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Captchas are there so you can prove you are a person instead of a ‘bot. But what if you fail the test? They can be pretty hard! Frank Lesser, who writes for The Colbert Report, expresses his frustration with captchas in a column in the New York Times that you might relate to. Link -via the Presurfer
The internet is a giant playground full of potholes you can fall in without realizing it. Lifehacker has advice that you’ve probably heard, but can never be reinforced enough. Read these tips on protecting your privacy, your money, your data, your reputation, and your blood pressure. My favorite: Do not feed the trolls.
First, it’s important to remember that trolls are not attacking you—they’re attacking boredom. They have nothing better to do than say something mean so that’s how they’ve unfortunately chosen to spend their time. If what they’re saying isn’t going to have much of an impact on anyone, just remember that they’re bored, loathsome people and let it go. On the other hand, if they’re promoting hate speech and potentially causing harm to others, it’s best to avoid engaging them and instead report them to the site’s administrator. Many sites offer a means of flagging harmful posts, and commenting systems offer ways for an administrator to ban problematic users. A simple email is often sufficient to take care of a bad person. Engaging with a troll-ish thread is just going to make you angry and potentially get you in trouble, too. If you do fall into the trap of feeding a troll, however, using the principles of cognitive therapy can be a worthy solution. This means responding positively and calmly, while accepting their different opinion. The trolls will likely find it frustrating and even condescending, but it’s hard to argue with someone who is accepting your point of view (or even agreeing with you).
Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Working on the web is hard, which is why Fark has decided to take a brave stand, going against the grain to support SOPA and PIPA. This way, if the site gets shut down under the ridiculous censorship bills, the company won’t have to do any more hard work.
While a bunch of other sites are going “dark” to protest SOPA/PIPA, we’re over the moon about the whole thing. Why? Honestly, we’ve been bringing you the latest news happening across the internet for 12 years, and we’re tired. And SOPA/PIPA is the perfect excuse to quit.
While SOPA might be “almost dead,” it’s not quite all the way there, and under various drafts of both SOPA/PIPA, Fark could have its DNS assignment (the thing that turns an IP address, like 10.0.0.1, into words like Fark.com) revoked without notice simply for linking to content that could come under foreign copyright claims. This means, even if it is actual news in and of itself, if we link to it, we can be shut down. And thank God, cause we’re about ready to crack under the strain of being on top of the news all the time.
The post isn’t up anymore because the blackout day is over, but you can read about it over at the link from The Consumerist.
By now, I’m sure you have all heard about SOPA and PIPA being as how every blog in the world has been talking about them as of late. Even those that are usually apolitical (like Neatorama) have taken a stand against the legislation, but despite all the talk and Wikipedia’s many messages warning about their upcoming blackout, some people still didn’t get the memo.
That’s where Herpderpedia comes in… chronicling the Tweets of people freaking out over the Wikipedia blackout despite the many warnings on the site and the fact that its blackout message clearly describes what’s going on.
Sure the Twitter account will only have one good day, but it’s certain to bring endless enjoyment for the internet snobs around the country.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Nitrozac and Snaggy from The Joy of Tech made a comic to cover the site during the internet strike. See, there are things to do that aren’t on the web! Link -via Laughing Squid
As
you may know, Congress is considering two bills, SOPA and PIPA, to combat
online piracy, ostensibly by foreign rogue websites. While the aim seems
noble, the devil is in the details.
There are many criticisms of SOPA and PIPA (e.g. the ones at EFF, Gizmodo, and reddit), but let me focus on one: under the proposed law, linking to a website with infringing content is illegal.
Censorship aside, that presents a huge day-to-day operational problem for many law-abiding websites. For a blog like Neatorama, which has nearly 40,000 posts and over 311,000 comments, this means that we'd have to police every single comment to ensure that nobody links to a rogue site (and continuously checking that legitimate links in past comments haven't gone rogue), otherwise we'd be breaking the law. A gargantuan task, indeed.
I urge you to contact your members of Congress and ask them to vote against SOPA and PIPA: Link
Update #1 1/18/12: Sign the Petition or Call Your Representative and tell them to vote against SOPA and PIPA – Thanks for the suggestion, ray hahn!
Update #2: Header on all Neatorama posts now links to the petition and call pages.
College Humor presents new superheroes for the internet. Or, internet sites as superheroes. Besides Google here, check out the powers of The Facebook, Reddit, Huffington Post, and Google Plus. Link -via reddit
Remember
your first time driving? For most Americans, nothing symbolizes freedom
more than the open road. But that's changing: for more and more teenagers,
freedom doesn't mean a fast car. It means a fast Internet:
If Ferris Bueller had a day off now, would he spend it on Facebook?
Recent research suggests many young Americans prefer to spend their money and time chatting to their friends online, as opposed to the more traditional pastime of cruising around in cars. [...]
