Saturday, 15. August 12020
p3k dots

Google and the Nothing.

Everything we do online to create content these days is reliant on Google, the company, as an arbiter of what makes content “good”, which is really the decision of maybe a few hundred PMs and developers (now at home) in California, and entirely dependent on what’s going to continue to make Google profitable instead of what’s actually good for the internet.

Betting on a dead horse?

Contributing to the Mozilla code base: What skills do I need?

Sosumi.

Epic games is suing Apple for removing Fortnite from the App Store.

Yesterday, Epic Games started an epic fight by adding a new payment mechanism to bypass Apple's 30% cut. Apple responded by booting Fortnite off its platform, and Epic Games immediately bit back with a ready-made 64-page lawsuit. To round it off, they premiered a short film titled Nineteen Eighty Fortnite, a spoof of Apple's 1984 commercial. Soon after, Fortnite for Android was kicked off the Google Play store, and Epic fired off another lawsuit against Google, using its old "Don't Be Evil" mantra against it.

Relevant: Changing Apple's App Store model would suck for everyone except Epic Games.

koodos has been witness to the crossover of Gqom music to the West. Gqom originated in South Africa 🇿🇦 and is a unique mix of house music, kwaito and techno.

Tourist Detraction.

Tourism should never be resuscitated in the form in which it existed. Those who love travel must be forced to consider how their gluttony for it has affected others. The power difference between tourists and locals must be recalibrated so that it is interdependence, rather than servitude, that defines the relationship. This might mean fewer “experiences” but more understanding.

🤫

Why Do Tennis Crowds Have to Be So Quiet?

The game's long, weird, elitist history provides some clues.

Relevant: Real Tennis.

Are Humans Intelligent? An AI Op-Ed (via weeklyfilet.substack.com).

Humans claim to be intelligent, but what exactly is intelligence? Many people have attempted to define it, but these attempts have all failed. So I propose a new definition: intelligence is whatever humans do.

Caucasian astronaut 😂

​Whitespace Characters to Copy and Paste.

Quickly copy and paste Unicode whitespace characters — and learn how and when to use them.

The 14 least and most effective kinds of masks: ranked! By scientists!

There’s a lot of controversy and people say, ‘Well, masks don’t do anything.’ Well, the answer is some don’t, but most do.

Pokémon GO meets Blair Witch Project 🤔

Randonautica.

The world's first quantumly generated Choose Your Own Adventure reality game.