firehose

Snapchat is today looking to clarify exactly how and when law enforcement agencies can access your "self-destructing" messages. According to a new blog post from Micah Schaffer, who handles matters pertaining to trust and safety at the company, Snapchat can only retrieve snaps that are unopened. Once a message has been viewed by its intended recipient, Schaffer says it's permanently deleted from Snapchat's Google-hosted cloud service. But unopened snaps are different; they can be manually fetched by the company in response to certain law enforcement requests — and only such requests.

"Do we manually retrieve and look at snaps under ordinary circumstances? No," Schaffer writes. "If we receive a search warrant from law enforcement for the contents of snaps and those snaps are still on our servers, a federal law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) obliges us to produce the snaps to the requesting law enforcement agency." Schaffer says that the company has received "about a dozen" of these warrants since May 2013, and immediately looks to hammer home just how small that number is. "That’s out of 350 million snaps sent every day." Snaps that have been added to Stories are automatically deleted after 24 hours, but during that timeframe can be reviewed by the company for terms of service violations.

According to Schaffer, only two employees at Snapchat can access this retrieval tool: himself and co-founder / CTO Bobby Murphy. Snapchat certainly isn't alone in its requirement to bend to law enforcement, but now more than ever it should be obvious that your snaps aren't immune to snooping, particularly if your friends are tardy when it comes to opening them.

The Penn State University professors behind a massive open online course (MOOC) on infectious-disease epidemics are running an online game, Moocdemic, that will allow players to see how a disease spreads across the globe.

Moocdemic is tied to "Epidemics - the dynamics of infectious diseases," a free, eight-week online course offered by Penn State. More than 27,000 students have registered for the sessions, according to Marcel Salathé, an infectious disease biologist at the university's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and one of the instructors of the course.

"We're going to run a massive online epidemic here in parallel to this course with you, the participants — virtually, of course," said Salathé, whose team is also developing the game, in the introductory video for the online class, which you can watch below.

Moocdemic will launch tomorrow, Oct. 15, and will be playable from any mobile device with a web browser. The location-based game simulates the spread of an infectious disease, and lets players spread it and attempt to control the outbreak. People can play the game without partaking in the course, and vice versa.

The educational game sounds like it could resemble Ndemic's popular mobile title, Plague Inc., in which players attempt to infect and then eradicate the entire human race with an infectious disease.

The early ’90s were spoiled for choice when it came to comic book adaptations. Not only was Batman: The Animated Series on the air, but X-Men led Marvel’s push to get on the small screen, diving right into the often convoluted continuity of everyone’s favorite mutants, luring in a generation of fans, and paving the way for cartoons to follow. That’s why we’ve set out to review every single episode of the ’90s X-Men animated series. This week: X-Ternally Yours, in which Gambit’s ex-girlfriend might be even worse at relationships than Gambit himself.

Previously, on X-Men:

In our last episode, we got bits and pieces of Wolverine’s backstory, starting with the Weapon X program and moving on through his time with Alpha Flight. As weird and choppy as the episode was, it actually did a pretty nice job of giving Wolverine a little depth by establishing that he joined the X-Men so that he could fight for a cause rather than just being used as a weapon, adding a little nobility to a character that’s mostly been growling and stabbing up to this point — not that growling and stabbing aren’t still his primary and most enjoyable characteristics, you understand. Of course, on the downside, the episode was also about Alpha Flight.

In our discussion of stories with blunt and unsatisfying endings, I was surprised that only one reader brought up the J. Michael Straczynski ouvre by mentioning Supreme Power and his ill-fated run on Thor. Imagine that, a JMS run not having a satisfying ending. Or an ending.

