Game. Set. Match

January 18, 2016

Hello internet friends,

Mondays, uh?

~

Bet you didn’t see this coming:

Betting worth billions. Elite players. Violent threats. Covert messages with Sicilian gamblers. And suspicious matches at Wimbledon. Leaked files expose match-fixing evidence that tennis authorities have kept secret for years.

Besides the story itself I find it pretty fascinating to see the BBC work with Buzzfeed on this one.

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Sometimes – tbh all the time – computers are acting up and even those of us who know a bit about these things are not always sure what happens.
So maybe they are cursed and need a witch who casts a bunch of spells to make them work again?

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Why are people popular on social networks? Anil Dash says that the trick is mostly to be early.
I’m not sure how much that is true. I was (am) the second Twitter user from Germany and I’m still about as irrelevant as you can imagine. On the other hand, this makes the people who follow me a self-selected club of great people and spam bots.

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Netflix News! They want to block VPNs and they have many, many genres.

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Now, go forth and have a good week.

Very Different Today

January 11, 2016

Hello internet friends,

learning that David Bowie passed was surely not how I expected this week to start.

Starman

But here we are.

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I know that most people are so over “The Force Awakens” already, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Even though it looks a lot more real than the prequels, there is basically not a single shot that isn’t CGI. If you want to know how they did it, here is a great interview with ILM VFX Supervisor Roger Guyett.

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I can’t even… everyone has the same personality online.
I am not so sure if I agree, though. Mostly because I don’t want to admit that my magic skill to judge people on how they behave online might just be prejudice.

~

Given what humanity is doing in space these days it is pretty amazing that it has only been 70 years since we very super happy that the moon would bounce back radio waves.

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Thanks for reading, now go listen to some Bowie. Or maybe to some Nemesis instead?

A Spark of Joy

January 4, 2016

Hello internet friends,

let’s have a nice 2016, okay? Okay.
So.

Maybe don’t call chuchuk a horse penis, British dude.

I’ll probably read this article some time later, we’ll see. (And hereby recycling the joke that basically everybody who linked to this, made.)

Just around Christmas Mailchimp sent an email out to their customers with the exciting teaser that we could find out how much coffee they drank in 2015. I’m not sure anyone really cared. (In case you wonder: I had 546 cups of coffee in 2015, including espressi. Which is actually a surprisingly low number, not even reaching 1.5 cups of coffee/day.)

It is pretty amazing how many owners some aircraft go through before they are put out of service.
Just look at that beautiful Singapore Airlines livery on the first picture.

If you make or consume websites in one way or another, you might be interested in Maciej Cegłowski’s talk on big, heavy websites. (Here’s the transcript, if you don’t want to watch a big, heavy video.) It is really worth watching/reading.

Take care, people. And maybe clean out a bit. (I know I should.)

Post-Cool Normcore

December 28, 2015

Hello internet friends,

so, we got through another one of those again. I hope you had a nice one.
Onwards!

~

I’m quite a big fan of Muji. Almost every time I was in town in Düsseldorf I made sure I at least looked at their window display, it is just always very pleasing. (These days the closest Muji is in Paris, which seems a bit excessive, trip-wise, just for some window shopping.)

Muji, with its lack of logos, represents post-cool, normcore Japan, which is, of course, a fetishized version of Japanese culture—serene and neat and proper.

Turns out Muji is growing pretty fast, trying to stay calm while taking over the world.

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I use Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlist on my Sonos as alarm clock and let me tell you: it’s not always “so damn good.”
But it is pretty good often enough, so I’ll probably keep doing that.

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Erm.
And by “erm” I probably mean “same.” How else am I supposed to use the watch when my right hand is busy fondling using the phone?

~

If you just want to write something on the internet without much hassle you can probably do worse than medium dot com. I quite like it, too – it’s nice as a platform and there are a lot of things the people there do right. But when the founder says that “we” basically only need Facebook and Medium, he might not be all that right.
I’ll still re-publish all these emails over there – but, well, no. The web will still be happily being published on when Medium is long gone and forgotten.

~

If you want to read a bit more, here we go:

~

That was it for 2015, see you all next year.

Pew Pew Pew

December 21, 2015

Hello internet friends,
last weekend I went to watch a star war. Maybe even twice.
Apparently it is still not okay to talk about it publicly – but come on, that movie has been out for more than 48 hours.
That being said, here is my short review:
It’s a Star Wars movie. If you like Star Wars movies, you will like this Star Wars movie. It is not a toy commercial like the prequel trilogy was,[1] so that’s something. And I really enjoyed the two new lead actors, they seem to know what they’re doing.
If you’re kind of on the “meh” side when it comes to Star Wars, this might be the review for you.
And if you really don’t care, just shrug and move on. You’ll see the logo and the toys until your death, so that’s really all you can do.
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More media consumption think pieces! Streaming TV is different from regular TV!
This is something I’ll think about while watching Frasier on Netflix.
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The Washington Post used to ask “What was fake on the Internet this week?” since 2004. These days the answer seems to be “Basically everything, ugh.”

Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment. This format doesn’t make sense. I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless. […] institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

Yay.
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Likely also fake: hipster chocolate.
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Apparently some people think it is a good idea to ban children from the internet. While I certainly agree when it comes to my parts of the internet – haha, the joke here is that children are irritating – I really think that is a rather stupid idea.
~
Do you need some more articles to instapaper and never read? Okay, I’m here to deliver…
Are you into the whole idea of self-driving cars? Here, have the happy scrappy Ubuntu-powered one out of a hardware hacker’s garage.
Or maybe you’re more interested What the Führer means for Germans today.
~
Ending on that high note, have a good holiday if one is happening in your area.

