Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Last week New York City backed down from a plan to cap the explosive growth of Uber’s vehicle fleet. The mayor’s office declared the deal it reached to be a win-win for both sides, and warned Uber that an eventual cap is still a possibility if it doesn’t comply. But that threat seemed hollow given…
New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has lost round one against Uber. After locking horns with Uber, De Blasio has backed down from his plan to cap Uber’s growth in New York. Under a new agreement, the city will conduct a four month study on the environmental effects of on-demand car services rather than limiting the number of…
Computer experts have long warned about a catastrophic cyber-attack in the US, a sort of Web 3.0 version of 9/11 that would wreak enormous damage throughout the country. Like most Americans, I shrugged. With all of the enormous resources the country enjoys, those warnings seemed like the rantings of a digital Chicken Little. Oddly enough,…
When Ray McEnaney types, he’s confident it’s the most efficient way possible. But it’s not typing school that’s given him this feeling. It’s his keyboard. Frustrated with the limitations of the traditional QWERTY layout, McEnaney spent the last decade designing a new one. Considering that the universal key arrangement was designed in the typewriter age…
Welcome to the age of hackable automobiles, when two security researchers can cause a 1.4 million product recall. On Friday, Chrysler announced that it’s issuing a formal recall for 1.4 million vehicles that may be affected by a hackable software vulnerability in Chrysler’s Uconnect dashboard computers. The vulnerability was first demonstrated to WIRED by security…
I have had so many conversations or email exchanges with students in the last few years wherein I anger them by indicating that simply saying, “This is my opinion” does not preclude a connected statement from being dead wrong. It still baffles me that some feel those four words somehow give them carte blanche to…
Amazon.com Inc., typically known for sacrificing short-term profit so it could spend its money on long-term investments, created an investor frenzy Thursday with results that put it narrowly in the black. Shares of the Seattle online retailer surged by more than 17% to over $566 in after-hours trading, pushing its market value well past that…
Social Sharing Toolkit v2.2 In her new book, The Internet of Garbage, Sarah Jeong states that “the Internet is, and always has been, mostly garbage.” She talked with The Toast about topics discussed in her book, including online harassment, doxing, spam, free speech, and the challenges of moderating content platforms and social media networks. You can buy…
The Naval Posgraduate School’s Timothy Chung stands with the unmanned aerial vehicles his team attempted to swarm in May, 2015. That day they were able to launch 20 into a swarm. After a second attempt in July, they got 30. Krista Almanzan/KAZU hide caption itoggle caption Krista Almanzan/KAZU The Naval Posgraduate School’s Timothy Chung…
In the past few months, there have been some promising developments in tech diversity. Eileen Burbidge and Martha Lane Fox were given prominent government roles, Jacqueline de Rojas was appointed president of techUK, Apple finally had female employees presenting at their conference and the E3 gaming convention featured lots of non-sexualised female protagonists. And yet…