August 5, 2015
F.A.T. Lab closes its doors
— they seem torn up about it, but they made so much great stuff and should be proud #
The Data Drive
— cut-and-paste Facebook from a parallel world where Zuck ran off with all of Facebook's data #
Soylent founder on "how I gave up alternating current"
— I can't decide if this is real, satire, or just cynical trolling to promote Soylent 2.0 #
Rhythmic gymnastics ribbon with a robotic arm
— first robots take over manufacturing, and now they're going after our gymnasts #
No one will ever read this but
— audio readings of found online writing that each author thought would never be read (via) #
Bobbie Johnson on people with liberal arts degrees in tech
— most of the people I know doing interesting work in tech don't have engineering degrees, or a degree at all #
Blackbox
— new startup from the Cards Against Humanity team helping others sell and ship stuff, like Exploding Kittens today #
New evidence appears in Happy Birthday copyright case
— nail in the coffin for Warner/Chappell's case #
State of Georgia sues Carl Malamud for copyright infringement
— for republishing annotations of their legal code, not the code itself #
Boing Boing on Manyland, the pixel MMO
— amazing to see how it's evolved, the timelapse is beautiful chaos #
NYT on the legality of Sandra Bland's arrest
— straightforward explanation of everything they screwed up #
British Movietone posts video archive to YouTube
— a followup to my 2008 post about their formerly-inaccessible darkweb #
Study finds poorly-performing men more likely to harass women in online gaming
— I'd love to see this repeated in other competitive online communities #
Why Are You So Angry?
— six-part series on Internet aggression, focused on Gamergate as a case study; good followup #
Final episode of the Double Fine Adventure documentary
— one of the best explorations of the challenges of making something, at a particularly interesting time for indie games #
Erica Joy's salary transparency experiment at Google
— "People asked for and got equitable pay based on data in the sheet" #
Paul Ford on the Ashley Madison hack
— touches on other major hacks and the ethics of outing personal information #
Gawker reports on Gawker resignations
— super inside baseball, an existential crisis over whether the site is "too mean" #
Zero-day exploit remotely controls Jeep Cherokees
— an estimated 471,000 vehicles are vulnerable, including brakes, transmission, and GPS #
New Yorker on the impending earthquake that will devastate the Pacific Northwest
— some light Monday morning reading for all my Portland friends #
The Verge's profile on The Awl
— deliberately staying small and focused, excluding an audience they don't care about #