This one is for you kids:
"Poll finds no lag on tech use by black, Hispanic millennials" Associated Press August 22, 2015
WASHINGTON — A new poll finds African-American and Hispanic millennials are just as technologically connected and likely to get news through social media as regularly as their white counterparts, further narrowing the risk of people of color being left behind technologically.
As opposed to what?
Overall, 57 percent of millennials say they get news and information from Facebook at least once a day, and 81 percent say they get it from Facebook at least once a week.
They aren't reading the Globe like me?
The poll also found Hispanics and African-Americans are just as likely as any millennials to have a paid news subscription.
Oh, thank God.
There was little differentiation between racial groups getting news from Facebook, the poll found. But about half of African-American millennials said they comment on news stories posted to Facebook, compared with about 30 percent of whites and Hispanics.
It's agenda-pushing lies and distortions just like mine?
The findings suggest that, despite fears that millennials — those 18-34 years old — may not be going to traditional sources for news, they are clearly getting news from social media.
Who is?
My hits have skyrocketed, and I only read and report on the Globe to show you what shit they are shoveling. I certainly don't go there to find out what is really going on.
‘‘People of color are very wired and just as adept in using technology,’’ said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, which funded the study. ‘‘If you want a subject that hasn’t been covered in the mainstream, millennials have found ways to get at that information through community sharing more than traditional ways. “
In the 1990s, some expressed concern that minorities would have less access to technology than whites, calling it the ‘‘digital divide.’’
Just another false racial divide being promoted for reasons known.
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Yeah, looking around I notice all the young 'uns have a phone.
What they don't have:
"Banks hope cardless ATMs will get millennials to open accounts" by Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff August 22, 2015
The granddaddy of banking technology, the ATM machine, is getting the hip, mobile treatment as financial institutions try to shake off their stodgy image and appeal to younger customers.
The student loan debt enslavement scheme not leave them open to the early withdrawal?
Banks across the country, including two in Massachusetts, have started to upgrade their machines to dispense cash using a mobile application instead of a debit card.
The cardless ATM technology is the latest attempt by banks to persuade customers under 35 to open an account with them instead of migrating to their traditional competitors or the latest Silicon Valley startup that promises to help consumers borrow, manage, and invest money through their phones.
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Twenty banks across the country, mostly regional and community banks, also have gone mobile, although the ATMs still accept traditional debit cards, said Doug Brown, senior vice president and general manager of mobile at FIS, the Florida banking technology firm that makes the mobile software for the ATMs.
Don't worry about all the hacking or anything (hmmmmmmmm!).
More banks will follow in coming months, Brown said. The technology not only makes ATM transactions faster, but also safer, bankers said.
Oh, yeah?
Banks lose an estimated $1 billion a year globally through skimming fraud, according to industry experts. Thieves install skimmers, tiny devices the size of matchboxes, on ATMs enabling them to read card and PIN numbers and steal them.
That's a fraction of what the rigged market brings with all the Wall Street firms' computer transactions programs.
Without the need for a debit card, banks expect to see a decline in this kind of fraud.
For smaller institutions, which are seeing customers age and dwindle, offering the latest technology early on can be crucial, industry analysts said. It’s a way to stand out before big, national banks bring the services into the mainstream, said Mary Monahan, research director for Javelin Strategy & Research, a California consulting firm.
“By offering different capabilities that aren’t at the big banks yet, it’s a way for them to fight back, and that’s what they’re doing,” Monahan said.
Putting their fingerprint on it, as it were.
But it still promises to be an uphill battle for banks to hold onto the next generation of customers.
Poor banks!
A recent survey by a subsidiary of the media company Viacom Inc. found that 3 out of 4 millennials, defined as 18-to-34-year-olds, were more excited about companies like Apple and Google offering new financial products than their own banks.
Still, when they do bank, millennials prefer the larger, national institutions, in part because of the digital and mobile options; more than half use the nation’s four largest banks, according to Javelin.
CarrieAnne Cormier, director of retail operations and strategy at Avidia Bank, said she hopes the cardless ATMs will help the community institution compete for younger customers.
“I’ll be honest, our millennial base is really small, and that’s something we struggle with,” Cormier said. “It’s hard. We’re not cool. We’re an old community bank. We have to change.”
It’s unclear when and if large banks will introduce cardless ATMs. Bank of America declined to comment on whether it will adopt the technology.
“We watch consumer behavior closely and will adapt to it,” said Tara Burke, a company spokeswoman. “We’re always looking at new technologies to make banking easier for our customers.”
