I'm never happier about being married than when I watch people try and date in 2018. Tinder looks ter
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May 4 · Issue #106 · View online
A newsletter of innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair collected and written by @.
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I’m never happier about being married than when I watch people try and date in 2018. Tinder looks terrible! People seem awful! Fucking catfishing‽ (Side note: After a few drunken conversations with my neighbour, who coincidentally worked with me at iStock, I wrote a treatment for an animated web series based around the idea of buying stock lives for online use. We never did anything with it, but Life Faker uses the same basic premise as their gag and now I wish we had.) Now Facebook wants to get you hooked up (or “ paired off” if you’re an idiot—another aside, this is a good thread and entirely unrelated to the Facebook thing… but Ross is a dummy and I’ve enjoyed watching him get dragged), which is a terrible idea. Also, it’s a strange ask from them on the heels of recent privacy revelations. “Sure, we fucked some stuff up, but now you should absolutely trust us with your sex life!” At the same time, everyone is on Facebook. If you’re looking for a someone, going where all the potential someones are isn’t the worst strategy. You know how we all agree Facebook is pretty bad and we still use it because family or friends or groups or you’re trying to sell a book? Same thing. It’s shocking what we’ll give up for convenience. But I am married. And happily. So this is all somebody else’s problem. Good luck with that!
Housekeeping: Not a lot happening this week. Sorry. Final (I hope!) round of book edits and a thing due (actually overdue) for This.
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Twitter Advising All 330 Million Users to Change Passwords After Bug Exposed Them in Plain Text
It’s weird that they don’t force password changes across the board after something like this. Twitter hasn’t revealed how many users’ passwords may have potentially been compromised or how long the bug was exposing passwords before it found and fixed the issue. But the fact that the company is urging its entire user base to change their passwords indicates that it would seem to be a significant number of users.
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Pirate Radio Stations Explode on YouTube
Pirate radio is a strange thing in the internet era—easier, cheaper and more prevalent, but, you know, way less cool. The channels occupy a precarious space between YouTube’s algorithm and its copyright policing, drawing comparisons to the unlicensed pirate radio stations of the 20th century, recreated in the digital sphere. Many of the channels blink in and out of existence within a week, but their presence has become a compelling part of the site’s musical ecosystem. And while competitors like Spotify are gaining, YouTube still dominates the streaming world, according to the latest Music Consumer Insight Report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
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The Bloomberg Paywall Does Not Make Sense
Felix Salmon is not a fan of Bloomberg’s new paywall. So why is the paywall going up? Partly because it can. Paywalls are so common nowadays that Bloomberg was effectively leaving money on the table by not having one. Like the good capitalists that they are, Bloomberg’s executives have decided to pick this low-hanging fruit. As a business decision, it’s a no-brainer. But there’s something else going on here too, related to the way Bloomberg LP is structured.
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What Does The Amazon Echo Look Mean For Personal Style?
Are algorithms destroying taste? What does that mean? Most importantly, how does this shirt look on me? Philosophers in the 18th century defined taste as a moral capacity, an ability to recognize truth and beauty. “Natural taste is not a theoretical knowledge; it’s a quick and exquisite application of rules which we do not even know,” wrote Montesquieu in 1759. This unknowingness is important. We don’t calculate or measure if something is tasteful to us; we simply feel it. Displacing the judgment of taste partly to algorithms, as in the Amazon Echo Look, robs us of some of that humanity.
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We Will Never, Ever Stop Arguing About Cult Teen Films
Fucking right we won’t. I will fight all of you. You don’t have to be a developmental psychologist to understand how a potent combination of visceral thrills and ideology, administered amid the hormonal chaos of adolescence, can have a lasting emotional impact. Whether they’re as brilliant as A Wrinkle in Time or as idiotic as the Saved by the Bell reruns I watched on an infinite loop in middle school, these stories burrow into our malleable, pubescent lizard brains and teach us how to live. From there, they become transitional objects for kids too old to drag around a tattered security blanket. Long after I graduated to grown-up literature, I would spend anxious nights re-reading Sweet Valley High books.
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Arrested Development: Star Wars
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maybe Kanye is just the Ezra Pound of rap.
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The Digital Vigilantes Who Hack Back
Nicholas Schmidle on the American companies that fall victim to data breaches and want to retaliate against the culprits: Can they do so without breaking the law?
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Big Brother Goes Digital
In the twenty-first century, new technologies have emerged that enable companies as varied as Amazon, the British supermarket chain Tesco, Bank of America, Hitachi, and the management consultants Deloitte to achieve continuous oversight of their workers’ behavior.
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The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code
Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.
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The Mystery of the Most Famous Missing Person on YouTube
He ran out of an airport terminal, terrified. CCTV recorded him. But he’s never been seen again—even though thousands of YouTubers and Redditors have attempted to crack the case.
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