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Netflix’s decision to quietly remove the ability to cast content from its mobile apps to smart TVs and streaming devices has caused a bit of an uproar on social media. The complaints are the usual ones you see when a company removes a feature. Some blame greed. Some are upset their method of end-running subscription sharing has been shut down. Some just jump on the opportunity to complain about Netflix. But frequent travelers could have a legitimate grievance about the company’s decision to largely end casting. The change was enacted without warning and without fanfare in November, with some of the earliest complaints from users coming on Nov. 10. Netflix has since changed the help page on its Website to say it no longer supports casting shows from a mobile device to most TVs and TV-streaming devices.” It follows a 2019 decision by the company to remove support for Apple’s AirPlay feature. Netflix says the casting feature was rarely used by subscribers. But many business and other frequent travelers have come to depend on casting to watch Netflix on hotel TVs instead of their phone’s screen. The days of free HBO being a sufficient draw to attract travelers are long gone. Today’s hotel visitor wants to be able to connect to their streaming service of choice while they’re on the road. (Missing a screening of a movie you’ve seen before isn’t a big deal. Missing the new Stranger Things and risking spoilers for the rest of your trip can be.) Hotels, meanwhile, encourage guests to use streaming services, as it puts the cost burden of entertainment programming on the traveler, helping the chain cut expenses. There’s no universal way to watch streaming services in your hotel room. Some chains let you connect your laptop to your in-room TV, though you’ll need to remember to pack an extra HDMI cable to take advantage of this. Some offer apps directly on the television, letting you scan a QR code to verify the connection on your phone, then access your streaming service. Despite protections by those hotel chains (all login information is wiped at user checkout, something the hotels are contractually obligated to do by the streaming services), many people are still hesitant to link their personal accounts to a public television. That leaves casting. Many hotels prefer this option, says Richard Leonarz, director of product management for Hospitality Television at Samsung, as it takes the responsibility of clearing user credentials off of their shoulders. (Once the guest and their phone are out of range of the TV, the casting ends.) Casting is also a strong preference for visitors to Airbnb and Vrbo destinations, as owners of those facilities often don’t wipe the credentials of previous guests. International travelers also frequently prefer a casting option, as it lets them access services that might not be available in the U.S. or a built-in option on a hotel Smart TV. That said, casting isn’t a perfect solution for hotel visitors. It requires the proper software to be installed on the in-room TV (usually Chromecast) and there needs to be a system in place to ensure a guest’s cast goes to their own TV, not one in the room next door. Netflix, apparently, hasn’t completely done away with casting. Some older Chromecast devices and TVs that support Google Cast are still able to utilize the technology. That’s only available to subscribers who pay for an ad-free plan, though. Ad-supported plans are unable to cast no matter where they’re attempting to do so.
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Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of peoples feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do. Re-ranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected peoples emotions and their views of people with opposing political views. Im a computer scientist who studies social computing, artificial intelligence, and the web. Because only social media platforms can modify their algorithms, we developed and released an open-source web tool that allowed us to re-rank the feeds of consenting participants on X, formerly Twitter, in real time. Drawing on social science theory, we used a large language model to identify posts likely to polarize people, such as those advocating political violence or calling for the imprisonment of members of the opposing party. These posts were not removed; they were simply ranked lower, requiring users to scroll further to see them. This reduced the number of those posts users saw. We ran this experiment for 10 days in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that reducing exposure to polarizing content measurably improved participants feelings toward people from the opposing party and reduced their negative emotions while scrolling their feed. Importantly, these effects were similar across political affiliations, suggesting that the intervention benefits users regardless of their political party. This 60 Minutes segment covers how divisive social media posts get more traction than neutral posts. Why it matters A common misconception is that people must choose between two extremes: engagement-based algorithms or purely chronological feeds. In reality, there is a wide spectrum of intermediate approaches depending on what they are optimized to do. Feed algorithms are typically optimized to capture your attention, and as a result, they have a significant impact on your attitudes, moods, and perceptions of others. For this reason, there is an urgent need for frameworks that enable independent researchers to test new approaches under realistic conditions. Our work offers a path forward, showing how researchers can study and prototype alternative algorithms at scale, and it demonstrates that, thanks to large language models, platforms finally have the technical means to detect polarizing content that can affect their users democratic attitudes. What other research is being done in this field Testing the impact of alternative feed algorithms on live platforms is difficult, and such studies have only recently increased in number. For instance, a recent collaboration between academics and Meta found that changing the algorithmic feed to a chronological one was not sufficient to show an impact on polarization. A related effort, the Prosocial Ranking Challenge led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, explores ranking alternatives across multiple platforms to promote beneficial social outcomes. At the same time, the progress in large language model development enables richer ways to model how people think, feel, and interact with others. We are seeing growing interest in giving users more control, allowing people to decide what principles should guide what they see in their feedsfor example, the Alexandria library of pluralistic values and the Bonsai feed reranking system. Social media platforms, including Bluesky and X, are heading this way, as well. Whats next This