But with money tight in many households, and the cost of gas and insurance soaring, some youngsters are having to choose between buying a car and owning the latest smartphone or tablet.
In a survey to be published later this year by Gartner, 46% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they would choose internet access over owning their own car. The figure is 15% among the baby boom generation, the people that grew up in the 1950s and 60s - seen as the golden age of American motoring.
A new study from the Pew Research Center confirms what seem fairly obvious to most of us: people go on line for no reason at all.
That should explain all those kitten videos.
The report finds that the amount of time people spend tooling around on the Web doing nothing corresponds with age. Only 12 percent of people over 65 say they went online the previous day for no particular reason. Of those aged 50 to 64, the study found 27 percent answered yes to the same question.
In all, 58 percent of all adults said that they use the Internet to pass time or have fun at least occasionally. Of adults who use the Internet, nearly three-quarters surf the Web for no reason.
And those are the people we aim to serve. Link
From Angry Birds to YouTube, the internet is already addicting enough, but just in case you need a little more motivation to enroll in your favorite time-wasting activities, here are some great propaganda posters.
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Ben Mendelsohn gives us a look at “The Physical Underbelly of the Internet.”
The video is meant to remind viewers that the Internet is a physical, geographically anchored thing. It features a tour inside Telx’s 9th floor Internet exchange at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, and explores how this building became one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of Internet connectivity.
Read more about the film at Brain Pickings. Link
How many internet memes are in this song by the GAG Quartet? All of them! Well, according to the YouTube page, there are forty -in case you want to try to find them all. -via The Daily What
We've got Books on Wheels, so why not the Internet on Wheels? Here comes the Google Internet Bus, a free, mobile cybercafe that roams the backroads of India, bringing the joy of the Interweb to many:
LIKE the travelling fairs that still roam India, a snazzy white bus trundles along the subcontinent's B-roads, stopping in small towns for a few days at a time and inviting locals into another world. But in place of tightrope-walking girls and performing monkeys, its main attraction is access to the internet. For some visitors, it is their first time online.
The Google Internet bus is a free, mobile cybercafe dreamed up by the search giant and run in association with BSNL, a large state-owned internet service provider (ISP). It has covered over 43,000km and passed through 120 towns in 11 states since it hit the road on February 3rd, 2009. Google estimates that 1.6m people have been offered their first online experience as a result. Of those, 100,000 have signed up for an internet connection of their own.
There is, however, a dark side to the project:
Like a high-school drug dealer, though admittedly less nefarious, the idea is to hook them young and keep them coming back. In return for its efforts, Google says it gains a better understanding of their needs. That, in turn, lets it develop products for the potentially huge local market.
If you are a fan of community, you may have seen their parody of Doctor Who on an episode a few weeks back. If not, here’s a link.
So why am I bringing this up now? As it turns out, the internet is even geekier than most of us imagine and the show’s parody, called Inspector Spacetime, now has it’s own fan page on Tumblr filled with speculation about who will play the next inspector and what the fan’s favorite episodes are. Now that’s something even a sitcom writer couldn’t have predicted.
Link Via The Mary Sue
Back in 2001, you’d have to mail in money orders to pay for online shopping. Wikipedia had just launched, and research was probably still done by reading books. Things have changed. What do you remember about the internet ten years ago? (I remember playing Neopets…)
Link -via Look At This
Do you ever feel like your love of the internet just isn’t obvious enough when you’re away from the computer? If so, you may need to invest in some of the jewelry on this great BuzzFeed list, like these delightful LOL earrings.
If you are reading this at work, then you may actually be boosting your productivity. At least that is what one study claims. I think a group of researchers was just looking for a way to surf the web and have a good excuse when their boss catches them. What is your take on it? Are you more productive in an office environment that isn’t constantly monitoring your computer activity?
“Browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function,” according to a report from the National University of Singapore.
So-called cyberloafing can refresh workers mentally after long periods of work, researchers said at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in San Antonio this week.
Surfing the Web is even better for productivity than talking or texting with friends or sending personal emails, the study found.
And smart bosses would stop snooping, researchers said: Excessive Internet monitoring and surveillance only makes employees do it more, they said.
Caldwell Tanner posted the 8 Lesser-Known Fairies that affect your daily life. This one, the Internet Fairy, should be very familiar to all of your Neatoramanauts! Link - via Look At This
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It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed. Of course, one could argue that these sites are no different than conversation was for previous generations, and that conversation seldom generated big ideas either, and one would be right.
Remember Mary Bale, a.k.a. the woman who was tracked down and harassed after someone uploaded a video of her throwing a cat into a trashcan? She’s one of the many people who were taught a lesson by the throngs of angry internet users. You can read more about her and 11 others in similar situations over at Ugo. Fair warning, not all of the people actually deserved what they got.