Also, one reader pointed out that I made a few factual errors when I referred to Alpha Flight living in “Canada City” and being vague about Heather Hudson’s identity and history in the comics, insinuating that I was ill-informed and coming off as — and I hate to even admit this because it’s probably true — a little arrogant. I’d like to apologize to all of you, and in the interest of keeping these reviews as factually accurate as you expect, I’d like to correct those mistakes: Alpha Flight’s headquarters is not in “Canada City.” Maple Base One (or Le Staçion de Maple Premiér to our Quebecois readers) is actually located in Canada Towne. ComicsAlliance deeply regrets any confusion this may have caused.

Now let’s watch Gambit be a scumbag for twenty minutes, shall we?

Writer Julianne Klemm and supervising producer Scott Thomas open our story once again in medias res with a shot of burning wreckage that used to be one of the X-Men’s crazy bananas flying Formula 1 cars. The culprit, it seems, is Cyclops, who appears to be just slightly worse at flying planes than he is at being a superhero. He takes a moment to flash his visor at the viewer before immediately being knocked over by the plane exploding because he decided he should stop to pose right next to an airplane that was on fire.

Seriously: It’s been like three episodes since we’ve even seen Cyclops, and the first thing he does in this one is fall down on his face. It is delightful.

Oh, and then everybody starts being menaced by a tentacle monster.

As you might expect if you’ve been following along every week, it all turns out to be a Danger Room simulation, and after he blows off the tentacles bondaging Rogue and Jean, Cyclops — who literally just fell down on his face — starts griping about how it’s all too easy. And to whom is he complaining? Why, Gambit, of course! Who else would be masterminding a Danger Room scenario where a tentacle monster gave the women on the team a big squeeze and then respond to criticism with “What? You don’t want Gambit to be gentle?”

The fact that we watched this show when we were 10 to 12 years old sure does explain a hell of a lot about my generation.

As Cyclops, still recovering from falling flat on his mouth in front of his girlfriend, yells about wanting to “crank it up,” Gambit gets a shocking phone call from someone with an even more cartoonish accent and, distracted, leans against the lever that controls the difficulty setting in the Danger Room. Or, uh, the Danger Team, I guess.

Quick question for anyone who knows about copyright law: Does its appearance in this show mean that Marvel owns the title “DANGER TEAM LEVEL MAXIMUM?” Asking for a friend who just opened a new word document with that title on my computer just now.

Anyway, down in the Danger Team, the room is suddenly faced with presumably lethal versions of their greatest enemies: Apocalypse, Omega Red, Mr. Sinister, the Juggernaut and… an alligator wearing a suit of armor.

I know there’s a lot of debate over what order you’re supposed to watch these episodes in — I’m going by the DVD order, if anyone’s curious — but I am pretty sure I would remember it if I had seen that guy show up before. Don’t get me wrong, I do not doubt that an alligator man is a formidable foe, even if he wasn’t wearing field plate, but it feels a little like they’re gilding the villainous lily just a bit.

While Cyclops performs a tactical roll to create space with his opponent (or to put it in layman’s terms, while he runs away without actually standing up), Gambit’s phone call continues. It’s from Pierre, and “it Bobby! He in trouble!” Gambit, true to his scumbag roots, does not give a dang about all this — or at least that’s what he pretends while his team leader is getting bounced around the holodeck by an Inhumanoid. His tune changes, however, when Pierre tells him that “it da tithe! Bobby disappeah! An if he ain’t deah tonigh wit da tithe, you KNOHW wha gonna happen!” So if you ever wanted to know what Claremontean accents sounded like when spoken aloud, this is the episode for you.

To be fair, Cyclops is actually able to hold his own against the holograms pretty well for a few minutes, until he suddenly isn’t. So where, you might ask, are Rogue and Jean, who were just down in the Danger Team with him? Oh, you know. Getting coffee.

This is fantastic, largely because there’s no way around the idea that they just totally bailed on their grumpy teammate when he started throwing a hissy fit about how training was too easy today. Best case, they left when he was yelling at Gambit to crank up the difficulty because they figured he’d be too distracted to notice, and worst case — the one that I, of course, prefer — is that they were there until all the villains showed up and just decided to slip out rather than deal with the hassle.