  1. I mean… it is. But it doesn’t feel like one.  ↩

#swag

December 14, 2015

Hey guys 👋 this is Dominik and today we’ll learn about YouTube Voice.
We’ll probably also learn about emoji in newsletters.
Talking about emoji – apparently they are not longer cool in Japan.
But who knows these days what actually cool is? Apparently the dude who decided to offer a #swag course at an university.
His “introduction to cool” begins with setting up Medium and Slack accounts, so that’s, well, “cool.” After all, I have both of these and I’m the definition of cool.
What I sometimes have, before I frustration-uninstall it again, is Snapchat. It is completely not made for my mental model of how ~the internet~ is supposed to work. But maybe this might help?
It still doesn’t, really.
Today in fun facts: It is quite likely that Stonehenge is a second hand henge. It’s quite nice that the Welsh didn’t just throw it away but sold it to a bunch of Brits.
Hey, everybody, let’s try this at the office today!

Look No Further

December 7, 2015

Hello internet friends,

a couple of weeks back we all had a light chuckle when we saw this pullquote regarding avocados.
Which we then forgot again, because internet lols are in endless supply. When I saw it again, I tried to find the whole article and I have to say, it really delivers:

I mean, no offence to Stephen Hawking, I’m sure black holes are also a big deal in their own way but, if you really want to get to grips with the meaning of modern life, look no further than the avocado.

Chapeau. And onwards.
If you work on the internet, it might be interesting to know What Web Can Do Today.

We are at a crossroads of purpose and pain. Our conversations with other travellers have led to an awakening of ultra-intergalatic consciousness. Humankind has nothing to lose.

I enjoy this New-Age Bullshit Generator just a tiny little bit too much. It’s from those people who decided that studying these “profound” statements was a good way to spend their time. And well, they were not wrong.
Sometimes I watch SNL stuff, when it appears somewhere online. This sketch is probably the funniest lately. They were really respectful about it.
Take care and maybe have a laugh or two.

Shipping

November 30, 2015

Hello internet friends,

the end is nigh!
At least the end of this year, if you happen to follow the Gregorian calendar.

I didn’t see one of these “hoverboards” in real life, yet – but it is still hugely interesting to see how these things are built and sold.

The crapfest that was Age of Ultron soured me on the MCU – and yet, mostly because Krysten Ritter has been great in everything I have seen her so far, I watched Jessica Jones last week.
And what can I say – I really liked it a lot. Mostly because it moved all the silly superhero antics way to the background in favour of a really dark detective story. If you happen to have Netflix around, give it a go. Maybe watch something fun in between the episodes, though.

Back in the day I used to play a fair share of StarCraft II. Some people (hi!) really want me to get the new and last version of it, too. Probably mostly so that they can kick my ass in it.
If you are so inclined, it might be interesting to read about the last big tournament finale of the version before the update.

Boarding airplanes is only fun if you have a very interesting definition of “fun” – usually it involves a lot of standing around and being shuffled from one queue to the next one.
Given that airlines have decided that humans are just cargo anyway, how about we build containers for them and plug them into planes as needed? It’s an interesting concept – a modular airplane, what could possibly go wrong?

Have a good first week of December, everybody.

Wayward

November 23, 2015

Hello internet friends,

when was the last time you thought about Enya? Precisely.
Now she has a new album and because it’s 2015 the long portrait doesn’t appear in Vanity Fair but over on Buzzfeed.

If you are more into engines than Enya[1] you might want to watch the top three of the current supercars driven around a race track in Portugal.

If you’re not interested in either of those, maybe you like (long think pieces about) selfies? Bring some time for that one, the reading time algorithm clocks this one at a whopping 57 minute read.
Just imagine how many selfies you could have taken during that time.

Apparently there are Millennial life coaches and I honestly don’t know how to process that information.

I celebrate everything! Even if you got on the call and said, ‘I didn’t do shit,’ I’d be like, ‘Wooo!’

Wooo. Well, I’m in.
(This is also a great article for the people with the snake people browser plugin. Chrome/Firefox)

If we still didn’t know that podcasting is getting big – just like in 2004 blogging got big – here is the Vogue podcast.

Have a good week, people.

  1. Those of you who know me in person can probably picture my smug smile over this lovely pun-ny segue.  ↩

Quality Content

November 16, 2015

Hello internet friends,

somehow my paragraph on the current event in Paris and everybody’s reaction to it got a bit longer. Since I understand that many people want or need to avoid articles about the more traumatic news, I put it out as an addendum. You can find it here: Capital-O Opinion.

For everybody else, let’s try to keep this one a bit lighter for now, okay?

Apparently English is a pretty weird language. But obviously not as much as the author claims, notes the always helpful geek choir called MetaFilter.

The Internet Will Always Suck – and because we’re trying it with a lighter mood, this one is about the technical infrastructure and not the people.
In case technical infrastructure made you roll your eyes and think: “ugh, nerd!” – enjoy this helpful guide on how to handle electricity.

Apparently a bunch of hotels are worth 12.2 Instagrams. That’s pretty amazing.

I’ve been playing the new Tomb Raider game all weekend (in case you wonder if I have a life…) and it is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

15 Things That May Or May Not Be Amaze – BuzzFeed delivers quality content once again.

Take care, everybody. Breathe. Hug a tree or a fellow person, if you’re so inclined.