Nerdology

Dieter hits on everything I’ve been feeling about messaging as of late.

Once upon a time, we created interoperable communications standards like email, Internet Relay Chat, and hell, HTTP. Now, apparently, the only way to create a new way to talk to each other electronically is to wait for a big corporation to do it for us.

Between GroupMe, Hangouts, iMessage, Twitter DM, SMS… I’ve got a lot of chat conversations scattered throughout the Internet. Part of me just wants to ditch everything in favor of SMS. But those were simpler times.

Cool interview with Daft Punk in GQ by Zach Baron.

One of the things that stood is how much Daft Punk is kind of hating on their own record. They do it to the point of evoking Scream sequels:

Only a handful of people have heard the album so far, but the two men already seem resigned to the possibility that no one will like it.

“In Scream 2, they have this discussion about how sequels always suck,” Bangalter says. In this scheme, Random Access Memories might as well be Scream 4. “The thing we can ask ourselves at some point is like: We’re making music for twenty years. How many bands and acts do you have that are still making good music after twenty years? It always sucks—almost always, you know?”

And de Homem-Christo, who has said maybe a few dozen words up to this point, most of them about salad and directed at our waitress, peers over the golden top edge of his sunglasses and says: “So our new album is supposed to really suck.”

It reminds me of Nirvana before In Utero came out. Kurt Cobain went on record saying, “The grown-ups don’t like it,” and that it was “unlistenable”. He also told Circus, “The first time I played it at home, I knew there was something wrong. The whole first week I wasn’t really interested in listening to it at all, and that usually doesn’t happen. I got no emotion from it, I was just numb.”

It’s kind of interesting. And I’d like to go on record saying that Scream 4 was better than Scream 3… so there’s that.

Also, interesting is that this is the writers first article for GQ. So, good for him.

Mark this date. I have a feeling this is going to be a huge disruption in the TV space. It’s limited to select partners for right now, but I’ll bet that anyone with a YouTube channel will get the opportunity eventually. And as Mat Honan says, this brings us “a small step closer to the dream of a la carte programming.”

YouTube will let you pay to subscribe to channels with a new pilot program that includes a limited number of channel partners for now. The company listed Jim Henson Family TV and Ultimate Fighting Championship as initial members.

Prices start at $.99 per month, paid via Google Wallet. Users get a 14 day free trial to channels, which are also discounted if you subscribe by the year. Once signed up for a paid channel, you can suck down as much video as it has to offer.