Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Condescension drips off the opening screen of Millennial Swipe Sim 2015, a game that purports to simulate the “thrilling world of app-based dating.” Much like Tinder, it presents you with photos of potential suitors—albeit pixelated ones—and asks you to swipe right or left to indicate if you’re interested. “But watch out,” it warns. “Stop swiping…
The new issue of Jacobin, commemorating the 150th anniversary of Union victory and emancipation, is out now. Subscribe today to get a copy or order a single issue. In principle the annual Burning Man festival sounds a bit like a socialist utopia: bring thousands of people to an empty desert to create an alternative society. Ban money and advertisements and make it…
When a team of hackers dumped data online that revealed the identities of millions of users of the infidelity dating website Ashley Madison, among the revelations was just how few women seem to use the site. Ashley Madison claims that around 5.5 million of its 37 million users are women. But some stories asserted that…
In San Francisco, Uber recently began testing what it calls “Smart Routes,” TechCrunch reports: Rather than hailing an Uber directly to your door, UberPool’s map shows a green line overlaid on a major artery street nearby. If you’re willing to set your pickup location anywhere along these Smart Routes, Uber will compensate you with a…
We live in an age of nerds. Sometimes I try to explain to my kids that I grew up in a time — a dark age known as The Eighties — when reading comic books, playing fantasy-based card games, watching Doctor Who, or being really into computers could get you publicly pantsed. There was a…
It’s 2015, and feminism is still a dirty word. But it’s a real expletive on places like Tinder, where sexism is all-too-often all-too-visible. That’s why Laura Nowak created the Instagram account Feminist_Tinder, showcasing what happens when women put the word feminist into their Tinder bios. For the account, Nowak screenshotted various conversations she had…
Begin: WordPress Article Content It was supposed to take 18 months. But with React Native, Facebook built its iOS Ads Manager app in 5 months, and then ported it to Android in just 3 more months. That’s because React Native let Facebook’s engineers work faster and reuse the JavaScript backend. Coders have dreamed of a…
I Had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon. This Is My Story Last Saturday, I read the 6,000-word New York Times piece, “Inside Amazon,” in the car on my way to the beach. I sat quietly in the front seat, glued to my phone while my husband flapped his hand gesturing for…
When hacker group Impact Team released the Ashley Madison data, they asserted that “thousands” of the women’s profiles were fake. Later, this number got blown up in news stories that asserted “90-95%” of them were fake, though nobody put forth any evidence for such an enormous number. So I downloaded the data and analyzed it…
Verizon is announcing Hum today, a two-piece hardware system bundled with a phone app and monthly plan that give basically any old car (1996 or newer) OnStar-like capabilities, ranging from stolen vehicle tracking to Check Engine light remote diagnosis. One module, equipped with a CDMA radio and GPS, connects to your car’s on-board diagnostic (OBD)…