Happy Monday y'all!

Technology Chutney

Apple ads – they just don't make 'em like they used to.

Over the weekend the Internet became outraged (OUTRAGED!) to discover that Facebook has been tinkering with users' news feeds and 'emotionally manipulating' them.

But what if this announcement is just another experiment, testing the speed of the spread of outrage or something? Turtles all the way down.

Build your own Steam box

Unauthorized =/= unacceptable. Tedious adventures in the world of copyfraud.

we have a basic right to participate in culture that is more fundamental than anybody else’s desire to maximize profits.

On the upside, if you have a problem (you're being sued by your Prime Minister) and noone else can help, maybe the Internet can.

Crowd-funding his defense, he exceeded his target of 70,000 Singaporean dollars in four days. He’s also spoken at a protest against the pension system organized earlier this month, and written plenty more on the subject.

Photography

Shot at Dawn

During the first world war hundreds of soldiers, many of them teenage volunteers, were shot by firing squad for cowardice or desertion. Chloe Dewe Mathews's photographs of the mostly forgotten sites of their execution provide a poignant memorial of their tragic fate.

Red Star exploding.

Frozen photos from the Antarctic past.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Trampolines in the mine, diamonds in the mine, data in the mine, museum in the mine and survival in the mine.

Football Corner

Punching. Cardiac arrest. Hubris. Dumb tweets.

This World Cup is serious business.

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First, Pablo Escobar's hippos.

• Pablo's Hippos part one, part two, part three

Next, get off my lawn, modern Glastonbury. ♫ Drugstore, from 1995.

Now …

Bears, As Promised

Like a suave jewel thief (think David Niven in The Pink Panther), or Father Todd Unctuous, this Alaskan bear circumvented all cupcake security measures by attempting its heist from above.

• This bear from the same neighbourhood is a keen baseball fan.
• This bear is in a more contemplative mood, just sittin' on the dock of the bay.
• This bear played an instrumental role in the GoPro IPO.

Crowdscamming

Yet another Kickstarter scam suspended. If it looks too good to be true it probably is, cave canem, a fool and his money etc.

(h/t @conoroneill)

Worth Pondering

Google commences scrubbing in Europe. 41,000 requests so far apparently. Of course this is still dwarfed by corporate copyright takedown requests.

Snapchat for flowers. "The Beats by Dr. Dre of artisanal cheese" and so on. Can you say 1999? Or even just dumb technology bubble?

Dead Trees

The New York Times kills off a lot of its blogs, or actually just folds them into the 'newspaper' and stops calling them blogs. So blogs aren't that different to online editions of newspapers after all. Three cheers for progress at the Grey Lady!

• Only one in five journalists check their facts before publishing. Shocking, I know.

Totally Confused

The 1966 World Cup final on Twitter, real-time cyberwars, $10 million for Wikipedia edits, three men watch three Transformers movies simultaneously and one man is informed on live TV that his son is missing.

Football Corner

Best World Cup save celebration you'll see. That's a man who's looking forward to spending his share of the three million dollars, chaos or not.

Things got serious later on, and lasers were allegedly deployed. Even the machines are interested in soccer these days.

Thanks Obama. Fox News contributor Keith Ablow is convinced that the US president is using the World Cup as a distraction.

Your weekly dose of Pocket lint.

'Heil Hipster: The Young Neo-Nazis Trying to Put a Stylish Face on Hate, 5,100 words, 17 minutes.

'Sailing into hell: two men, a small dingy and one of the most dangerous journeys ever', 3,700 words, 12 minutes.

'Her House of Cards', 5,000 words, 17 minutes. Poker in Hollywood, adapted from Molly Bloom's memoir.

'The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits', 5,200 words, 17 minutes.

'The Wolf Hunters of Wall Street, 11,200 words, 37 minutes. Excerpt from Michael Lewis's new book. 'Nuff said.

'Why We Play, 5100 words, 17 minutes.

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Yes, the breakfast octopus. Yet more evidence that Jeff Bezos is, as I said yesterday, some kind of bad wizard.

