Reddit

PLOS, in conjunction with /r/science, is launching a new series called PLOS Science Wednesday. It’s an effort to bring contributing scientists from the open access journals to reddit. A list of the first four contributors can be found here. It all gets started on April 22 with cancer researcher Andrew Beck.

Scammers and Skeptics Are Strangling the Future of Digital Money

Bitcoin devotees and other cryptocurrency fans say that math gives their radical ideas so much potential. But starting a new value system also requires a level of faith in the people using the math. As “shitcoin” scams pile up, it’s becoming clear that new currencies need trust, too. And they don’t have it. Nowhere is…

There’s a Modern TV Hidden Inside This Classic 1950s Philco Predicta

There’s nothing quite as retro-futuristic as the Philco Predicta television from the late 1950s. That bubbly, detached picture tube. The metal frame. It’s gorgeous. Unfortunately, the iconic TV set is also notoriously unreliable—and what good is a broken Predicta TV? Well, it turns out it makes a pretty bitchin’ monitor frame. Redditor Imapm (or “ModularDuck”…

Feds Want Reddit to Give Up Personal Info of Darknet Market Redditors 

Federal agents want Reddit to turn over the personal data of five prominent Redditors active in the Darknet Markets subreddit. IP addresses, names, and other data about five Reddit users active in Darknet Market discussions have been requested. Earlier this month, the popular drug-and-weapon peddling darknet market Evolution vanished in an apparent scam by its…

Nootropics and the Human Lab Rats of Reddit

Eric Matzner tells me he takes 30 to 40 pills a day. He is 27 and perfectly healthy. Thanks to the pills, he says he hasn’t had a cold in years. More importantly, the regimen is supposed to optimize the hell out of his brain, smoothing right over the ravages of aging, sleep deprivation, and…

Social Graph Reveals Disturbing Connections Between Subreddits

The people who moderate some of Reddit’s most popular forums, including ones that have been defaults, are also the same people creating forums for nonconsensual pornography and snuff pictures. In a story about Reddit’s new CEO Ellen Pao in The Guardian, Alex Hern and Helena Bingsston explore the commonly-held idea that there is a “mainstream”…

Reddit Finally Banned Stolen Porn 

Reddit is finally slamming the banhammer on porn posted without the permission of the people it depicts. This means no more leaked nude photos, no more revenge porn, and no more creepshots*. In an announcement, the Reddit team admitted that they’d “missed a chance to be a leader in social media when it comes to…

Edward Snowden’s Reddit AMA Sure Is Going Great So Far

The man who blew the whistle on the NSA’s most intense spying schemes and opened all our eyes to a world where virtually nothing you do online goes unwatched by the Power That Be is doing a little AMA on Reddit right now, to promote his new movie CITIZENFOUR. There’s a little trouble with the…

Bill Gates: Digital Currency Can Help the Poor, But Not Bitcoin

Bill Gates has high hopes for digital currency as an important banking tool for the poor. But Bitcoin isn’t one of those currencies, he said in a Reddit AMA today. At least not in its current form. Gates extolled the value of digital currency in his AMA last year as well, explaining that since many…

Realistic version of Reddit alien mascot is neat and creepy as hell

Kudos to redditor ChristopherDesign for this cool version of a three-eyed Reddit alien mascot, rendered in Cinema 4D and finished in Photoshop. He says it took him 30 to 40 hours to make: I’d say the actual amount of time to create what you see is about 30-40 hours, but I worked on it pretty…

Reddit Started a Crowdfunding Site to Fill the World With Reddit Baubles

Reddit just launched a crowdfunding platform called Redditmade so moderators can enlist their fellow redditors to fund projects. Why ask outsiders to do something for you when you have your own in-house cabal at your disposal? There’s nothing surprising here when it comes to crowdfunding, other than this is something by Reddit, for Reddit. A…

Google Tests Connecting Doctors With Online Patients

The web can be a precarious place to find accurate information regarding your health. With only a list of symptoms to type into a search engine, your mild headache could just be a headache…or the early stages of brain cancer. It’s always best to consult a doctor if you’re concerned and Google is trying to…

Apple and Reddit Shut Down the iWorm Botnet

Last week, a Russian security firm discovered that over 17,000 Mac computers had been infected with a malicious software called iWorm that connected infected devices to a botnet by using Reddit to unearth links to command servers. This weekend, both Apple and Reddit took measures that rendered the software ineffective. Apple updated its Xprotect software…

Hackers Are Using Reddit to Connect 17,000 Macs to a Botnet

Bad news for Mac users: You’re at risk for an insidious malware that will connect your computer to a botnet. Hackers have developed a backdoor entry called “Mac.BackDoor.iWorm” that gains access to Macs and uses Reddit to connect the hacked computer with a command server. Once the computer is infected, the iWorm uses Reddit’s search…

The Internet Is on Go-Slow Today to Support Net Neutrality

Websites including Reddit, Pornhub, Twitter and Netflix are all slowing down today in support of net neutrality. In this article, the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains why—and how you can join in. You know the net neutrality conversation is breaking new ground when even the porn sites are weighing in. And that’s just what we’re seeing—major…

Reddit’s New App Lets You Read AMAs on Your iPhone (Update: Android Too)

Reddit’s AMAs (Ask Me Anything) are the one of the best things about the network. But let’s face it: Reddit isn’t the world’s prettiest website. The learning curve is fairly steep. Clearly, Reddit thinks so too, because it has now released a rather good-looking app to read and participate in AMAs. The AMA app, available…

Watch This Guy Desperately Try to Save His Dying, Water-Bound Drone

Keeping your gadgets charged is important. More and more our very lives are stored on our smartphones. If they die, we’re cut off our friends, work email, and Reddit. There’s also the nightmare of realizing your drone’s battery is dying while it’s 50-feet above a body of water. YouTuber redphive, an ironic reference to Luke…

The Enterprise Crew Flail About Like Morons In “Star Trek Stabilized”

It’s the Star Trek TV shows’ simplest, but most effective effect — have the actors throw their bodies in one direction while shaking the camera. Redditors took the time to stabilize these shots — i.e., show what they would look like if the cameras were actually still — and the results are ridiculous. It should…

Reddit Study Reveals How to Ask For Favors Online — and Get Them

If you manage to look beyond irate commenters and festering trolls, the internet can be a friendly place full of people keen to help a brother out. Now, a study of Reddit reveals how people ask for favors online—and the best way to make them succesful, too. It’s an interesting phenomenon for sure, perhaps best…

10 of the Weirdest Corners on Reddit

If you’ve ever spent any time on Reddit, you know that bizarre corners and seedy underbellies abound, making it virtually impossible to uncover some of the site’s more absurd stores of knowledge (to use the term loosely). Knowledge, for example, like this, or this, or even this. So to aid us in this monstrous task,…