That 2014 is turning out to be the hottest year ever recorded is, sadly, not particularly remarkable. Nor was it really notable that, despite the global swelter, most of humanity was content to pump out a record-breaking volume35 billion tonsof additional heat-trapping carbon pollution.

It wasnt remarkable that the worlds climate scientists issued a series of reports bearing the international climatology communitys strongest warnings yet. (It is extremely likely that human influence is the dominant cause of todays warming, which is scientist for "wake up.")

Or that California experienced the worst drought in at least 1,200 years.

Or that a massive ice sheet in Antarctica thawed and collapsed, all but guaranteeing 10 feet of global sea level rise from it alone. It may take a long timehundreds of years, evenbut its locked in.

Or that the Pentagon is officially preparing plans for waging wars in a warming world.

Or that vast plumes of methane, a super-heat-trapping gas, are bubbling up in the Arctic at a rate not seen before.

Or that conservative politicians, pundits, and voters ignored it all, continuing their tradition of brushing off climate change as a liberal contrivance, and of convening hearings to haughtily disavow one of the most robust scientific consensuses ever established.

None of those deeply unnerving developments were particularly surprising in 2014they all simply reflect the new machinations of the world we now inhabit. We live in the age of perpetual, incremental environmental decline. It may have been a few years since weve seen a new hottest-ever year recordthe last one was in 2010but theyre becoming common enough to qualify as routine (previous record-breakers include 2005, 1998, and 1997). The extreme weather; the droughts, the heat, the floods; theyre downright pedestrian.

Yes, our blue marble greenhouse is a little bit steamier this year than it was the last, reports assessing its health and stability a bit gloomier, the necessity of human cooperation a bit more fiercely urgent. But the same was true of the year before, and the year before that. The slow rise of the mercury and grim tidings of our science are an unremarkable feature of modern life.

While global warming continued to engender hotter temps, more extreme weather, and its familiar host of other sadly ordinary symptoms, there was actually one remarkable thing about the climate story of 2014, and that is the way that some humans began organizing effectively to turn the tide.

The Obama administration unveiled its long-coming "Clean Power Plan," which harnesses the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the carbon emissions of fossil fuel-burning plants. If the plan works as expected, it will reduce the CO2 emissions of power plants 30 percent by 2030.

In August, the largest-ever climate march took over the streets of New York City, where 300,000 people gathered to sound a call for action. The event made international headlines, and became a powerful signal that the public was fed up with the status quo.

That much was clear, months later, when surprise news broke that China and the US had inked a deal agreeing, after years of stalemate, on carbon cutsa historic move, considering the worlds two biggest polluters had long been the key obstructors to an international climate treaty. Weeks later, rumors spread that India (the worlds third-largest emitter) and the US were close to a similar deal.

Finally, just this month, 180 nations did what they had never done before: Gathered in Lima for the 19th annual climate meeting of its kind, delegates from each agreed to a tentative regime of carbon reduction. All of them. Sure, the plan that emerged is non-binding, has been criticized as being toothless, and is more of a blueprint than anything. But thats okay.

Because next year at Paris COP20 is the worlds big chance at a legit climate deal. Even if that fails, which is entirely plausible, 2014 at least made it clear that there is a groundswell of public support for fighting climate change. Besides the triumphant Peoples March, the divestment movement is barrelling along, collecting victories from reputable institutions and proving a thorn in the fossil fuel industrys side.

The idea that climate change is a hoax was labeled the lie of the year by the venerable fact-checking organization PolitiFact. People are fed up with climate denial, to the point that Republicans had to resort to the pathetic "Im not a scientist" dodge on the campaign trail, in order to justify their climate-ignorant policy preferences. Of course, those Republicans are coming into power in 2015, and they will remain as opposed to climate action as ever. Obstruction will continue.

But at least a wind of change is blowing; even if the gusts hitting our faces will be hotter than ever.

*This post contains spoilers about the podcast Serial*

The first season of the ultra-popular podcast Serial is over, but lots of questions remain, in no small part due to the lack of evidence tying then-high school student Adnan Syed to the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.

Huge swaths of Sarah Koenig's longform storytelling (and reporting) experiment are dedicated to frustratingly minute details of what cell phone tower a certain call pinged, what certain high school students were doing at a certain time on a certain day, and whether or not someone had voicemail.

One of the most interesting things about Serial, to the Motherboard crew, was the fact that, yes, these high school students had cell phones, and they had email, but they used that technology in an entirely different way than we do today. Adnan checked his email, every once in a while, at the library, for goodness sakes. 

So, we decided to explore what sorts of digital evidence a murder with similar circumstances would have today. Would Hae's time of death been narrowed down thanks to her last Instagram post? Would Adnan's Facebook have helped him remember what he was doing that day? And what's the deal with cell phone tower tracking, anyway?

In December 2014, writer Tim Maughan published a story in the BBC about his visit to the markets and factories of Yiwu, where over 60 percent of the world's Christmas decorations are made. It went viral. His expedition was made with the Unknown Fields Division, 'a nomadic design studio' lead by speculative architects Liam Young and Kate Davies, on an expedition to follow the supply chain back to the source of our consumer goods. This piece of speculative fiction is inspired by that trip.

29 June 2024 Yiwu, China

Ming-hua takes a Santa Claus from the conveyor belt, holds its feet between thumb and forefinger, and blushes its cheeks red with two delicate taps from a paintbrush. As always, she tries to avoid its dead-eyed gaze, but before the second dab of paint its laughing at her, hidden servos shaking is head from side to side in simulated cheer.

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas Ming-hua!

She drops the Santa on the pile next to her table and they celebrate the arrival of yet another of their kind, 300 Santas ho ho ho ho-ing and vibrating as one.

Two tables up the line Yanyu, who paints the pupils onto their dead eyes, is wearing a plastic mask while she works. This week its Kermit the Frog; last week it was Pikachu. Before that, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. It stops the Santas from scanning her face and searching the social networks for her name. It means they keep fucking quiet. The masks have to be animals or cartoon charactersno real people or celebrities.

Ming-hua tried it, for a while. She hid behind Spider Mans face. But it got too hot, the sweat from her brow stinging her eyes, the smell of the plastic as suffocating as the fumes from the injection-moulding machines clanking and pounding in the corner. She decided she was better off putting up with the ho ho ho-ing.

The camera above her twitches as she moves, the counters on the screen tracking her progress as the Santa hits the pile, updating her daily stats like video game scores: units per minute, units per hour, units per day, Yuan earned. Time per unit, both for her and across the whole production line. Theyve all been keeping an eye on that oneMr. Han threatening them every morning that if they dont keep on target hell replace them all with 3D printers and auto-painters. 

At break Yanya always tells her its bullshit, that theres no way he can find printers or bots faster than them, plus hes too tight to pay for upgrades. All Ming-hua knows is that she needs this job, so she doesnt let herself stop and think about it for too long.

13 October 2024, Ningbo, China

Weiyuan stares down, past his feet and through the glass floor of the cab, fighting vertigo. He drops the container down on steel cables. Even though he cant see it happening, he knows its made contact with the stack on the ship. Somehow he feels the hard clang of contact through joysticks and pedals.

He knows well enough to thumb the button on the joystick that releases the spreader, makes it disconnect from the container, and leaves it sitting there. Hit that too soon and boxes fall, product is ruined, lives are lost. Hit it too late and you slow everything down, or you find yourself hauling the spreader back up before the release is done, and youre back to falling boxes, ruined product, lost lives. Either way youre fucked, the network knowing its you holding up the entire supply chain, your incompetence sending planet-wide ripples of schedule panic through infrastructure space. Timing is everything. Feeling is everything.

Weiyuan glances at the screen above him, at the ever-shifting Tetris puzzle, unthinkingly decoding the squares and numbers, knowing instantly where on the ship he needs to drop the next box. He doesnt know whats in the boxes, doesnt care, he leaves that to the network, to some algorithm in Copenhagen to worry about. He just worries about being fast.

And he is fast. One of the fastest. The frame of his super-post-Panamax class crane is studded with medals, gold and white against Maersk corporate blue. 300, 400even 500 boxes moved in a single 12 hour shift. And hes got to stay fast. He rarely looks up, but he knows that across the port, under the halogen-orange clouds, the rival Evergreen terminal is running without people at all. If they dont keep up the pace itll be Maersk next; theyll plug the cranes directly into the network so Copenhagen can run them. Theyre fast, he hears, but not 500-a-shift fast, limited by safety regulations and insurance policies. He wonders if those Danish algorithms can feel.

Not that Weiyuan is perfect. Next to his screen, gaffer-taped to the ceiling, is a crane-jockeys tradition: items taken from every box hes dropped and split open, a bouquet of multicoloured plastic. Day-glo toys. USB charging cables. Cigarette lighters. Socks. A Che Guevara action figure. Phone covers. Toy cars. And right in the middle of them all, a red and white plastic Santa Claus, its head shaking as its eyes meet his, its tinny digital voice singing out:

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas Weiyuan!

And Weiyuan swears, that for a second, he can feel the container hanging below him shaking, as if its entire contents are ho-ho-ho-ing along.

22 December 2024, Queens, New York City

Shonda scans the shelves of Target, desperately looking for something she can afford.

Its not that shes totally broke, but she just spent too much of her last paycheck getting back from Detroit. 11 hours stuck in the back of a Bolt Bus, not sleeping, her limbs aching. She should be excited to be backfirst time shes seeing her kids in four monthsbut shes scared. Scared they wont even recognize her. Scared they wont care.

Four months in Detroit, away from her family, sleeping in a workersdormitory that was once a public housing project. Four months spraying plastic tribal masks with varnish so they look more like real wood. Varnish that hangs like a cloud of glue around her, sticking to her overalls and splattering her goggles, impossible to shake in a small room in a building where Americans used to make cars for the whole world. And now the Chinese make fake masks to sell to tourists in Kenya. A small room where its always too hot, even when its minus twenty outside.

She thought shed have more to show for it, after four months of 16 hour shifts in the varnish room. Even after PayPaling most the money to her mom so she can feed the kids, she expected to have some left for Christmas. But money acts weird in Detroit. You get paid and it seems like a lot, seems to go a long way, plus when you live in the dorms you dont really need to pay for food or heating or shit anyway.

But come back to NYC and damn, like as soon as you step outside of Detroit all the prices are doubled, like its a different country or something. Mom says its because they made Detroit a Special Economic Zone, with its own laws about taxes and labor conditions, just so the Chinese could come in and help out the city when it was so broke. And thats why Shonda headed up there, cause there were jobs. Seemed like a good idea, four months in Detroit.

On the shelf, in amongst the mess of red and green and white and glitter, something catches Shondas eye. A little fat Santa Claus, his cheeks cherry red, his head starting to shake from side to side as it calls out to her.

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas Shonda!

And then around it dozens more, identical little Santas, springing to life, ho ho ho-ing and vibrating as one.

