Why is having very little to do so much more tiring than being busy? 
Happy invoicing!
- They wanted to make a video game phenomenon. They made $10 million. The story of Crossy Road. - "Unlike many of its contemporaries, nothing about Crossy Road makes a player feel the need to pay to progress or win. Its design subdues its monetization, and that has cost its developers revenue… This is not an accident. Crossy Road was an experiment in doing free-to-play differently, and that experiment has been wildly effective.” Dave Tach on a different approach to making money from free games.
- The Last Cargo Cult - Mike Jay visits the cargo cults of Melanesia: ”‘Cargo cults’ got into full swing during the 1950s, though once the phenomenon had been classified by Westerners it seemed that the beginnings of the movement could be traced way back, as far as the 1890s… All over, islanders were downing tools, clearing airstrips in the jungle, building imitation radio masts out of bamboo, scouring their bibles for hidden messages, even sitting around politely drinking afternoon tea. If it worked for the white man, so the theory went, it would work for them.”
- Depeche Mode's internet following - From 1993, a look at how the net used to be used: ”I check in four times a day — that’s a lot.”
- How Voltaire Made a Fortune Rigging the Lottery - "While history knows him as a great Enlightenment thinker, Voltaire was once Francois-Marie Arouet, the charismatic and rebellious youngest son of a middle-class French family… Voltaire at the time was struggling financially, but de la Condamine had a plan which he proposed to Voltaire that would help make Voltaire and himself a boatload of money via ever so slightly unscrupulous means, though technically not breaking any laws.”
- Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious - "Researchers have data crunched 2,500 recipes and found the secret to their success." HT to Alias for this one
- Anatomy of a Hack - "In the early morning hours of October 21st, 2014, Partap Davis lost $3,000. He had gone to sleep just after 2AM… While he slept, an attacker undid every online security protection he set up. By the time he woke up, most of his online life had been compromised: two email accounts, his phone, his Twitter, his two-factor authenticator, and most importantly, his bitcoin wallets." Russell Brandom unpicks the methods used in an alarming case of identity theft.
- Welcome to Seapole - An alternate world made from our real one, by Chris Wayan: ”As an experiment, I took an Earth globe off its stand and tilted it until both poles were oceanic, like our Arctic. That wasn't easy! With our current geography, nearly all possible axes have one wet pole and one dry (quite by chance--in many geological eras, it wasn't so). I only found two "wet" orientations--this one, with poles in the South Atlantic and off Japan, or poles in the Arabian Sea and south of Mexico."
- Free Royalty Free Music - A collection of free loops and tracks, with which to spice up your videos or whatever: ”In return for the use of these free royalty free music loops we only ask that you please give Partners In Rhyme a link on your website or blog, a credit in your Youtube video, or just a nice email saying "Thanks!".”
- Tracking Device Teardown - The team at ifixit get their hands on an FBI surveillance device: ”The device comprises a GPS unit for receiving the car's position, an RF transmitter for relaying your location to the interested authority (i.e., the FBI), and a set of sweet D-cell batteries that power the whole enchilada. But we didn't stop there, of course. Read on to find out exactly what components make this secretive device tick.”
- Museum Of Obsolete Media - All kinds of ways of storing things that aren’t used any more - though it also includes ones we still use, but which presumably will also pass into obscurity: ”The Voice-O-Graph was a recording system about the size of a telephone box that allowed people to record their voices directly onto a phonograph disc.” It’s not quite obsolete, as one was used recently by Neil Young to record an album
Happy invoicing!
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