Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
TWITTERBOTS UNITED FAKE FOLLOWERS COULD WRECK THE ELECTION Donald Trump understands minority communities. Just ask Pepe Luis Lopez, Francisco Palma, and Alberto Contreras. These guys are among the candidate’s 7 million Twitter followers, and each tweeted in support of Trump after his victory in the Nevada caucuses earlier this year. The problem is, Pepe, Francisco,…
render left third party share bar style=”background: url(../images/patterns/paper-noise.png) top left white;” story headline story body A Georgia man claims the car accident that left him with permanent brain damage was caused by a teen too busy taking selfies to pay attention to the road, according to reports. Now he’s suing the teen, Christal McGee, and…
Last night, an investment bank and a venture capital firm co-hosted a premiere screening of a farcical premium cable show about tech companies. It sounds like the setup to a joke, but like on the show itself, it’s not clear who gets the last laugh. A few minutes before the crowd of industry insiders gathered…
(Getty) Part of what gives Uber an edge over taxis is that you can request an Uber while still in your apartment and know that it will be there when you finally change out of your pajamas, finish your Blades of Steel game, find your keys (ha, they were in my pocket all along!)…
China’s messaging services show that conversational interfaces are not always desirable. // end .article-topper__hgroup Picture a nightmarish future in which half-witted “conversational user interfaces” drive us insane with mindless conversation and misunderstandings. As U.S. tech companies rush to emulate the success of China’s messaging platforms, this could be where we’re headed. Dan Grover, a product…
I have two cyborg implants. One is in my hand, and it lets me unlock phones and doors by waving at them. The other is in my uterus, and it lets me control my own fertility. In the space between my left pointer finger and thumb is an RFID microchip, a small glass capsule about…
2. What Is Talkshow? Talkshow is a new messaging app where all the conversations are public. The company says Talkshow “is texting in public,” but it really feels much more like a public-facing Slack room — an ongoing conversation between multiple people, that anyone can see. ID: 8532033 3. Wait. Isn’t that Twitter? No. Here’s…
Millions of drivers use Waze, a Google-owned navigation app, to find the best, fastest route from point A to point B. And according to a new study, all of those people run the risk of having their movements tracked by hackers. Researchers at the University of California-Santa Barbara recently discovered a Waze vulnerability that allowed…
There’s trouble afoot inside the Emoji Council of Elders, or, at the very least, signs of a low-simmering schism that’s being referred to by some of its participants — perhaps with less humor than one might expect — as “Emojigeddon.” Emails seen by BuzzFeed News reveal an emerging tension at the Unicode Consortium — the…
John Hermann, who writes about media industry for The New York Times, is one of my favorite writers. His incisive and cutting commentary at his previous home-on-the-web, The Awl, was on my “read first and do everything else later” list. About ten days ago, we had a conversation about the shifting media landscape and the…