Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
On May 1st, International Workers’ Day, I will be publicly discussing my job title, my experience and my salary on #talkpay and I urge everyone to do so as well. Pay inequality is an oft-discussed topic. There are measurable pay discrepancies between groups when looking at race and gender which are further exacerbated when someone…
What if the future of law enforcement doesn’t involve faster, more forceful responses to crime—but rather, a surefire way to predict it? Hitachi, the Japanese tech giant that makes everything from elevators to security systems, seems to have faith in the latter. It announced today (Sept. 29) that it’s developed a robust new technology that…
With the rise of coding bootcamps, it’s become a popular notion that being able to code is simply a matter of will, not dollars. “Learn how to code and become a developer, it’s easy! Take an eight-week course!” But this couldn’t be further from the truth: Becoming a developer is difficult and often out of…
In the hours between the shooting spree at Umpqua Community College and the moment news networks were able to name Chris Harper Mercer as the alleged gunman, crowds on social media clamored for a name to fill the informational void. 4chan gave them two, both of whom turned out to be alive, and neither of…
It may never be known whether Chris Harper Mercer went on the Internet forum 4chan the night before he killed nine people at Umpqua Community College to warn of what he planned to do, or whether the post that had media outlets and investigators scrambling was completely unconnected to the shooting. Either way, this…
Security works best in layers: Something you know (a password), something you have (a token), something you are (a fingerprint). Yet too many web services rely solely upon that first, often impossible-to-remember layer alone. The upshot? Compromised accounts—day in, day out. That could soon change. Chris Wansrath, CEO and co-founder of the coding community startup…
NEWS: A forthcoming app called “Peeple” will purportedly function as a ratings service of private individuals. On 30 September 2015 social media users began buzzing about a purported new app called “Peeple” and proposed functionality (i.e., “to assign reviews and one- to five-star ratings to everyone you know”) that was almost universally scorned by its…
Discussions of income inequality typically focus on how information technology raises the return to skilled labor, or on the rise of global trade, or perhaps on the way that politics skews power toward the rich and well-connected. But there’s another fundamental driver of income inequality: the improved measurement of worker performance. As we get better…
If you want to survive a biological attack, you might want to look into buying a Tesla. The company just officially unveiled the Model X, and Elon Musk shared a rather unexpected feature during the… Tesla’s new Model X has a ‘bioweapon defense mode’ button | The Verge.
Yesterday, 4chan founder Christopher “moot” Poole announced he was selling the infamous anonymous message board to Hiroyuki Nishimura, the man whose 2channel message board had inspired 4chan’s creation. Over the past 12 years, 4chan has fostered many of the central groups and images of web culture, alongside damaging harassment campaigns and pockets of neo-Nazism. We talked with Poole…