Ultimately, cardless ATMs are about ensuring the bank provides potential customers with the tools and services they want, said Dawn Dillon, chief information officer and senior vice president of strategic change management at Salem Five.
“It seems to me everybody is becoming more reliant on their phone,” Dillon said. They’re becoming more a part of our day.”
Tell me about it. I'm surrounded by people who are addicted to the thing, and freak if they can't find it on their person.
I guess we all have our vices.
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So who do the kids prefer when voting?
"Debates on cable, not free TV — a new poll tax?" by Janell Ross Washington Post August 25, 2015
WASHINGTON — A large share of the presidential primary season debates will not be aired on free over-the-air broadcast networks. Of the 15 primary season debates, all but five will air on cable TV.
They ain't watching that!
That pattern has led Susan Crawford, a Harvard University law professor, to Crawford published a piece last week in Medium about the cable subscription fees necessary for interested voters to watch the debates in real time.
She said it amounts to nothing short of a poll tax.
That’s a big, bad claim in a country in which poll taxes were deployed uniformly to keep black and Latino voters away from the polls in the Deep South and Southwest in the decades before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and with opponents of voter ID laws describing fees associated with obtaining identification needed to vote as the most recent vintage from this same political vine, any implication that people must pay to participate in the American democratic process draws attention.
Still, in many ways the comparison is overwrought.
Cable subscription fees and the programming available represent but one route or method by which Americans can learn about the candidates, their policy ideas, their temperaments, and their talents. Americans can still read about the candidates, listen to them on the radio and, when the cable networks make it possible, stream the debates live or in the hours and days after the event actually takes place. Learning about the candidates might be an important part of participating in American democracy, but it’s the actual voting that decides who holds elected office, whose political needs and interests become policy, and whose are ignored.
No, it's those who count the votes that decide.
Poll taxes weren’t a matter of inconvenience — some hurdle that people could clear by other means. They were an instrument of oppression, total and illegal domination of one group over others. Poll taxes quite literally impeded the ability of millions of Americans to engage in the core act of citizenship in a democracy. For some Americans, voting itself was subject to a tax.
And NO GAY, as far as I know, was ever denied that right.
Crawford makes some solid points about cord-cutting and the ostensibly growing share of the public that does not have cable TV. The primary process might have brought us candidates not constitutionally qualified to serve as president (like Deez Nuts).
But just one GOP debate in, the significance of debates is pretty clear.
As one analyst said before the debate, no matter how much show happens on that stage, debates are a major part of American political culture. They rank among the ways that ordinary Americans who have never been anywhere near a debate stage evaluate intellectual chops and who should even be considered for important leadership roles. That’s why there’s often a debate for 6th grade treasurer and multiple debates when you run for president.
Debates matter, and so too does access to them.
Those who got to watch the debate in real time could see quickly and clearly which candidates wilted under or seemed to manage the pressure well. They could make their own early evaluations before the punditry really began.
I'm not impressed with any of them, not a one.
Those who didn’t have cable subscriptions (or the log-ins made available to cable subscribers so that they can watch cable programming online) had to wait for Fox to post the full video.
I have one, and didn't watch.
And with the primary debates arranged between the interested parties — the Democrats, the Republicans, and each of the networks — it’s unlikely that anybody can make CNN or CNBC do things differently. It’s totally up to them.
There’s no question that this puts some Americans at a distinct political disadvantage.
But Crawford, the law professor, focuses much of her attention of those who have opted not to subscribe to cable on frugal principle or some sort of inherent antiestablishment, mistrustful instinct that runs strong among Millennials....
Stereotyping of a generation, and I'm tired of all these labels applied to us all by the elite pre$$.
But perhaps they should be. Cable costs are climbing at a rate that far outpaces other things. The average monthly price of expanded basic service (the most common package) excluding taxes and fees, increased by 5.1 percent in 2013, to $64.41, according to a May 2014 Federal Communications Commission analysis.
I'm sensing a theme.
By comparison, the other goods that make up the Consumer Price Index grew an average of just 1.6 percent.
Still, a quick look at a long-running Gallup survey of technology use in the United States shows that in 2005, about 68 percent of American households had cable....
That’s not to say that no one is cutting the cord. In 2013, it just hadn’t outpaced the share who still subscribed or started doing so. And all of this probably brings us to the real reason that so many of the primary debates will appear on subscription cable networks this year.
Cable networks — particularly news networks wrestling with ratings free falls — would very much like for people to regard their network as a near-essential, or at least something for the concerned and informed.
WHAT, HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
Related: What millennials believe
They question whether there is something terribly wrong here, I was told. Why they would do that. I have no idea.
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