Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Catch The Sun Amid recent (depressing) revelations that some cheap calculators have fake solar cells on them, a short history of real solar cells on calculators. Recently, a video has been making the rounds online that highlights a stunning fact: We so expect cheap calculators to have solar charging capabilities that manufacturers will go to…
On Tuesday, Bloomberg doubled down on its bombshell report from last week, which alleged China had surreptitiously implanted tiny chips into the motherboards of servers to spy on US companies such as Apple and Amazon. If true, this would be one of the worst hacks in history. In its new story, Bloomberg reports that a…
John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, told a group of top editors a week ago that their news organization no longer had to groom young, raw talent. It could go after the best journalists around. As an example of its capabilities in high-impact reporting, Micklethwait cited an Oct. 4 piece under the…
When more than 500 white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the alt-right marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, they weren’t just showcasing their startling numbers and their hateful creeds but also their organizational capacity. There were guest speakers, rideshares, demonstration permits, and houses and hotels rented out—everything you’d expect from a group staging a large protest. But…
Samaira Mehta is a 10-year-old girl growing up in Silicon Valley who has quietly attracted an almost cult-like following because of her work as a programmer. She’s the founder and CEO of a company called CoderBunnyz that’s earned national media recognition and landed her speaker roles at nearly a dozen Valley conferences (and counting). It all started when she…
react-text: 220 /react-text Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg. Onstage at last week’s New Establishment Summit, C.E.O. Dara Khosrowshahi, who has been tasked with taking Uber public, made a point of highlighting the company’s meal-delivery service as one of the most promising components of Uber’s ride-hailing business. Indeed, when Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs valued the company at up…
Brand collaborations are hot, and Facebook wants to do some matchmaking of its own. Facebook is testing a new ad format that features multiple advertisers in one unit, bundling dynamic ad campaigns from two different companies in a side-by-side version of Facebook’s Collections ads. Cameron Mills, who works in growth at e-commerce company Brandless, flagged the…
If it seems as though the app you deleted last week is suddenly popping up everywhere, it may not be mere coincidence. Companies that cater to app makers have found ways to game both iOS and Android, enabling them to figure out which users have uninstalled a given piece of software lately—and making it easy…
Pieter Hanson was in the middle of a marketing exam when his phone started blowing up, buzzing and buzzing until he was convinced something terrible had happened. Too anxious to focus, he whizzed through the rest of his test, handed it in to his University of Central Florida professor and bolted into the hallway to…
Jihadi rapists. Muslim invaders. Faked mass shootings. Pizzagate. Somebody browsing highly partisan websites in recent weeks could have seen articles about all of these subjects — and on the same pages seen cheerful green ads for the Girl Scouts, bearing the slogan “Helping Girls Change the World!” Such juxtapositions, documented by a Washington Post review…