P.R.E.S.T.A.V.B.A. (1988)
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teen hackers in communist Czechoslovakia made and swapped illegal protest text games on bootleg cassettes
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Genesis Noir leads IGF 2021 finalists
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as always, an incredible year of indie games to seek out and play
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Neopets’ blackmarket pet scandal, explained
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Simone de Rochefort dives into the site's history, current drama, and future
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LiveLeak shuttered after 15 years
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I never knew until today that it started as an offshoot of internet shock site Ogrish
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Report finds ISPs funded fake net neutrality comments
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18 out of 22 million comments were fake, 7.7 million from a single 19-year-old college student
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Signal banned from running Instagram ads revealing how much Facebook knows about you
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a stunt, but a good one
(via)
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How Basecamp Blew Up
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incredible reporting from Casey Newton on the disastrous all-hands meeting that led to a third of the company quitting
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Verizon sells Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm
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the new company will be just called "Yahoo," finally dropping the exclamation point
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Web Curios returns
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after a nine-month hiatus, Matt Muir's link-laden newsletter is back and at its own domain
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Basecamp employees quit en masse after politics ban and severance offer
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I counted 19 out of 57, fully one-third of their team, and those are just the ones who announced it publicly
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Snopes or Nopes
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guess whether Snopes fact-checks were true or not based on the article titles
(via)
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Casey Newton on what really happened at Basecamp
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the company banned societal/political discussions at work, to the surprise and dismay of its employees
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Making animated glitter text with SVG
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reproducing the Angelfire look with SVG's noise, color cycling, and blending features
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SiriusXM acquires 99% Invisible
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the show will remain free, with Roman Mars and his team developing new shows for Stitcher
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Yahoo, the Destroyer
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Kaitlin Tiffany interviewed me, Jason Scott, Maciej Ceglowski, and others about Yahoo's casual destruction of internet history
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The Slander Industry
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Aaron Krolik and Kashmir Hill dig into the relationship between gripe sites and reputation-management services
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The copyright quagmire of Emily Ratajkowski’s NFT
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who owns the rights to a link to a photo of a print of a screenshot of a photo
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Oxford Malaria vaccine proves highly effective in trials
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77% efficacy over 12 months compared to current vaccines that only prevent 29% of severe cases
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TikTok creators struggle with its opaque and unpredictable algorithm
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in the past, human moderators have suppressed videos based on attractiveness and political content
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Aaron A. Reed on Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger
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completely new to me, a pioneering work of interactive fiction on the WELL that predates games like Her Story by 30 years
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Join my birthday paste party
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last year, I wrote about why I love these and their long history online
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Ed Zitron on the misplaced wrath directed at social media managers
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"the average social media manager has very little power over any of the decisions but all of the consequences"
(via)
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Charlie Warzel on Facebook’s worrying embrace of the creator economy
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I expect these monetization tools will be a hit for Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, and their other biggest pages
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IRS estimates tax cheats are costing the U.S. $1 trillion a year
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offshore tax evasion, cryptocurrency, and other methods allow the richest 1% to hide 20% of their income
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Crypto casino apps on iOS are masquerading as children’s games
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like backdoor speakeasies, they only appear if you're in certain countries or on a VPN
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The Guardian on India’s devastating virus surge
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they're nearly one-third of all new cases worldwide, with nearly 300k yesterday
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Derek Chauvin found guilty on all counts of George Floyd’s murder
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not justice, but a rare moment of accountability after a year of protests
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The war between McDonald’s and a startup trying to fix their unreliable ice-cream machines
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they sold a device to monitor and repair the notoriously finicky hardware and ended up in court
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Zoom Jeopardy!
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amazing TouchDesigner mod to play archival or custom Jeopardy! games with friends over Zoom, get it before it's C&Ded
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The Story of “A Thousand Miles”
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VICE interviewed virtually everyone involved with Vanessa Carlton's 2002 hit, including Terry Crews
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NYPD deploys Spot Mini to public housing complex
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creepy authoritarian surveillance just got more dystopian
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Discord will block NSFW servers on iOS
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did Apple require this change or is this Discord's attempt to get their 12+ rating back?
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Just One Day – 2winz²
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the only thing better than Brian David Gilbert is four Brian David Gilberts
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Visualizing the risk-reward of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine
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the risk is so absurdly small, it seems inevitable that many more people die as a result of halting distribution
(via)
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Charlie Warzel on Twitter and context collapse
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the first issue of his new Galaxy Brain newsletter on the attention economy
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