Lily Hay Newman, writing at Wired:

These redirects can show up seemingly out of the blue when you’re in a mobile browser like Chrome, or even when you’re using a service like Facebook or Twitter and navigating to a page through one of their in-app browsers. Suddenly you go from loading a news article to wriggling away from an intrusive ad. What enables these ad redirects to haunt virtually any browser or app at any time, rather than just the sketchy backwaters in which they used to roam? Third-party ad servers that either don’t vet ad submissions properly for the JavaScript components that could cause redirects, or get duped by innocent-looking ads that hide their sketchy code.

Not a day goes by that I don’t get pitched some variation of these kinds of ads for this website. They promise thousands of dollars a month in revenue, and it seems like a lot of big websites are saying yes to these third party ad networks. I think it’s killing the internet.

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

The report found that album sales, including both digital and physical, fell 17.7 percent last year to 169.15 million copies, down from 205.5 million in 2016. Meanwhile, streaming once again soared, leading the overall music industry to growth, largely due to the significant 58.7 percent increase in on-demand audio streams over last year.

Speaking of that huge security bug, here’s Troy Wolverton reporting for Business Insider:

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold off a large portion of his stake in the company months after Google had informed the chipmaker of a significant security vulnerability in its flagship PC processors — but before the problem was publicly known.

The vulnerability, which affects processors from Intel, AMD, and ARM and could allow malicious actors to steal passwords and other secret data, became public this week.

The New York Times:

The two problems, called Meltdown and Spectre, could allow hackers to steal the entire memory contents of a computer. There is no easy fix for Spectre, which could require redesigning the processors, according to researchers. As for Meltdown, the software patch needed to fix the issue could slow down computers by as much as 30 percent — an ugly situation for people used to fast downloads from their favorite online services.

Bad, this is all bad. More information can be found on the official website for these bugs. Yes, there’s an official website.

The New York Times:

The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to dismantle landmark rules regulating the businesses that connect consumers to the internet, granting broadband companies power to potentially reshape Americans’ online experiences.

The agency scrapped so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content. The federal government will also no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as if it were a utility, like phone services.

Shit.

Jon Brodkin, writing at Ars Technica:

Because advertised prices often don’t reflect the full cost of service, the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 forced ISPs to be more transparent with customers about hidden fees and the consequences of exceeding data caps. The new requirements were part of the net neutrality rules—and are therefore going to be eliminated when the FCC votes to repeal the rules next week.

While FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is proposing to keep some of the commission’s existing disclosure rules and to impose some new disclosure requirements, ISPs won’t have to tell consumers exactly what everything will cost when they sign up for service.

Sigh.