Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Marco Arment, a developer and blogger who had been one of the most prominent advocates of ad blocking, has pulled his best-selling ad-blocking app from Apple’s App store. “Just doesn’t feel good,” Arment titled a post explaining the move, which came just three days after his “Peace” app launched. On Wednesday, Apple’s new iOS9 software allowed…
As so often happens, a government attempt to quash the use of technology it doesn’t like has made that tech more popular than ever. A week after the Department of Homeland Security intimidated a New Hampshire public library into shutting down its Tor relay, about a dozen other libraries nationwide have shown interest in running…
The adblockalypse has begun. Just one day after Apple released iOS 9 into the wild, users are flocking to the App Store and downloading adblockers. According to AppAnnie.com, three of the top five paid apps are adblockers — meaning people are paying from 99 cents to $2.99 a download. Taking the top slot is Peace for…
For journalists, tracking what’s happening has in some ways never been easier. From Twitter to livestreams, 24-hour television news to text messages, we reporters—and everyone else—have access to more media to keep us informed than ever. But with so many ways to track stories today, there’s also just so much more to track. Facebook wants to help journalists find…
In case the hysteria over ad-blocking software wasn’t already at a fever pitch, Apple’s new iOS version is now in the wild—complete with built-in support for ad blocking—and several ad blockers are topping the most-installed list. Is this an apocalypse for publishers, especially small ones? And if it is, does installing and using an ad…
Yes! Zune is still a thing. But whatever is left of Microsoft’s old music vestige will be getting shut down on November 15th. Microsoft stopped selling its Zune HD music player hardware years ago, but the brand has lived on in the form of Zune Music Pass, a subscription music service that came with 10…
What it’s actually like to be a Black employee at a tech company My fingertips danced with delight as I frantically typed away at my computer. “I just saw a new Black person! Does anyone know who it is?” I circulated the email to the “Blackbirds,” Twitter’s internal group for Black employees. In my three…
For all its rough and rugged mystique, masculinity can be the most vulnerable of traits. Forged by the knuckle-worn fists thumping hard against Homosapien chests, and honed to a fine sheen in the gladiator bathhouses of ancient Rome, the fragile male ego is now under threat by the greatest force the world has ever known:…
Last week, Julia Greenberg from Wired wrote an interesting story titled “All Those Mobile News Alerts Are Getting On Your Nerves”: Mobile news alerts are becoming the norm. … Many of you hate them so much so that you’ve turned all alerts off. But even if you do get them, you don’t really like them….
In the center of the lab, CHIMP stretched out one huge arm, then gracefully unfurled its three metal fingers, as if about to beckon someone. On its head, two rapidly rotating laser scanners enabled it to monitor its surroundings, but the engineers standing nearby were wary nonetheless. If the robot — a five-foot-tall, crimson-colored humanoid…