Anti-texting and driving laws! UNNNNNGGGGHHHHHH!!! Amirite? I don’t know who thought these laws were a good idea, because it’s totally boning up my sweet texts and tweets while I’m trying to zipper merge. Thank god then for the new product that makes texting and driving so much easier: “Text & Drive”! For drivers! Who text! […]
Tech
Posted inMovies & TV
And So It Begins
Cinema as we know it is dead, today’s children don’t even have the attention spans to pay attention to a goddamn cartoon, imagine the sort of behavior you’re teaching these screeching little cretins, etc. The Walt Disney Studios invites animation fans to experience a classic film like never before with a new interactive theatrical event […]
Posted inTech
What Do You Think About the New iPhone Announcement?
Apple just had their big annual iPhone hootenanny. Announcements include a release date for iOS 7; a cheaper, plastic iPhone 5C in multiple colors; and the iPhone 5S, which comes with a better camera, a new fancy gold shade, and—some seem to think this is the biggest deal—a fingerprint scanner. At the moment, Wall Street […]
Posted inTech
iOS 7: The Revenge of Jony Ive
Up until today, the aesthetic of Apple’s operating systems—and, as a result, the aesthetic of everybody else’s operating systems—were defined by skeuomorphism, a word I had no idea existed and still have no idea how to pronounce but totally know what it means. So do you. It’s this: Thanks Wikipedia! In other words, it’s something […]
Posted inTech
Apple iPhone 5s Announcement Preview
It’s that time again! It’s time for Apple to release the newest, most incrediblest, revolutionariest piece of technology ever shown by guys wearing jeans on stage. Don’t worry, you don’t need to watch to announcement because I’ve tracked all the most accurate analysis, speculation, rumor, leak, and made-up nonsense and I’m here to give you […]
Posted inNews
Today in the Surveillance State: The Virtues of Police Cameras
Surveillance is inevitable—I don’t write about it because I think there’s any real chance of it going away, but because the smarter we are about how we let it get introduced into our lives (and the more we know about how it’s being introduced without our participation, permission, or consent), the better off we’ll be […]
Posted inTech
The Gospel According to Facebook
I make no apologies for disliking church. I was forced to go for the first 15 years of my life, and I figure I’ve done my time. HOWEVER! I’m seriously reconsidering my stance after seeing this kickass gospel choir performing a hilariously level-headed song called, “Keep Your Business off Facebook.” If preachers continue handing out […]
Posted inMedia
HuffPo Is Ending Anonymous Comments
Arianna says: Trolls are just getting more and more aggressive and uglier, and I just came from London where there are rape and death threats… I feel that freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they say and not hiding behind anonymity. We need to evolve a platform to meet […]
Posted inPolitics
The Internet Is Not Confidential
Ken White at Popehat writes: For ten years Pamela Jones has run Groklaw, a site collecting, discussing, and explaining legal developments of interest to the open-source software community. Her efforts have, justifiably, won many awards. She’s done now…Pamela Jones is ending Groklaw because she can’t trust her government. She’s ending it because, in the post-9/11 […]
Posted inTech
Facebook Could Be Planning to Drop 15-Second Ads Into Your News Feed
Well! There goes Facebook. Bloomberg says: Facebook Inc. (FB), seeking to break the long-held dominance of television over advertising budgets, plans to sell TV-style commercials on its site for as much as $2.5 million a day, two people familiar with the matter said. The world’s largest social-networking site, which has 1.15 billion members, expects to […]
Posted inMedia
Are Commenters Still Commenters When They’re Writing Headlines?
Nieman Journalism Lab’s Adrienne LaFrance says that Gawker CEO Nick Denton is adjusting the commenter/reporter relationship: Tonight Gawker is rolling out a new kind of reblogging functionality to Kinja so that readers can top the articles they share with their own headlines and introductions. (It’ll first enable Gawker Media staffers to re-top stories; that power […]
Posted inTech
Another State Against Government Spying
First there was Montana’s law against government spying on cell phones. Now, New Jersey is moving in a similar direction: Staking out new ground in the noisy debate about technology and privacy in law enforcement, the New Jersey Supreme Court on Thursday ordered that the police will now have to get a search warrant before […]