She shakes her head. What the fuck is it with things all knowing your damn name these days? But it is kinda cute. The kids will probably like it. Itll make them smile. And its only a couple of bucks. She grabs one, drops it in her shopping basket. Looks back at the shelf. Doesnt seem much point in only getting one. She grabs another three. Now shes just got to find something for mom.

25 December 2107, Land Fill District 14 South-B, New Jersey

Mary scans the landscape, trying to blank out the stench.

Some of the other kids joke that they cant smell it anymore. They say its burnt out the parts of their noses that respond to that particular frequency, or the parts of their brains that identify it. Marys not so sure. She can smell it. Always. Its always on her body. She can smell it when she wakes in the morning. She can smell it when she eats. She can smell it every fourth day when shes allowed to shower, and she can smell it while she sleeps. She can smell it in her dreams.

Walking is hard. The oversized boiler suit flaps about her like a useless flag, stained with filth like the emblem of the worlds shittiest nation. It catches the breeze like a sail as she walks. She keeps her head down; the floor of the landfill crater is hazardous terrain, an undulating battlefield of micro-hills carved from plastic and pools of toxic runoff. Tendrils of compacted ethylene monomers graze her ankles. Shes good at this, shes been doing it most of her life. Keep your head down. It was the best piece of advice she was ever givenkeep your head down. Pay attention to your feet. Pay attention to the ground.

Before they let her out of the camp to work here she had to memorize diagrams, catalogues of shapes and lines drawn precisely by hand on decaying paper sheets. The things she spends all day looking for. Syringes. Glass bottles. Ceramic plates and cups. Cutlery. Scalpels. Clothes. Anything valuable. Anything they cant make anymore.

And then the pictures of things to ignore, the useless things best left and forgottenshe had to memorize them too. Cell phones. Batteries. Toys. Laptops. Anything made of plastic. Anything with a screen.

She was good at memorizing; when they give her and the other kids tests, she always scores high. Which is why she pauses when, from out of the corner of her eye, she spots something she doesnt recognize, red and white extruding from the shredded, mulched plastic.

She pulls it away from the ground, holds it in her hand. Its dented and scuffed, but made from that ancient plastic thats near indestructible. She turns it in her hands, a tiny ornate figure, red cheeks and sculpted white beard. As the gaze of its dead eyes meets hers, its head starts to shake, and it calls out to her.

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas [ERROR: NETWORK CONNECTION UNAVAILABLE]

She drops it, lets it just slip from her fingers, and as it falls the ground beneath her begins to shake, the small hill shes standing on vibrating, a tiny earthquake of indestructible, compressed, forgotten trash ho ho ho-ing as one.

The first Christmas trees arrived on North American shores from Germany with the Hessian soldiers fighting in the Revolutionary War, and it wasnt long until enterprising business people got the idea in their heads to design a better, artificial tree.

Ever since then, the manufacturers of fake trees and the growers of real ones have engaged in a pitched battle to leverage design and technology to make a more appealing Christmas tree.

The demand for artificial trees in America was likely due to several factors, some of which are still around. One can imagine a hapless person in the 1800s watching the needles fall from their old-timey tree and being all, The hell? I have to clean this shit up? Fuck it, Im sticking some goose feathers to a log.

The most famous example of more modern forays into designing an artificial Christmas tree with realistic needles is perhaps the Addis Brush Companys contribution from the 1930s. According to the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA)a national body that promotes the purchasing of traditional trees during the holidaysit was made with the same equipment they used to manufacture their chief market offering: toilet brushes.

Glade jul by Viggo Johansen (1891). Image: Wikipedia

The convenience of an artificial tree is still a much-vaunted point of appeal today, especially by organizations that promote artificial trees, like the American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA).

And then theres the environmental angle. As Linton Weeks reported over at NPR, early advocates of artificial trees used the depletion of local forests as a selling point for their own creations. Artificial trees would result in fewer real ones being harvested for the holiday season, and were more environmental friendly, they argued at the time.

Weve come a long way since then. While the genome the kind of trees used as Christmas decorations, conifers, has remained largely the same for over 100 million years, artificial trees have evolved in some spectacular ways.

Take, for example, the aluminum tree of the 1950s and 60s. A carnivalesque statue celebrating American consumption and industrial progress, aluminum trees were often accompanied by a rotating colour wheel that washed them in vibrant coloured lights. They exuded a certain technological optimism unique to the age of the Moon landing.

In the last few decades weve seen 3D holographic trees, and even fiber optic trees with needle tips that glow with a soft, white light. 3D-printed trees could also be on the horizon, and just this year, Simon Fraser University scientist Richard Zhang developed an algorithm that can print perfectly shaped mini-Christmas trees.

In sum, artificial trees were a technological solution to the problems, real or perceived, posed by the real thing centuries ago.

By no means have the supporters of real trees been sitting on their hands as artificial trees have grown more advanced and, frankly, bonkers, however. Significant amounts of research and high technology have gone into creating real trees that can compete with artificial ones.

The convenience problemspecifically, having to clean up all of those fallen brown needles is being tackled at research labs across the continent.

In 2010, researchers from Laval University reported in the journal Trees that needle loss is caused by ethylene, a plant hormone. By spraying conifers with chemical compounds that interfere with the hormones, the researchers were able to double the time it took for the trees needles to brown and fall.

John Frampton, a professor in the Forestry and Natural Resources Department at North Carolina University, is taking a cross-breeding approach to making a Christmas tree that can compete with the longevity of artificial PVC needles. Rebecca Doyle of Popular Mechanics reported back in 2012 that Frampton was busy splicing Fraser firs with Japanese Momi firs, which are more robust but dont look great in a living room.

Image: Bill Abbot/Flickr

Framptons work can be considered part of the field of phytopathology, which studies plant diseases. Year-round, plant pathologists are working to ensure that Christmas trees are healthy and robust in sufficient numbers to meet consumer demand. Without leveraging scientific research and cutting edge breeding practices, more of our trees might look like Charlie Browns.

As for the environmental argument, real trees come out on top, without any scientific help. A 2009 study by Montreal-based sustainability consulting firm Ellipsos found that artificial trees contribute three times more to climate change than natural ones, assuming that youre chucking out your artificial tree every six years. If you keep your artificial tree for over 20 years, however, youre probably okay.

Moreover, environmental concerns over the non-biodegradable polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic used in modern tree designs have become a key issue as of late. Real trees can be turned back into mulch and used for fertilizer, as well, whereas PVC trees usually end up languishing in a landfill. The National Institute of Health recommends against exposure to PVC due to the presence of cancer-causing dioxins that are released mainly during production and landfilling processes.

Nobody knows where tree technology will go next, if well even need them in the futurewe might just enjoy the holidays from inside a virtual reality helmet.

This morning, Sony Pictures Entertainment confirmed that the controversial comedy The Interview will be available to rent online through YouTube and other online platforms in addition to around 200 independent theaters. If that happens, this could be the largest experiment yet with a so-called video on demand release.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have said that video on demand is the future. What used to be the movie business will be internet television, Lucas said at a panel last year. But even though internet distribution could replace fading DVD sales, tap into new audiences, and potentially head off piracy, movie studios have resisted the move. No major studio has been willing to try releasing a film simultaneously in theaters and online.

Thats no surprise: Its common knowledge that Hollywood is extremely risk-averse, and right now there is very little data to predict things like how much money an online release would bring in and whether it would cannibalize theater ticket sales. Sony is only releasing the film this way because major theater chains dropped the movie after hackers threatened a terrorist attack.

There have been a few experiments with video on demand, however. Earlier this year, the dystopian drama Snowpiercer was distributed online two weeks after its theatrical release. The result? The movie made more money in two weeks online than it did after five weeks in theaters.

Critics scoffed that the tactic only works for arthouse films that appeal to a niche audience. Its really just the indies that are doing it, market researcher Tom Adams told Variety.

After about a month in theaters, the plotless abstract film Upstream Color was released through the movies website as well as iTunes and Amazon Instant Video. The film grossed less than $500,000 at the box office, a success for what Motherboards Jason Koebler described as the only movie where I understood the plot even less after I read 15 articles about it, but a flop by major studio standards. The distribution strategy got a ton of press. However, the video on demand revenues were never released publicly, and Upstream Color failed to start a trend.

Indie films smaller than Upstream Color have experimented with video on demand, but there still isnt enough data to know whether its viable for small films, let alone big ones. (Perhaps most encouraging: Keanu Reevess Man of Tai Chi made $1.5 million through a video on demand release before even opening in theaters.) Any statements about the independent-film business can only be expressed in anecdotes and generalities, writes Scott Tobias at Dissolve.

In other words, Sony releasing The Interviewa movie which is supposed to be terrible but still stars two A-list actors and is owned by one of the Big Eight major studiosis a huge deal. Not only will the release raise awareness of the existence of YouTubes movie rental site, we will finally have a good case study for releasing a mainstream film simultaneously online and in theaters.

Its probably too soon to call this a groundbreaking moment for the movie industry, in the words of CNNs Brian Stelter, who broke the news about the online distribution. The Interview is an anomaly: another movie in the future may get a publicity boost from hackers claiming to be from North Korea, but it seems unlikely. For that reason, cautious studios will probably continue hemming and hawing even if the movie sets a record for revenues from a video on demand release, which it easily could. Its a step, not a leap, toward a new distribution model.

Industry pundits had forecast $90 million for The Interview at the box office. Well see if a video on demand release can come close.

Today, Uber announced a change to its pricing scheme in a bid to push users away from traditional taxi services and towards the company's own UberX option. According to an email from the company to Uber users in New York City, Uber will now add a $2 surcharge to completed fares on its Uber Taxi service.

Previously, the company's Uber Taxi service worked as a simple taxi hailing app: After dropping a pin and arranging a pickup from a regular yellow or borough (green) cab, riders pay their fare with cash or card like any other cab, skipping the Uber app altogether.

It's convenient and straightforward and makes you wonder what would have happened if NYC's Taxi and Limo Commission had figured this out years ago.

There's nothing wrong with Uber charging users to use its app, as it's got to make money somehow, and users can decide whether or not that service is worth it. But in its announcement, Uber said that it added the surcharge "on behalf of yellow and boro taxi drivers who utilize the Uber platform," despite the fact that the $2 is charged through Uber's app and goes to Uber directly.

The email sent to Uber users in NYC.

This is some seriously smarmy language. Aside from the fact that Uber suggests drivers were clamoring to charge customers more, how is Uber collecting $2a princely sum for a single-time use of an app, by the wayan action done on the behalf of drivers that aren't seeing a dime of that revenue?

Uber argues that by charging riders an app surcharge, the company can ensure it doesn't have to charge drivers for its service. In an emailed statement, an Uber representative said that "there is no fee associated with UberT for drivers, however to cover costs associated with provisioning the platform, riders are subject to a $2 booking fee that is passed through the driver to Uber."

