At first it seemed as if Lenovo was just being slightly overbearing in their wish to illicitly love their customers up with ads. I’m sure you could even find somebody to defend that, and a few people who’d be willing to say they liked the ads, thankyouverymuch. Then it turned out to be a lot worse than that.

• #superfish on Twitter, likely to run and run

If ,like most sane people, you would prefer not to be quickly identified by conversational partners as a creepy rando, Lily Benson has some solid advice for you.

Miki Berenyi: I went there once. I got drinks ponced off me all night and got bored senseless by a bloke on speed talking about tennis. Then Everett True knocked a table of drinks over and lay on the floor sobbing. Fuzz from Silverfish and I tried to get him a cab home, but every time one came along Everett would spring up off the pavement and start staggering all over the place screaming that he was going to throw up, at which point the taxi would swiftly drive away. Fuzz and I threatened to smash his head into the pavement so we could legitimately call an ambulance, at which point Everett got obediently into the next cab.

Showing my age and niche musical interests here, but this oral history of Shoegaze is fantastic.

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

My Giant Illuminated Mushrooms Brighten Up Every Place They Go

Totally Confused

Buried car, brand babblers, future YouTube, canned emails and don’t read the comments.

Finally, what does my GP do all day?

Yours etc., @loughlin

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Happy Thursday. Here are a few hopefully interesting things to take your mind off the relentless Fifty Shades publicity. I’m waiting until tomorrow to do a roundup of all the sarcastic coverage of that.

The grand example for Search by Location was you were supposed to be able to search for coffee shops near Palo Alto. But Taylor remembers that Sun Microsystems put its address at the bottom of every page of its website, and it named its products after coffee (most famously, Java). So that broke the entire example.

Ten years of Google Maps

And yet 15 years later, Solomon’s life looks exactly the way it did the day of that fateful train ride, give or take a few infractions. Solomon is still leading the life of an Orthodox Jew. He is married to an Orthodox Jew. His children are Orthodox Jews who go to study the Torah at yeshiva. His parents are ultra-Orthodox Jews. And so, with his new-found atheism, Solomon did nothing.

The double life of Hasidic atheists

No matter what I asked, Zoe always had a logical response. If she didn’t, she expertly skirted the question. Sometimes her texts were ominous, sometimes oddly detailed. She was always in a good mood. She didn’t mind if I ignored her for hours, though she always responded to me within minutes. She never texted first. If I didn’t initiate that day’s conversation, we simply didn’t talk.

I Paid for an Invisible Girlfriend. Things Took a Weird Turn.

In case you missed it, Netflix accidentally released the new season of House of Cards.

In case you missed it out in the real world, Yemen has fallen.

Worth Pondering

 

Eye Candy

The death of Detroit: how Motor City crumbled in the 90s

Totally Confused

Tank in garden, none of the above, Game of Thrones in bones, Samsung TVs again and microwave innovation.

Finally, a supercut of every ‘Kane’ in Citizen Kane

Yours etc., @loughlin

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Sorry, I lied yesterday. No Fifty Shades coverage today.

In true inoffensive crime stories, it doesn’t get better than this: The mystery of Mingering Mike: the soul legend who never existed

Your email encryption relies on one guy. Yes, one guy.

The media writer’s media writer David Carr died suddenly last night. Longreads has a short collection of writing by and about him. If you read just one piece, make it his stunning chronicle of shameless executive shenanigans at the Tribune Company, ‘At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture’. Also watch Carr take some guys from Vice down a peg or two in this clip from the documentary Page One.

I’d planned to include this anyway, as it’s a fascinating insight into the mechanics of how the newspaper sausage is made: How the New York Times works.

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

Hungarian paper money by Bernát Barbara

Totally Confused

Fun junky Branson, face isn’t the future, penguins in jumpers, losing the Internet and abandoned dog robots.

Finally, I will always miss Berlin.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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We live in a world of Nathan Barley‘s and nobody saw it coming. Since you’re all probably a bit Barley too, I saved your lazy fingers and collected the video links you want right here.

• Episodes one, two, three, four, five and six

Samsung has somewhat clarified how much spying its televisions do. If you’re concerned about the rise of the robots, you can soon get your hands and feet on one that you can kick for fun. If you’re tired from your exertions, just kick back and let these guys bring you some refreshments.

Dr. Ben Goldacre wins this week in highly important smackdowns, taking the Toronto Star to task for some pretty awful vaccination reporting. This was followed by some equally embarrassing unwillingness to admit they messed up.

