Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch in March 2016.Alex Wong/Getty Images On paper, the current conflict between the U.S. Department of Justice and North Carolina can seem dry, academic even. North Carolina passed a law forbidding trans people from using certain bathrooms that align with their gender identity. The Department of Justice notified the state…
Illustration: Jim Cooke We are, right now, in the midst of a digital media upheaval. What was previously conventional wisdom—that a media company with hopes of turning a profit needs, above all, to achieve scale—is being proven false. The new conventional wisdom is that video will be digital media’s savior, but it is only a…
“[The Amazon Echo] is opening up a vast new realm in personal computing, and gently expanding the role that computers will play in our future,” writes Farhad Manjoo in the Times. Manjoo, like others, goes on to address what makes the Echo remarkable: first, dramatically improved voice recognition and fast response times make talking with…
Facebook Trending Topics is that special box you see on the right hand side of your Newsfeed that tells you what news is trending. Most people thought it was simply an algorithmic amalgamation of what Facebook users were talking about until Gizmodo reported this month that it’s actually curated by human beings. And some of…
Photo: Liya Hoshi Liya Hoshi, a graphic designer from New Bedford Massachusetts, noticed something a little strange when she plugged in the travel charger she purchased from Amazon. The gadget seemed to come with a specific message. She said it took her a minute to realize the logo actually read “iSmart”—but a very simple…
For many of us, Facebook has intertwined itself into our lives to such an extent that it often seems to fade into the background—it’s always there, like the atmosphere, and so we stop thinking about it. But now and then, the giant social network does something that forces us to consider its over-sized influence on…
Illustration: Jim Cooke Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in…
.entry-header “When I Needed You” Carly Rae Jepsen released her third album, Emotion, in 2015. The closing track on the record is When I Needed You. In this episode, Carly tells the story of how the song was made. You’ll hear the first demo for the song, a version she co-wrote with her longtime collaborator…
Begin: WordPress Article Content Today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, we had both the founder of AdBlock Plus Till Faida and Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg on our stage — but not at the same time, mostly because Rothenberg refused to even shake hands with Faida in public. Rothenberg minced no words in his dislike…
“We Will Literally Predict Their Life Outcomes” Scientist Vivienne Ming says she can foretell a child’s earning potential, happiness, even longevity. But not all her claims add up. Earlier this year, I met an entrepreneur who believed people could become better parents by texting with a software program she’d built. To me, a new mother,…