The fee already exists in Washington, DC and Chicago, and Uber argues that the surcharge is worth it because of the value provided to drivers in terms of getting more fares through the app.

The thing is, Uber explains in the same statement why the taxi drivers it claims to be working for are going to get burned by the new policy. Emphasis Uber's:

We want to take this opportunity to introduce uberX, the low-cost Uber. Cars on uberX are hybrids or mid-range vehicles in a variety of colors, and with rates cheaper than an NYC taxi, there's no better way to get around!

So let's say the new surcharge saves taxi drivers moneythe argument Uber makesbecause Uber now charges riders directly to subsidize the service, instead of introducing fees directly to drivers. The problem is, since Uber just ensured that taxi rides are now even more expensive than UberX, a lot of riders will eschew UberT altogether. 

I reached out to the TLC, and a spokesperson said the TLC was also trying to reach Uber for clarification. I'll update this post when I hear something new.

Uber and the TLC have tussled over ridesharing for the last two years, and one clear trend has emerged: the value of NYC taxi medallions, which are required to operate each of the city's yellow cabs, has been in decline. At the Times, Josh Barro reports that the price of an individual medallion in NYC fell to $840,000 in November, down from a peak of $1.05 million in June 2013.

This is of natural concern to taxi operators, who are seeing the value of their investmentwhich is no longer as big of a barrier to entering the taxi businessfall at the same time that ridesharing alternatives like UberX are pushing fares lower. Uber's standard response is that cheaper fares are better for riders, even if the company's claims about how much drivers can make are up for debate.

Now, Uber has made UberX even more attractive to riders, not by reducing prices through freer competitiona good thing for consumersbut by adding an excessive surcharge precisely to increase the price gap between a traditional service that it can't monetize well and its own service, which the company has far more more control over.

Editor's note: This post was updated to include comment from a TLC spokesman and comments from Uber. 

Update 2: A reader mentioned that Uber Black flat-rate airport services also got a rate hike today, from $85 to $100. Email below:

Sony, Twitter, and a musician from California continue to be engaged in a tug-of-war over Sonys hacked emails. Sony has now filed at least 20 copyright takedown requests with the social media network, demanding that Twitter remove tweets containing screenshots from Sony's leaked email cache, according to emails obtained by Motherboard.

Twitter apparently isnt budging.

Of the 20 requests, Twitter has, thus far, only removed content from two tweetsone that contained a screenshot of a James Bond script, and another from a Twitter user in the Netherlands that I havent been able to determine the contents of.

Meanwhile, 18 tweets containing screenshots from Sonys hacked emails remain on the site, despite there being Digital Millennium Copyright Act requests from Sony demanding that Twitter take them down. Those 18 tweets contain screenshots from Sonys hacked emails posted by Val Broeksmit, a musician who has been occasionally tweeting (generally) embarrassing info from the leaks.

A screenshot from he takedown request.

The requests were officially filed by Daniel Golden of Entura International, a company that Sony uses to deal with copyright issues. The company previously sent Broeksmit an email asking him to voluntarily remove the tweets. "Rather than complaining to Twitter and risk them taking action against your account, we thought we'd get in touch first and ask if you would remove the tweets that we've identified," the email said.

That tactic didn't work, so it moved forward with the official DMCA requests.

There is a link on this site that allows for the transmission and/or downloading of the SPE Stolen Files, in violation of Rights Holders exclusive rights under copyright law as to any copyrighted works contained in the SPE Stolen Files, Golden wrote in the takedown request, which was obtained by Motherboard from Broeksmit.

The only tweet of Broeksmit's that Twitter has deleted. Screenshot: Twitter

Twitter's decision to remove the James Bond script suggests that the company doesn't believe it's worth trying to defend itself when its users post clearly copyrighted content (say, a page from an unreleased movie script), but that it believes it can defend the posting of leaked emails. One possible defense is the fact that Broeksmit is commenting on the content contained in the emails, which could be a fair use of copyrighted material reserved for commentary.

Twitter notified Broeksmit late Wednesday about the requests to remove the emails, which Sony said may also violate, among other things, your terms of service, trademark law, trade secrets law, and privacy law.

One other tweet was deleted; I haven't been able to confirm what it was yet. Screengrab: Twitter

Its a different (and more conventional) tactic than the one Sony tried earlier this week. On Monday, Sony lawyer David Boies wrote a letter to Twitter in which the company threatened to hold Twitter responsible for any damages or loss arising from such use or dissemination [of hacked data] by Twitter. Sony said itd take legal action if stolen information continues to be disseminated by Twitter in any manner.

That certainly riled free speech types, and the well-known Streisand Effect, wherein trying to delete something off the internet only fuels its spread, kicked into high gear. Broeksmits earlier tweets have gotten hundreds of retweets, and hes received more than 15,000 followers thanks to the attention Sonys letter got.

(2/3) Sony goes at new #JamesBond film #SPECTRE #SonyHack #ScottRudin #BarbaraBroccoli #AmyPascal #DougBelgrade pic.twitter.com/TWX31o2g3A

val broeksmit (@BikiniRobotArmy) December 15, 2014

This, and many other tweets containing email screenshots, remain on the site.

At the time, a Twitter spokesman wouldnt comment on the companys response, but noted that Broeksmits tweets were still on the site, which suggests that the company is standing by its users right to share these emails. The fact that the company has formally received, and thus far ignored, DMCA requests from Sony suggests that the social networks stance on this isnt changing.

Ive reached out to both Sony and Twitter for further comment and will update this post if I hear back.

The Interview, by the way, opens in theaters today.

As the editorial team of a tech site, we see a lot of gadgets and gizmos come and go. Occasionally we write about them. But actually parting with our cold, hard cash?

Weve rounded up some of our best and worst tech purchases of the yearthe money well spent, and the impulse buys that seemed like a good idea at the time but ended up disappointing.

As you can tell, were not exactly extravagant; it's the little everyday things that most made an impression. Phones and laptops dominate our lives, and we fret over optional additionsheadphones, chargerslike you might over supplies for a well-loved but very demanding pet.

At bottom, the list perhaps says more about our own caprices than the tech itself: One of us nominated his cheap earbuds as his 2014 favourite, while another said hers were the worst. Staff writer Kaleigh loved her iPhone because its great; senior editor Brian hated his because its great. And Motherboards editor in chief is just really enthusiastic about a charger plug.

Adrianne Jeffries, Managing Editor

Best: Estes microdrone

An Estes Proto X minidrone. Image: Eddie Codel/Flickr

I honestly dont buy a ton of technology (actually, I just dont buy a lot of anything, mostly out of laziness) but once in a blue moon I will fall for a gadget. I fell for one at the end of last year at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials in Miami. I was wandering around the engineers garages looking at robots, and some guy on one of the teams had a microdrone, a little Proto X which is only $40. Its like a robotic bug. 

I crashed mine a million times by March and it gave up its little robo bug ghost, but by then I became aware of the upgraded version, which is a little microdrone with a tiny camera you can get for about $60. Just be careful where you buy it: some places will try to sell the drone separate from the controller. The fun-to-dollar ratio is unbeatable. I will never get tired of this thing. Its also a good way to practice before trading up to a larger, more expensive drone.

Worst: Bookman bike lights

Image: Adrianne Jeffries

These things look really neatthey are just simple small boxes with a single large buttonand they affix with elastic, so theyre super quick to put on and take off your bike. My boyfriend got the same pair and we rode around with them for months. One night we were biking up Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn when I realized the lights were worthlessthey were practically invisible from 20 feet away. Anyway, these things are a little trendy now, but its form over function. I went and bought some ugly bulky lights that are bright as hell. I dont wear a helmet so I want people to see me.

Jason Koebler, Staff Writer

Best: Sony earbud headphones

Image: Jason Koebler

One of the only pieces of technology I have purchased this year, these headphones both fit in my ear without ever falling out and play music, which satisfies my two needs. They also cost $12 and are sold at virtually every drugstore or bodega in New York City, which is huge, because I lose headphones, and everything else I own, at a very fast rate. Without music I am amongst the people and that is a place I hate to be. I have these either in my pocket, laying in bed with me, or in my ears twenty-three-and-nine-tenths-hours-out-of-the-day, with a brief respite while Im in the shower. WHAT A DEAL.

Worst: HTC One M8

Image: Jason Koebler

This phone is cool and its good, but is it so much cooler and more good than my last phone? Not really. It still takes pictures that are good but not great, I still have to put it on airplane mode when I get out of the subway just to reset the signal, the battery still dies too fast. I still have extreme anxiety whenever I load a video or something because Im worried about going over my data plan limit, which I know is not HTCs fault but come on. 

The speaker is louder which is great but whatever. I dont think it responds well to water, which Im unwilling to test, but I suspect as much from having it blast music while Im in the shower and dripping water on it. It wont connect to wifi at my office, I have to shut down half of my apps to get Plants Vs. Zombies 2 to open most of the time. Its a phone and it works, but when the hell is someone going to make a phone thats AWESOME? 

Derek Mead, Editor in Chief

Best: Macbook charger adapter

Image: Derek Mead

I love my work laptop. It's thin, light and fast, and is the best computer I've ever owned. It's not the best piece of tech I bought this year, however, because Vice paid for it. Thanks Vice!

The problem with this wondrous machine is the fact that taking it home for the weekend requires lugging around a charger that's bigger than the computer itself, and I hate all those loosey-goosey wires snaking around and just touching EVERYTHING in my bag. Gross, I know.

The thing is, I have a couple old Macbook chargers at home, but they didn't work with the new-style connector that Apple invented just to sell tiny converters that cost $12 from the local brick-and-mortar. For months I resisted spending this money for a hunk of metal with two different-shaped indentations on each end, lugging a charger as I meandered around town like some sort of jackass.

But that's changed. Two weeks ago I bought one of those adapters, and my life is measurably better! What great packaging! (I actually thought "Oh so this is why tech writers like Apple so much" to myself.) What a strong magnet, which hooks onto the old charger plug with a convincing, you're-never-going-back-to-the-old-computer-again thunk!

Cutting the cord has freed up a number of new bag options that I didn't have before, and I can stroll down the street, laptop in hand, looking like a guy who DOES THINGS, rather than some shitbird futzing with a cord in a grocery bag because I forgot my backpack at home. This thing rules!

Worst: LED bathroom light

Image: Derek Mead

The bathroom power plug in my old-ass apartment only receives power if you flip the light switch on, which makes a regular nightlight impossible. Turning on the actual bathroom light in the middle of the night is a recipe for blinding insomnia, and the bathroom has no window, meaning zero ambient light. In short, I'm usually left peeing in a dark closet while half asleep, and it sucks.

