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Our favorite new podcast probes the shady world of pyramid schemes

Oct08
by on October 8, 2018 at 11:37 am
Posted In: Around the Web


Multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes are weird enough to be interesting, but common enough that most people have a familiarity with them. Almost everyone knows someone who, at one point, has spruiked Herbalife on their Instagram feed, or flogged some Deepak Chopra-endorsed enema or something. There’s no shortage of radio programs, films, or TV shows that have explored this phenomenon. Arguably the most sophisticated of the bunch is The Dream, an original podcast from Stitcher which we’re loving at the moment — hence this article. This season, The Dream is taking a deep-dive into the world of MLMs, but in a…

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Some smarty pants did the maths behind ‘Super Mario Party’ dice rolls

Oct08
by on October 8, 2018 at 9:50 am
Posted In: Around the Web, gaming


Is maths cool? It’s a question that has plagued philosophers for centuries. For every hip cat like Einstein, there are thousands of math teachers who ruin numbers for everyone. Luckily though, there are some stars out there, such as the person who worked out the maths behind the dice rolls in Nintendo‘s new Switch game, Super Mario Party. If you’re unfamiliar, Super Mario Party is a minigame-driven, uh, party title. In its main mode – which is a lot like a board game – characters roll a die and move across a map to gain stars. And with these stars, comes victory.…

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Binance vows to donate all cryptocurrency listing fees to charity

Oct08
by on October 8, 2018 at 9:41 am
Posted In: Around the Web, cryptocurrency, Hard Fork


Soon after being forced to defend accepting money for new listings, Binance has announced it will donate all the fees paid by cryptocurrency projects to charity. The new initiative will see previously kept funds being diverted to its Blockchain Charity Foundation, which claims to be “decentralizing worldwide poverty alleviation” – whatever that means. “Any project will be able to decide what is their fee (donation) and this fee will be disclosed to the public through Binance’s charity initiative,” reads the announcement. “Binance will not dictate any number, nor will there by any minimum viable donation fee. Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao…

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An Indian mental health clinic is treating its first Netflix addict

Oct08
by on October 8, 2018 at 9:37 am
Posted In: Around the Web


Most of us are no strangers to spending hours binging great and not-so-great shows on Netflix. But as it turns out, you can have too much of a good thing. An Indian user was so addicted to the service that he spent an average of seven hours a day streaming shows on the platform – and had to undergo treatment at a mental health facility to help wean himself off it. Last week, the Service for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore, India, treated a 26-year-old man who…

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Or just read more coverage about: Netflix

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5 lovely predictions on how Alexa will change our behavior

Oct08
by on October 8, 2018 at 9:32 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Contributors, Voice


Happy birthday Alexa! Four years after her birth as a new kind of house servant, let’s blow out the candles, take a deep breath, and talk about the future of speaking. I believe that us humans and how we speak is going to fundamentally change with the rise of voice assistants. Many of the things we tap to control — keyboards, touchscreens, remote controls, fridges, even vibrators apparently — are already turning to voice control technology. And as they all do, we should be prepared for a new kind of speaking culture with a faster speed that changes office norms,…

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