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MoviePass is effectively dead and will shut down September 14

Sep13
by on September 13, 2019 at 11:22 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider


If you’re still a Movie Pass subscriber for some reason, it appears tonight is your last chance to use the service. In an “I hope no one notices” late Friday press release, the company announced it “would be interrupting the MoviePass service for all its subscribers effective September 14, 2019,” and it is “unable to predict if or when the MoviePass service will continue.” It’s one of the most dramatic tech flops in recent memory. Once upon a time, MoviePass offered film aficionados the ability to pay $10 a month and see almost any film as often as they’d like. As…

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How WSDG and Gimlet built world-class podcast recording studios

Sep13
by on September 13, 2019 at 10:32 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, Insights, podcasts


Picture a professional recording studio. What do you see? Perhaps a band rocking out in an acoustically treated room, or a vocalist singing softly into an expensive microphone. Artists and engineers will spend thousands to build or use studios that provide the acoustics and consistency they need to do their jobs. But in recent years, a different kind of recording studio has emerged: the podcast studio. Consider the case of Gimlet, a podcast network known for its high production values, acquired by Spotify for $230 million earlier this year. Within a few years, Gimlet grew from a humble studio operation…

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Free software icon Richard Stallman has some moronic thoughts about pedophilia

Sep13
by on September 13, 2019 at 9:22 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev


The world of academia is in turmoil over the shock discovery that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein funded several several prestigious science and technology research labs, including MIT’s Media Lab, long after his 2008 conviction for sex crimes involving children. For the late Epstein, his generous donations served to whitewash his tainted reputation. They were part of a well-sculpted PR effort that also included paid-for puff pieces in publications like Forbes and HuffPost, which emphasised his philanthropy, while conveniently ignoring his crimes. Epstein believed that by throwing wads of cash at universities, people might forget about the hundreds of exploited and…

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UK committee condemns loot boxes (‘surprise mechanics’) as gambling

Sep13
by on September 13, 2019 at 7:46 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, gaming


The UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee today released their conclusions from their investigation into addictive game mechanics. While the report is a long one not solely focused on games or loot boxes, the committee firmly condemns the use of such mechanics, in spite of attempts by gaming reps to spin them the other way. The committee’s findings, which you can read here, concluded that, for all the attempts by gaming industry reps to spin the situation another way, loot boxes are gambling, simply put: “We consider loot boxes that can be bought with real-world money and do not…

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Twitter’s refusal to dox a cow stymies Republican’s $250M lawsuit

Sep13
by on September 13, 2019 at 6:31 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Opinion, Social Media


US Rep. Devin Nunes can’t seem to catch a break. First, despite his memo blaming Obama and the FBI for all the evils in the world, his fellow former members of the Trump transition team keep getting indicted for being bad at crime. And now he can’t figure out which one of his cows is helping his mom make fun of him on Twitter. Nunes, the Salacious B. Crumb to Donald Trump’s Jabba the Hutt, filed a lawsuit against two parody accounts on Twitter earlier this year. According to a report from The Fresno Bee, Nunes argues that “activists conspired…

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