"The internet is shit today. It's broken. It was probably always broken, but it's worse than ever." My conversation with Peter Sunde , one of the founders and spokespersons of The Pirate Bay, did not start out optimistically. There's good reason for that: In the last couple of months, the…

This past May in New York City, YouTube held a summit for its top 100 or so video personalities, individuals and networks. It was a chance for these creators to get face time with senior YouTube executives and discuss what was happening on the video platform. One issue that some attendees felt…

Daily Tedium The Great Platform Problem In an era when every content platform wants to sell you the moon, going your own way is a valid option. For one thing, there’s no risk of “demonetization.” Featured 06 Sep 2017 about tedium, youtube, monetization, platforms, independent, medium, tumblr, inside…

The first time Alex Acero saw Her , he watched it like a normal person. The second time, he didn't watch the movie at all. Acero, the Apple executive in charge of the tech behind Siri , sat there with his eyes closed, listening to how Scarlett Johansson voiced her artificially intelligent character…

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands Recently, while standing on a rooftop bar in Lisbon – my face sunburned and sand in my hair after a day on the beach – I looked around to realise that everyone else in this bar was ridiculously beautiful. Every single person there was stunning and…

While it sometimes feels like we do all of our shopping on the internet, government data shows that actually less than 10% of all retail transactions happen online. In a world where we get our groceries delivered in just two hours through Instacart or Amazon Fresh, the humble corner store–or bodega…

Louis Johnson & Leo Fender If I asked you to remember the first time you heard about UX, you would probably tell me it was in the last decade, maybe earlier. But the truth is, UX has existed ever since humans started making things. It was just never called “UX” because humans didn’t realize its…

Credit Matt Chase 阅读简体中文版 閱讀繁體中文版 Over lunch in a downtown restaurant, Beatrice, a New Yorker in her late 30s, told me about two decisions she and her husband were considering. They were thinking about where to buy a second home and whether their young children should go to private school. Then she…

“That’s how these little circles of community are marked—by what you share,” says Graeber. You might have heard about the Detroit comeback. It’s a popular narrative in media silos these days, a tale of investment and revitalization. Young people look romantically to the city as a “blank…

This story reflects the views of these authors, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company. These are fast-changing times. Old certainties are collapsing around us and people are scrambling for new ways of being in the world. As we pointed out in a recent article , 51% of young…

Television has always had a soft spot for nostalgia. From Happy Days to Mad Men to The Get Down , there is always some creative genius scribbling about a lost era that most of the target market experienced only in history books. While HBO brags that they’re “not television,” they too have had their…

I’m not a narcissist, but sometimes my copy is. One time, I nearly lost my mind while brainstorming copy for a holiday print ad. I was writing for Havenly , an interior design company, and we were advertising in a popular home decorating magazine. “Keep it simple,” I told myself, “this has been done…

Last week, Americans woke up to news of yet another mass breach of their personal data. The consumer credit reporting agency Equifax revealed that as many as 143 million Americans’ Social Security numbers , dates of birth, names and addresses may have been stolen from its files — just the kind of…

An illustrated depiction of facial analysis technology similar to that used in the experiment.Illustration: Alamy Artificial intelligence can accurately guess whether people are gay or straight based on photos of their faces, according to new research that suggests machines can have significantly…

Off Exit 484A on 101 North through Rohnert Park, California, you’ll find the usual roadside offerings: There’s a Burger King and a Taco Bell, and marginally more exciting, there’s a Chick-fil-A and an In-N-Out Burger. But right off the road that bisects the interstate, you’ll find a fast-food…

Entrance to the theater at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin. Spring Green, WI. Don’t stare at your industry. Look in the opposite direction. Have you noticed that Instagram has been looking more and more like Snapchat lately (of course you have)? When companies compete, they tend to borrow from each…

Several months ago, I turned off notifications from Facebook on my phone. Last week, I went ahead and removed the Facebook app from my phone. Now, I genuinely enjoy Facebook. I use it for keeping up with with my family and my IRL friends, who are spread out all over the world. (The questions I ask…

Hackers stole data from a casino by hacking into an Internet-connected fish tank, according to a new report. (iStock) Hackers are constantly looking for new ways to access people’s data . Most recently, the way was as simple as a fish tank. The hackers attempted to acquire data from a North American…

Story highlights "This is a unique office, without a clear blueprint for success," Obama wrote The words reveal a conciliatory outgoing commander in chief (CNN) During his final moments in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama folded into thirds a handwritten letter to Donald Trump, slid it into…

