LEGO Universe's dong detection problem
— until recently, Minecraft never hosted servers, so it wasn't an issue for them #
Mystery Show #2, "Britney"
— Starlee Kine's endless curiosity about other people is the best part of her new podcast #
Jeremy Keith on the messy, beautiful web
— "The web has no gatekeepers. The web has no quality control. The web is a mess. The web is for everyone." #
Space Weird Thing
— remaking Space Oddity using only the thousand most-common words in the English language #
Extra Credit on Rust's representation of race
— the game devs randomly and permanently assign skin color to players with interesting results #
Analysis of Twitter's 133k verified accounts
— 25% are journalists; collected by scraping who @Verified follows #
Hot Topic buys ThinkGeek
— this will only surprise someone who hasn't been in a Hot Topic in a decade #
TNG Edits, "Riker"
— a new TNG Edit after five years! the original series of remixes were instant classics #
Deep learning robots use trial and error for motor tasks
— we need a word for the feeling when something is equally exciting and terrifying #
Flickr faces complaints over offensive auto-tagging in photos
— completely predictable outcome for a frustratingly unnecessary feature #
Sony's secret contract with Spotify
— streaming's a good deal if you're a major label, but indies are stuck with paltry royalties only #
Christina Xu on killing projects with dignity
— ending something in a deliberate way is a time for celebration and closure #
Facebook launches Instant Articles
— The Awl's John Herrman had the best thoughts on the implications I've seen #
The Verge feature on startups drawing inspiration from casinos
— which, in turn, exploits behavioral psychology to take player's money #
Video game execution watched by 325,000 players
— the security lead took over the character in-game, stripped, killed, and deleted him #
Offworld on Lifeline, iOS game where you text an astronaut in real-time
— finished this unusual iOS game this morning, highly recommended #
VHX announces subscription video sales
— a new option for indies to make money from serialized video beyond ads #
Ryan Gosling finally ate his cereal
— Ryan McHenry compiled his Vine videos in a single video on YouTube #