Hi there. Music: Cabaret Contemporain and Hyper Light Drifter's OST by Disasterpeace.

News:

• Tristan Harris: How technology hijacks people’s minds — from a magician and Google’s design ethicist. So much yes in this article, via [fr] une entrevue du Nouvel Obs via [fr] Nouveau Projet:

  "The more choices technology gives us in nearly every domain of our lives (information, events, places to go, friends, dating, jobs) — the more we assume that our phone is always the most empowering and useful menu to pick from. Is it?

  [...]

  If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.

  Does this effect really work on people? Yes. Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parks combined. Relative to other kinds of gambling, people get ‘problematically involved’ with slot machines 3–4x faster according to NYU professor Natasha Dow Schull, author of Addiction by Design."

  But here’s the unfortunate truth — several billion people have a slot machine their pocket."

• John Oliver investigates gun control in Australia (2014): Part I, Part II. Merci Jo.
• The insanity that VPAID ads are, via HN.
• X marks gender-neutral.
• Why some cultures frown on smiling, via [fr] Nouveau Projet.