"You can't do much, alone." That's the tagline for Pikuniku , a game that looks like a platformer, sounds like a dystopian adventure, and plays a lot like a blobby physics experiment where people yell excitedly quite a lot. It's got the heart of Animal Crossing—friendship as its goal and perky…

As someone who identifies as polysexual, I've often experienced negativity from those who don't think outside of how their relationships function. At times, this judgment has come from those close to me. "You're just slutty," or "Your man is OK with that, really?" are things I've heard over and over…

The grim tale of America’s “ subprime mortgage crisis ” delivers one of those stinging moral slaps that Americans seem to favor in their histories. Poor people were reckless and stupid, banks got greedy. Layer in some Wall Street dark arts, and there you have it: a global financial crisis. Dark arts…

PAX West 2017: Devolver Digital At PAX West 2017, COGconnected was lucky enough to visit the Devolver Digital booth for a closer look at some highly anticipated and recently announced titles. Specifically, we saw High Hell , Reigns: Her Majesty , Pikuniku , and Swords of Ditto . For a closer look at…

The opening title sequence of Andrew Niccol’s 2005 film Lord of War , starring Nicolas Cage as arms dealer Yuri Orlov, is a tale of birth and death. The life of a bullet. The death of a child. The title sequence, conceptualized by Niccol and shepherded by Visual Effects Supervisor Yann Blondel with…

The hard truth What’s important when picking out a font? It’s one of the most common questions I get when I consult in accessibility . People expect me to start lecturing on the importance of fonts for people with dyslexia or other reading impairments. How different typefaces and kerning really can…

The image that hacker Jason Hughes found hidden in Tesla's latest Model S firmware. Jason Hughes It seems Tesla is set to bump the battery capacity of its Model S sedan up to a hefty 100kWh some time in the near future. We know this thanks to the work of a white-hat hacker and Tesla P85D owner named…

Owners of Tesla Model S cars, such as the one above, received updates that enabled them to flee Hurricane Irma. (Paul Sakuma/AP) As Florida residents fled Hurricane Irma over the weekend, some Tesla owners got a little surprise from the automaker to help them get out of the danger zone. On Saturday,…

Between the “adpocalypse” that drained advertising money from YouTube, and highly-publicized fiascos involving popular content creators , YouTube’s had a rocky 2017. Now, many who make a living off the website are dreading the fallout from the latest Pewdiepie debacle. The question many are…

Illustration: Anna Parini What is this midlife crisis among the 30-year-olds I know? Millennial women — at least those who reside in professional bubbles — seem to have it all. They are better educated, more prosperous, less encumbered by cultural expectations than any previous generation of women.…

Comedy has taken Nathan Fielder to some pretty strange places, but nothing quite compares to the time he found himself walking a high wire between two seven-story buildings in downtown L.A. It was the finale of the third season of Nathan for You , the hit Comedy Central series in which Fielder…

Photo: Getty The future is not completely unpredictable. Many of the most powerful economic and political trends in this country can be found inside an Amazon warehouse. And what happens to the workers there will say a lot about our collective future. Our nation—as it often has throughout modern…

Wesley Yin-Poole Deputy Editor @wyp100 Ubisoft's comedy RPG South Park: The Fractured but Whole features various levels of difficulty, from easy to very difficult, much like most games. What's different though is the difficulty affects the colour of your character's skin. During the character…

For Lego, it's time to break down the blocks and start again. After building up sales aggressively since a near bankruptcy in 2004 through new ventures like films and new toy lines, the company seems to have hit a peak. Its sales are now falling for the first time in 13 years and it says it needs to…

This Thursday, September 7, the first Goldie Awards will go down in New York City at Brooklyn Steel . Created by A-Trak, the co-founder of Fool’s Gold Records, the event will feature DJ and beat battles judged by panel of experts including Mannie Fresh, Just Blaze, Diplo, Craze and Mija. Hosted by…

These two giants seek to disrupt much more than the digital content space. The bidding war for the theatrical rights to the next James Bond film just got a whole lot more interesting. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that both Apple and Amazon have joined the fray to acquire the theatrical rights…

Instrumental hip-hop can be a very bad idea. Taking the human voice away from a genre that's largely dependent upon it can result in the most banal café soundtrack music, like instrumental metal. (Just kidding about instrumental metal. Don't @ me.) So it takes an artist of particular verve to make…

We catch up with Maartje of Fashion Studio M.E.N, based at Makerversity Amsterdam M.E.N have been selected for the Fashion Makes Sense Award , an award for young, conscious new generation designers with innovative ideas for sustainability. The award is awarded during the Dutch Earth Week (October…