Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
When Facebook moves into its new offices in Mountain View this fall, a signature Silicon Valley perk will be missing — there won’t be a corporate cafeteria with free food for about 2,000 employees. In an unusual move, the city barred companies from fully subsidizing meals inside the offices, which are part of the Village…
The consumer privacy law that California’s governor signed into law on June 28 is considered the strongest, most aggressive privacy protection measure in the U.S., according to legal experts. The new California law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2020, will require that companies tell state residents what information the company is collecting and how…
Photo: Getty California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who said last week that people should be “open to all points of view” when it comes to the cause of global warming, thinks it’s fine if people looking to sell their homes don’t want to do so to LGBTQ people. The Orange County Register reports that last week, Rohrabacher told…
Leading Democrats are proposing a labor law overhaul that could extend collective bargaining rights to huge swaths of the gig economy, the latest sign of gathering blowback for companies committed to maximizing profits by denying workers rights and benefits often associated with regular employment. On Wednesday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with…
A pair of women ride a LimeBike scooter. Photo by the author The Bay Area serves as America’s sandbox. The tech world’s most far-fetched ideas are often sketched and tested here, and if they’re successful, they’ll spread throughout the country. The latest trend to materialize here is motorized scooters you can rent through an app….
Illustration: Jim Cooke (GMG) In the four months since a mysterious group of rich people took over the L.A. Weekly, news outlets across the country have continued to experience brutal cuts to newsroom staffs and other harsh austerity measures. More than 50 journalists from the East Bay Times and the San Jose Mercury News were…
A woman opened fire at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., shooting three people with a handgun before taking her own life and causing widespread panic in the technology hub south of San Francisco. A law enforcement source identified the alleged shooter as Nasim Aghdam. Investigators initially believed the shooting was a domestic incident, with…
Cape Town’s main water supply, at the Theewaterskloof Dam, is running dry, and the city may soon have to turn off its taps. Photograph from AP PUBLISHED February 2, 2018 Editor’s Note: On Monday, February 5, Cape Town officials announced that the city had gotten “a slight reprieve” and that “Day Zero” had…
Before she became a pot “queen pin,” Stephanie Smith drove a Lincoln Navigator fueled with human fat collected at her physician boyfriend’s liposuction clinic in Beverly Hills. “Dr. Lipo 90210,” the boyfriend, Dr. Craig Alan Bittner, called himself in ads that promised: “Lose over one gallon of fat with liposculpture.” He reported in a blog…
San Francisco residents continue to rage against the machines. While the city’s board of supervisors moves toward finalizing limits on robots that roam the sidewalks to deliver food and goods, it must also find a way to handle security robots that patrol public sidewalks. Ad Tag – c1 (xs/xm/md) The S.F. SPCA in the Mission…