After dropping her coffee, Rogue rushes into the control room and hits the emergency override, narrowly saving Cyclops from being killed by exactly the kind of tough workout that he was asking for not two minutes prior to this. The Fearless Leader of the X-Men, everybody!

Rogue is, understandably, pretty upset about Gambit almost murdering Cyclops by giving him exactly what he wanted, sort of like a mother who comes home and finds that the babysitter has allowed her kid to eat an entire bag of chocolate chips and then pass out on the kitchen floor. The heat is deflected just a bit, though, when he tells her “I gotta go home, chere. They’re gonna waste my brother.”

After a dramatic zoom and a few commercials, we’re back in the Danger Team where Jean and Rogue rush in to tend to their fallen roommate. Rogue tells Cyclops and Jean that Gambit was upset beacuse of “something about a brother,” presumably because she is not familiar with hippity hop slang terms like “waste.” Did she take it literally and assume that Gambit’s brother had gotten a job that didn’t make full use of his talent? The world may never know. Either way, it’s off to New Orleans and a flashback where Gambit reminisces about “dat tievin fool!”

Hoo boy. It’s at this point that things get weird.

After a brief look at a bunch of “Assassins” who look like they’re about to hit up an S&M club designed by Joel Schumacher, we get a shot of a bunch of sketchy looking dudes running through the woods trying to put a little golden box on a tree stump. Gambit’s there, too, and we know it’s a flashback because instead of his costume (which, as we all know, is the one suit of clothing he owns), he’s wearing a yellow shirt and light blue pants that appear to be the exact same outfit Mary Jane Watson wore for the duration of the Spider-Man animated series.

Shocking no one, the dirtbags of the T’ieves Guild are late putting their little golden box on the tree stump — you know, the Tithe, like we’re all very familiar with — and before they get there, The X-Ternal rises up out of the water and this is now the most ’90sest thing ever.

Let’s break this outfit down, shall we? Top to bottom, we’ve got a ponytail of neon orange head tentacles, some purple concentric Renaissance art halos, two sets of sharpened shoulder pads, Ultimate Warrior face paint, a workout leotard, metal sleeves, and multiple belts, one of which is off-center. Critical ’90s: Confirmed.

The X-Ternal announces that the time has come and demands that the Chosen One step forward, because this is what weirdos who have been living under swamps for the past ten years do when someone puts a little golden box on a tree stump. The Assassin steps forward, and you’ll be pleased to know that he also has a terrible cajun accent, which is pleasing enough that the X-Ternal shoots pink lightning out of her eyes in order to give them “strength and protection.”

The Thieves Guild member on little golden box duty finally shows up, but since he’s thirty seconds too late, he’s rewarded with more pink lightning, but this is hand lightning, not eye lightning, which results in “a darkness neverending!” Then there’s still more pink lightning, and a young lady from the Assassin’s Guild gets her clothes transformed into a little look I like to call the Tennessee RenFaire:

She does the same thing to one of the Thieves, and all he gets is the same coat he was already wearing but in a slightly different color. This, of course, is Bobby.

Back at the Mansion, Jean explains that she knows something’s wrong with Gambit because “when he was leaving the mansion, I sensed his feelings.” So, not because he told Rogue someone was going to kill his brother and then left in an airplane, then? Good job, Jean. Good hustle out there.

Down in the bayou, Gambit lands and meets up with Pierre, and we learn that his dumb jacket and weird hair aren’t just an inexplicable fashion choice, they’re actually some kind of uniform:

I wonder if the Thieves Guild has a hierarchy based on how impractical your clothes are. Gambit, with his hot pink abs and powder blue metal boots, is basically God Emperor down there.