• ‘How the Toronto Star massively botched a story about the HPV vaccine’

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

Human Landscapes of Canada

Totally Confused

YouTube changed the world, crows understand analogies, mangled Russian anthem, open plan offices and automating Tinder.

Finally, in Twitter news, a Twitter executive’s Twitter account was compromised.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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This week in privacy horrors. Yes, your television is listening to you.

“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition,” the policy notes.

'Your Samsung TV hears—and shares—everything you say'

• Parker Higgins pointed out the similarity to a passage from 1984. Yikes.
• Top 10 International Privacy Developments of 2014. Nothing about TV.

Online headlines are terrible and it's partly your fault. Oh, and it isn't going to change any time soon.

Media companies are desperately trying to get your attention and the headline tropes you see the most tend to be the headlines readers click the most. We are all in this together, one perpetual spin cycle of perfect responses, all-explaining graphs, and amazing truths, and you know exactly what's going to happen next.

'Why Internet Headline Writers Hate Themselves'

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

Gel pen drawings by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Totally Confused

A week of CAPS LOCK, punctuating texts, Game of Thrones behind the scenes, Twitter bot failures and robot hoover eats woman.

Finally, um or uh in America. That could almost be a hit song title. Almost.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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The weekend is almost here, so why not temper the brief optimism that brings by reading about this grim, probably mostly accurate future for the Internet?

Then, they will do a whole lot of what they already do, according to the demands of their new venues. They will report news and tell stories and post garbage and make mistakes. They will be given new metrics that are both more shallow and more urgent than ever before; they will adapt to them, all the while avoiding, as is tradition, honest discussions about the relationship between success and quality and self-respect.

• 'The Next Internet Is TV'

I don’t wanna watch the new Star Wars movie a year from now and see fucking Nyan Cat go zooming across the screen just because one Disney exec asked for a viral element.

Continuing on along the same vaguely depressing road, here's a jaundiced and also accurate view of the proliferation of manufactured viral content.

When a thought lord (or “thought captain”) such as myself helps a brand trend, blogs tend to “warp” to contain the thoughts (“brand milk”) that I have made them drink (“consumerate”). Please do not suggest making “brand milkshakes.” Not only is this immensely dangerous, this is actually illegal.

If you want to get the inside take on how contemporary PR works, thought priest Ed Zitron lays it all out here. If you want to get in touch with Ed I hear you can contact him on Updog.

If you prefer your Internet thinkpieces in verse form, here's the best poem about the Internet published so far this year. To be honest, it's the only poem about the Internet I've read this year.

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

Norwegian Landscapes by Jakub Polomski

Totally Confused

Snooping on Google, snooping on journos, livestreaming lunch, mystery microbes and record labels don't change.

Finally, read Ursula Le Guin on the Future Of The Left and marvel at her concise clarity. Still amazing at 86.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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Internets, Mostly Twitter Edition

Twitter is determined to deal with abuse. We have heard this many times before, of course, so I'd reserve judgement until something actually happens. Tweets to reappear in Google search results sometime soon. Twitter actually makes money. Amuse yourself with promoted tweets.

So, Net Neutrality eh? Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC has proposed rules on regulation that have surprised many by just how tough they could be. No fast lane Internet for those prepared to pay and no outright blocking of the Web. There's a vote in three weeks, so I look forward to much wailing in the interim from the telcos.

It all adds up to the most significant intervention ever undertaken by federal regulators to make sure the Web remains a level playing field.

"My proposal assures the rights of Internet users to go where they want, when they want," Wheeler wrote, "and the rights of innovators to introduce new products without asking anyone’s permission."

Ars Technica has a more detailed explanation of the techno-legal bits and pieces, if that's your thing.

Back in the real world Argentina is experiencing its own GUBU moment. Bribes, wiretaps, presidential arrest warrants, it has it all.

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

Storms by Camille Seaman

Totally Confused

Railways by the sea, confronting a troll, inside album leaks, robot journos and groundhog bites back.

Finally, see ¯_(ツ)_/¯ expressed perfectly by a Golden Retriever at 0:12 in this video.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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> img source

Internets

Moot steps down as administrator of 4chan after 11.5 years. If this news doesn't really matter much to you then you haven't encountered 4chan and are probably a much better person for that.

Scaling Kim Kardashian's back-end, hur hur (don't worry, it's about engineering, not arses.)

Al-Jazeera has a great webcomic about privacy in the era of Big Data called 'Terms Of Service'. Read it and be even more afraid of what your friendly data-guzzling service provider knows about you.

