incensed over proposed changes to unravel Net neutrality protections for consumers, unleashed a torrent of criticism against the FCC and urged viewers to register their protest online. The response led to a digital meltdown on the agency's site Sunday night. Oliver targeted a proposal that would loosen Net neutrality regulations.
Arms, the highly anticipated fighting game for Nintendo's Switch, will be available next Friday, and based on the early reviews, the company just may have found the magic bullet. Nintendo's Switch console, launched earlier this year, has been something of a surprise success. Prior to its launch, it seemed like a risky play for the company, which has been bobbing and weaving in recent years.
At least 40% of Australian households now have at least one home "Internet of Things" device. These are fridges, window blinds, locks and other devices that are connected to the internet.
Video footage of a senseless murder in Cleveland, posted after the fact on Facebook Live, has attracted national attention to the role of the platform in criminals' minds. Authorities Tuesday morning announced that Steve Stephens -- the 37-year-old suspect wanted for the cold-blooded shooting of Robert Godwin Sr. -- shot himself to death after a short pursuit by Pennsylvania State Police.
Most people who spend time on the Internet will likely have asked themselves whether things are really getting worse, or whether it just feels that way. Constant online exposure to the world’s troubles no doubt encourages an end-of-days mood, but the consequences of using social media as a news channel are more complex than your run-of-the-mill existential dread. To blame “monotony,” a blasé description in the context of “people killing each other,” is to miss that the defining feature of social media is a mismatch of scale. The feed is where we go both to be informed about the world and to escape its violence. It is designed to accommodate the personal and the planetary, political awareness and head-in-the-sand retreat. These opposite poles of life are dressed in identical trappings, and we’re invited to react to them with a single, limited set of coded responses. The same thumb goes up when friends post photos of their Canadian camping trip and when they check in safe after an attack in Brussels or Nice or New York or Berlin. As a result, the social-media news cycle demands of us a bifocal gaze, one that comes with a particular emotional toll.
Appeal following fatal traffic incident on the M3 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We are appealing for witnesses following a fatal collision on the M3 yesterday morning (Monday 5 June). Fatal road traffic collision in Odiham 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We’re appealing for information following a fatal road traffic collision in Odiham. Bravery and dedication celebrated at our Chief Constable's Awards 2 Jun 2017 - General news From a dramatic rooftop rescue, to the brave capture of a knife-wielding robber - there was plenty to celebrate at the Chief Constable's Awards. Summer drink and drug drive operation 1 Jun 2017 - General news Too many people are still taking the risk to drink and drug drive and that is simply unacceptable – Superintendent Simon Dodds. Policing plan for a safe Isle of Wight Festival 2017 7 Jun 2017 - General news A dedicated policing plan is in place to ensure residents and visitors stay safe on the Isle of Wight during this year’s Festival season. Man given life sentence for assaulting officers 26 May 2017 - General news When police officers put on their uniforms, they don’t expect to end their shift lying in a hospital bed.
As the government extends its BDUK Super Connected Cities Scheme to March 2016, Zen Internet reaffirms its support as an approved supplier. The scheme, which covers 22 cities across the UK, provides vouchers to cover the set-up and hardware costs for new super-fast broadband installations, giving small businesses the opportunity to reap the benefits of high-speed connectivity, and embrace a new generation of online services. Designed to help local businesses develop, the scheme has received an additional £40 million of funding on top of the original £140 million, and will be extended to cover more cities from April 2015.
"While we cannot create this framework alone, it is for government, not private companies, to protect the security of people and ensure the fairness of the rules by which people and businesses abide," the document reads. "Nor do we agree that the risks of such an approach outweigh the potential benefits."
For all his criticisms, America's most celebrated architect wasn’t intrinsically opposed to cities. Instead, he urged us to examine what they had become and recognize that none of their failures were inevitable.
Facebook last week signed agreements with several content firms -- among them Vox, Buzzfeed, ATTN and Group Nine Media, according to reports. The deals are widely viewed as part of the company's strategy to attract millennials to its live-streaming Web content. Facebook will offer multi-tiered programming, according to a report that cited sources familiar with the plans.
Advertising helps fund our journalism and keep it truly independent. It helps to build our international editorial team, from war correspondents to investigative reporters, commentators to critics.
