Dealing with Twitter spam occupies seven people full-time, plus the services of two engineers. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian B iz Stone and Ev Williams discovered pretty quickly that Del Harvey was serious about the task they'd set her of putting a lid on Twitter's spam problem. Within a…

For me, 2011 is the year of the reader . Essential technologies such as pixel density and screen typography are at last reaching comfortable standards, and after years of being treated as mere eyeballs and drivers of ad revenue, users finally have tools that help them regain control of the reading…

When we self-diagnose, we look for control factors. Sometimes we invent them. The goal of solipsistic anxiety is to find an individual agent that explains our misery. We eliminate possibilities one-by-one in hopes that a single cause remains. This is how people deduce food allergies and come to…

Niko Bellic, the lead character in Grand Theft Auto IV. O nce upon a time I wrote in the morning, jogged in the late afternoon and spent most of my evenings reading. Once upon a time I wrote off as unproductive those days in which I had managed to put down "only" a thousand words. Once upon a time I…

It might be the best marketing in the history of wine. The story of how a rap mogul transformed a $50 champagne into the next Cristal—and received millions for doing so. By Zack O'Malley Greenburg On a frigid February night, I’m waiting outside a ground-floor apartment in Harlem, beginning to wonder…

How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various friends and colleagues who seem well-informed to describe their media diets. This is from an interview with Neetzan Zimmerman, a professional, full-time…

Lending e-books THE latest newcomer to the e-lending business was the first to be called out. Like other similar sites, Lendle relies on loans of books purchased for Amazon's Kindle reader. But on Monday morning Amazon turned off the content tap that feeds the site; it was not switched on again…

A recent Vanity Fair profile of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ends with an anecdote about an inspiring speech he gave to the assembled staff at his new mobile payments startup, Square . The internal “TownSquare” meeting took place on his 34th birthday last November, and it is a remarkable statement by…

Pryor enlightened his audience on race and interracial relationships using a flamboyant vocabulary that he’d learned growing up in his grandmother’s whorehouse. Credit Illustration by Al Hirschfeld, Courtsey of the Margo Feiden Galleries LTD SKIN FLICK Winter, 1973. Late afternoon: the entr’acte…

That’s when we first really noticed Charlie Sheen, and it’s the key moment in his movie career (it now seems to define and sum up everything that followed). He hasn’t been as entertaining since. Until now. In getting himself fired from Two and a Half Men , this privileged child of the media’s…

RAISE your hand if you remember when Starbucks seemed cool. Anyone? Think back. To before the planet groaned with 17,000 Starbucks shops. Before the pumpkin spice lattes and the Ciao Amore CDs. Before the Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino ice cream, the Starbucks cream liqueur, the Pinkberry-inspired…

Three short years ago, almost to the day, I arrived in San Francisco and instantly fell in love. As a former technology columnist for the Guardian (and, unbeknownst to me, about to become one again), I had more than a passing familiarity with the goings on in Silicon Valley. But unlike most tech…

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt] I'm no stranger to In-N-Out, the massively popular California-based fast food burger chain (that is apparently poised to expand East , if only a couple states closer to me—hooray!). And of course, I've been aware of their secret menu for years. I've eaten plenty of…

Talking Carl is a mildly famous iPhone app in which a vaguely anthropomorphic red blob repeats things you say to it in a funny voice and responds to touches and prods with giggles and yelps. Readers have been sending us some quite angry messages about a mysterious recent update to the app which…

Marco Arment, the former CTO of the Tumblr blog platform, is best known these days for his time-shifting reading app Instapaper . But he could start a side-job as a financial advisor to start-ups. His motto: Get the money from your customers, not investors. Arment’s more traditional take is built…

SOMETIMES I can’t believe what my 82-year-old mother has been eating. Living now in a retirement home in Durham, N.C., she told me she recently had cherry cobbler for breakfast. Apparently she’d had French toast stuffed with bananas and Nutella for lunch the day before, and after lunch had gone to…

Charlie Sheen talks to Amy Wallace about his latest bender, his true feelings about sobriety and 'Apocalypse Now,' and the cyclical insanity of his crazy-ass life Five days ago, we closed a profile built around an interview with Charlie Sheen that will appear in the April issue of GQ . Since then,…

Dear Apple-centric media, It’s time we had a chat. I think you know what this is about. Writing about rumors concerning Steve Jobs’ health is not only unprofessional, but it is disrespectful. I get that a lot of people think that Steve Jobs equals Apple. Not only is that incorrect, but it places an…

BILL PLASCHKE School celebrates its first conference basketball victory since before the players were born. Caltech's Ryan Elmquist makes the winning free throw with three seconds… (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles…) It was the last chance in the last game of the last basketball season Ryan Elmquist…

Movies No, Hollywood films aren't going to get better anytime soon. Mark Harris on the (potential) death of the great American art form You want to understand how bad things are in Hollywood right now—how stifling and airless and cautious the atmosphere is, how little nourishment or encouragement a…

Sean McClure of Craft making a non-alcoholic kumquat-and-fennel smash. Kirsten Luce for The New York Times A column that celebrates drinking should pause every once in a while to celebrate not drinking, given that alcohol is a two-edged sword: catalyst for delight and engine of destruction; handled…

The Bluths from Arrested Development. Photograph: 20th CENTURY FOX Have a confusing title Come up with an unwieldy title that perhaps comes from the realm of psychology, so that the title of your show is almost instantly forgettable. For example, if you were to call the show "Welcome Matt", an…

How a late-night Luddite accidentally fought his way back into bedrooms (and computers, smartphones, and tablets) across America. Conan O’Brien is in his bedroom. It’s a little bit past 11 p.m., and he’s shyly, hesitantly, nervously attempting to do his first webcast. But he keeps getting…