There used to be an interesting debate on whether it is better to leave the notification on or block all notifications—in terms of reducing screen time and improving productivity. Two lovely read to begin the new semester: Nature has the stories: Science must protect thinking time in a world of instant communication July 2024. Link. Productivity is the eternal goal of corporate and academia. Apps—all kinds of apps—has been trying to increase connectivity. But they are not the same. ...

Here are paragraphs in Subprime Attention Crisis that contains some key statistics—how to make buttloads of money on the internet to sustain a business. The answer is, resoundingly, advertising: From the biggest technology giants to the smallest startups, advertising remains the critical economic engine underwriting many of the core services that we depend on every day. In 2017, advertising constituted 87 percent of Google’s total revenue and 98 percent of Facebook’s total revenue. ...

Here’s an episode of Game Changer - the game theory podcast that shares enthusiasm and passion for game theory and its applications. Link to the podcast How auctions conquered the internet. In this episode Michael Ostrovsky walks us through the history of online advertising auctions, from their modest beginnings at Yahoo and other internet pioneers to the lucrative business models many internet giants like Google and Amazon rely on today. Even though online ad auctions are a story of incredible success Michael also gives some insights into which flaws existed in its early days and how these were overcome as time passed. ...

‘Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.’ — John Heywood Here’s a news that demonstrate one side effect of ad targeting technology: UW News | For $1000, anyone can purchase online ads to track your location and app use Jennifer Langston, October 18, 2017. not in the catwoman way though Privacy concerns have long swirled around how much information online advertising networks collect about people’s browsing, buying and social media habits — typically to sell you something. ...

Here’s a new book that I cramed down my stomach over a weekend trip: Tim Hwang (2020) Subprime Attention Crisis Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet An irritatingly catchy cover, right? content summary In Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet, author Tim Hwang sets out to make a provocative argument: The programmatic advertising industry has created a subprime attention crisis, a market bubble that—if popped—will have disastrous results for the publishers of content and users on the Internet. (Bridget Barrett, 2022) ...

Here’s Siddharth Kannan’s review on Subprime Attention Crisis by Tim Hwang. He reorganized and summarized key facts and arguments. It almost covers all points of the book and would be a nice substitute if one doesn’t want to read through the book. Here’s the keypoints of the review (in quotes): intro What would happen if all the free services that you use on the Internet, which are powered by advertisements, stop being free one day? This is the premise of the Subprime Attention Crisis. If you ask yourself this, you might realize that many of the services that we think of as free are powered by advertising. ...

Though I found myself reluctant to admit my attachment to mainstream pop, my favourite album over the summer of 2024 would have to be Short N’ Sweet—given the unhealthy playing repeats of a few of its singles. Here are two reviews explaining why it might just be the biggest hit of 2024: Vinyl cover of Short N’ Sweet. Original full-size picture available here—I mean, look at this remarkable visual presentation of the album’s aesthetic concept: the nostalgic pastel setup, the vivavious blush and hair, and the goofy face. ...

I wrote 37 paper blogs—write-ups of papers I’ve read over the last year. The total quantity of thoroughly read papers is approximately double this number. as for the downloaded ones—i don’t even dare to count.

The journey begins with Google’s sponsored search business. When Google developed the PageRank algorithm, it not only ranked results but also recommended the most relevant ones to users. Simultaneously, it charged advertisers to display their ‘sponsored’ results atop those organic outcomes. This business model, which underpins our ‘free’ internet today, grew from nonexistence in 2000 to becoming the biggest and possibly most influential business globally, amassing over 600 billion USD in volume worldwide. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, leads as the world’s top company, with advertisements accounting for 90% of its revenue. ...

Using Gurobi and PuLP for LP: import pulp Retrieves a solver interface for Gurobi using PuLP. It allows one to use Gurobi as the solver when defining optimization problems in PuLP: solver = pulp.getSolver('GUROBI') Silence pulp solving console output: pulp.LpSolverDefault.msg = 0 Setup the model with variables, objectives and constraints # Initialize the LP model K = 3 B = 4 model = pulp.LpProblem("model_name", pulp.LpMaximize) z = pulp.LpVariable.dicts("z", range(K), lowBound=0) # Objective function model += pulp.lpSum(z), "Objective" # Constraints model += pulp.lpSum([z[k] for k in range(K)]) <= B, "Budget_Constraint" Solve the problem and check status ...