To remedy this, and because I was already buying crap on Amazon, I bought the cheapest possible version of one of those LED tap-it lights you find occasionally on late-night television. Actually I bought three, because it was cheaper to buy three shitty ones instead of one nice one. Now, I can't tell if it's actually bad or not, because I've never gotten around to buying AAA batteries to power itit's been like six months and I still haven't found myself in a battery store with reasonable pricesbut the thing sure does FEEL like the worst thing possible.

Brian Merchant, Senior Editor

Best: Moldovan leather hat

Image: Brian Merchant

My favorite piece of technology that I spent money on this year is a faux-leather hat I bought in Moldova for $15. It is lined with some sort of fur, and has flaps that have been innovatively fashioned to descend over my ears. It does a better job of keeping my head heated than any hat Ive ever owned. It is a serious advancement in personal head warmth.

Worst: iPhone 6

Image: Brian Merchant

No, Im not going to complain about oversized screens or bendabilitythe problem with the iPhone 6 is that, for me, it finally collapsed that fragile boundary between phone and PC, probably incontrovertibly. I was on a train, tapping away at LTE speeds, when the phone was just a couple days old. I found myself, for the first time, instinctively editing and loading a Motherboard article onto our content management system by touchscreen. It was slower, yeah, but not overly painful. I could, and did, do it. I published. Then I moved over to the HipChat app and discussed editorial strategy with the rest of the team. It was seamless.

And it was official: I could work, effectively and efficiently, from anywhere. I realize this ambivalent revelation has arrived long ago for many, many Blackberry-toting execs and technophiles, but my heart sunk. The device, already an engine of anxiety with its email notifications, status updates, and news ticker, had finally evaporated any distinction between work and normal life. It was more symbolic than anything: There was no longer a space or mode that was distinct to either; both would coexist seamlessly, inevitably uncomfortably, from now on.

Now, like so many others, Ill have to think about ways to disentangle the digital crush, and wonder listlessly if my privileged, tech-abetted life is bringing me more stress than benefit. Damm you, iPhone 6, you glorious piece of all-consuming technology.

Kaleigh Rogers, Staff Writer

Best: iPhone 5S

Image: Kaleigh Rogers

I wish I could point to a really cool, unique, niche piece of tech that I bought this year, but the truth is the best device I bought was my iPhone 5S. For the past five years I had been using a Blackberry and put off upgrading because I was precariously employed (and I liked the keyboard). But in January this year, my lemon of a Blackberry finally gave inthe screen literally fell off of the phoneand I was forced to shell out the cash for a Big Girl device. Despite the fact that nine months later Apple came out with a newer version, rendering my shiny new toy obsolete, it is obviously my most-used and most-cherished purchase of the year.

Worst: New York Times Opinion app

Image: Kaleigh Rogers

I downloaded a free trial subscription to the New York Times Opinion app. I'm a huge fan of the NYT Now app and had hopes that the Ops app would help me sniff out new and interesting columnists. But, it was dull, predictable and didn't offer me anything I couldn't easily find through Twitter or other means. If I had remembered to cancel my subscription before the monthly fee was taken off my credit card, I wouldn't have paid a dime for it. I cancelled a day after they charged me, telling the operator I never, ever use it. She sounded sympathetic. Turns out I wasn't alone, because the Times scrapped the app just a few months after it launched.

Victoria Turk, UK Editor

Best: Portable phone charger

Image: Victoria Turk

Like most people, Im embarrassingly dependant on my phone for the most basic of daily tasks. But my iPhone 4S is getting on in years, and seems to be losing battery life at an increased rate, often spontaneously shutting down when the power icon still shows plenty of charge.

And so it is that the best piece of tech I bought this year was to make up for the failings of another. Ahead of a trip overseas, I panic-ordered one of those remote chargers that you can plug your dead phone in to revive it. I now keep it in my handbag and its already saved my ass a couple of times. Seeing as I outsourced my navigational skills to Google Maps before my brain had chance to develop an actual sense of direction, a dead phone on a night out in an unfamiliar city can be a frankly terrifying prospect.

I no longer have to worry about re-charging my phone before heading outas long as I remember to charge the charger when its out of juice too, that is.

Worst: Cheap headphones

The left earbud on these doesn't work; time to buy again. Image: Victoria Turk

Its my own fault. I always buy the cheapest, shittiest headphones. My reasoning is because they always break after a couple of monthsso Ive actually bought my worst piece of tech several times over in the past year. Almost immediately after purchasing a new pair (and spending several agonising minutes attacking the impenetrable packaging with scissors to get them out), they look like this: a tangled mess, with knots in the wires getting tied up in other knots until theyre about half the length they started out as.

Eventually, the connection between wire and earbud gets twisted a step too far, and Im only hearing music in one ear. Then the purchasing cycle begins again. Next year, Im resolving to invest in a decent pair. And take better care of them.

On some day back in early 1999, I walked into a baseball card shop and saw, in one of the glass cases, a glistening Charizard card staring back at me. I used my last $5the whole of my allowance moneyto make that card mine. I would treasure it and the tiny Edition 1 stamp on the left side of the fire-breather.

And then, a month later, I sold it on eBay.

I was 11 years old, still in elementary school, and I had just learned more about capitalism than any class Ive ever takenup til then, or since.

$150 is a lot for a piece of cardboard, but I quickly learned that things are worth what someone will pay for them. Thats not a groundbreaking discovery, but its an important one, for a preteen.

My sale of that Charizard card started a several year infatuation with eBay: I went from exchanging Pokemon cards for money orders (this was pre-PayPal) to selling my old Beanie Babies, to selling my dads vintage whiskey decanters and my uncles old comic books. I sold extra concert tickets and then, seeing how successful it was, I sold concert tickets I bought specifically to scalp. I once bought 20 copies of NBA 2K2 at Best Buy for $1 each, because the Dreamcast was dying and the store wanted to get rid of them. I sold them for $20 a pop on eBay.

Image: Oregon209/eBay

Im writing this not to brag about making a couple hundred bucks as a middle schooler. Instead, I just want to argue that, even today, eBay is the purest, most accessible bastion of capitalism out there. And its something that everyone should try, at least.

Capitalism might not be the best economic system, and it certainly seems like it has some inherent problems with the whole the rich get richer, the poor get automated thing we have going on right now. But, like it or not, thats the game we (in the US, at least) must play. And eBay is the quickest way to learn how the game works.

You can sell just about anything on eBay (within reason, excluding body parts and drugs and explosives), to people all over the world. It is the worlds biggest yard sale, and no one pays a cent more than what, quite literally, the world thinks it should cost.

And thats the value of eBay: Throughout my life, Ive met many a delusional person who thinks that their shit is somehow worth more than market value just because its theirs.

You know the typeits the person whose prices on old CRT televisions are FIRM at the flea market; the ones who want to sell a board game with half the pieces missing for whatever they paid for them in the first place; the ones who spend a huge amount of their and your time getting upset at gas prices, etc.

It is a laudable goal to not be one of those people, and eBay teaches you the value of, well, everything, very, very quickly. Theres no quicker way to be knocked down a peg than selling a hand-curated set of grass-type Pokemon cards you thought was worth a fortune (as informed by your earlier Charizard sale) for $.99 plus shipping.

And the second you learn that the price of things is not what the manufacturer says it is, its a weird combination of how desirable, how rare, how vintage, how weird, and how collectible it is, plus a little seasonal multiplier (Christmas, Valentines Day), you are free. You are free from attaching a monetary sentimentality to mass-manufactured junk that you happen to own and you are free from the rage most feel at overpaying a scalper for tickets and you are free from having to pay attention in economics class ever again, because you will have learned how the damn world works.

You will never, ever, spend weeks posting hundreds of your grandmas old VHS tapes on eBay, at a price she demands. Youll just say, hey, Grandma: Donate the stupid things. And youll be done with it. 

Warning: this post contains light spoilers.

Im not one of those Serial listeners who was disappointed by the ending. Serial was always less of a straight-up whodunnit than it was just great investigative reporting. But there was one aspect of the final episode that struck me. What about that Washington Post article mentioned in episode five, Route Talk?

The conviction of Adnan Syed, Serial's central character, came down to evidence corroborated by additional evidence gathered from cell-phone towers, and it was during a key moment in Route Talkhost Sarah Koenig citing the above Washington Post articlethat the scientific accuracy of cell-tower evidence was first brought into question.

In the episode, Koenig mentions the articles headline, Experts say law enforcements use of cellphone records can be inaccurate, but then doesnt quite unpack the piece itself. Instead, she contacts outside experts, none of which are among the sources cited in the Washington Post piece.

Its a nitpick, sure, but why mention the article at all without digging into it, or calling experts directly from the piece itself?

During the podcasts finale, even in Koenig's last fell swoop to map out the days events, the cell-tower evidence continues to be taken at face value, with no reference to the questions surrounding it.

'Serial' dug into the minutiae of every detail, and that's what made this oversight stick out

This is the sole aspect of the finale that caught me by surprise, not the series ambiguous conclusion. Serials 12-hour, no-stones-left-unturned runtime dug into the minutiae of every last detail, and thats exactly what makes this small detail stick out.

So, I decided to call up Edward J. Imwinkelried myself, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, expert on the admissibility of cell-tower evidence, and, most importantly, one of the sources from the very Washington Post article referenced in "Route Talk."

I cold-called him and left a voicemail. He called me back an hour later:

MOTHERBOARD: Hey, Professor Imwinkelried. The reason Im calling you is because I saw your name cited as a source in a Washington Post article written by Tom Jackman this year, and in turn that article was referenced in Serial. Have you heard of Serial? The podcast?
Imwinkelried: No, Im afraid I havent. No.

Oh OK, never mind, Ill just jump into it: Is the use of evidence gathered from cell-phone towers reliable and accurate when trying to pinpoint a persons location, say, in a murder case?
The important thing to realize is that cell-phone technology was not designed as a technology for locating people. Its a communications technology. Its one thing when using a technology specifically designed for locatingGPSits another thing when you try to adapt a technology which was never designed for that purpose.

GPS is the technology to locate people. The problem is, in the past, many of the cases have involved cell phones without GPS, and there theyve been relying on these supposed assumptions that the phone connects to the closest tower, or the tower with the strongest signal.

So theyre not reliable at all? Location evidence gathered using cell-phone towers isnt good science?
They were never intended to serve that function.

The decision as to which tower to connect to isnt made by the cell tower, it isnt made by the phone, its made by the network computers. And what are the network computers interested in? Balancing the load, using all the towers in the network.

And thats why you can sit in your room in a 10-minute period, make three cell-phone calls, and connect to three different towers. You havent moved at all, but youve connected to three different towers.

GPS in smartphones notwithstanding, have cell-phone towers themselves changed much since, say, 1999? Theyre just as unreliable today as they were 15 years ago when used to pinpoint a persons exact location?
Thats right. I mean, when youre trying to determine a persons location based upon call recordsthey were never intended to serve that function. Theyre intended to give customer satisfaction, to virtually all the time connect you. And in order to do that, the network computers have to balance the load.