Pierre reveals that the Assassins Guild has abducted Bobby, and when Gambit starts grumbling about how the Thives and Assassins have been killing each other for 300 years, we get the twist. They’re not going to kill Bobby, they’re going to return him along with his little golden box in exchange for Gambit. This seems a bit excessive, since they probably could’ve just set a bottle of Night Train and some spank mags under a cardboard box propped up with a stick and caught him that way, but who am I to question the way of the famous Louisiana Swamp Assassin’s Guild?

The rest of the X-Men arrive in typical Rest Of The X-Men fashion, which is to say that they’re two minutes late and primarily concerned with stuff that we’ve already seen. While they’re making bold deductions about how Gambit took a boat, Gambit shows up at an antebellum mansion to talk to his brother, who appears to have suffered a brutal beard-sketching at the hands of his captors:

There’s a lot of bad blood between Gambit and Bobby, mostly centered around Gambit’s frustrations that Bobby “made me a teef!” They argue for a bit, and then this web gets even more tangled with the arrival of Gambit’s cheesed-off ex-girlfriend.

Right, so remember the Renfaire Assassin from earlier? That’s Bella Donna (or “Bell” as Gambit calls her), and she rolls up in an ornate wedding dress and starts yelling about how Gambit left her at the altar. Apparently she’s just been havishaming it up for the past ten years, and this is all an elaborate get-back-at-your-ex scheme.

We’ve all been there, am I right? This guy knows what I’m talking about.

She tells Gambit that she still wears his rang, and asks him the simple favor of putting his on in exchange for letting Bobby go free. Naturally, Gambit agrees because the X-Men are just the absolute worst superheroes ever, and no sooner is that sucker slapped on his finger than Bella Donna’s eyes start glowing and Gambit is brought low when she channels pain directly through his wedding ring. It’s a hell of a metaphor for the kids.

Rogue, Jean and Wolverine continue to poke around the swamp, walking into another plantation house where they fall down a trap door, and amazingly, the show actually remembers they have superpowers. Rogue just corrects herself in mid-air, Jean floats herself gently to the ground, and Wolverine lands on his feet. You know, like Wolverines do.

It’s actually a pretty neat scene.

Turns out that the whole thing was a trap laid by the Thieves Guild for Bobby’s kidnappers, and they show up toting goofy Cobra surplus laser guns so that the X-Men can effortlessly disarm them. Before anyone gets stabbed, telekinesised or drained to death, though, Bobby shows up and tells everyone to chill out, they’re just his scumbag brother’s weird yankee friends. There’s some more talk of the tithe and Bella Donna’s plan to do something with Gambit. Something horrible. Something that must be stopped at all costs.

Marriage.

Honestly, it’s hard to drum up sympathy for Gambit, a dude who once tried to make out with Rogue while she was asleep, when the peril that he is faced with is a girl who’s just, you know, kind of clingy about him because he jilted her on their wedding day, but the show makes a good run at it. Turns out that she’s a faithless jezebel who has already betrayed Gambit by substituting a fake golden box for the real golden box that they were supposed to put on their tree stump in the ritual that definitely isn’t making any more sense the more I write about it. Look, it’s a bad thing and there’s a fake box. That’s all we really need here.

Finally, the tithe is set to happen, and Bella Donna rolls up with Gambit in tow and announces that he’s the newest member of the Assassins Guild. This is, I guess, kind of shocking, but Rogue immediately starts sobbing about it, choking back “I don’t believe it!” like she just watched Gambit punt a kitten into a river. Fortunately for her, Gambit’s a pretty s**tty fiancée.

After he cold knocks Bella Donna on her ass, Gambit warns the Thieves/T’ieves/Teefs that they’ve been tricked and that their tithe is a fake. Rogue calls Bella Donna a “swamp witch,” Bella Donna calls Rogue a “seducer,” Wolverine completely fails to use his indestructible adamantium claws to cut the ring off Gambit’s finger, and it all eventually turns into a big dumb brawl. While everyone fights, it boils down into Rogue and Bella Donna yelling at each other like they’re on Maury, with Rogue’s classic “Gambit ain’t gonna be your lapdog!” countered by Bella Donna’s “Remy’s keesed minny weemin, chere… but love onlay me!”

