Brain Dump
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‘This Is What Happens When Analytics Make Decisions for You.’

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Andy Beaumont, regarding his Tab Closed; Didn’t Read website:

What we’re witnessing here is the first wave of the second world pop-up war. Those of us who lived through the first one can only describe the horrors to our disbelieving children. This time though, the pop-ups are winning because we don’t yet have the tools to fight back. The web has seemingly evolved into something that actively antagonises people — why would anyone in their right mind hide the content that visitors are there to see?

In short, maybe they’re not in their right mind. This is what happens when analytics make decisions for you.

Whole piece is simply brilliant.

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aamermoquim
3957 days ago
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Alternate Universe
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Open Letter

18 Comments and 46 Shares
Are you ok?  Do you need help?
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aamermoquim
4017 days ago
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Alternate Universe
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17 public comments
josephwebster
4014 days ago
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Finally some rational political discourse.
Denver, CO, USA
Demagog
4016 days ago
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Well, but where is MiB and Greys and a lot of other secret rulers of the (not-so-good-site) of the Atlantic Ocean
beerland
4016 days ago
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YES.
Kensington, California
mrobold
4016 days ago
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Also, please make more bacon.
Orange County, California
herrmann
4017 days ago
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Forgot to mention the Majestic 12...
Brazil
sjk
4017 days ago
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Maybe all the organizations the control the US government are too busy arguing with the other members of the cabal to get organized?
Florida
MEVincent
4017 days ago
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If only this were true...
Manassas, Virginia
joshpennington
4017 days ago
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Yes. Please.
Saint Joseph, MI
bobfa
4017 days ago
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PLEASE!!!!
hannahdraper
4017 days ago
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Yep.
Washington, DC
MourningDragon
4017 days ago
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Full Frontal Truth...
yashimii
4017 days ago
Lols. If it wasn't so sad.
JayM
4017 days ago
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Ha! Definitely!
Atlanta, GA
ToToR65
4018 days ago
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Grève forcée des fonctionnaires US (pas en France que ça arriverait ><)
ashtonbt1
4018 days ago
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Word. This is amazing.
MaryEllenCG
4018 days ago
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Seriously, now.
Greater Bostonia
bronzehedwick
4018 days ago
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Alt text: "Are you ok? Do you need help?"
Tarrytown, NY

Free Works

2 Comments and 3 Shares

Marco Arment:

And we lucked out with Reader — imagine how much worse it would be if website owners weren’t publishing open RSS feeds for anyone to fetch and process, but were instead posting each item to a proprietary Google API. We’d have almost no chance of building a successful alternative.

That’s Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. (Does the shutdown make more sense now?)

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aamermoquim
4214 days ago
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Alternate Universe
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bobfa
4219 days ago
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So true

How Oreo's rapid-response team lit up Twitter with a Super Bowl blackout ad

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Oreo ad

The Super Bowl, America's annual celebration of the gridiron game, tends to be the most expensive day on any advertiser's calendar. Or maybe not. Oreo Cookies took a novel approach to its marketing during the big game last night by keeping its advertising team in the office, ready to respond to any unusual events during the match. Such an opportunity arose when the power inside New Orleans' Superdome went out, and the marketing minds quickly set to work on producing a poster ad for their product that played off that anomalous incident. After only a brief time, Oreo's Twitter account was up and tweeting the "You can still dunk in the dark" image, which resonated with Twitter users and has so far resulted in more than 14,000 retweets.

C...

Continue reading…

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aamermoquim
4262 days ago
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tar

6 Comments and 9 Shares
I don't know what's worse--the fact that after 15 years of using tar I still can't keep the flags straight, or that after 15 years of technological advancement I'm still mucking with tar flags that were 15 years old when I started.
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aamermoquim
4264 days ago
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faced this yesterday.
Alternate Universe
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5 public comments
samuel
4263 days ago
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I learned the handy tar cvf to make tarballs.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
brico
4264 days ago
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Lolololo
Brooklyn, NY
adamgurri
4265 days ago
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Unix jokes lulz
New York, NY
greggrossmeier
4266 days ago
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I hate to admit it, but I exemplified this just today.
Ojai, CA, US
4253 days ago
It is muscle memory, the only part I remember is e(x)tract and (c)reate. And when I create, I always list the order of tarball and files incorrectly. ^_^
sredfern
4266 days ago
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tar xfvz file
Sydney Australia
michaelglass
4266 days ago
HONESTLY!
euser
4265 days ago
Be careful, older versions of tar expect the 'f' to be in front of the file argument, so better make it -xzvf
skorgu
4265 days ago
'tar t' would be even safer.
aripollak
4265 days ago
No need to specify z, it will automatically detect the compression.
euser
4259 days ago
That's a very late GNU feature @aripollak, so don't rely on it when they say "Unix" here (and GNU's Not Unix) ;)