Linked List: March 1, 2017

Wednesday, 1 March 2017

Anthony Smith, reporting for Mic:

Snapchat told a gun safety charity it might run NRA ads on the charity’s anti-gun violence awareness campaign — which would have featured videos starring families who lost their loved ones to firearms — if the charity didn’t pay Snapchat for advertising, emails provided to Mic by a source close to the exchange show. […]

“I just learned our News Team is doing a Live Story on National Gun Violence Awareness Day,” Saliterman’s message began. “I would urgently like to speak with you about advertising opportunities within the story, as there will be three ad slots. We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story.”

In other words, if the nonprofit partnered with Snapchat’s editorial department instead of paying the six-figure fee to promote its event through Snapchat’s advertising department, it ran the risk of having its gun safety message countered by the NRA, which strongly opposes the reform Everytown promotes.

Creepy.

Google Throws in the Towel on Pixel Notebooks ★

Frederic Lardinois, writing for TechCrunch:

When asked if Google had plans to produce any more Pixel laptops, Osterloh said that the company had “no plans to do one right now.” He added that the versions that are already out in the market have totally sold out and that there are no plans to make any more of those, either. Indeed, if you go to the Google Store today, you won’t find any Pixel laptops for sale, though there are plenty of third-party Chromebooks available there.

The company is not, of course, talking about Chrome OS. “Chrome OS is a huge initiative in the company,” Osterloh said. “Google hasn’t backed away from laptops. We have the number two market share in the U.S. and U.K. — but we have no plans for Google-branded laptops.”

ChromeOS is popular, but it’s popular on piece-of-junk hardware. The idea of a premium computer running ChromeOS was appealing to like a dozen people.