Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
When Google announced its list of 34 prospective new Google Fiber cities last Wednesday, some were baffled that the company had overlooked San Francisco. This is, after all, supposed to be America’s technopolis: its capital of the future. And yet, in comparison to some other cities in the country — and the world — San…
Uber’s Travis Kalanick. Photo: Heisenberg Media/Wikimedia Commons An employment lawsuit against Uber can now proceed as a class action after a judge certified a class of 160,000 Uber drivers in California. Four drivers brought suit against Uber in 2013 alleging worker misclassification—according to them, they are employees of Uber, even if the company treats…
It’s a cold day in winter and you’re driving on dry pavement when your dashboard flashes a warning: black ice up ahead. You slow down, engage your four-wheel drive and start watching for other drivers who might not be so well informed as you. That scene, straight out of the connected-car playbook, would seem to require a few more years of public investment in smart…
Rebekah Marine, a model with an i-limb quantum prosthetic hand, will walk in New York Fashion Week on Sept. 13 in the FTL Moda show. The 28-year-old was born without a right forearm. She was told at a young age that she wouldn’t have a future in modeling. She quickly gave up the idea, went…
Adblockers and the fracking of data An inconvenient truth about digital content I’ve decided to test a Safari Adblocker extension in private beta directly with the Princeton student who’s developing it. I’m doing it for science and sharing my findings to encourage more public discourse about why the trust between content consumers and producers is…
It is a truism to say that relationship is hard to maintain. It might be even more difficult when the Atlantic Ocean separates them. But thanks to internet and those big data companies that feed themselves with our personal informations, we can now have a real relationship even with 5,500 km between us. Real in…
Many of you might have already seen the new Google identity. I’m not surprised that the brand is evolving its look in wake of the current company restructuring and formation of Alphabet. Change is oftentimes necessary and with a brand like Google that has so much reach and weight in this world, the changes are…
Russia ordered several internet service providers to block Wikipedia throughout the country after the volunteers who run the user-generated online encyclopedia refused to delete an article — then abruptly reversed its decision less than 24 hours later. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications watchdog, reversed its decision to order internet providers to block a page on Russian-language Wikipedia…
After searching through the Ashley Madison database and private email last week, I reported that there might be roughly 12,000 real women active on Ashley Madison. Now, after looking at the company’s source code, it’s clear that I arrived at that low number based in part on a misunderstanding of the evidence. Equally clear is…
Our future workplaces are increasingly managed by apps and algorithms. Is technology empowering workers, or making them ever more helpless cogs in a corporate profit machine? When we talk about the “on-demand economy”, we are really talking about two things: the ability of a consumer to summon a vehicle, their lunch, or their groceries with…