Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Begin: Right Rail Advertisement Container End: Right Rail Advertisement Container Begin: WordPress Article Content What if Silicon Valley had emerged from a racially integrated community?Would the technology industry be different? Would we? And what can the technology industry do now to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? I met Bob Hoover one sunny Friday afternoon when…
Reclaim and make the most of the public domain at Open Book Hack Day on January 14, 2015 at The New York Public Library, brought to you by NYPL Labs and The Readium Foundation. During this day-long event, we’ll push the limits of what’s possible with ebooks and open texts, liberate public domain documents onto…
A dizzying number of brands, from Taco Bell to Stouffer’s to Seamless, are attempting to sound less like Fortune 500 companies and more like your 14-year-old nephew, at least on social media. According to data crunched by Brandwatch, there have been nearly 17,000 mentions by brands and consumers of the word “bae” or “fleek” online. Among the culprits…
The two hundred and twenty million dollars in venture capital given to Instacart, a grocery delivery service that deploys human servants to retrieve goods from the shelves of existing grocery stores, seems less like an investment in the validity of its specific idea—which is stupid and unsustainable for reasons so blatant that they are not…
One of the most unlikely harbingers of the computer age was a Christian mystic. After getting his ass kicked by Muslim scholars, he thought up a device that would let him win any argument, answer any question, and convert all people to the one true faith. A Man of Many Names and Many Talents The…
Aram Zucker-Scharff Doing some personal metrics tracking lately using a semi-secret process soon to be blogged about and have uncovered this fun fact: Since January 5th I’ve read >140 articles on the internet. As of this week, I think I’ll be able to track word counts. Sadly, I can confirm that the internet is still…
Neil Young’s “high resolution” PonoPlayer goes on sale for $400 today. You shouldn’t buy it. The recalcitrant rocker isn’t wrong for wanting to reclaim audio quality in the digital age, but in the service of that goal he’s peddling junk science, and supporting expensive gear and music files you don’t need. For the last few…
Only when it doesn’t endanger their ability to make a profit. “Freedom of speech” has perhaps never looked so confused. In the days immediately following a massacre at French comics magazine Charlie Hebdo last week that left at least 12 people dead and 11 injured, multinational tech companies rallied support. Donations have poured into Charlie…
Mark Zuckerberg in 2013. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is dealing with the contradictions of promoting free speech while running the world’s biggest social network, after being called out on the gap between his words and Facebook policy. Zuckerberg, who has been outspoken in his support of Charlie Hebdo and freedom of speech in…