My sentiments exactly, Rogue.

At this point, the plot gets even more convoluted as Jean decides that the most powerful telekinetic in the world, an invulnerable woman who can fly and bench press a tank, and a berserker raging killer with knife hands just can’t possibly solve this problem with violence. They have to go find the real tithe to keep the Teefs from being killed by the X-Ternal.

If you’re confused as to what all that means, don’t worry. I am too.

Unfortunately, they don’t have time for any of it, because the X-Ternal rises up from the swamp water and starts yelling about how the tithe is false. The Assassins have the good tithe, so they get to level up again, and the Tieves are set to get some more pink lightning until Rogue tries to intervene and the X-Men get zapped for their trouble.

Jean thinks fast — well, fast for this show, anyway — and telepathically shows the X-Ternal what actually happened, which means we literally get a flashback to things we just saw less than one minute ago.

It is not even as exciting as it sounds.

The X-Ternal decides to let the Thieves decide what to do with Bella Donna, and when Bobby yells out that he wants to destroy her, he gets a punch in the mouth from Gambit, who asks for the relative mercy of taking her powers instead of her life. Then Bella Donna lays on the ground and cries while begging Gambit to stay, to which he responds “I am an X-Man, and I’m never coming back.”

That guff is harsh.

After that, Cyclops complains and we get another check-in with Professor X and Magneto down at the Savage Land, where the mutates are hassling them for what feels like the 900th week in a row. I cannot remember a time before this Savage Land story was playing out in 90-second installments, but considering that it involves Professor X using weaponized bees, that might be a good thing.

Discussion Question: This episode was a bit of a trial to get through for a lot of reasons, chief among them being the accents. That said, that is actually pretty true to how those comics were written for, you know, forty years or so. So with that in mind, what’s the best or worst representation of an accent in comics? In the comic book story that introduced Bella Donna, I remember being mystified by someone using the word “‘trupt” as an accented version of “interrupt,” but there might be a weirder one out there.

Next Week: Cable and Bishop are back! Giant guns and face tattoos for everybody!

Previous X-Men Episode Guides

Director Bill Condon has shown the ability to move between genres with ease, shifting from the the likes of Gods and Monsters and Kinsey to Dreamgirls and the two-part Twilight closer Breaking Dawn. For his latest film, he’s taking on another project inspired by real-life events: the WikiLeaks origin story The Fifth Estate.

The movie arrives amidst a storm of criticism from WikiLeaks itself, with the organization publishing script reviews and even suggesting alternative viewing options for UK filmgoers. We spoke with the director about the intense reaction, what it says about Julian Assange, and how whistleblowers like Edward Snowden are continuing the conversation that WikiLeaks started.

WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have been extremely critical of movies about the organization’s history, whether it’s The Fifth Estate or Alex Gibney’s documentary We Steal Secrets. Were you anticipating that kind of criticism when you signed on to this movie?

Absolutely. It already had happened because of the source material, which he takes exception to. But he takes exception to anything, honestly, written about him that isn’t completely laudatory. He’s very thin-skinned and he very much — in a naive way — tries to control what people say about him. There’s something strange and adolescent about it, you know? He’s like the teenager who has to prove he was right about everything.

"He's like the teenager who has to prove he was right about everything."

It’s an odd reaction, because I found the film to be very supportive of the WikiLeaks mission itself, and citizen journalism in general. It almost plays as a call to arms.

I agree! But that’s the thing, that he conflates WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. He thinks they’re one and the same. That’s completely who he is. He is, in some basic way, unsocialized, isn’t he? And because he had to do it alone for so long, and had to really survive on his own for so long … When you realize that he’s hardly ever had a roof over his head that he could call his own — and that continues to this very day — it makes sense that somebody like that, when it actually turns into something bigger than him, can’t make the distinction anymore. That was his big argument to Benedict when we were shooting. "Don’t do this because all this stuff about whether I dye my hair or not gets in the way of the message," and it’s sort of not true. He’s gotten in the way of the message to a great degree.