Spanning from over a decade ago to this summer’s memes, Ranker has gathered together 35 catchy viral musical videos that swept the internet. You can relive the good old days of “All Your Base” and “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” and also catch up with tunes you may have missed as well. Lyrics in some songs are NSFW. Link
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It’s no secret that the web is a safe haven to say whatever you want about who ever you want. However the overall effect of anonymous commenting on the internet has created an unprecedented mob mentality leading to an almost constant state rage and hatred directed toward any target. What do you guys think? Please leave a comment.
For a while after his first TV series was broadcast in 2009, comedian Stewart Lee was in the habit of collecting and filing some of the comments that people made about him on web pages and social media sites. He did a 10-minute Google trawl most days for about six months and the resultant collected observations soon ran to dozens of pages. If you read those comments now as a cumulative narrative, you begin to fear for Stewart Lee. A good third of the posts fantasized about violence being done to the comic, most of the rest could barely contain the extent of their loathing.
Who says internet memes don’t last? Some people have the most fleeting memes tattoos on their bodies. Imagine trying to explain to your grandchildren why those things were so important to you that you had them permanently inked into your skin. Ranker has a list of ten memes, some with more than one tattoo found. A couple pics are NSFW. Link
Geekosystem has a hilarious list of subjects you won’t believe eHow claims it can teach you. I particularly like the one above and “how to use superglue to fix a tooth,” which is conveniently followed by “how to remove superglue from a tooth.” You stay classy eHow.
Good magazine has a post entitled The Eternal Shame of Your First Online Handle, in which people share how they selected their first internet pseudonym. In the last few years, more and more people are using their real names online instead of anonymous identifiers.
Those of us who came of age alongside AOL must contend with something even more incriminating than a lifelong Google profile: A trail of discarded online aliases, each a distillation of how we viewed ourselves and our place in the world at the time of sign-on. The dawn of the Internet was an open invitation to free ourselves from the names our parents gave us and forge self-made identities divorced from our reputations IRL.
Here at Neatorama, every author either uses their real name or a made up name that sounds like a real name so they don’t have to explain it (except for me, which means I am a dinosaur in internet terms). However, the majority of our commenters use pseudonyms. Would you like to share with us the story of how you selected it -or the story of some abandoned name you once used? Link -via Metafilter
With the Lulzsec recent post of email addresses and passwords, along with all the regular hacking that occurs on a regular basis, it can be really hard to know if your email password has been compromised. Fortunately, Should I Change My Password can help automatically scan a variety of these info leaks to check if your password has been hacked. This way, you only have to change your password if it actually needs to be updated.
Update: Just to be clear, you don’t have to enter your password on the site, just your email.
A very internet video, indeed! This collection of clips features just about every video meme that ever hit the ‘net, edited into appropriate places to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Some language NSFW. -via BB Spot
The percentage of households in the United States that have TVs dropped from 98.9% to 96.7%. Why would you think that happened? Where I live, high-speed internet access costs $40 a month, whereas a decent slate of TV channels on cable costs $70. If you own a computer, the choice is a no-brainer. According to the New York Times:
There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.
The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.
I had forgotten that there are places in which people can pick up several TV channels by using just an antenna. If I lived alone, I would give up TV entirely because I don’t have time to watch it. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
While there are plenty of bizarre Blogger and Word Press pages, the number of off-the-wall Tumblr accounts is a little astonishing. I don’t know what it is about Tumblr, as opposed to all the other blog programs out there, but something about it just seems to inspire people to create some of the weirdest sites around the net. Here are a few of my favorite strange, niche and just plain silly Tumblr blogs.
Perhaps one of the strangest Tumblr blogs around, Selleck Waterfall Sandwich is exclusively dedicated to three things: Tom Selleck, waterfalls and sandwiches. You’ll be amazed just how many ways these three things can come together in an image.
Have you ever seen a citation needed tag on Wikipedia and thought, “really, they need a citation for that?“ Well, that’s the whole point of Citation Needed. One of my personal favorites on the site is this gem, “The band March Hare is named after the March Hare. [citation needed]“ Unfortunately, many of the funny bits on this site are removed from Wikipedia, making Citation Needed the only archive of such comments.
There’s a reason owls are nocturnal creatures –they’re too hung over to be awake during the day. But while hungover humans tend to look downright disgusting, Hungover Owls look absolutely adorable –in a slobbish, grumpy and tired kind of way.
Have you ever read a captcha and laughed at how humorously the words seemed to go together? Captcha Art asks you to take a screenshot of the captcha and then submit your artistic interpretation of the message.
more …
Encyclopedia Dramatica was always a place to get in-depth information on internet culture, memes, and history, but the site was rarely linked here at Neatorama because it was NSFW and far from family-friendly. Now Encyclopedia Dramatica is no more, and a new site has risen in its place. The new Oh Internet is dedicated to the same type of information, but is not open to unlimited editing by users as ED was. Geekosystem has more on the big switch. Link to story. Link to website.
