☆ Want You To Know: More Cats Than Expected

Somehow, this ended up with much more feline involvement than originally planned. Guaranteed not to happen again until at least some time next week.

Well Played, Metro, Well Played

Medical first as cats are found to pass TB on to their owners

This Can’t Possibly End Well

Things To Ponder

Relevant: long list of facts about cats, compiled by (who else) Buzzfeed.

Why did this sad remix of Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ take so long to appear?

Inscrutable To Most, Headlines Department

It occurred to me that plenty of the headlines I scan daily would probably have made no sense twenty years ago. Here’s a selection (which are all worth reading, I hasten to add).

Mobile Malware Mines Dogecoins and Litecoins for Bitcoin Payout

The coin-mining apps discussed above were found outside of the Google Play store, but we have found the same behavior in apps inside the Google Play store. These apps have been downloaded by millions of users, which means that there may be many Android devices out there being used to mine cryptocurrency for cybercriminals.

Lichdom: Battlemage’s powerful spells channel Borderlands and Dark Souls

Xaviant’s vision for Lichdom is to deliver a game in which the mage isn’t always the “glass cannon” in the back, the fellow that’s capable of doing massive damage but then gets fragged if something dangerous so much as looks his way.

Facebook recruits NASA boffins for robot drone fleet, laser comms lab

The Connectivity Lab plans to use solar-powered drones and satellites fitted with communications gear to relay internet access to areas of medium and low population density, along with new laser-based technologies to create a high-bandwidth transmission network.

Good stuff, right?

Longer Reads

‘Cos it’s almost the weekend.

‘Billionaire Ball’ by Matt Hinton. The excesses of sports departments in US universities. The figures involved are staggering.

Malcolm Harris skewers what he describes as “Actually Journalism”. FiveThirtyEight.com and Vox.com are his primary targets. More criticism of FiveThirtyEight from climate scientists.

What Seems To Be The Problem Here? is the latest instalment in n+1’s series of investigative pieces on Amazon. Ruth Curry of Emily Books gives a lot of insight into what Amazon has done to not just the publishing business but the entire online retailing industry. The prospect of the drones becomes ever more terrifying.

If you’re a millionaire model, YOU TOO can get government funding for your barely fleshed out charity idea. Lily Cole managed to get £200,000 from the Cabinet Office in the UK for a goods and services exchange website whose only currency is love, or thanks, or rainbows, or something.

It’s not unusual for wealthy celebrities, particularly in the fashion world, to support good causes or have whimsical hobbies. What makes Impossible.com highly unusual is that it received support from the taxpayer. And nobody seems quite sure why.

House ♫

The trailer [YT] for forthcoming documentary The House That Chicago Built is worth a look if you enjoy seeing a lot of normally garrulous types lost for words. The film itself is directed by Lil Louis incidentally.

Totally Confused

We demand a hot dog emoji, an end to chemical warfare in the swimming pool, no more bling bishops, less rubbish on the mountain and more bad Reddit AMAs.

☆ Want You To Know: Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

Smoke Fairies

Listen to this. Because it's damn good.

Vapid

Seems we're now selling one of the most powerful known natural toxins over the counter, mostly unregulated. In packaging that's attractive to children for good measure. Poison centres are issuing warnings.

Whilst e-cigarettes may help some to quit conventional cigarettes, it seems the law of unintended consequences has also kicked in

"E-cigarettes are likely to be gateway devices for nicotine addiction among youth, opening up a whole new market for tobacco," says lead author Lauren Dutra, a postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

General Internets

Rather than copying Facebook and buying something called Octopus Raft or similar, Twitter is taking a different approach. Photo tagging is being rolled out. Because everybody loves being tagged in photos, and those trendy startups like Secret and Whisper aren't all about anonymity (real or imagined).

Fortunately the Wire has put together a guide showing how to turn the damn tagging off. Take that, taggers!

Retweet may be becoming share. To retain users who were having great difficulty figuring out what retweeting did.

Regarding Oculus Rift, Rusty Foster summed it up rather nicely

It was initially underwritten by thousands of suckers via Kickstarter, who got oculus stiffed by this deal and who are, to put it mildly, oculus miffed. "Where's our stockulus!?" they wail. "This is just a big oculus grift!"

via Today In Tabs

Lithium Technologies has acquired Klout. Remember Klout? When people's Klout score was going to determine whether they were hip enough to be allowed into clubs or influential enough to deserve discounts? Good riddance.