Today's Technobabble

Google I/O introduced, gasp, wearable tech, lots of Androidy things and an unspecified amount of vapourware. Catch up on it pretty much anywhere.

Wired | The Verge | Engadget | Ars Technica | The Next Web | 9to5Google

Does anyone remember 2009's I/O? Google Wave, we hardly knew ya.

Moving on, here's a great piece on a new type of webcam voyeurism. Whatever you do, don't compromise the essential eagleness of the eagles.

Martin Scorsese on the art of silence

• ♫ The Sound of Silence

Eye Candy

Neverlands: The Enchanting Destinations Of 11 Fantasy Epics. Yes, Middle Earth / New Zealand is number one. Yes, Westeros / Northern Ireland is in there.

[Horslips5, via Flickr]

• Game of Thrones shooting locations map
• Journey To The Centre Of Google Earth

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Build your own virtual reality viewer, trapped by cats, extreme jumping cat, the importance of pausing, and Peeping tom drones.

♫ Todays tune is 'Bamboo' by Deers

Football Corner

• Tinder catches fire at the World Cup (sorry, couldn't resist).
• Portugal: bald eagle murderers, apple pie befoulers.

• We demand three meellion dollars
• The World Cup overfloweth with memes. A WSJ article about memes without any links. Keep keepin' it real, old media.
• On the other hand, the WSJ does do the state some service by providing this handy guide to skipping work in order to watch the US soccerball team draw with Germany later.

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This Is The Most Important Link

Nice piece on the re-emergence of email newsletters by Joanne McNeil. Yet again, Google is partly to blame.

Rebecca Greenfield, writing for Fast Company, traces the return of the internet newsletter to the death of Google Reader. A representative from TinyLetter told her that there was an uptick in users just as Google pulled the plug last year.

De Internet

Decent piece on truth, fiction and fabrication online. 4chan is mentioned, obviously, and Reddit is a "roiling human cesspool".

it suddenly feels quite plausible that half the web is just a grand experiment in the writing of fiction interspersed with news, jokes, and porn.

Despite roping in some top-notch designer talent, Google finds that wearing a computer on your face is still aesthetically problematic.

• Wearable technology with more acceptable aesthetics from Withings. The problem is the price.
• 'Alamo Drafthouse Movie Theater Chain Bans Google Glass To Prevent Piracy'
• 'Several Reasons You Shouldn't Buy Google Glass – Yet'

If you're getting tired of Google's increasingly rubbishy search results, here's another reason why you should give DuckDuckGo a try.

tweet with functioning links

Amazon Fire phone may be too magical. Jeff Bezos is clearly a bad wizard.

Architectural Eye Candy

The future is coming, and it's tall and pink.

Have a gawp at the 2014 RIBA Awards winners.

More From The Meatspace

Forget the sharks, here are 19 good reasons to avoid the beach. Scientists are such killjoys.

It's always the quiet ones. '18 things learned interviewing comedy writers'

• Charlie Brooker interviews screenwriters. A bunch of slackers, all of them – no, not really.

Oireland

The Irish Government decides to take another ill-informed tilt at the Internet. We all eagerly await Senator Healy Eames' contribution. [context]

Who is advising these people? Surely it couldn't be a case of doing something to be seen to be doing something?

Many Happy Returns

Purple Rain is thirty today.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Grenada or Granada, British Airways doesn't care, men saying stupid things in Playboy interviews, Gary Oldman apologising for saying stupid things in a Playboy interview, surreal ISIS infographics and no more tiger selfies.

Football Corner, Suarez-Free Zone

• Game Of Throne football strips
• 22 maps that explain the World Cup

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App Of The Week

RunPee takes the anxiety out of peeing during films. It recommends when is best to take a bathroom break during a movie, ensuring you don't miss any vital explosions. For those weak-bladdered completists still concerned they might miss something, the app even provides a summary of what's happened while you've been in the water closet.