The movie portrays Assange as someone whose ego becomes more important than the greater good that the organization is doing. When he has those conversations with Benedict, or when WikiLeaks comes out with its review of the script, do you feel like he’s making the movie’s case for you in a way?

"He just flat-out makes things up."

Well, that’s interesting. I know what you mean, and I know a lot of people have said that. But it’s a little frustrating, too, because as with the Gibney thing he releases this list of ways in which the movie is not true. And we have our own response to that. People have been saying, "No, no, this is fine. Hang back and don’t engage," but it is frustrating. Because he just flat-out makes things up. But I hope what you’re saying is right. I think what’s interesting is that it’s just a different target all the time, but it’s the same message: that nobody’s telling the truth about me.

Revealing secrets by publishing classified documents came up again this year when Edward Snowden revealed the existence of PRISM. Where do you think this open spread of information is taking us?

Well it’s such an unfinished story. But I have to say, Snowden’s been interesting in that I think he’s learned from some of Assange’s mistakes. According to people I read and trust, like [The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger], he’s been extremely responsible in withholding anything that might cause any kind of damage to people in the field, for example. So I feel as though Julian is the pioneer, but what’s hopeful about the Snowden thing is that he is proceeding in a more responsible way.

I guess you can question the idea that he exposed these secrets, and stole them in some way, you could argue. At the same time, he has started a conversation that is now moving into Congress. He’s been extraordinarily successful already, because it’s something that wouldn’t have happened without those revelations. Whether what he did turned out to have been more valuable than keeping the secret, I don’t think we’ll know for a long time.

I get the sense from the movie that you’re personally in support of this way of exposing truth, and the importance of it. Is that accurate?

"Governments cannot function with total transparency."

Yeah — but I would never say I agree with total transparency for powerful institutions, because governments cannot function with total transparency. I think that’s a naive idea, you know? But do we need to know more than we know? I would argue yes. So it’s somewhere in the middle there.

That nuance is something that can get lost in the discussion. It’s easy to think of it a binary decision, but I’d argue that it’s gray.

It is! That’s why journalists have always been — that’s what the Fourth Estate is meant to do. And, you know, his [Assange’s] challenge will be, "Well, they’ve kind of abrogated that to a degree by not pushing for more transparency," hence we need people like him. That may be true.

There’s a moment in the film where WikiLeaks really starts to take off, and you have this montage that seems geared towards exciting the audience about the work the organization is doing. Are you hoping to inspire people to get into journalism or get involved themselves?

Yeah! I think that’s true. I do think there’s something very inspiring about the idea. And again, how complicated is Arab Spring? How many decades before we know the implications of all of that? But still, you can’t help but feel as if it’s moving in the right direction.

The Fifth Estate opens in the US on Friday, October 18th.

Cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows PC games "makes a lot of sense" as part of a "connected ecosystem across all the different devices," said Microsoft's Phil Spencer in an interview with AusGamers.

Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios, stopped short of confirming that the feature is on its way, saying, "I'm not allowed to leak things.

"But I think what you're talking about makes a lot of sense," he continued. Spencer pointed out that both Xbox 360 and PC owners of the 2007 first-person shooter Shadowrun could play together, and said, "We didn't have tremendous success with that, but we learnt a lot from it."

He then gave more recent examples: 17-Bit's Skulls of the Shogun, which launched earlier this year on Xbox Live Arcade, PC, Windows Phone and Windows 8, and Halo: Spartan Assault, the Windows 8 and Windows Phone game that hooks into Halo 4.

"This connected ecosystem across all the different devices is definitely where I think the future of gaming is going; you don't have to do it as a developer, but you have the capability and I think a system like Xbox Live across all those screens where you know who someone is and who their friends are, what their Achievements are and their progression is really critical to that," said Spencer.