Local Edition

Actually not so local any more. The Garda whistleblower / bugging / ombudsman / call recording / resigning commissioner / stubborn Minister affair is now getting international coverage. The Guardian mentions what the most Irish media hasn't, the work of Gemma O'Doherty on the penalty points story and her subsequent dismissal.

Foreign attention has a knack of moving these kind of things on from the heel-dragging stage. Fun times ahead for Minister Shatter.

IsShatterGoneYet.com

Rolling Gum-Chewing Game Of The Day

Woo

Totally Confused

Giant rat in your kitchen, an entire universe in your kitchen, diplomacy in your International Space Station, hidden Super Earth in your solar system and lunatic charlatans in your Wikipedia.

☆ Want You To Know: Reality TV Revelations?

An article widely circulated recently was billed as being revelatory. The big reveal was that a generous proportion of reality TV is actually scripted.

Had this genuinely not occurred to a lot of people before now? It’s decades since The Real World debuted on MTV. The unreality of the reality of these shows has become more obvious with every passing year.

Charlie Brooker explains how a lot of it is done. Editing.

Meeja Pondering

This has been pretty apparent for the last while. There’s less decent reporting being done. Pretty soon there may not be much left to aggregate and curate that’s of any quality. Thus squeezing the market for aggregation services.

Of course, in future all news is going to be written by robots.

In fact, the BBC may already have deployed some robot sub-editors.

Quote Of The Day

Imagine being described as a wanker by Bono. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say it would be like your dog standing up on its hind legs in your kitchen one day and suddenly laughing at you for being a dog.

VICE

Totally Confused, Somewhat Sartorial Edition

Kim Jong-Un haircuts, smart watch chic, Facebook for your face, homeopathy may contain traces of medicine and cartoon faces

☆ Want You To Know: Techno-JOY

Techno-JOY

From the latest Snowden revelations relating to Huawei it would seem the NSA has expanded fully into corporate espionage. Bruce Schneier thinks IBM may be telling porkies about what they did and didn’t hand over to the NSA. Although the US government is at least making a belated attempt to do a smidgen of face-saving.

If all that gets you down a bit, have a look at Eddie Izzard explaining techno-JOY [YT]. Hacking and back doors covered.

Happiness

If true happiness it is you seek, you’ll find it in the clergy, apparently. Whatever you do, don’t have anything to do with Silicon Valley, unless you fancy being over the hill and miserable at 35.

Often the discrimination comes veiled in that vaguest of tech-world concepts: culture. One recent trend in Silicon Valley recruiting is for job candidates to interview with a programmer at their level or below after they’ve cleared every other bar in the hiring process. Ostensibly, the point is to make sure a candidate meshes with the whole team, a perfectly noble impulse. In practice, it’s frequently a tool for weeding out older applicants.

When the VC money dries up again, the bursting bubble certainly isn’t going to be pretty.

economies that embrace the Silicon Valley model writ large—throwing massive amounts of money at highly speculative investments—are suspiciously bubble-prone.

Stunningly Unsurprising Stats Of The Day

Twitter has a slight spam problem, and an overall difficulty in getting users to, em, use the damn service.

about half of the accounts registered in 2014 have been suspended by Twitter likely because the accounts were spam, compared to 28% in 2012.

In all, roughly 500 million registered accounts have been suspended since Twitter was born.

Twitter have also quietly killed off Twitter Music. Nobody will really notice because nobody was really using it. Pretty much.

Incidental History Lesson

On this day in 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in Greenwich Village, New York City caught fire. Over one hundred and forty workers lost their lives. The death toll was so high because at least one exit had been locked, as was common practice at the time.

The fire was instrumental in launching the modern labour movement in the US.

For the last ten years, on the anniversary of the fire, volunteers have installed ‘Chalk’ across the city. They inscribe the names and ages of the victims of the fire outside their former homes.
There’s lots more information on the fire in this PBS centenary piece and at Wikipedia.

It’s also 25 years since the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Definitely Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Donetsk to become part of the UK, magic for dogs, Los Angeles Police Department is investigating ALL the cars, water buffalo run free and silence may be golden.