This is how your iPhone comes together. Just don't think too much about the working conditions of those who put it together.

via bgr.com

Advertisers don't like banner ads. Or wait, maybe they do.

For all the hype surrounding the Times’s Netflix native ad, Tomich said banners will continue constituting a large portion of the Times’s ad revenue. There were countless ad tech companies along the Croisette, many of them selling publishers and brands on their solution for more efficiently buying, selling and tracking banner ads.

Cynic's Corner

Google is throwing $50m at Made With Code, an initiative aiming to encourage more girls to code. Altruistic, or just Google recognising it needs to widen the conveyor belt of computer science graduates before brogrammers take over and Yo is the pinnacle of technological achievement? You decide.

• The Yo backstory.
• What we have learned so far about using Yo for marketing.

Oh Marketing

Samsung wished Landon Donovan the best of luck in the World Cup ahead of last night's thrilling draw against Portugal. Unfortunately Donovan wasn't playing. In fact he isn't even in the USA squad in Brazil. Ooops.

Obama accosted by British robotic giraffe.

ISIS and social media. Promoted tweets coming soon?

The Almost-Real World

The Guardian hopefully declares the end of the hipster. I fear it won't be that easy to make them go away.

Why your earbuds get tangled up. This is exactly what science is for.

Berlin's church-mosque-synagogue.

Say "cheese!", this drone wants to take your picture.

What the hell, Detroit?

Totally Confused

Owl evacuation, dancing in the (silent) street, cuckoo eggs arms race, dog dance party and what Twitter bios really mean.

Football Corner

Despite all the goals (GOOOOOOOOAL), controversy just won't go away.

• Blackface
• Match fixing

Anonymous also took the official World Cup site down for a few hours on Friday.

Worth Pondering

Documentary of the day: Scary Scopolamine

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Amazon launches a phone. The phone connects seamlessly to all of Amazon's services. Also connects seamlessly to your wallet. Even the BBC are sceptical.

HTC shareholders wanted a free phone and all they got was a lousy thermos flask and some fruit juice. They were also a bit concerned about the 90% drop in the phone manufacturer's share price.

Dear Marc Andreessen, everyone's worried about you.

Furniture hacking is maybe OK, IKEA decides. File under brands not appreciating fans, entry # 17466.

Animated GIFs are now supported in a kind of piecemeal way by Twitter. Fortunately they don't autoplay.

Ireland Of The …

Ireland of the Ponzi schemes. Ireland of the representations.

Worth Pondering

and

Totally Confused

Record collections in pictures, spending in real time, shortest liveblog ever, Hilary Clinton stalked by squirrel and digital libraries in Ghana.

Football Corner

Thierry Henry is not impressed by Rio Ferdinand's punditing.

World Cup drinkies.

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Hot weather prevented this newsletter going out yesterday, I swear. As is usual, there’s no unifying theme, so lets just get going, shall we?

What’s cooler than being cool? ♫ Relevant.

In the not-news department, Game of Thrones is a pirating favourite.

That’s two petabytes, people. I’m reliably informed that a petabyte is bigger than a large family of elephants.

All About You

Where were you during the great taxi wars of 2014? The Wall Street Journal concocts a challenge out of three reporters making a short journey in a taxi. JOURNALISM.

New emoji are coming. What does this mean for you? Not a huge amount probably, but the Internet in general thinks it’s of great importance.

Chief Instagram Officer. How would you feel about introducing yourself to people with that title?

This week’s dose of ‘video games are killing us all’ scaremongering. This article contains so much speculation and stupidity that it really isn’t worth picking apart. Using scare quotes around “gaming” is so very early 90s, Damon Linker.

“so the Al-Qaeda relationship, what are the synergies there?”

ISIS, which is currently in the news, publishes an annual report. Here are some finance people discussing it.

This guy is still picking on dogs.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Game of Thrones commentary by Phil Neville, Ode to Joy in an unexpected fashion, chilled investing, riot control drones and riot control drone countermeasure

.

