Mirrorworld 26000

February 18, 2019

Hello internet friends,

sometimes there are weird ideas in people’s head and I really can’t follow them. Who, for example, thought that Twitter is a good platform for an interview? How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t do it.
Quelle surprise. It used to be a platform to talk about your breakfast and now it’s an app that makes you feel bad as a service.

Just like every year is the year of Linux on the desktop, every is the year that AR finally had a breakthrough. This time it’s going to have a creepy name, too! AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld
All snark aside – this actually sounds pretty old-school-Wired and if you scroll down all the way to the byline, you’ll understand why.

I can hardly plan for tomorrow, so I’m always amazed by people who plan a long time into the future. In this case, a couple of thousand years: The 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight
I was a disappointed, though – I saw the headline and thought it was 26,000 years old and probably made by aliens, but instead it was just some dude in the 30s.

I guess if you read this, you already like email newsletters. So it might be a bit silly to link you to an article praising email newsletters, but alas, here we go: Oh God, It’s Raining Newsletters

That’s all, folks. Take care and sleep well!

Føck

February 19, 2018

Hëllö ïntërnët frïënds,

(whät? Wëll: Ä Brïëf Hïstöry Öf Mëtäl Umläüts)

Fuck

Fuuuuuck. Fuck.
An Oral History of The Wire’s Unforgettable 5-Minute ‘Fuck’ Scene

Or not

They did the math and it doesn’t look good for single people: Tinder is not actually for meeting anyone
(It is probably worse for women, let’s be honest there. So far everyone I met through Tinder has been a total delight.)

What’s In a Name

If you ever used Facebook you probably saw an add for a shirt with your name on it. Turns out I’m not the only one who thinks these are sad, sad things: Those Name T-Shirts on Facebook Fill Me With Despair

Apocalypse

Maybe we can put some SAMs in between? Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand

Toodles!
Go watch Black Panther, if you haven’t already.

The Green Issue

February 20, 2017

Hello internet friends,

another Monday, this one with me cranky and slightly feverish in bed. So… let’s see how that will work for us.

Smart cities! They’ll probably work about as good as smart homes, which probably means – not all that good. Because what we should not forget – a city is not a computer. (Well, unless we get rid of all these pesky humans and just replace them with little robots.)

One thing that will always be a ~bug~ in a city will be the creative ways some of us humans are just a tiny little bit smarter than the systems around us. Take for example these models who use their ~being models~ skills to distribute weed in New York.

But sometimes we make little mistakes, no matter how smart we are. Just look at these friendly fellas, who accidentally bought a giant pig.

Now, shall we play “internet entrepreneurs being internet entrepreneurs” first or maybe a bit of science first?
Well, let’s do science! Turns out it is possible to measure the historical state of Earth’s magnetic field by looking at old clay jars. That’s pretty amazing.

So, internet entrepreneurs! Partying, throwing bread around – awesome! (I still like the clay pots more. Or maybe the models who sell pot? I can’t decide.)

Toodles!

Shrimp Emoji

February 22, 2016

Hello internet friends,

I actually quite enjoy flying. I like airports[1] and I am fascinated by the machinery and logistics of the whole system. I don’t mind sitting in a tube with a whole lot of people, breathing recycled air and never feeling quite comfortable, because after all – hello! flying! – but even this might have its limits. And nowadays these limits are being closed to being reached – with the first few airlines pondering non-stop flights from Europe to Australia.

I happily use Tumblr without thinking too much – I look at a bunch of photos on my dashboard, reblog a bunch, like some, yay. Except for the fact that I am quite annoyed that they took away the comment feature, Tumblr is where I go for mindless but always positive time wasting.
This might be a sign of my age, though – because for young people, Tumblr is serious business.

I did mention her before, but since I see her face almost every day, here we go again, a new article about Ariane, the stock model who is everywhere. And apparently this is her Instagram account. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good news! Drinking more coffee may reverse liver damage from booze.

I had Chris Dixon’s What’s Next in Computing? sitting open in a tab all day and now that I scrolled over it – come on, lol, reading the whole thing? – I will recommend that you read through the article. After all, the future of computing is also very much the future of our lives.
And me personally? Maybe I’ll see how I can retire to some remote island and/or mountain, far away from all these things.

Let’s learn about the secret double meanings of emoji! And then have another coffee and a good week ahead.

  1. With some exceptions. But isn’t that always the case?  ↩

All Tomorrow’s Bots

February 16, 2015

Hello, internet friends!

Every time I hear “Minority Report”-technology I think it’s about a silly hand-wavy interface. But then there is this now.
Onwards…?

I can see a future where a police might predict that a Twitter bot might not be a threat. But maybe it is not that easy? Some of your favourite Twitter accounts might be bots already.

And if they are bots, what happens, when they tweet something stupid? After all, the guy who ran that bot that scared the police, shut it down afterwards.
Luckily we’re still not that heartless when humans write something dumb, but we might be getting close.

When bots are not writing tweets for their programmers, they are playing the dating game for them.

What a future we live in.