Want You To Know: Barbies And Bots

Monday Morning internets

A couple of pieces on the twin engines of eyeball driving, Buzzfeed and Upworthy. The Upworthy piece is longer and is almost enough to make you lose your cynicism about those cunning, laughable and highly successful headlines. Buzzfeed trawling through Whisper’s database of secrets sounds like it could definitely be successful. Who doesn’t love a bit of anonymous gossip?

Speaking of Buzzfeed, keep taking those quizzes. Though do remember, kids, that

willingly giving away lots of information about your personal preferences to a media company might not be the best idea.

Somehow I missed this satisfyingly snarky headline from El Reg a few days back: Google wearables: A solution looking for a rich nerd. Yes, just perhaps the market for wearables in their current form isn’t as big as some fans would like to think.

To Ponder

On Barbie

For some reason or other, several Barbie related things today. Extreme Barbie jeep racing [YT playlist]. “Barbie … has not, to my knowledge, cosplayed as Brienne of Tarth until now.”. A Kickstarter for a project to produce 3D printed armour for Barbie. Yes indeed. This of course comes soon after the news that Lammily, AKA normal Barbie has been funded and will be hitting the toy shop shelves. No doubt there is a movement already underway to denounce Lammilies as ‘not normal’.

B-b-b-bitcoin

If Bitcoins were around in the 90s [YT]. Because they’re not going away you know. They just keep getting lost, and found, and then lost again.

History Lesson / Movie Plug

But in the summer of 1984, a group of gay and lesbian activists in London, at a time when the AIDS issue was seeing prejudices come to the fore, decided to raise money to support the families of striking miners.

Pits and Perverts

Totally Confused

‘Are Trout South African?’, Wikipedia is being edited by bots, humans are creating playlists, drones are saving humans and a hybrid human.

Weekend edition

Video menagerie: Magic for dogs. Molting tarantula. Puzzled penguins.

Whilst mostly ignoring all the media brouhaha about flight MH370, I found this piece fascinating. There’s remote and then there’s remote. “There are two bicycles to ride, a soccer field and a slow Internet connection.” If you fancying reading one other piece about lost planes, make it this one by Michelle Read.

Interested in knowing what teenagers are doing online and whether it will bring about the downfall of society as we know it (hint: no it won’t, just like rock ‘n’ roll didn’t)? Danah Boyd thinks about this and other interesting things a lot, and here’s a Q&A she did with Nick Bilton.

The New Yorker does a brief history of techno. Definitely wouldn’t have expected to see that a decade ago. Perhaps two decades ago, considering how long techno has been around now. Still, artists and audiences alike continue to innovate.

Protip of the day: if you’re leaking your employer’s confidential information, it is best not to use their email service to do so.

Somewhat related, Cloak is an anti-social network, or something like that. It uses Instagram and Foursquare location data to let you know when your contacts are nearby. You can then take the appropriate measures to avoid them if you so wish.

So Today This Happened

Tony Benn passed away. The Twitter hive-mind reacts by repeatedly posting his “Five questions” quote. How many of these people actually intend to ask awkward questions of power? In addition, most media outlets lauded Benn for sticking to his principles and beliefs, as if this was surprisingly unusually.

It was simultaneously genuinely interesting to see the outpouring of fond memories that peoplke posted. The highs and lows of Twitter right there.

This also brought to my attention a story about Tony Benn I hadn’t heard before. The image below says all you need to know.

Meanwhile Enda Kenny is giving it loads in the US for St. Patrick’s Day. He encouraged all members of Congress to call him at any time, as Ireland is still The Best Small Country In The World To Do Business In.

Enda apparently added that he lets ‘his people’ (whoever they might be) ring him all the time. Unless they might be whistleblowers, someone on the radio cheekily points out.

Still in the US, a man was arrested in Los Angelese for offering to shoot someone in exchange for 100 retweets.

Back in Ireland, the Irish Times had an article by Morgan Kelly, which should have been titled ‘I warned yiz before and now I’m warnin’ yiz again’. To my surprise a few rueful commenters on Facebook expressed sentiments along the lines of ‘maybe we should listen to him this time’. How far we’ve fallen from those heady days of 2006, whilst still turning corners at a dizzying rate.