Tag: Internet
Data-enthusiast John Matherly has created a map of pretty much all of the world’s devices currently connected to the internet by pinging ALL THE IPs with “Are you there?” Quite a few machines disable the reply, but still, that’s pretty amazing. Check out that smattering on the coasts and nothing in the middle. Russia needs to get some […]
In the digital age of text-centric communication, we must keep searching for increasingly subtle clues about how other people are feeling. Anyone who lives or works with another person will have noted that the sound of someone’s typing seems to fluctuate with their mood, particularly if that mood is “REALLY FUKiNG PISSED OFF SACYSBGOUYASGASJXCASD.” Now, a recent study has proven […]
Imagine you’re back in the distant past. The year was 2008, a strange and terrifying time. The recession was in full swing, we hadn’t yet gained the ability to “like” things on Facebook, and Microsoft was getting really desperate to recruit cool young kids before they were all snatched up by Google. These recruiting videos from Microsoft are both […]
Everyone is doing the #IceBucketChallenge, from Tom Cruise (who got 7.5 ice buckets poured on his head, like a Tom Cruise would) to Bulgarian politician and alleged wiretapper and embezzler Tsvetan Genchev Tsvetanov. Though the viral campaign was launched to promote awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, it took some pretty creative tangents, specifically the #RubbleBucketChallenge from Gaza (because water is a little too precious to waste when you’re […]
Sixteen-year-old Lolita Richie has never even heard of “racist space alien” Valeria Lukyanova, she claims. Aspiring to internet fame and anatomy-defying “living doll” aesthetics, “I’m the ultimate vamp woman,” the teenager tells the Daily Mail. And so it begins. Lolita boasts just 40 followers on Russian social network VK page. Her 33-year-old mother, former actress Anya Richi, takes photos of Lolita dressed up in Anya’s old […]
Since the shut down of major cryptomarket Silk Road, the “dark net” drug market has boomed, nearly doubling in size. At the Conversation, James Martin provides a reasonable take on the increasingly professional practice of online drug distribution and its “socially beneficial implications.” For dealers, selling drugs online offers significant advantages over face-to-face retailing. They have immediate access to a huge and […]
Gilad Lotan of I-Data has published an enlightening and thorough analysis of how social media channels and online publications spread coverage of the conflict in Gaza. It illustrates the pathways through which we’re served biased material, based on our user preferences and whichever social media bubble we already occupy. The article features massive infographics like […]
Neuroscientists are hard at work figuring out how our brains interpret emoticons, which have become somewhat integral to modern communication. In past experiments like those conducted at Tokyo Denki University, scientists determined that the right inferior frontal gyrus (the part of our brain which processes emotions) is activated by a smiley or frowny face. However, emoticons would do […]
Twitter may be the saddest social network. No other platform makes it easier to send a quick message of despair into the universe. The hugely popular account @sosadtoday demonstrates Twitter’s penchant for melancholy well, with recent tweets like “depression is now following you” and “btw it’s not going to be ok” that generate hundreds of […]
In troll-ceptual eBay art news, a screenshot of 4chan post No. 33181590 has been up for sale on eBay since August 29th. The initial price was set at $500, but with less than eight hours to go, the bidding price has reached $90,100. The price leaped by $10,000 today alone. Dubbed “A one of a kind work of […]