study represents our first step toward designing algorithms that are aware of their potential social impact. Many questions remain open. We plan to investigate the long-term effects of these interventions and test new ranking objectives to address other risks to online well-being, such as mental health and life satisfaction. Future work will explore how to balance multiple goals, such as cultural context, personal values, and user control, to create online spaces that better support healthy social and civic interaction. The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Tiziano Piccardi is an assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The next big meeting on your calendar might not have any other attendeesit might just be you. A growing number of high-performing leaders, including managers at Google and other Fortune 100 companies, are carving out protected focus blocks and treating them like mission-critical meetings. With constant pings, shallow tasks, and back-to-back calls, this might be the only way to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time features that automatically block off calendars to protect deep work. Paige Donahue is a product marketing leader at Google who helps YouTube creators grow their communities and monetize their followings. She says shes started using the Focus Time feature inside Google Calendar to carve out protected blocks for deep work. Before, my day was really just a stream of constant meetings, and I think a lot of people can relate to that, she says. It was meeting after meeting, ping after ping, and I was finding that I didnt have a lot of time to do the deep work thats really important to move things forward. Now, she notes, its much easier to see forward momentum. [The focus time feature] is really helping me get in the groove and tackle projects . . . instead of getting bogged down by endless meetings. Deep work has become a job requirement While the idea of deep work isnt new, the urgency around it is. Leaders can no longer treat focus as a luxury. In todays reactive workplace, carving out uninterrupted time for thinking and creating has become a core leadership responsibility. And employees want this just as much as executives. According to a recent Twilio survey of over 1,200 UK workers, 47% said they prioritize distraction-free focus time, and 36% said theyd like their employers to formally schedule such quiet periods. This suggests that protecting focus isnt a personal quirkits a cultural shift waiting to happen. But its all too easy to let your week get sucked up by shallow work, the work that may appear urgent (such as last-minute requests and fire drills) but rarely move you towards the end-of-year KPIs that determine your bonus and future promotion potential. At Lifehack Method, where we coach executives and teams on productivity, we see this firsthand: when leaders skip focus time, teams flounder in shallow work. When they protect it, they model a culture of depth, clarity, and results. Every Friday, our clients practice a Weekly Planning ritual where they calendarize the entire week, ensuring strategic work has nonnegotiable slots before the week fills up with reactive tasks. Forget time management, start managing your attention The calendar is a useful tool, but the deeper shift is about what we choose to protect. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out, the old paradigm of time managementsqueezing as much as possible into the dayhas limits and can even be detrimental. The new frontier is attention management: the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places, and at the right moments, as Grant defines it in a New York Times essay. When we coach leaders in our programs, we encourage them to embrace this mindset shift. The question isnt How do I fit this in? but Does this deserve my attention? That pivot can mean the difference between a week lost in shallow work and a week that produces breakthrough outcomes. Use your deep work blocks to empty your mind of those pesky urgent tasks and give yourself the gift of diving into your most leveraged activities. These are often not even on your to-do list, thats how little attention they tend to get! When a calendar block isnt enough, bring a buddy Of course, protecting time on a calendar doesnt always mean using it well. Getting forward momentum is tough when youre facing procrastination and anxiety about how to start. Thats where accountability comes in. Enter virtual coworking, a rising trend that pairs you with a partner online to ensure you show up and do the work. Many of our clients here at Lifehack Method rely heavily on coworking sessions as a force multiplier to speed through otherwise procrastinated tasks. Science backs this up. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that real-time, subtle feedback during lapses of attention helped participants regain focus. The researchers concluded that it may be more effective to intervene during low-focus moments than to simply enforce long, uninterrupted blocks. For high-stakes or creative work, this suggests that lightweight accountability systemslike coworking sessions or structured check-inscan serve as the feedback nudges that keep people in the zone. Virtual coworking platforms are seeing traction among enterprise employees. Taylor Jacobson is the Founder & CEO of Focusmate, the worlds No. 1 virtual coworking community. He shares that Fortune 500 Focusmate members currently average 31% more sessions than the average user, and 13% more time spent on the platform. Donahue shares that at work, she uses both virtual and in-person coworking to ensure she says on task. I am a big fan of coworking. I feel that it adds a layer of accountability and its just nice to sit around the campfire with other people who are in it as well. Its a great way to do deep focused work almost like a sprint. How to make focus time impactful Protecting focus blocks isnt just about willpower. It requires communication and culture change. Leaders who succeed tend to: Treat focus time like a sacred meeting. Dont reschedule unless its truly urgent. Communicate clearly. Let your team know when youre offline for focus and when youll be available again. Pair protection with accountability. Use tools like Focusmate, oras we do at Lifehack Methodstack focus time with rituals like our Winning the Week Method planning process, which makes deep work part of the weekly rhythm. Model the behavior. When managers visibly protect focus, employees feel empowered to do the same. Protect your focus to future-proof your job As tools evolve and workplace demands intensify, the rarest resource is no longer money, ideas, talent, or even time. Its unbroken attention. Leaders who defend it will drive innovation; those who dont risk drowning in noise. Focus time is not indulgent. Its the only way to do the kind of workcompanies actually pay leaders to do.
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