What was the precedent for courts accepting this evidence as being admissible in court? Whats the status of its admissibility today?
Theyve been accepting cell-phone evidence for a long time, well over a decade. Its only recently that theyve begun to question it.

One of the most important cases was a case decided by the Northern District of Illinois in Federal District Court in 2012United States of America vs. Antonio Evans. It was this case that, perhaps for the first time, the courts really questioned the simplistic assumptions witnesses used in the past.

So cell-tower evidence is still admissible today?
Even today a prosecutor would be inclined to use cell-tower evidence, but now there is a body of law questioning the use of cell-tower evidence.

And the other thing Ive seen is that the prosecution witnesses are becoming much more circumscribed in the testimony they give. They wont say it always connects to the closest tower, or always connects to the strongest towertheyll use generalization, but even those generalizations are suspect. Because, again, of the need to balance the load, a need fulfilled by the network computers.

Thanks for taking my call, I think that covers it.
OK, have a nice afternoon.

So, according to this expert, the idea that cell phones connect to the closest or strongest tower is an absolute myth, and the admissibility of this evidence for determining someones location now has a body of law that outright disputes it. This wont help Syed, or Serial fans who wanted real closure, but how different would details of season one have looked if this particular expert was called instead the two engineering professors in episode five?

Weve all had that Christmas gone wrong. The days before instant online reviews and unboxing videos were like the Wild West. All you could glean about a product would be the commercial, the anticipation, and the knowledge that "everyone else would have it."

My personal blunder was Christmas 1995 and the notorious Virtual Boy, Nintendos tragic portable failure designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the genius behind the classic Game Boy. Nintendo poured good faith and money into what ended up being a red-tinted, headache inducing nightmare machine that inexplicably launched with a game based on Kevin Costners Waterworld. (Fun Fact: The SNES version of Waterworld was developed by DMA Design, who later became Rockstar.)

I begged and pleaded for it and I received it, but that new videogame system smell only held me for so long. Three days of attempted fun playing blood red tennis solo and a bottle of Advil later, I subsequently returned it for a mountain of X-Men toys. Oh and Gunpei? After 31 years with Nintendo he left the company following the Virtual Boys release and then got hit by a car, dying less than a year after that. It was a cursed system.

But even the Virtual Boy pales in comparison to the CueCat, arguably the most useless, pointless piece of tech to ever exist, but one that is still important to look back on in todays tech landscape.

The shitty CueCat in action. Image: YouTube

The early 90s saw a very strange surge in consumer barcode reading technology. In Japan, the Barcode Battler by Epoch was a massive hit.

The Barcode Battler was a card reading LCD game system that allowed scanned barcode cards or barcodes from over the counter products to "fight," based on a generated skill point system made from the barcodes. Naturally, an LCD system with no graphics was a huge failure by the time it hit North American shores.

Still, investors and inventors alike saw promise in what they perceived as a burgeoning home-scanning market. By the late 90s and early 2000s home computers were the norm and marketers were hungry to take advantage of this hot new thing called "the internet."

Enter J. Hutton Pulitzer (or J.Jovan Philyaw, or just Jovan, depending on when you ask him). Jovan was an infomercial production magnate, self-professed assaholic and one-time background actor in a Jackie Chan movie.

In 1996 he launched Net Talk Live (sadly the URL bizarrely links to a Google Video Search now, butWayBackMachine came to the rescue), which claims to be the first "triplecast," a live TV show RealAudio stream and radio show, all airing live at the same time.

Despite its rough edges, for 1996 it was undeniably ahead of its time. It aired for an insane 266 episodes and was syndicated in certain markets. According to himself he is the most prolific inventor since Thomas Edison, based on his patents.

Even with the triplecast and years of infomercial money in place Jovan wanted more. He was convinced that consumer scanning was the future, particularly with the internet. He launched Digital Convergence, a company whose focus was on cracking the consumer home scanning market. With his media contacts in place he was able to raise an insane $185 million dollars, including major investments from RadioShack, Coca-Cola, and Dallas media giant Belo.

The CueCat was the result of those millions. The idea is that youre reading a magazine, you come across a product youre interested in, you scan the CueCat across it and voila, youre instantly at a website with more information. 

Now, obviously that raises many questions. If youre already reading a magazine in front of your computer, what problem does this solve? If youre savvy enough to be aware of something like the CueCat already, arent you the sort of person who would know how to find a product on the internet? Why is it shaped like a cat?

Naturally, it was a colossal failure. PCWorld named it one of the Top 25 Worst Tech Products Of All Time. This was a product that solved a problem that didnt exist. Digital Convergence manufactured over 3,000,000 of them and RadioShack was forced to literally give them away.

To add insult to injury, in late 2000 a security breach was pointed out that revealed users personal names and email addresses. There are, of course, methods of hacking your CueCat to remove this backdoor, if you happen to still be using one. For the record it still works with Movie Collector, if you have a giant DVD collection or something.

Its easy to look back on the CueCat for exactly what it is. However, Jovan & Co do deserve some praise. Internet TV and livestreaming have become commonplace, but in 1996 it was unheard of, for that he and his posse were almost pioneers. Plus, the CueCat is an obvious precursor to the eponymous QR codes that now appear everywhere. He unfortunately started a little too early to truly capitalize on these ideas, but the CueCat still stands as a monument to the dotcom boom. 

That being said, do not get anyone a CueCat for Christmas.

As every year comes to a close, we are confronted with a solemn, holy occasion, when many of us come together to meditate on what the best and truly consequential things in our lives are. Right now, across this blue world, video game writers are choosing their Games of the Year, a practice that is as righteous as it is daunting. But 2014, in the year of our Lords of Shadow, is an odd duck. Its quacking us up.

Many years theres an heir apparent. Sure, theres variations: Many publications think The Last of Us was GOTY, some felt GTA V was GOTY, some say Bioshock Infinite, while others that Gone Home was GOTYand none were incorrect.

But what did the industry serve us this year? Titanfall and Watch Dogs feel like distant, forgotten memories. Destiny, grandiose as it was, lost steam quickly, feeling like we were served the bill first and are still waiting for the second course. But an incomplete Destiny is a blessing compared to Assassins Creed Unity and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which were broken upon release. Few of these games failed commercially, but most of them let down their fans. VICEs own Mike Diver thinks this years GOTY are just last years GOTY.

An image from the Destiny trailer. Image: YouTube

Being bummed by the AAA game industry isnt a brand new development, weve had years of blahs before, but 2014 feels different because, while there was no single blockbuster that captivated us, we successfully managed to stay entertained. When the safe bets stuttered, we learned to gamble on the dark horses.

Even the indie scene has its own hype infrastructure, and when I talk about what big hits happened from small places, Im not even referring to Capybara, DoubleFine or Studio Pixel, who all had good games this year. But some complete unknowns had better.

It feels most fitting to start with a game released with no pretence, from someone literally disconnected from the scene, but was easily one of the most widely played titles this year.

Adored and aggravating, while it was originally uploaded in 2013, this was the year Flappy Bird broke. Made by Dong Nguyen, a Vietnam local who suddenly pulled the game a few weeks into its domination. Not because it had haters, not because of rumours that Nintendo could pull his ass into court over obviously inspired pipe assets, but according to a Rolling Stone profile, because he was worried the game was so popular and so difficult it was ruining peoples lives.

Flappy Bird set a sort of prescient. It was simple in appeal and design but it was also a bit of a fluke, discovered and distributed rapidly, creating a big rabid following at a speed Ubisoft, EA and Activision would and maybe have killed for.

Related: Here Is 'Hatred' a Video Game Where You Do Nothing But Murder Innocent People

When I think about a game this year with a dizzying following, the alliterate thing that comes to mind is Five Nights at Freddys. Once again, a game made by someone unknown to the scene had suddenly become an honour student. The game, tapping into psychology of Creepy Pastas, had lured willingly devoted into starting its own rumour mill. 

Fans making speculative 15-minute long videos to make sense of all the breadcrumbs left in Five Nights and Five Nights at Freddys 2a sequel which came out only a few months lateris the kind of cult horror franchise we havent seen since A Nightmare on Elm Street. Albeit, the swift launch may have been an accident as well, not that the fans are complaining.

This isnt to say that the en masse consumers or spooked players have made the indie game basin irrelevant, if anything it feels like theyre all unconsciously working towards the same goal of pushing hidden gems they think should be champions. Monument Valley was greatly promoted by game making peers, even if it wasnt explicitly made by one of their own stars. It just looked really neat, and after coming out, lived up to the promise of being really neat.

Image: YouTube

Monument Valley has replaced Angry Birds as a gateway game for people with the right tech, but previously no interest in virtual time wasters. Its gorgeous, simple and easy, though unlike the alienating Mountain its also intuitive, not that the two are mutually exclusive from your iPhone.

And for most Desert Golf probably fits into this category. While I heard about it through unrelated word of mouth, I really enjoyed Justin Smiths previous games Enviro-Bear and No Brakes Valet. Desert Golf, however, was a popular mutation. Simple to play, and understand how to play, but never why you were playing it. Equal measures addictive and mystifying, sating both gamey game players and total weirdos.

Image: YouTube

None of these games push the limits of their platforms. A nihilistic golfing game and a haunted family pizza castle survival sim do not sound like safe bets for superstars. And yet here we are.

The comfortable rhythms of independent releases on PSN, Steam and Kickstarter feel like they can be suddenly interrupted by a left field strike. I cant shake the gumption that the next great thing will be available off itch.io or someones Patreon. Or even, god help us all, a browser game.

A browser game, America.

Great independent games have been recognized for the last few years, but many felt like they arrived with a red carpet extended before them. Some even had entire documentaries. Now, because of one part underwhelming major releases and one part everyone getting in on the game dev action, it feels impossible to forecast where the next game of the year could come from. And that feels great. 

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

The lines from "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope, made doubly famous by Michel Gondrys film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, describe the euphoric blankness of a mind controlled, free will set aside in favour of following instruction. Since last night, Popes words have echoed around my head, along with the vague implanted memory of being a cat.

I should explain. Last month I wrote about hypnosis videos on YouTube, designed to send you to sleep or give you hands-free orgasms. After the piece was posted, Ultrahypnosis, one of YouTubes most prolific hypnotists, contacted me on Tumblr. I asked if he'd hypnotize me over Skype, and he agreed.

Which is how I found myself stretched out on a sofa, limbs immobile, trying very hard not to make purring sounds on a Thursday afternoon.

This was my first time going under, in person or over Skype. My friend Sibeal agreed to supervise in case I had trouble getting out of trance state, or remained in cat mode, climbed out the window, and got stuck in a tree.

I neednt have worried. It turned out to be a much more sedentary experience.