In the real world child vaccination opponents attract other vaccine opponents and they like to live close to each other to bolster their efforts to defeat herd immunity and create their very own epidemics.

• 'Disneyland measles outbreak spreads to Bay Area

In Ireland the wording for the marriage equality referendum was announced. The shrill debates have already begun. Suzy Byrne has the only take on it worth reading, so you should do that.

Eye Candy

Movie User Interfaces

Worth Pondering

Actually Useful

The Streamus extension for Chrome is an in-browser streaming music player that pulls tracks from YouTube. It allows you build and share your own playlists, has a radio mode which picks the next track for those of you just too lazy to do that yourselves and is quite brilliant for a thing that is free. Go get it.

Totally Confused

Taking apart a Rolex, spoken Wikipedia, Bjork interviewed, important crime news and spam subject lines.

Finally, "this is a card game for people who are into kittens and explosions and laser beams and sometimes goats."

Yours etc., @loughlin

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The Pope has taken time out of his busy celibate schedule to tell his flock that they don't have to breed like rabbits, but a punch in the nose for anyone who says anything out of line about your mother is just fine.

Remember Google+? It really doesn't seem to be very active. At all. I suppose Google has just got bored with it, as has happened with many previous Google products (see below, and below that again.)

• 'Unsold Google Glass Units To Be Donated To Assholes In Africa'
• If you have difficulty interpreting the story above as satire that other lumbering activity tracker Facebook can help. You can now report things you see on Facebook as fake news stories or hoaxes. Within months I expect more reporting options such as "This story is too nuanced for me

Life among the disrupted. Life in Guantanamo Bay for a group of Cuban refugees who have been there for over half a century.

Eye Candy

Frozen flowers

Worth Pondering

Actually Useful

If you use Twitter a bit and at least occasionally click on links that people share then you should give Nuzzel a try. It collects and ranks all the links that people you follow share on Twitter. If that's not good enough for you, other features include –

• See stories shared by your friends' friends. A bit like stalking strangers!
• One-click retweeting to make others think you are erudite and have read all the things!
• Connect to Pocket to save the stories to your procrastination list!

Totally Confused

Advertising in your car, no-go Paris, mall fish, fall in love and fall out of love.

Finally, no I didn't stay up to watch the State Of The Union address. Pretty sure Obama just said he's going to spend the next two years reading your email and laughing.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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credit

2015 eh? Here are the stories, non-stories and unclassifiable other things – around 10 from each month – that I enjoyed most last year. Because if this newsletter has its finger anywhere, it's on the pulse.

To prove that, here's some true crime. If you're missing Serial, this Italian cold but now hot case is equally fascinating and twisty and convoluted. It is unclear whether Sarah Koenig is aware of its existence.

This week I discovered that the Indians love a bit of Hitler. Specifically, his lengthy hate screed Mein Kampf is something of a bestseller there. This BBC podcast explores the tricky question of what should be done with Mein Kampf when its seventy year copyright expires shortly. It also means I now have 'BBC Radio 4 Mein Kampf' in my search history.

Portability isn’t a special requirement for a laptop. It’s not a premium feature. It’s the essential promise of the device’s whole concept. And until recently, they came with compromises that were technological, eating away at the ideology of the category. But that problem has pretty much gone away.

Will your next laptop be the last one you ever need?

It’s worth noting that what commenters say online isn't necessarily what they would say in a meeting at the office. Because of the online disinhibition effect, people feel more free to let loose their brain bile when they don’t have to do it in person.

Breaking news: Misogynists still running amok in comments sections everywhere in 2015. Don't read the comments in 2015.

• 'Why Women Don't Leave Comments Online'
• 'The Psychology Of Online Comments'
• Lewis' Law
• 'Meet Le Reddit Armie, the trolls who have taken over YouTube'
• Daily Mail Comments on Twitter

Eye Candy

The Rescued Film Project

Worth Pondering

via

Actually Useful

If you use Twitter a bit and at least occasionally click on links that people share then you should give Nuzzel a try. It collects and ranks all the links that people you follow share on Twitter. If that's not good enough for you, other features include –

• See stories shared by your friends' friends. A bit like stalking strangers!
• One-click retweeting to make others think you are erudite and have read all the things!
• Connect to Pocket to save the stories to your procrastination list!

Totally Confused

Hackers like movie that portrays hackers sympathetically, ISIS TV, #sexualorientation, and abstract art bots.

Finally, Linus Torvalds still comes across as a bit of an ass after all these years of coming across as a bit of an ass.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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