http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/
I made this! Please see the slides, they are more "up to date" than the respective papers.
Thank you for making that beautiful site.
How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#102I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javas…
I grew up in Utah. Living there taught me at least one thing that helps me deal with certain types of more fanatical or difficult people I meet and deal with on a near daily basis: Everyone wants to be part of a secret society or have some esoteric knowledge that makes them feel set-apart from the norm. Unfortunately, this is incredibly easy to exploit and I've watched nearly every member of my family get taken in by…
Jesus!
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spoiler: It's Mint in your iced coffee. I'm eager to try it now.
Mint facts! The reason people say to put toothpaste on a bruise or a hickey is that toothpaste is traditionally flavored with mint. It's really the peppermint oil they're after, which is a strong vasodilator. For this same reason, peppermint oil is, at high doses, an abortificant.
TIL I learned a new word ... it sounds kinda cute..
I'm sure there's a pretencious band name in there somewhere :)
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#104What actually happens when you hand over your credit card details?
Do you get an eBook or something?
The article doesn't actually say.
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#105This is the same as the 'Nigerian 419' fraud concept. They fill the email with spelling and grammar mistakes and in doing so, they filter out the marginally intelligent, resulting in a pre-filter to attract the most gullible. The crappy, hand drawn ads, the dire videos, and the bad production have the same effect. The punter needs to be a gullible fool, since a fool and his money are soon parted.
I heard it different: all that stuff is intended to make the mark feel superior and less likely to suspect that they're being scammed. Makes a lot more sense to me.
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#106Well... I excepted the article to go deeper. Investigate who actually pays these ads,,where does the money go, why are they allowed to basically lie in the ads.
Instead the author just clicked on the ads and watched the videos. Well, I can do that too.
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#107I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javas…
Amazing. People click on stuff that is in comments. Genius.
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#108This is the same as the 'Nigerian 419' fraud concept. They fill the email with spelling and grammar mistakes and in doing so, they filter out the marginally intelligent, resulting in a pre-filter to attract the most gullible. The crappy, hand drawn ads, the dire videos, and the bad production have the same effect. The punter needs to be a gullible fool, since a fool and his money are soon parted.
I heard it different: all that stuff is intended to make the mark feel superior and less likely to suspect that they're being scammed. Makes a lot more sense to me.
That's pretty much the same thing.
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's truly amazing the amount of mental energy people will apparently spend dwelling on advertising, even worrying that if they accidentally click it their life could be forfeit to a scam, but yet they won't spend the five minutes it would take to simply install Adblock.
I use flashblock instead of adblock. Advertising pays for much of the internet, so I feel it's reasonable to let some of it through. Flashblock kills the worst offenders, and given I also run noscript (which isn't for everyone), the rest of the bad ones are taken care of as well. Simple images are allowed through, and these kinds of ads aren't particularly distracting. In the rare case there is a bad animated .gif, h…
Adblock has a safelist for non-annoying ads. They understand this problem and they have it enabled by default. I keep it on.
Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Advertising wasn't always the norm, and I would personally love to return to the days where people published because they actually had something to say. How many search results these days are from those extremely valuable sites with one person geeking out on everything they know about a topic, versus the sheer number of content farms regurgitating the same simplistic crap just to get page views and ultimately waste y…
Advertising pays for a lot of very legitimate content-focused blogs/news organizations as well. People can't afford to pay for every single blog or bit of news they read and authors can't do anything substantial or meaningful without making it a job(and needing money to do it).
I'm not sure that "can't afford" is the right conclusion. The amount of money a site makes off each person by showing ads is miniscule, so almost anyone could afford to pay at least as much for the content as the adverts make.
I think it's more likely that the mental overhead of choosing whether to pay for something (which is roughly constant, even for small amounts of money) adds enough friction to the process that charging small amounts never works.