Before the session began I spoke to Ultrahypnosis, who also goes by the pseudonym Carl Nickleson, about how he first learned to trance strangers over the internet. Carls interest in hypnosis began in middle school, and he began to make YouTube videos in college. I had really bad insomnia and found I had a lot spare time. And I thought, I have a lot of interest in this, maybe I should do it. The side project progressively took over his life, and he has amassed over 94,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Ultrahypnosis gained a following by creating highly specific videos that cater to viewer requests. He prefers these sent to him by email, which he runs through a program he wrote to pick up on whats most in demand. It sorts through them all and is based on word frequency, roughly how often something is requested, how much its requested... Sometimes I can set it to random when I'm not feeling particularly inspired.

I asked if it took time to perfect the voice he uses to hypnotize listeners. You have to work out a voice of your own. Keep it clearly modulated, stick with the range you pick and keep the pace a little slower than normal. It's like a calmer public speaking voice, in a way. He tries to keep his hypnosis voice and speaking voice entirely separate. Occasionally I'll talk to people who are extremely suggestible and can be tranced just by talking to them, so you have to make that distinction.

Even over Skype, Nicklesons speaking voice was slow and very calming. I wondered if I would be one of those very suggestible people.

I stretched out on the sofa like a session with a Freudian. Nickleson began by telling me my limbs were getting heavy, my eyelids beginning to shut. This duly happened, until it felt as though I was sinking into the sofa like Ewan McGregor sinks into the floor in that scene in Trainspotting, only without the heroin. The sensation of falling lasted throughout.

The deeper you go, the better you'll feel, and the better you feel, the deeper you'll want to go... All skepticism shut down, and I found myself relying on the voice coming from my laptop, leading into warm, gelatinous darkness.

Image: Roisin Kiberd

It was a rare opportunity to give my brain a rest. Over recent months Ive stopped sleeping for more than five hours per night, with my laptop beside me, waking up to read alerts and emails. I feel automated in a different way, by the circuit of tweets and dopamine hits that engineer a short attention span.

In hypnosis, you allow someone inside your head, to map your thoughts into a network of corridors. You are asked to put your mind to sleep in the worlds most comfortable bed. It taps into that part of oneself that wants to be controlled, to have the thinking done for you. During the session I felt disjointed: half my brain was still awake, and listening, even as the other part went unconscious.

Nicklesons voice was like ASMR on steroids. Every so often hed go shhh, shhhh and I would shiver slightly.

The rag doll routine followed and my arms were lifted one by one as if by imaginary balloons. It took effort to get them to move but the minute Nickleson said hed cut the balloon strings, they fell without my control. He made me forget what the number three looked like, though I was still able to name it, then he made my wrists stick together immovably as though tied with invisible strings.

Then he clapped and said sleep, and I curled up again and went under.

Going deep into trance always feels good

It felt like my brain was doing stretches.

In my early teens I used to believe that drugs were dissociative (drugs, in general, because school safety classes didnt differentiate between the kinds they warned you against). I thought they sent you out of yourself entirely, and that youd resurface hours later in a puddle of vomit, or somebody elses bed. But you dont: youre just yourself, exaggerated. Hypnosis is similar: you cant do anything you wouldnt be capable of doing already.

Which is why I wasnt good at being a cat.

We left this for the last attempt, and it began just as the others. My voice is here to make you feel good. Follow my voice into deep relaxation... I went back under, semi-paralyzed.

Feeling so good. Just letting go. One. Two. Three.

I started to wonder if a cat could be hypnotized to believe it was a human

This time Carl tried to guide me to the feline part of my mind, a room with a fire and a carpet and cat toys. Already I knew it wasnt going to work. It just seemed too ludicrous. Sibeal, god bless her, tried to help by scratching behind my ears and I nearly burst into giggles.

"It's ok, you don't have to be a shy cat. You can just meow."

I don't know how. We never had a cat growing up, I was allergic.

My thoughts wandered. I started to wonder if a cat could be hypnotized to believe it was a human.

That feeling of wading through treacle remained, the delicious weight to the limbs. But it just wasnt enough. Being a cat, I imagine, is like a yoga class on Valium. Lots of stretching and making oneself more comfortable. A lifelong orgy of yawns.

Dammit, I wanted to be a cat so bad. He stopped trying and the session was over.

Conscious effort is highly overrated, said Nickleson. It's a finite resource. It's how you burn yourself out. Though he discourages anyone from seeking serious psychiatric help through hypnosis, he sees it as life-enhancing, a trick to implant good habits and iron out bad ones.

After my own session with Nickleson I felt happy and upbeat, and curiously warm despite it being the middle of December. My brain felt sharper and faster than before, like Id had a full night of sleep.

Hypnosis is versatile, each experience apparently unique to the subject. For me the dizzy, underwater feeling of being tranced was enough in itself. The prospect of combining it with actual sexsomething Nickleson offers in custom videos with challenges like 12 Days of Edgingsounds overwhelming.

Feel wave after wave of relaxation go through you, as you just drift

Playing back the session to write this piece I find myself falling asleep in my chair, my shoulders slackening. My arms feel limp and languid as I type this. I wonder how many cans of Monster Energy it will take to get to the end.

I consider going for a cat nap, though there is thankfully no residual purring.

Theres a week left in 2014, but for much of America, the year in drones starts today. And thats scaring the bejeezus out of the Federal Aviation Administration.

No doubt, thousands and thousands of teens and adults will have a drone sitting under their tree this morning and, no doubt, many of those people will have no idea what theyre doing when they go fly it for the first time.

For that reason, then, we can expect 2015 to be much like this year when it comes to drones, only magnified exponentially. This is the year that dronesnot Predator drones, but little white plastic toys (OK, and lots of other variations on the little white plastic toy)became a common topic of conversation. And they arent going away anytime soon.

Case in point: Earlier this week, the FAA put out this campy, almost aggressively poorly produced video called Know Before You Fly. It is the FAAs most accessible attempt yet to beg prospective drone pilots: Please dont be idiots with these things. And the agency that oversees the FAA has already said that its going to be nearly impossible to actually police all the drones people are going to get for Christmas.

But thats the future.

To understand how were going to get to a place where your regular-ol person owns a drone, however, we have to understand what the heck happened this year to keep drones in the public consciousness so much.

And lots happened. People were innovative with drones, people were stupid with drones, the government fumbled with what to do with drones. The commercial use of drones was kinda-sorta-illegal, and then it was completely legal, and then it was illegal again. Hobby use of drones was unregulated, then it was quasi-regulated, and now it exists in an exceedingly confusing state in which the FAA can call whatever use it wants illegal.

Drones took pictures of naked people and filmmakers made porn using drones. Pepper spray guns were attached to drones and drones were shotgunned out of the sky. The dronie became a thing. A teenager was assaulted by a woman for flying his drone. Two hobbyists were arrested by the NYPD after the police chased after their drone. Speaking of police use of dronestheyre using them. Is that a good or a bad thing? Who knows.

And thats kind of the deal, here: Some uses of drones are awesome; others, not so much.

File these ones under the Case For Drones column: Lakemaid Brewery announced in February that it would be delivering beers out to ice fishers in Minnesota using drones (the FAA squashed it). Anti-poaching activists used drones to monitor wildlife and look for poachers in South Africa. Hundreds of small businesses thrived (and flew safely) as real estate photographers, pipeline and agricultural field-monitors, and wedding photographers. Amazon and Google both dipped their toes into drone delivery, to varying degrees.

Many, many people will be getting one of these today. Image: Shutterstock

And file these under the probably not so great developments for the future of drones: Frat bros filmed their parties with drones (OK, this one was just kind of tacky). The National Parks Service banned drones outrightand, after the ban, someone went and crashed one into a lake in Yellowstone. Not one, but two drones (one on each coast) were blasted out of the sky with a shotgun. The FAA has done all it can to keep these out of the sky and, in doing so, has potentially made throwing a frisbee illegal. There are still privacy concerns. Theyve been used to smuggle drugs into prisons. The big ones are and will remain targeted killing and surveillance devices.

The list goes on, but Im going to stop it there. Because this is probably going to be the last year in history that one can even do a The Year in Drones article and actually do a reasonably thorough job of catching everything. Moving forward, trying to nail down The Year In Drones will be like trying to make a list of what everyone did with their smartphones or computers all year.

Unless, of course, one of you who just got a drone for Christmas goes and does something colossally destructive or dangerous with it. So, yeahplease dont ruin it for the thousands of people out there who have turned the drone industry into one of the most exciting sectors in recent memory. 

We know the NSA scanning and collecting data about our electronic communications in bulk. So, what if we all embedded a little artistic fuck you into our metadata, not only as a form of protest but just for some kicks?

This is what artists Nicholas Knouf and Claudia Pedersen do with Art for Spooks, an augmented reality book and app built around text and imagery from the NSA's internal advice columnist, "Ask Zelda," as well as other images and documents from Edward Snowden's leaked NSA/GCHQ documents.

As Knouf told Motherboard, Art for Spooksin both its hand-bound and e-book incarnationsallows users to explore how NSA employees see the world if all that we have to go by are the released slides and text fragments. Using an iPad, users can examine the book's images, seeing alternative cultural imaginaries (how cultures see themselves) inspired by the NSA/GCHQ images.

It's a bit like flipping the tables on the NSA, an agency that seeks to know more about how many of the world's inhabitants communicate. The work is currently on view at Davis Museum at Wellesley College until December 21st.

When an image from the book is shared through social media, the metadata is mangled to add hidden information pulled from a variety of sources, including scholarly texts on surveillance (Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, for example), coordinates of drones strikes, and recombined versions of NSA/GCHQ texts.

The spread of these images is designed to add to the images and metadata collected by these surveillance agencies, thus providing "art for spooks,'" said Knouf. In other words, the goal is that by sharing the imagery on social channels, it will be hoovered up and analyzed by the very spy agencies it's meant to critique. Included in the images are the famous rabbit-duck illusion and Heironymous Bosch's The Conjurer, each marked Secret.

When a gallery visitor takes the iPad and holds it over the image in the book, they see something else going on, said Knouf. Perhaps a video that relates to the image (for example, an image showing protesters in Egypt is paired with a clip from Bassem Youssefs comedy show), or an animation (the rabbit-duck illusion is paired with a collage of work by Jeff Koons and Roy Lichtenstein).

While the work has a clear target, Knouf and Pederson's motivations weren't exactly identical. For Pedersen, whose family were political exiles from fascist Portugal, the Art for Spooks work has a quite personal dimension. Vivid childhood memories of surveillance abound, as she was asked as a very young child to sit atop stairs and look out for spies while her grandfather listened to forbidden radio broadcasts in another room, or looked at printed newspapers and flyers on a mimeograph machine hidden in their basement.

This is all to say that control is deeply damaging on a collective and personal level (my mother has what I would call post-traumatic stress), she said. I think the NSA revelations will have beyond the impact on individuals and communities (think of the surveillance of Muslim communities in the US), it will equally have grave consequences for the United States as an idea.