When it comes to protecting your virtual black market from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), some countries are better than others. As it turns out, Iceland is probably not where you want to be. While the country may have protected WikiLeaks from the Americans, it's not harboring the recently-busted illegal drug bazaar Silk Road. The Reykjavik Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they handed over data on the Silk Road at the request of American authorities.

It's unclear how much information Iceland turned over, but the FBI claims two Silk Road servers were based there. Icelandic police say the site was actually hosted there. Since Iceland does not have a formal Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the US, it appears that the FBI negotiated a special one-time agreement in order to get the data.

It still looks like the bulk of the information that broke open the case did not come from Iceland, however. The complaint says "an image of the Silk Road Web Server was made on or about July 23, 2013, and produced thereafter to the FBI" as a result of a request made to a foreign country under a formal MLAT.

"An image of the Silk Road Web Server was made on or about July 23, 2013."

That image, or bit-for-bit copy, of the Silk Road server gave authorities access to private messages between the Silk Road's owner and other members of the site. It was instrumental in seizing the site and arresting Ross Ulbricht, the man police allege was behind the Silk Road.

Runa Sandvik, who works on the anonymizing network Tor, has been trying to figure out which country handed over that server image. She initially ruled out Iceland because it does not have an MLAT with the US. Various Silk Road content was also hosted in the US, Latvia, and Malaysia. Latvia is an MLAT signatory; Malaysia is not. If the request was indeed made under an MLAT, it looks like the image either came from Latvia or another country that has not been revealed yet by the FBI.

Another possibility is that the FBI's complaint erroneously claimed the request was made under an MLAT, when the reality was less formal. Either way, future virtual drug kingpins now know that Iceland is no safe haven.

The menswear community on Tumblr is positively bustling. In the last 30 days, more than 77,000 photos, text posts, and videos were posted with the #Menswear tag, according to Union Metrics. There are posts by Nick Wooster, a street-fashion icon; Fuck Yeah Menswear, which spawned a book; and even Menswear Dog, a Shiba Inu that dons a variety of well-put-together outfits, and who has garnered more than 60,000 followers on Instagram. Ten years ago, most men, let alone dogs would have been caught dead sporting an ascot, but today, the desire to be fashionable has reached critical mass.

Ten years ago most men, let alone dogs, wouldn't have been caught dead sporting an ascot

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the spike in interest in men’s fashion occurred, but with that spike came a dozen new websites aiming to sell clothes to men — men who have traditionally been stubborn about shopping for clothing online. JackThreads was one of the first, which opened its doors in 2008 not just to fashion-savvy men, but also to regular guys. "Retail always focused on the female shopper," says founder Jason Ross. "I didn’t feel like there were any retailers out there thinking about guys." But selling to guys brings its own set of challenges, since men often shop differently than women.

To Michael Preysman, it begins with the male psyche. He’s the founder of Everlane, an online retailer that sells designer-quality basics like oxfords and T-shirts to men by sourcing its own factories,. "‘Is this my new shirt?’ men ask," according to Preysman. "‘Do I want to buy all my button-downs from here?’" Men often look to find the best shirt or pair of pants for their dollar, and then buy a bunch of them, he says. "It’s a hunting mentality," says Preysman. "Once you find that good spot, you say ‘Fuck it, I’m going to get everything from here.’" Thus, Everlane created what it calls The Perfect Tee and has spun up an appealing story to help sell it.

He cites The Sartorialist, a blog documenting street fashions, as one of the pioneering places to catalyze the online menswear revolution back in 2005. Today, he says, threads about the stitches per inch in a men’s shirt can go pages deep on StyleForum or Reddit, two popular destinations for debating men’s fashion. These discussions aren’t just about "metro" fashion trends as one might expect, says Preysman, but about fine details in clothesmaking. "Metro was the idea, but that’s not as much what’s happening," says Preysman. "Design-centric guys think about good quality stuff." One New York-based retailer named In God We Trust gave itself this bold tagline: "Pride builds quality, quality builds pride."

