Check out last week’s Hot Links: .Proof that having the Olympics in NYC would have sucked: the sad, furious tweets of Londoners.TechCrunch finds good evidence that using real names in comments sections doesn’t produce better comments. Real name comments are becoming more popular in the U.S., but the idea was already tried in South Korea and didn’t cut out the trolls. One thought: How many people don’t even realize or care that their real name is showing up?BuzzFeed does the Olympics right with this roundup of the 29 prettiest Olympic horses.Two were arrested in South Korea for hacking the data of 8.7 million phone users.Police are increasingly using predictive analytics to guess when crimes will occur. Minority Report and all that.Avalanches have been found on one of Saturn’s moons. Extraterrestrial water seems rather pedestrian these days, doesn’t it?Fascinating op-ed in the NY Times asks if algebra is even necessary. The idea is that arbitrary standards in education limits some students from reaching their full potential.Here’s the new pop-psychology trend running around: If you don’t use Facebook, you’re likely a psychopath.Music labels that won big settlements from The Pirate Bay won’t actually share those funds with the aggrieved artists, instead funneling that money back into themselves for more anti-piracy work. For shame.Here’s the sad, dumb story of Curt Schilling’s failed 38 Studios. I don’t care for Schilling and the story of him running a game studio into the ground doesn’t help.Big essay by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone: Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.
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Funk up your week: Ellis Valentine, a baseball player who played for the Expos in the late ‘70s, put together a playlist of his favorite jams. I have no idea why, but it’s awesome.Slate, being Slate, asks why Olympic gymnasts suck so badly at dancing now. Worth the read nonetheless.Heavily-linked Slashdot story asks a great question: Is China’s space boom a potential boon for the U.S.?