This looks an awful lot like the Google search results for “worst school mascots” doesn’t it? Actually, it’s a search I just made (in an incognito tab, because that’s where any blogger worth her salt does their investigatory Google fiddling) that does not include the word “worst” at all. Turns out, enough people out there still casually use “gay” as a blanket pejorative term for pretty much any kind of thing that Google’s algorithm also thinks that it’s a pejorative term. And Google doesn’t seem inclined to do anything about it.

I say “in case,” because there were rumors of this last week, and Yahoo announced that they’d be announcing the purchase of Tumblr yesterday, and even when I turned on the radio this morning, it to hear legitimate news outlets attempting to talk about the ball of bizarre that is the Tumblr blogging platform. I also say “in case,” because Tumblrers have been understandably flipping their wigs about it, so I should say up front, “in case,” that the above image isn’t an officially changed logo, it’s just something that the internet whipped up in the past few days. Other things the internet has whipped up in the past few days? The idea that Yahoo is going to eradicate fandom blogs from Tumblr.

Yeah. That’s not a real thing, gullible underbelly of Tumblr. Lets talk about real things.

How well do you know that buddy/significant other/family member that you’re watching your Netflix show with? Maybe the question is… how well do you think you know them?

Because they could be cheating on you right now, by. Watching. Ahead.

Sabeen Mahmud (above, in blue), who says she fell in love with technology the first time she ever saw a Mac, just organized Pakistan’s first ever Hackathon last month, aimed specifically at finding ways to use technology to fix or at least alleviate Pakistan’s political problems. According to a piece by Wired, the gathering was pretty amazing for everyone involved.

Netflix is pretty decent when it comes to piracy. In fact they just implemented a measure that makes it easier to share one Netflix account between multiple people. So it’s not surprising to hear their Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos, say something like:

I think people do want a great experience and they want access – people are mostly honest. The best way to combat piracy isn’t legislatively or criminally but by giving good options. One of the side effects of growth of content is an expectation to have access to it. You can’t use the internet as a marketing vehicle and then not as a delivery vehicle.

But what’s more interesting to me, in the same interview, is what he says about bringing back old television shows with cult followings, specifically for Netflix, and why we shouldn’t expect new episodes of Twin Peaks, Firefly, or Buffy to show up anytime soon.

If there’s one valuable lesson a creator can learn, it’s not to engage with reviewers. With very few exceptions, railing against a negative review reflects most poorly on the reviewed, who are likely to come off as petulant, not the reviewer. Unless a creator can prove definitively and objectively that a reviewer has misrepresented their work in some way (as has occasionally happened in video game reviews where publicly available play statistics and screenshots reveal reviewers who played merely the first few hours of the game, for example), it’s better to simply ignore the review, and it should seem obvious that this maxim applies even more stringently when the source of the review is a lone fan rather than a professional.

So when Kayleigh Herbertson picked up a used, abused dime store copy of Anne Rice‘s Pandora in order to use its pages in a craft project and wound up reading it for a lark, and then reviewing it, she should not have expected to be called out by an internationally famous author who tacitly invited her fandom to harass Herbertson in the comment section of her post.

As far as allowing you freedom to watch, Netflix is pretty good about things. You can register up to six devices to an account at one time, and stream simultaneously to two. It’s also pretty cool about passwords and log ons. No digging into your cable provider’s website to find your registration info, or worse, calling your friend with HBO and instructing them on how to find that info on their cable provider’s website.

And so Netflix knows that somewhere around 10 million of its subscribers are getting the service for free, by logging in under the accounts of friends or family, but rather than cracking down on those folks, they’re offering another option.

Remember the heart-warming story of the dad who hacked Donkey Kong so his 3-year-old daughter could play as a princess? Saccharin sweet, right? Well, not to internet trolls, who we’ve already established have no heart (or brain for that matter). Youtuber Shesellssheshells put together a vocalized compilation of some of the comments on the father’s original video. The results may shock you. [Warning: Video contains graphic, terrible internet comments throughout.]

(via Topless Robot)

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It doesn’t have Erica Dansby, though.

(via Geekosystem.)

PBS’s Off Book series has done a really interesting job of taking a look at some of the new communities and new ideas about community that have arisen with the internet. Today, they’re talking about webcomics, and while no eight minute video could possibly cover the entire breadth of the webcomics community, this is a good introduction to the way webcomics are becoming a new and powerful distribution and creation model for the comics industry. Also, it’s got Christina Xu of Breadpig and Lucy Knisley of Stop Paying Attention!

(via Laughing Squid.)