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September-October 2019

10 things every voter should care about this election, 1-5

Mainstream media only shows us a handful of issues, but federal leaders should be held accountable to much more

various

  1. The Rise of the Alt-Right Andrew Scheer formally addressed the United We Roll convoy in February, a protest that began as a pro-pipeline demonstration and grew to represent racism and xenophobia characteristic of the worldwide yellow vest movement. In May, Conservative MP Michael Cooper read a passage from the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto […] More »

How this LGBTQ conference brings together tech and queerness

Toronto's Venture Out challenges the city's Silicon Valley lookalike, male, heterosexual bro-tech space while supporting LGBTQ techies

Sohini Bhattacharya

As a queer young woman fresh out of university entering the workforce, Jeanette Stock had several challenges to navigate. “The biggest barriers were my own about me being queer. I had never been schooled in workplace 101 on being queer,” says Stock. Challenges included coming out at work and getting comfortable with speaking about her […] More »

Stuck in a news filter bubble? There’s an app for that

New Twitter app Echology aims to diversify news sources on the social media site

Celie Deagle

Individual news organizations tweet upwards of 100 times per day—a content diet even the most obsessive tweeter can’t digest. Instead, we pick out small bites, our personal interest and bias helping us choose what tweets we see and which accounts aren’t worth a follow. With each retweet and mention, Twitter’s algorithm goes to work, shaping […] More »
January-February 2018

Defining Canada by the language of Silicon Valley

There’s a problem when people attempting to define our country's culture use the language of rejected TEDx Talks

Tyler Hellard@poploser

I spend a lot of time parsing the language of Silicon Valley, that heady mix of technobabble and pseudoeconomics where many words are used to say very little. It’s a lexicon designed by “visionary” business types (though they prefer to be called “entrepreneurs” now) and the middle managers they hire, saying words filled with pomp, […] More »
July-August 2017

In defence of e-readers

It's okay to go digital, writes tech columnist Tyler Hellard

Tyler Hellard@poploser

Confession: The first thing I do when I start reading a book is crack the spine. It’s satisfying. I’ve never understood people who keep their books in pristine condition. They are meant to be lived in—dog-eared and coffee stained and marked up all to hell. The pages should be wrinkled from that time you dropped it […] More »
January-February 2017

Twitter probably isn’t the best platform to debate grown-up, complex issues

Welcome to the internet, where much discussion devolves into name calling

Tyler Hellard@poploser

On the morning of the U.S. election last November, I logged onto Twitter and spent several hours arguing about privilege—mostly white, but also male—with someone who believed the entire concept was, itself, racist and sexist because he “judges people individually,” systemic issues be damned. As often happens, the discussion devolved to me calling him “willfully obtuse” […] More »
November-December 2016

In today’s internet age, who does the news belong to?

On Facebook's algorithmically powered stories—and what it means for Canadian media

Tyler Hellard@poploser

Earlier this year, Facebook got in trouble for “curating” trending news articles that seemed to betray an ideological bias—their editorial team was accused of pushing a left-wing agenda by people who would have preferred to see them push a right-wing agenda. Facebook’s solution was simple: get rid of the human element. But a few hours after flipping […] More »
November-December 2014

Terms of service

Tyler Hellard@poploser

Are we too apathetic when it comes to social media user experiments? A few months ago, Facebook got into trouble for experimenting with some of their users. In the name of “science,” the company decided to start tweaking people’s newsfeeds with an excess of either positive or negative status updates from friends. The study showed […] More »