Knouf, on the other hand, moved along a path through engineering and applied science, to a stint in cognitive neuroscience, a master's in media arts and sciences, and a PhD in information science. This, combined with his sister's Rett syndromea rare neurological condition that amongst other things prevented her from speakingpushed him to seek out other means of communication; namely, codes and other systems that break away from semiotic communication, which uses symbols, metaphor, and so on.

Knouf has explored these concepts with other projects, but it was a photograph found in the NSA leaksan ad for buffalo meat at Whole Foodsthat convinced him to undertake Art for Spooks. Other NSA images that appealed to Knouf and Pedersen were those that suggesting a need for cyber magicians or that made references to art history. The duo thus wanted to take people inside these black boxes, where they could witness just how the NSA and GCHQ perceive the world. Knouf said this concept was also a counterpoint to reporting on the NSA, which focuses on the nature of the surveillance programs.

We believe that these agencies operate first on a rational model of collecting all information available in order to create a 'complete' picture of the world, Knouf said. Secondly, they operate in a paranoiac fashion, working to create links between elements that are otherwise unrelated. Our projects builds upon this paranoiac mode, while extending it into the poetic... All of the augmentations are paired with the images in specific, precise ways based on Salvador Dalis paranoiac critical method.

In Dali's method, paranoia is a means of creating links between things that don't actually exist, used to create ambiguous artistic imageryoccasionally in the form of optical illusionsthat provoked multiple interpretations. By its nature, augmented reality is an optical illusion because it's not actually thereand with the NSA, Knouf and Pederson had all the paranoia they needed.

Artists like Ricardo Dominguez and EDT (Electronic Disturbance theater) call this 'non-functional' use of media (including the computer) 'poetic gestures,' said Knouf. Their understanding of code as poetry chalked on the sidewalks for the 'floodnet' projectin solidarity with the Zapatistas at the end of the 1990sand more recently the incorporation of poetry in the [Transborder Immigrant Tool app] are at the background of Art for Spooks.

The two were also inspired by non-linear approaches to imagery and poetry, including Stphane Mallarm's typographic poems and the work of futurist-infused artistic groups like the Estredentistadas (radical Mexican avant-garde artists), Dadaists, and Surrealists. Knouf and Pedersen's task, however, was much different than their influences: they had to bring Snowden's digital documents and the practices of digital surveillance out of the immaterial realm and into the physical world.

We wanted people to take their time with the text and images, to flip through it in a leisurely yet sustained fashion, Knouf said. We wanted to ensure that there was a physical record of these images. We wanted the book to be able to stand on its own as a document of this moment in time.

But just as importantly, we wanted to use a tablet to provide a 'lens' onto another way of engaging with the images, he added. The augmentations provide a poetic-serious-comical-ironic take on the Snowden releases. The sharing feature allows screenshots to be uploaded with mangled metadata, providing the 'Art for Spooks' and thus also implicating the viewer through their capture.

Knouf and Pedersen are currently working on a print-on-demand version of Art for Spooks, and will release the iOS app after the exhibition closes December 21st.

The envisioned switch to mobile ground vehicles. Image: DARPA

If you thought the dawn of Special Forces soldiers burning across the moonlight sand dunes of Iraq on hyper-bikes was far awayguess again. The almost Star Wars-like military scenario is in the works according to media reports and a new project from the US Defense Department's high-rish tech lab, DARPA.

Earlier this year, ISIS sent shockwaves through the West by releasing gruesome videos depicting the beheadings of western aid workers and journalists. After that, news swirled of covert missions potentially aimed at rescuing captured westerners who were with ISIS, deep behind enemy lines.

Shortly after the release of the now infamous James Foley video, British media revealed that an extremely secretive joint unit of the British SAS and American Special Forces called Task Force Black was authorized for redeployment to Iraq and Syria. This unit, like most other special operations units, goes about its business in silence, and any attempts to publicize its work is met with fierce resistance, as author Mark Urban learned the hard way.

The GXV-T concept in an artist's rendering. Image: DARPA

Task Force Black is the derivative of an earlier joint effort by the US and British militaries called Task Force 145 that combined elements of Navy SEAL Team 6, Delta Force, SAS, MI6, and the CIAs Special Activities Division.

The unit has operated with great success in the past, as the Telegraph revealed in 2008. An unknown British official acknowledging the unit brought down 3,500 insurgents in under 18 months. While the technology and tools required to achieve these results is highly classified, once in a while, DARPA does give us some hints on the types of war trinkets the most covert soldiers use.

One such glimpse came in early 2014, when DARPA awarded a $100,000 small phase innovation research contract to a little known company called Logos Technologies. According to the Logos website, the DARPA program calls for a lightweight, rugged, single-track vehicle that can operate near-silently for extended periods while transporting small, distributed forces over hostile terrain.

The company release goes on to say that the vehicle will combine Logo Technologies' hybrid-electric power system with a cutting-edge, off road electric motorcycle platform that will give operators near-silent capability and ease of operation of an all-electric vehicle.

The GXV-T concept in an artist's rendering. Image: DARPA

These vehicles certainly fit in line with an August announcement from DARPA that the US military will be moving away from highly armoured and heavy vehicles, focusing more on creating mobile fighting platforms. Superfast, covert bikes, capable of in-and-out, surgical war clearly fits the bill when it comes to the US Armys growing dependence on Special Forces operations.

Almost ten months after that initial announcement of a stealth bike, the British media broke a stunning story: sources told British journalists that SAS snipers on ATVs were being airdropped into combat range by Chinook helicopters under the cover of darkness. The tactic was proving to be enormously effective, not only from a strict kill-to-casualty ratio, but also from a psychological operations perspective.

Were degrading their morale, the source claimed to the Daily Star. They can run and hide if they see planes in the sky but they cant see or hear us. Using so many snipers takes the fear factor to another level too; the terrorists dont know whats happening. They just see their colleagues lying dead in the sand.

ATVs are horrendously loud vehicles, and while its possible to dampen their noise output, theres no way to completely eliminate the noise to operate at the level of a hybrid electric engine. Its likely that the reason DARPA issued the RFP for a stealth back in February was precisely to address this type of mission.

First we had special forces guys on horses when we were going into Afghanistan. former Navy SEAL Jonathan Gilliam told me. For where they were going, horses were the fastest, most capable and covert method of getting around the mountains. You can see horse tracks and not think anything of it, but if you see ATV tracks, people in those villages will know that someones there.

Behind the wheel of a GXV-T. Image: DARPA

"The faster we can actually act on the battlefield and couple it with stealth, that allows us to really make a big, big impact quickly. Whereas you had a platoon that was walking in before, now that you can have units on stealth bikes, youre going to be able to get in and out of amazing places. DARPA just forward thinks these things and I think DARPA is probably the unsung hero of the battlefield now because of that forward-thinking.

Bikes are lighter and smaller, thereby making them easier to transport, either by MH-47 Chinooks or the CV-22 Osprey. The units could be dropped far enough away that no enemy combatant could hear the aircraft and make their way to the target in complete and utter silence. That being said, Gilliam thinks, even if you have stealthy technology, it will be extremely hard to get in and out without being noticed. The awareness of the neighbourhood will always be a determining factor. For one thing, dogs will always know youre there unless youre just absolutely invisible.

Considering that experts have said the battle against ISIS could potentially last years, the need to develop new technologies that allow for very specific missions is crucial. A Logos spokesperson told me that they are expecting an imminent announcement from DARPA for the go ahead on phase II of its project.

With the advent of potential Iron Man suits and stealth helicopters, covert bikes seems like one more futuristic toy special operations forces can employ in battle. In any event, the prospect of something called Task Force Black is terrifying in and of itself.

As long as technology has made it possible, people have sent pictures to each other. For just as long, people have embraced this technology to send photos of their shit.

I have been on the receiving end of these photos, as early as a photo SMS and as recent as a Snapchat video. (I would like to take the opportunity now to say on the record that I myself have never sent any media of this type. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar and no one is going to believe you.)

Upon further investigation, Instagram is littered with these fecal photographers, who enjoy one of two related activities:

1. Taking a photo of themselves on the toilet.

2. Taking a photo of their results in the toilet.

The two are vastly different in both intent and content, and comparing the two is difficult, a task not entirely like comparing an apple and an orange. Especially if the orange was a photo of a piece of shit, and the apple was a picture of a person on the toilet. However, they are both worth exploring, as Im sure they will be a sociocultural phenomenon discussed long after humanity circles the drain.

Why is this a thing?

Basically I use my shit vids to spread laughter and joy amongst my snapchat bros

At first, this putrid behavior seems like another example of humans wastefully using technology. There are a number of Instagram hashtags devoted to taking photos of the happenings on, in, and around the toilet. As I write this, #Poopstagram has 6,419 photos, #shitpic has 10,223, and #toiletselfie is topping the poo-related charts at 74,388.

I reached out to some of the folks who are willing to wear their digestive tract on their sleeve, to see what motivates one to document one of lifes most intimate activities.

One [redacted username] was a recent participant in a #ToiletSelfie, which is pretty self-explanatory. When I inquired what drew the artist to take this photo, we had a much more pleasant interaction than I expected. He explained that THE FREEDOM!!! was his motive. Nothing more.

Another person has taken it upon themselves to aggregate these photos with the aptly-named @shitpics Instagram account. Again, pretty self-explanatory stuff; fecal photographers are very straightforward with their nomenclature. When I asked for the motivation behind the account, the creator of @shitpics account hit me with the following knowledge bomb:

You see, people all over the world post vast pictures of their latest meals and achievements. So I thought to myself, 'there's got to be more to this story behind the scenes?'" he wrote. "And of coarse [sic] this leads me to the world of shit. Somebody has to post the truth. Then you find a sort of respect for poo, you're not just taking a bog... It's art!"

He basically said that poop photography is avante-garde art that uncovers the horrible truth: people poop after they eat. As he notes: Somebody has to post the truth.

I have also personally received an innumerable amount of crapchats. These I find more interesting, given the subject matter. Almost all of these have reached me in the form of a Snapchat video, and all from the same person, who I went to high school with. We do not keep in touch, so I figured I was not the only person receiving these videosotherwise this would be strange form of cyberbullying.

I reached out to Geronimo (name changed for privacy reasons) via text to ask a couple questions. A master of the crapchat video, he estimates hes sent close to 100 of these videos. He sends them to a carefully curated list of snapchat bros, because if you send shit vids to girls you are basically saying, Hey I never want to see you naked, here's me pooping. He does note hes sent a couple to his sister: she's got a couple of the ones [I] was real proud of lol," he said.

Geronimo notes the process is freeing. He Def feels liberated as fuck sending them out cause its like 'hey dude look at what I just did during my bathroom break at work don't act like you're not impressed.'

I told Geronimo I had my own theories why people would send these photos and videos, and he responded with his own viewpoint.

