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That ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Ransom Thing Was Never Going to Pay Off

Jason Tate

Brian Barrett, writing at Wired:

Although the hack offers a reminder that even the best security can be undone by the so-called “weakest link” — Netflix can’t do much if a vendor is compromised — it provides a bigger lesson in how the internet has largely shifted away from torrenting. If a show lands on The Pirate Bay and nobody watches, did it really stream?

Consider that in 2011, BitTorrent accounted for 23 percent of daily internet traffic in North America, according to network-equipment company Sandvine. By last year, that number sat at under 5 percent. “There’s always going to be the floor of people that are always going to be torrenting,” says Sandvine spokesperson Dan Deeth. That group will surely enjoy whatever Piper’s up to in season five. But the idea that so small a cohort might prompt Netflix to negotiate with hackers seems absurd.

I commented on this when New Found Glory’s new album leaked and there were a bunch of comments in the threads basically saying, “no reason to go hunt for the leak, it’ll be on Spotify soon enough anyway.” I always thought easy and convenient access to music would help curb piracy, but even I didn’t think it would have as big an impact as it has.

Matt Skiba Apologizes to Fans for the Fyre Festival

Jason Tate

TMZ caught up with Blink-182’s Matt Skiba and asked him about the Frye Festival. He apologized to fans for the disaster:

We were only pulling out because we were getting the feeling that it didn’t have enough of our stage that we needed to put on the show we have. We’re on tour right now and we have a production that we bring with us and they weren’t able to facilitate the show that we put on, so we were just like, ‘We can’t play the show.’

“Nail the Mix” With Saosin’s Beau Burchell

Saosin
Jason Tate

Saosin guitarist, producer, and engineer Beau Burchell is the featured producer on this month’s “Nail the Mix” online course:

Beau Burchell will lead an exclusive livestreaming class offering a complete walkthrough of how he mixed “The Silver String”. NTM subscribers can download the multi-tracks today, then join Burchell for the livestream on May 28. NTM will also host a Q&A chat with Burchell on May 15 at 2:00pm ET, exclusively available to subscribers.

EPA Website Removes Climate Science Site

Globe
Jason Tate

The Washington Post:

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday evening that its website would be “undergoing changes” to better represent the new direction the agency is taking, triggering the removal of several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information. […]

The staffer described the process of reviewing the site as “a work in progress, but we can’t have information which contradicts the actions we have taken in the last two months,” adding that Pruitt’s aides had “found a number of instances of that so far” while surveying the site.

Yet the website overhaul appears to include not only policy-related changes but also scrutiny of a scientific Web page that has existed for nearly two decades, and that explained what climate change is and how it worked.

Yeah, if you hide the science that’ll stop it from being true.

The ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Cast Reminisces After 25 Years

Jason Tate

It’s been 25 years since the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The cast recently got together to talk about the film during a special screening. Variety has some of the tidbits revealed:

The most iconic moment in “Reservoir Dogs” is unquestionably the scene in which Madsen’s character, Mr. Blonde, tortures a captured cop (Kirk Baltz), cutting off his ear after doing a little dance to the jaunty tune of Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You.” That dance was entirely spontaneous, it turns out. “You never made me do it in rehearsal, because I was so intimidated by it,” Madsen reminded Tarantino at the panel. “I didn’t know what to do. In the script, it said, ‘Mr. Blonde maniacally dances around.’ And I kept thinking, ‘What the f–k does that mean? Like Mike Jagger, or what? What the f–k am I gonna do?’”