But the 24-year-old Mike Bloomberg, in 2014, couldn’t come to New York and find a cheap apartment anymore. Or if he did, it would be with six other guys.
I don’t know, but my guess is that if you and I were sitting around the table back 40 years ago, you would have said the same thing. It’s like the way we think the music that we have is okay, but the next generation’s music is crap. “I could never get into that school today”—that’s all bullshit. Things are changing, but I don’t subscribe to that.
– From the New York Magazine’s Bloomberg interview. Man is even insightful about music.
[video]
1. Read another story about antics at the border.
2. Play Papers Please from Steam.
zoya:
evan:
We’re engaged!
We are!
(via zoya)
Linus Torvalds on community discussion styles
More on Ars
[video]
Instagram's New Videos and the Impulse to Capture Every Moment -
Personally, I think in time all of this instantaneous and attempted comprehensiveness in sharing every moment of our lives will be looked back at with disdain, a waste, a slap in the face to what it means to really live. But for now, it’s here, and it’s going to be used until the entire idea of social sharing has been so watered down that it’s no longer something the majority wants to participate in.
Thinking about what this can all look like if we look back 10 years from now is a fun exercise. I am with you.
(via trappedintime)
Instagram's New Videos and the Impulse to Capture Every Moment -
“We’re forever on a quest to take a moment and record it forever in time,” Systrom said. “It’s our collective belief that the world is better off captured and shared more permanently. That’s what Instagram is.”
The best reading on this constant conflict of capturing moments and being in them is probably Susan Sontag’s On Photography.
She connects our desires for capturing moments with our desire to constantly produce and work, something that has engulfed us over the past few decades.
By now, these desires have engulfed us so fully that it is often impossible imagine an alternative way of being. The old debate about phones and cameras at concerts barely makes sense today because some can’t even enjoy the show if they can’t get a quick video from the crowd.
The idea of being in the moment has been transformed into something different. It’s not something we can simply undo, but understanding why this all happened can help us break out, at least for a moment.
“You probably do have something to hide, you just don’t know it yet.” — Moxie Marlinspike on privacy, NSA, etc.
“Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?” — David Foster Wallace (via theatlantic)
(via kenyatta)
“Startups have been systematized, mythologized, culturally and socially de-risked; reduced down to formulas and recipes. Yet, there is no enduring formula for creativity and rebellion. When we attempt to factory farm innovation we breed out the very thing we’re trying raise: the creative destruction that stokes and re-stokes the fire of capitalism.” —
Alex Payne: Letter to a Young Programmer
This whole post is most excellent. See also: World Building in a Crazy World
[video]
Yesterday, Yandex exposed their ad targeting stats to each individual web user. By going to http://crypta.yandex.ru/, you can see what profile Yandex’s systems think you have (it doesn’t work well if you don’t browse many Russian sites, as only those would likely have Yandex tracking/ad code). In this screenshot, the targeting concluded I am a woman who browses the web early in the morning. Yandex also offers a more detailed description of what’s going on here [RU].
Would be cool to see Google, Facebook or other ad firms do the same, but I imagine this won’t make anyone any new friends, given the constant discussion of privacy issues (it seems to be a less popular conversation in Russia).