And I think I do it just cause everyone poops and poop is funny and when youre on the toilet might as well make use if [sic] your time lol plus when you see the purple video tab you don't know what it's gonna be so I know if someone is at work or just waking up or w.e they're gonna laugh hysterically," he said. "Basically I use my shit vids to spread laughter and joy amongst my snapchat bros."

I would posit that, just maybe, sending someone a shitpic is the bravest and most intimate form of communication, and not simply a crude and disgusting form of digital harassment. Photos sent while pooping are not about terrifying the viewer, or at least not always. Theyre about challenging social norms, having fun, and bringing enjoyment to an otherwise boring workday.

Again, to be clear, I've never taken one of these photos, and never would. But I admire the lack of filter for those who have, and those who will go on to send them in the future. Remember that many artists are not appreciated until they are dead. 

Like any year in science, 2014 was packed to the brim with both exciting breakthroughs and ominous warnings for the future. But if there was one overarching theme to the past twelve months, it is the increasing awareness that human civilization is creating problems faster than scientists can solve them.

The most pertinent example is the increasing environmental devastation caused by humans, which was quantified in great deal this year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2014 is on track to be the hottest year on record, thanks in part to human-driven climate change. Humans are also edging out species at 1,000 times the normal rate, prompting fears of a sixth mass extinction event, dubbed the Anthropocene. The year in medicine was similarly apocalyptic, dominated by the worst outbreak of Ebola in history.

Map of the 2014 outbreak. Image: AmericanXplorer13.

On the upside, the public is clearly cognizant of these problems, as demonstrated by the largest climate change march in history in September. The Ebola pandemic inspired multiple new methods for dealing with diseases, from the epicenter of the crisis all the way to outer space.

On top of all that, there was a lot of other positive medical news: doctors grew an entire organ in a live animal for the first time, mind-controlled prosthetics became a reality, e-cigarettes are catching on fast, and there were numerous advances in synthetic biology.

All of those medical gains stand to increase human longevity, which is, in theory, fantastic. But in practice, longer lifespans may also contribute to a rising global population, which will in turn exacerbate the aforementioned environmental crisis and could also increase pandemics like Ebola. Thus, the overarching theme: problems are outpacing solutions, and are sometimes even a result of them.

Problems are outpacing solutions, and are sometimes even a result of them

Indeed, even the most triumphant victories of 2014 were plagued with unexpected setbacks. For example, by far the biggest story of the year broke on November 11, when ESAs Rosetta mission succeeded in landing a probe on a fucking comet (cue thunderous applause). But the achievement was undermined slightly first by the Shirtgate controversy and then by the loss of the Philae lander. By no means does this negate Rosettas historic mission, but it does give rise to new challenges for future missions.

The Antares rocket explosion on October 28, 2014. Image: NASA.

Along those lines, space exploration unfortunately took several hits in 2014 including a fatal Virgin Galactic crash, a devastating Orbital Antares rocket explosion, and mounting political tensions over the ISS. However, NASA was able to round the year out nicely with the successful first test launch of the Orion spacecraftthe flagship vehicle of its manned deep space programon December 5.

Last but not least, scientists have conclusively confirmed that a 527-year-old body found under a parking lot in 2012 belongs to British monarch Richard III. The study caps off the oldest successful DNA identification case ever, and as a bonus, it also proved there was some juicy adultery going on in the royal family. Its interesting to note here that even research with more of a novelty edge seemed to expose human imperfection this year.

In this way, 2014 was a year of truly ambitious and innovative work, backed by a generous amount of funding, that resulted in an upshot of hard truths and unforeseen challenges. Its difficult to group a year under one banner, but speaking generally, the last twelve months have highlighted the imperative to address humanitys future on a much longer timescale.

This was an obvious theme even in science fiction, with Snowpiercer, Interstellar, and the Syfy series Ascension all addressing the tenuousness of our long-term futurea great example of Brian Merchants argument that we need dystopian fiction now more than ever.

How are we going to sustain our civilization over the coming centuries? Should we bail on Earth and head to Mars, or build a more sustainable planet? How can we regulate the population without trampling reproductive rights? How should we handle the integration of robots into the workforce?

The priority for 2015 and beyond should be a more concerted effort to address these types of admittedly difficult questions with an eye to the very far future. And not to toot our own horn too obviously, but that is exactly Motherboards mission statement.

The future is wonderful, the future is terrifying. We should know, we live there. Lets try to keep it that way.

Climate change may be the poster child for the Anthropocene. But the scars weve left on Earths subsurface might actually prove more likely to earn humanity a spot on the geologic timescale. Anthroturbationthe digging, drilling, mining, and blasting that mars our planets subterranean environscould end up being the key marker for the epoch of humans and machines, according to the scientists tasked with hashing out when a new geologic era begins.

The extensive, large-scale disruption of underground rock fabrics, to depths of greater than 5 km, by a single biological species, represents a major geological innovation. It has no analogue in the Earths 4.6 billion year history, writes Jan Zalasiewicz, the British geologist who chairs the International Commission on Stratigraphys Anthropocene working group. 

Zalasiewiczs recent paper on anthroturbation is the first to detail the myriad ways weve chewed up the ground, the unparalleled nature of the damage, and why subterranean scarsamong all human traces are uniquely geologic.

Its easy to bemoan the mess weve made of our planets surface. Ocean garbage piles, decimated rain forests, and eroded coastlines pull fast at our heartstrings. By contrast, the wreckage weve wrought on Earths underground strata has gone relatively unnoticed: Out of sight, out of mind. But rest assured, weve been busy there, as well.

Consider, if you will, all the hardware and infrastructure beneath your feet that quietly supports your existence. Gas pipes and electric cables, sewers and reservoirs, tunnels, subways and building foundations. No organism has ever before laid claim to such extensive subterranean transformation. And thats just scratching the surface.

Victoria Tunnel. Image: Wikimedia

Boreholesused to extract oil, natural gas, coal, metals and mineralsdrive hundreds to thousands of meters into the Earth. Together, the millions of oil boreholes weve drilled span some fifty million kilometers, roughly the distance from Earth to Mars. Its this deep anthroturbation thats truly unprecedented in our planets history. And, most importantly to the geologists, this stuffs permanent.

The only way these marks can go away is by coming to the surface and being eroded, or getting caught up in a continental collision, or some other tectonic activity, Zalasiewicz told me. Any scenario for erasing them will take tens to hundreds of millions of years.

A big hang-up in the Anthropocene debate is the lack of a proverbial golden spike: A marker for ourselves that will stick around throughout the ages. Does anthroturbation fit the bill? Better, it seems, than anything else, but some remain skeptical about introducing such a novel phenomenon to our planetary timescale.

The difficulty in all this is the heterogeneous nature of how humans have scarred the planet, Zalasiewicz told me.

Typically, geologists use fossils, sedimentary rock layers, and geochemical evidence to decide where various epochs begin and end. There are rules for how this stuff worksyounger rocks are deposited over older rocks, and layers of rock are laterally continuous over large areas. But if anthroturbation is to mark the age of humans, the rules are going to have to bend.

We have a whole network of this stuff, extending underground and forming complex three dimensional patterns, cutting through layers of rock from Holocene to pre-Cambrian, Zalasiewicz told me. Human activity simply doesnt behave like a stratigraphic layer.

And if anthroturbation doesnt play nice for geologists, consider the other lines of Anthropocene evidence being thrown around: So-called technofossils include everything from saran wrap and CDs to cars and spaceships. As Zalasiewicz wrote in a related paper published earlier this year, The morphological range of technofossils is almost infinitely greater than the range of trace types produced by any other species. And thats not to mention all the animals weve scrambled about the planet, which, millions of years from now, are also going to make for some head-scratching fossil beds:

Rats, pigs, cows and domestic cats will appear almost everywhere very suddenly, other species will disappear in a blink. Itll be a biological merry-go-round the likes of which paleontologists have never seen, Zalasiewicz said.

So, the Anthropocene is geologically weird, and hidebound geologists wont be hurried into a rash decision. (The first formal scientific meeting on the subject was convened this past October, and the working group has given itself until 2016 to hash out a proposal for the ICS.)

I think the Anthropocene reflects a real phenomenon geologically theres a real thing there, said Zalasiewicz. For the formalization, it needs to be not only real, it has to be useful to the geological community.

There is one aspect of anthroturbation where conventional geologic wisdom still applies: After humans disappear, fresh, unpunctured rock layers will bury our traces. Itll be up to future alien geologists, digging into our planets subsurface and discovering eons worm-eaten, trash-ridden rock, to try and sort the whole mess out.

Man praying at tsunami mass graves. Banda Aceh, 2007. Image: Adrianne Jeffries

It's the 10th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in 2004. The disaster was unique because of the level of devastationa 9.1 earthquake that occurred off the coast of Indonesia and affected all of Southeast Asia as well as the east coast of Africaand for the outpouring of donations that came in through the internet, a relatively new method of fundraising. 

More than half the deaths in the tsunami occurred in the Indonesian island of Sumatra, primarily in the Aceh province at the north tip. The first challenge after the tsunami was facing the sheer number of dead. The bodies had to be identified and their relatives told, but there was chaos and the corpses were decomposing in the sun. 

The countries affected were almost completely taken by surprise. The region is prone to tsunamis that are "both infrequent and catastrophic," US Geological Survey geologist Brian Atwater told reporters at the time, but they're so rare that the fear of a tsunami had not taken hold in many of the local cultures. Scientists later found evidence of at least three major tsunamis in that area, the most recent being 550 to 700 years earlier. 

I traveled to Aceh in 2007. There was evidence of the funds flowing in from the Red Cross and other aid groups, but the signs of the earthquake were still fresh.

A sign for a children's center built by Enfants Refugies du Monde, a French charity. Signs like this were common.

Tsunami survivors in relatively newly built housing.

"Do not throw trash here."

New houses.

And roadside shacks.

Bovine tsunami survivors.

The landmark Baiturrahman Grand Mosque survived the storm.

Roofs of the market in Medan.

Earthquake damage in Medan.

Earthquake damage in Medan.

Life goes on.

Parts of Indonesia, like the fishing industry, have recovered fully, and the tsunami helped calm the violence that was there due to political infighting by Aceh secessionists. The housing infrastructure has been rebuilt, despite problems with construction, theft, and logistical difficulties around proving land ownership. 

However, locals and aid groups say the country still desperately needs help. More than 80 percent of projects designed to help survivors become self-sufficient have failed, the director of the International Center for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies in Banda Aceh told the L.A. Times, and aid groups are losing interest. There's hope for the futureSumatra is gorgeous, and tourism could be a boon, as it has been in neighboring Sri Lankabut the dependence on aid money and the dwindling supply of it are cause for concern.

The area has definitely bounced back since 2007 when I was there. I'm reading reports of KFCs, malls, and traffic jams. And on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy, thousands of Indonesians gathered to pray at the mosque that withstood the waves.

All images by Adrianne Jeffries.