Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
The world has waited nearly a decade to show their disdain on Facebook with a single click. Now, Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is finally building a button. “I think people have asked about the dislike button for many years. Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we’re working on…
The OnHub is Google’s latest weird experiment. It’s a $200 router stuffed with fourteen antennae that’s being marketed as a cure-all for people who have a zillion wireless devices with different network needs. But what does that actually mean? I tore down my OnHub with the hardware hackers at iFixit to find out. For those…
For three weeks, an online criminal gang used popular sites such as eBay, the Drudge Report and Answers.com to try to infect millions of internet users in one of the longest malvertising campaigns ever seen, according to a security firm. Using booby-trapped ads, commonly known as “malvertising,” is quickly becoming the most common way for…
Yahoo! Inc. sued a former employee over claims she “brazenly” divulged confidential information about the company to a reporter who was writing a book about Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer’s leadership. Yahoo claims that Cecile Lal, a former senior director of product management, broke a confidentiality agreement when she leaked proprietary information to the journalist…
Content notice: discussion of mental illness, suicide, obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia and exercise addiction, trauma, severe online harassment, threats and stigma. It is undeniable, statistical, and evidenced by lived experiences that tech workers have mental illnesses. Marginalized individuals in tech — more likely to have mental health problems due to oppression, trauma, abuse and inability…
A collection of advocacy groups from around the world on Friday released an open letter to Twitter, calling on the company to restore API access to Politiwoops, a site that archived politicians’ deleted tweets. In May, Twitter pulled the American version of Politiwoops’ API access, and followed suit with the international editions last month. In…
A few months ago, I researched how many state legislators had social media accounts and which social media platforms they were most likely to use. That post focused on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and found that 46% of all state legislators have an account on at least one of these platforms, with Facebook being the…
Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube continue to become more and more integrated into the fabric of American culture. For many, they present a more convenient option for communication with friends, family, corporations, and political figures. It’s not unheard of for a tweet to a retail company to be more effective in…
Joshua Goldberg posed as an Islamic radical and allegedly encouraged a terrorist to attack on September 11. That’s just one of his online personas though. When Joshua Goldberg wasn’t posing as an Islamic radical, he was pretending to be a white supremacist—and is accused of impersonating a Jewish lawyer. Goldberg had several online personas: an…
The White House on Saturday unveiled the new college-information website that it developed once it abandoned its ill-fated plan to rate colleges. The new College Scorecard site, which replaces an older one of the same name, features a more modern and user-friendly design and some new information about colleges not previously available on the predecessor…