Let's Play: The Shining »

Pippin Barr’s note-perfect recreation of The Shining as an 8-bit game.

Mattel Update the ThingMaker as a 3D Printer »

Cheap, easy to use, surprisingly decent resolution. I think I’m going to be picking one up myself. For my kid, of course.

Wyclef Jean Does an AMA, Gets Destroyed »

I’ve never seen an AMA go so badly that the celebrity answered nothing and deleted their reddit account. Example question:

Are you the same guy that started a charity for his country then stole that money?

The Art of the Witness »

The Witness is a frustrating game. Not just because the puzzles are hard, but because the game demands so much of your time (I’ve spent hours on individual puzzles) and because the world hints at so much but appears to deliver (from where I’m standing, at least) so little apart from more puzzles for you to bash your head against. So it’s nice to step back and just appreciate the beauty of the world they created.

They're Terrorists. They're Organized. They're Americans. »

Long one, but completely worth your time. The point SecretGamerGrrl makes about the shared language of hate groups nails what I found so troubling about the recent anti-feminist posts by Scott Adams and Eric S. Raymond. It’s easy to dismiss them and say that we should just expect these kinds of posts from white, cis, middle-age men, but it shows that they’re just a hop, skip and a jump away from something really dangerous.

'Homeland Is Racist' »

The producers of Homeland hired a bunch of street artists to graffiti the sets, to make it seem ‘authentic’. The artists used the opportunity to write a load of anti-Homeland slogans in Arabic and no-one noticed. Just wonderful.

Judge Rules Happy Birthday is an Orphan Work »

For a great summary of the whole situation regarding the copyright of Happy Birthday, check out the most recent episode of the Reasonably Sound podcast. Because whoa, this is huge.

Oysterbooks Is Shutting Down »

As we continue on, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of ebooks and mobile reading.
…
With that, we will be taking steps to sunset the existing Oyster service over the next several months.

This is a real shame. Their product (Netflix for ebooks) was pretty good, but their Oyster Review was one of the best-curated sources of book recommendations on the internet. For proof of this, check out their list of the 100 best books of the decade so far. Can anyone suggest a replacement?

Camera Restricta »

Camera Restricta is a speculative design of a new kind of camera. It locates itself via GPS and searches online for photos that have been geotagged nearby. If the camera decides that too many photos have been taken at your location, it retracts the shutter and blocks the viewfinder. You can’t take any more pictures here.

When I go to a concert (lol, like that’s a thing I still do) and I see hundreds of cameraphones shooting up to take a photo of the lead singer, I wonder: what’s the point of that? There’s nothing tying you to that photo. Anyone could have taken it, so why not just go into Twitter or something and grab someone else’s photo? Maybe even someone shooting with better equipment than you?

I don’t think the Camera Restricta will catch on. People care too much about their fitness selfies. But I still love the idea of it.

An Introduction to Cult Movies »

Some kind soul on Metafilter has collected together all of Alex Cox and Mark Cousins’ introductions to Moviedrome. You could do a lot worse with your day than to spend a few hours watching these. They’re like a complete film education in short, 10-minute burts. Warning: watching these will make you despair about the fact we don’t have a show like this today.