Saturday, April 19, 2014

WNYC- Collected Stories

Sgt Star - An Update

An update to March's TLDR story about a chatbot that wants to recruit you to the US Army.

A Silent Spotify to Fund a Tour

A band called Vulfpeck has asked fans to stream an entire album of silence on Spotify while they sleep, so the band can use the royalties to tour without charging for their shows. So far, the scheme has worked. We talk to Vulfpeck's Jack Stratton about ...

The Problem With "Doxxing"

For years an internet term of art for revealing personal information online, "dox" suddenly entered the popular lexicon last week when Newsweek claimed it had discovered the founder of Bitcoin. But is this the right application of the term? What does doxxing actually mean?

TLDR #17 - Hey, Guess What? I Found Truth For Us

Last fall, TLDR covered a bunch of hoaxes. Some we liked, most we didn't. On this episode, we talk to Paulo Ordoveza and Adrienne LaFrance, a couple of people who have devoted themselves to trying to debunk the innumerable falsehoods flying around the internet.

The likely hoax app that requires you to be drunk before you can use it.

Livr is a new social networking app named for the organ you will be destroying while you use it. You see, you can only access Livr if your blood alcohol level is above a certain number.

#16 - *Win a Million Dollar Mansion From Your HOME COMPUTER*

"Sweepers" are people who spend their free time entering hundreds of online sweepstakes -- the contests most of us skip because we're sure they're all scams. It turns out, we're wrong. Some people win big. Reporter Laura Mayer takes us into the online sweepstakes universe.

The Internet Has Brought Thousands of People Together to Play Pokemon

In its purest and most noble form, the internet is an experiment in community building. It allows people who would have no reason to interact in the real world to come together to work toward, or in some cases against, a common goal. In the case of Twitch ...

Why the Hasidic Community Loves WhatsApp

Since it is used expressly for peer-to-peer communication, it doesn't require users to browse the internet, thus potentially exposing them to material they might not want to see.

Creepy New App Lets People Eavesdrop

Why leave eavesdropping on phone calls to law enforcement? With the new app Crowdpilot, you can invite anyone to listen in.

No, New York Will Not Get 30 Inches Of Snow This Weekend

News outlets are reporting it and sourcing their claims to "social media speculation" (!!!). Good news: It's not true.

OK, Maybe we jumped the gun on the whole Google Glass thing

Last week, PJ wrote an excellent article comparing early aesthetic critiques of Google Glass to those of the Sony's Walkman. The point was that all technology looks ridiculous and impractical until it becomes useful, and then it's basically indespensible. But cartoonist and journalist Susie Cagle pointed ...

TLDR #13 - Slender Man, The Internet's Monster

The Slender Man is the internet's monster - the subject of countless remixes, tributes, and parodies. He's so ubiquitous he feels like he's been around for ages, like folklore. But Slender Man has an owner and a point of origin. Host Alex Goldman talks to Eric Knudsen, the creator ...

Prince's Troubled Relationship With the Internet

Prince is suing 22 fans, for $1 million a piece, for posting links to bootlegs of his concerts on filesharing sites. This is just the latest volley in Prince's long standing love/hate (well, mostly hate/hate) relationship with the internet.

TLDR #12 - Hunting for Youtube's Saddest Comments

YouTube's infamous for having one of the worst comment sections on the internet. There's no reason to ever read them. Unless you’re writer & filmmaker Mark Slutsky. Mark spends hours scouring the comments section on YouTube, and occasionally, scattered in the dross, he finds small poignant stories for his ...

Revenge Porn Pioneer Hunter Moore Indicted

UPDATE: read indictment below.
Time Magazine is reporting that Hunter Moore has been indicted by a grand jury for conspiracy to “access a protected computer without authorization to obtain information for private financial gain.” There aren't many details available and I haven't seen a copy of the indictment ...

Behold! The Internet's Beauty Catalogued

If there is one idea that PJ and I drive towards both on the TLDR blog and on the podcast, it's that the internet can be a beautiful, magical place. It is the staging ground for so much cleverness and creativity and humanity. So, imagine my delight this ...

Facebook is still not dying

Another day, another hysterical report on the demise of Facebook.

Twitter Tries to Cash in on Large Minority Userbase

Ther have been two wholly unrelated truths about Twitter almost since the service premiered. The first is that it has a black and Hispanic userbase that is much larger than the internet as a whole. The second is the service remains unprofitable. Twitter is hoping to ...

Yesterday, The Internet Solved 20-Year-Old Mystery

The internet helps a woman decipher the confounding, decades old notes of her dying grandmother.

The Feds Have $25 Million In Bitcoin From the Silk Road. Now What?

Yesterday, the US District Attorney's Office for the Souther District of New York announced the forfeiture of 29,655 bitcoins from the servers it seized from Ross Ulbricht, the owner of defunct internet drug marketplace Silk Road. According to this bitcoin converter, that is about $24.5 million dollars worth ...

A Weird, Gwen Ifill-Related Twitter Mystery is Happening Right Now (Update: Solved!)

At 2:01 this afternoon, a bunch of journalism-related Twitter accounts suddenly started tweeting this cryptic message: "f gwenifill." If you search twitter for the phrase, you see that it's very widespread, and that no one really seems to know what's going on.

Businesses Might Suffer If They Google Prospective Employees

Scientific American reports on a study that shows job applicants who know their prospective boss viewed their social media profiles are more likely to think that their hiring process was unfair. This is even true in cases where the applicant gets the job.

Leaving Negative Reviews Online is Not As Safe As It Used To Be

There was a time when leaving negative reviews of a business on the internet was a no risk proposition. If a company burned you, or even if you were a competitor leaving a fake review, the business couldn't really do anything about it. That appears, however slowly, to be changing.

Sometimes, Native Advertising is Actually Pretty Good

I am generally not a fan of advertising of any kind. Print, billboards, TV - no matter how creative you are, I find it an annoying distraction that I try to tune out. But there have been a couple of smart attempts at online advertising recently that were great not ...

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