The public got a rare view into how Facebook tries to keep offensive and dangerous content offline in a report published Sunday. Leaked confidential documents exposed the secret rules by which Facebook polices postings on issues such as violence, hate speech, terrorism, pornography, racism and self-harm, as well as such subjects as sports fixing and cannibalism.
Close We've noticed that you are using an ad blocker. Advertising helps fund our journalism and keep it truly independent. It helps to build our international editorial team, from war correspondents to investigative reporters, commentators to critics. Click here to view instructions on how to disable your ad blocker, and help us to keep providing you with free-thinking journalism - for free. Thank you for your support. How to disable your ad blocker for independent.co.uk Adblock / Adblock Plus Click the Adblock/Adblock Plus icon, which is to the right of your address bar. On Adblock click "Don't run on pages on this domain". On Adblock Plus click "Enabled on this site" to disable ad blocking for the current website you are on. If you are in Firefox click "disable on independent.co.uk". Firefox Tracking Protection If you are Private Browsing in Firefox, "Tracking Protection" may cause the adblock notice to show. It can be temporarily disabled by clicking the "shield" icon in the address bar. Ghostery Click the Ghostery icon. In versions before 6.0 click "whitelist site". In version 6.0 click "trust site" or add independent.co.uk to your Trusted Site list. In versions before 6.0 you will see the message "Site is whitelisted". Click "reload the page to see your changes". uBlock Click the uBlock icon. Then click the big power button to whitelist the current web site, and its state will be remembered next time you visit the web site. Then reload the page. Close Thank you for supporting independent.co.uk Continue to our site
This vignette gets its bathetic comedy from the collision of two scales: the immensity of war and its mass casualties hitting against private comforts. Proust mercilessly shows how thinking small can trump thinking big, how a buttery morsel can dwarf life’s grandest horrors. Pope writes in his mock-guide for bad poets that their eyes “should be like unto the wrong end of a perspective glass, by which all the objects of nature are lessened.” Alas, Madame Verdurin’s sinking feelings are not hers alone, since who among us isn’t implicated in this moment of tactless pleasure? It is part of our hourly adventures in the News Feed, with its blithe slide show of photogenic pastries and bloodied refugees. This digital bathos, the deflating consequence of an amoral algorithm, no doubt contributes to our general sense of unease about the social-media project. For in these continual descents from the tragic to the whimsical, we are troubled both by the sufferings of others and by our own placid, treacherous consolations.
As mundanity mingles with tragedy, we confront the inevitable Popian letdown: Do we care enough? Do we have the right to our local contentment? Our joys can seem at once shamefully full and depressingly empty. I have online friends on both sides of the Atlantic, and, looking down my News Feed, I’ve often felt the heedlessness of one continent in the face of the other’s torments.
Ian McEwan’s novel “Saturday,” from 2005, dramatizes the experience of the twenty-four-hour news cycle before the arrival of social media. In that post-9/11 period of increased news saturation, there was still the sense that the anxieties provoked by being informed could be separated from the humbler pleasures of everyday experience. In the novel, a teen-ager named Theo, worn down with grim tidings, frames the problem of modern optimism in terms of scale. “When we go on about big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible,” he says. “But when I think small, closer in—you know, a girl I’ve just met, or this song we’re going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto—think small.”
Reuters is the news and media division of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Learn more about Thomson Reuters products:
https://newsklic.com
Featured General news Witness appeals Missing people Your local area Campaigns Collections Get updates via RSS feed Appeal following fatal traffic incident on the M3 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We are appealing for witnesses following a fatal collision on the M3 yesterday morning (Monday 5 June). Fatal road traffic collision in Odiham 6 Jun 2017 - Witness appeal We’re appealing for information following a fatal road traffic collision in Odiham. Bravery and dedication celebrated at our Chief Constable's Awards 2 Jun 2017 - General news From a dramatic rooftop rescue, to the brave capture of a knife-wielding robber - there was plenty to celebrate at the Chief Constable's Awards. Summer drink and drug drive operation 1 Jun 2017 - General news Too many people are still taking the risk to drink and drug drive and that is simply unacceptable – Superintendent Simon Dodds. Policing plan for a safe Isle of Wight Festival 2017 7 Jun 2017 - General news A dedicated policing plan is in place to ensure residents and visitors stay safe on the Isle of Wight during this year’s Festival season. Man given life sentence for assaulting officers 26 May 2017 - General news When police officers put on their uniforms, they don’t expect to end their shift lying in a hospital bed. See more news
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