Kat’s Kable turns 50 :). It’s been a great ride. If you like it (which I hope you do), I’d like to be forward and ask you to send this to five people who you think will enjoy it. If you think it’s great and worthy, share it on social media. Spread the love!

P.S. bonus! I’ve written up how I go about compiling each week’s list over here. You might like it. I would also love to answer any queries that you have. And on we go to the list itself.

1. Inside the Hunt for Russia’s Most Notorious Hacker - Great Wired investigation and story. This is about Evgeniy Bogachev, a Russian hacker who created a botnet that ravaged computers around the world. US authorities hunted for him for a number of years until they finally brought his network crashing down.
   
2. Will Roger Federer Ever Be Done? - “I think a lot of people were hoping that I’d win,” he told me quietly, when we finally sat down. “It seems that a lot of them were super happy.” Federer at his best. This is a GQ interview and feature and is lovely.
   
3. The Weird World of Stock Photos - This is hilarious!Death by DIY. Stock image actors are probably just filling in before that big break in Hamlet. But this is what tragedy and disaster really look like. A strange artificial room and an elaborate sense of desolation. This is Beckett with stepladders.
   
4. How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons - Great. Uber doesn’t really employ its drivers, but it still exerts so much control over its drivers. Who’s really driving whom? This is a nice feature from NYT complete with interactive graphics. The interesting takeaway is that we may be moving from our current state back to a time where employers had iron cast rules for the people working with them. Little in the name of benefits or job security. Is this a sign of things to come?
   
5. A.I. vs. M.D. - That towering colossus of modern science writing, Siddhartha Mukherjee, writes about the role of artificially intelligent systems in making medical diagnoses. They are already better than humans now (in parts), and they can only get better. A.I. will theoretically last forever, and they learn all the time. And what happens finally, when all diagnoses are automated? Are humans eliminated completely? This is slightly scary, because most jobs and occupations where we predict that humans will be eliminated are menial ones, and the job of making a diagnosis is a specialised one, one that requires years of study and experience.
   
6. Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too - This article has been gaining popularity, and deservedly so. An in-depth study of how much truly engaging work one needs to put in daily to create meaningful, creative output. Many creative geniuses put in only four to six hours of solid work a day, and spent the rest of their time pursuing hobbies, sports, or just walking. This gives me hope. Takeaway: deliberate practice done daily adds up to give phenomenal results; deliberate practice is not easy, so do only a few hours a day. The key is to keep at the habit.
   
7. Computer Moves: How intelligent machines can teach us the necessary skill of losing - This is nice (read: interesting). It’s about chess in the age of computers and intelligent systems that have, in the past, beaten the best in the world at chess. What does this mean? Do we humans just stop playing chess, or as the author suggests, do we treat this as a humbling where we know we can’t win, and get used to losing?
   
8. Pathology of a Fake News Story - From start to end, how does ‘fake news’ propagate? A story of one article. I think everyone should read this to know of the tell-tale signs of when a news story seems off.
   
9. Stealing Mona Lisa - The shocking theft of the Mona Lisa, in August 1911, appeared to have been solved 28 months later, when the painting was recovered. In an excerpt from their new book (from 2009), the authors suggest that the audacious heist concealed a perfect—and far more lucrative—crime.
   
10. The Starbucks Barista Who Wants You to Know There Is No Secret Menu - This is an inside peak into the world of Starbucks, told by a barista in New Hampshire in the US. I really don’t know why I’m sharing this, but it seemed fascinating.

Here’s to another 50, and another after that. And so on. So it goes.