The Weekly Whatever: Facebook Metastasizes
Latest news
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Japanese celebrate mundane Halloween with lazy but creative costumes.
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In spite of COVID-19, 2020’s greenhouse gas emissions reached record highs.
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Today’s meth is not the meth your parents used.
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After 45 years, Randy Bachman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive has tracked down a stolen guitar.
Worst site on the Internet
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Employees begged Facebook not to let politicians break the platform’s terms of service, but senior executives intervened to carve out exemptions for Breitbart, Diamond and Silk, Charlie Kirk and PragerU.
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If you think Facebook’s US content moderation is bad, imagine what it’s like for the countries Facebook put on its secret low priority list.
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The kids are alright: Facebook’s research found that young adults “perceive [Facebook] content as boring, misleading, and negative. They often have to get past irrelevant content to get to what matters.” Plus they have privacy and wellbeing concerns.
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Apple threatened to ban Facebook from the app store 2 years ago because it’s widely used for human trafficking.
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But maybe we don’t need to fix social media. Maybe we just need to get everyone to shut up?
Law and order
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173 prison inmates in Texas have died of COVID-19 – or maybe 295. It depends on whether you’re referring to the public figures or the figures sent to the attorney general…
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Oklahoma execution “was carried out in accordance with Oklahoma Department of Corrections’ protocols and without complication.” Convulsing, vomiting repeatedly and taking 21 minutes to die apparently don’t count as complications.
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DEA reluctantly gives back innocent church warden’s life savings.
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San Antonio, Texas’s highest-paid city employee is a cop who has been fired 7 times and is now accused of shooting a Tennessee deputy.
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Austin man starts an armed standoff with a SWAT team and sets his house on fire after the city tries to cut his lawn.
Details
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Texas wants to demolish an old warehouse, but first they need to decide where to put 750,000 bats.
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Columbian court rules that Pablo Escobar’s horny, horny hippos are legally people.
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Taiwanese math tutor gives (fully clothed) calculus lessons on PornHub.
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Remember all those classic songs by The Smiths with their iconic frontman Rick Astley?
Technology
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Award-winning photojournalist publishes a book about a Macedonian town that had a thriving industry manufacturing fake news. He illustrates the book with faked photographs and an essay written by a neural network.
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“Dune” screenplay was written using MS-DOS software that can only hold 40 pages in RAM at a time.
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US government subpoenas Signal for user data again. Signal explain that they don’t have any, again.
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Apple can’t keep up with demand for its new products — particularly not the $19 cleaning cloth. iFixit teardown confirms the cloth is not repairable, and fans look forward to next year’s model of cloth and hope it will come with a notch.
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Marvel at the prototype for the original iPod.
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Lost hiker ignores calls from rescuers because he doesn’t recognize the number.
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Want to be a tech entrepreneur? Start with a parasite infection.
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Microsoft digitally signed a rootkit again.
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Egyptian security forces detain robot artist accused of spying.
Gamers
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While Activision Blizzard fights a lawsuit against gender discrimination, ex-employees start a new game studio with 11 men and one female employee — a dog.
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Final Fantasy XIV now has in-game restraining orders.
Reasonable people
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Texas Catholic bishop goes full QAnon.
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Muslim student in NJ asks if everyone can have some more time to finish an assignment. The teacher responds “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
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Georgia man got $57,000 of COVID-19 relief funds and spent it on a Pokémon card.
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UCSB was offered a $200m donation by an amateur architect on the condition that they house around 4,500 students in windowless rooms as part of a grand experiment. They agreed.