Football Corner

Amazing it took Eamonn Dunphy this long to realise that swearing and subsequently apologising on live TV could get him on the front page of many newspapers! Who could have guessed that, eh?

The World Cup of food.

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World Cup Fail Whale Fear at Twitter.

From the article

it consists of fewer matches than the Olympics

Does Fast Company understand how most Olympic events work? Sprinting matches? Javelin matches? Synchronised swimming matches?

In billing cock-up news, Vodafone told customers it had slurped money from their bank accounts when it actually hadn't. Whatever next .

"i have your guns. i took them and they are in my shed"

Internetting

Facebook joins Google and Yahoo! in not honouring the self-explanatory browser setting do-not-track. Because if somebody else is doing it, that's good enough for Facebook.

Meanwhile, Path is in your inbox, deleting all ur messages. Interesting. Next up we'll have a social network that doesn't actually deliver any messages at all, just deletes 'em as you type.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Bill Murray photobombing, dogs skydiving, camels predicting, Tetris sprinting and cat littering.

Football Corner

Most confusing opening ceremony ever.

Image via Mashable

Bored of the World Cup already? Try the World Cup of everything else (if you like statistics, lots of statistics).

Vanishing spray.

Game Of The Day

Grow your own neuron.

Your weekly dose of Pocket lint.

The Internet of Things, and what Barry White has to do with it (1,150 words, 4 minutes)

The Open-Office Trap (1,100 words, 4 minutes)

The Office Phone Call Was Music to the Ears (1,000 words, 4 minutes)

Loch Ness Memoir (8,500 words, 30 minutes)

Not All Women: A Reflection On Being A Musician and Female (4,400 words, 15 minutes)

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Today in virtual reality, Zuckerberg assures us that the Octopus Raft will be as cheap as possible. Since that really doesn’t mean anything, it must be a slow news day for tech babble.

Continuing with the slow news is better than no news theme, yesterday’s Tweetdeck outage may have been an ‘accident’, caused by an ‘experiment’.

Here’s the best trailer to come out of E3 so far. Dinosaurs and spaceships, together at last in a procedurally generated universe.

Amazon joins dozens of others in the music streaming business.

Worth Pondering

Hey Internet, Pivot On This

If PaperLater takes off, newspapers are going to be even more confused by the Internet than they are currently. I’ll be really amused. Find articles online, save them for later and have them printed up and delivered to your door a few days later. Slow news indeed.

Totally Confused

Dating professionals, wireless phone charging with your coffee, the law of unintended Uber consequences, 290 film noir reviews and a timelapse of a star exploding.

Football Corner

Well, today’s the day. Sao Paulo doesn’t seem particularly happy.

If you were in Thailand you could watch all the games for free, courtesy of the military junta. Presumably these elephants approve.

Speaking of Thailand, might be an idea to stop eating prawns that originate there. Just sayin’.

Game Of The Day

VVVVV, Make and Play Edition. Just go and download it now. It’s even available for Linux, so no excuses.

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Apple's Tax Lair

The European Commission are interested in finding out more. Sounds very like a whole lot of far too little, far too late.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer couple

News Corp is threatening to sue the Mail Online. Could this be the most satisfying court case of the decade? No matter who wins and who loses, everyone else is a winner. Just think of the popcorn sales …

Yet another bad Octopus Raft idea. Or maybe we'll all be trading Bitcoin using our faces in the glorious near future. Who knows.

The Register (amongst many others) comprehensively skewers the Turing Test story. All hail Captain Cyborg for pulling off another successful publicity stunt.

The Washington Post attempts to turn its hand to trolling. 4/10 at most, must try harder.

Today's Best Betteridge

Should Adults be embarassed to read young adult books?

Totally Confused

"Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.", watch Jon Snow brood, major league eating, law enforcement via Facebook, and the shark attack.

Today's tune is 'Supernatural' by Vic Chesnutt, in honour of Penny Dreadful moving beyond being a guilty pleasure and towards something pretty damn decent.

Football Corner

Scandal? What scandal? Let's dance!

Cartoonishly evil.

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