One of the ways to communicate quality is transparency. Online retailer Outlier, for example, provides detailed dossiers on its products, explaining how they were made and providing scientific descriptions of the high-tech, self-cleaning Swiss fabric used. "Being online means that people can do super extensive research, and then when they want to buy, the process can be extremely clean and smooth," says Outlier co-founder Abe Burmeister. In a brick-and-mortar store, it’s easier to walk out with a pair of pants, but harder to nail down "the specs" for any article of clothing, like where it was made, what fabric is used, and if it was ethically manufactured. If anything, Burmeister says, an online shopping experience offers men the ability to research a coat the same way they might research a new TV on a site like The Wirecutter. The effect is that you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth.

"Metro was the idea, but that’s not as much what’s happening."

A photo of Everlane’s latest oxford shirt design, another example, is flanked by the following description of the factory where the shirt was made: "Located in Hangzhou, China — known as one of the country’s most beautiful cities — we last visited this factory in January. We landed here in late 2011, the result of a long search for the best silk factory." Presyman says, "It’s about telling a detailed story, helping people understand why it’s a good product — from the fabric to story of the dyes used — men love the detail and history behind a product."

"Men’s shopping offline was just such a crappy experience," says Burmeister. "It just wasn’t tuned to how many men like to shop, which is in a bit of an all-or-nothing style." In its efforts to account for men’s shopping habits, online retailer Frank & Oak has come up with an ingenious, albeit risky, scheme. As part of the site’s "Hunt Club" free membership, Frank & Oak will mail you a box of clothes you’ve picked out once a month. You can pay for what you want to keep, or you can just send everything back entirely free of charge. Frank & Oak is betting that once you’ve tried on and liked a shirt or pair of pants in the comfort of your home, you’re far more likely to keep it. Meanwhile, the company eats the shipping cost.

"Lots of guys care about looking good, but not necessarily about shopping," says Frank & Oak co-founder Ethan Song. His company both designs and markets its own products to keep costs down, but it also introduced an innovative way to customize the site’s selection for your tastes. When you log in for the first time to Frank & Oak, asks "Which style guru inspires you most: John F. Kennedy, Don Draper, or Bob Dylan?" The answer to this question, among others, helps Frank & Oak recommend specific items to you, which means you might spend less time scrolling through an endless grid of shirts. On a site like Bonobos, you might even be thrown into a bucket like "metrosexual or gay," "finance guy," or "hipster." Or, you can just head into one of Bonobos’ handful of to get more personal recommendations and try on the company’s clothes in person — a hedge against the biggest advantage brick-and-mortar retailers have: shoppers who prefer to see and touch the items they’re buying before taking the the plunge.

"A lot of guys say ‘Can you help me pick out five items that are great for me and I’ll be done?’" Song says. For some online retailers, fitting shoppers into specific molds can be one secret to success that brick-and-mortar stores can’t easily match. Another element is a tight mobile experience, which has led JackThreads to double-digit millions in sales on mobile alone. The menswear industry is expected to rake in $139 billion per year by 2017, and an increasing portion could be from online sites — places better catered to the way men, and perhaps even menswear dogs, shop today.

Last month we covered the soft launch of Ghost, a Node.js-based minimalist blogging platform. The application blew through a Kickstarter goal and has been under heavy development; last month, Kickstarter backers were granted early access to the application to get started with it (my own Ghost-based blog, for example, is here).

Today, the Ghost team is opening the platform up to everyone. You can download the Ghost application and get it going on your own server immediately, and users interested in assisting with the development can hit up the project's GitHub repo and start poking around.

There are two major features still lacking from the platform: the fancy graphical management console and the hosted service. The graphical console with all of its fancy charts and graphs has been set aside temporarily while the core team focuses on making Ghost stable and functional enough for launch, but it should be making an appearance in an upcoming release.