Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In 2013, Andrew Mason was famously fired as CEO of Groupon, a company he cofounded. His second act, Detour, was a startup that created podcast-like audio tours. That involved producing a boatload of spoken-word content. And Mason discovered that working with speech in existing sound-editing programs was a hassle. “Trying to edit waveforms, even once you get…
Tweet threads — also known as “tweetstorms” — will now be easier to create thanks to a new button the company is rolling out. Background: Threads, which Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen helped popularize a few years ago (before he quit Twitter last year), have become the go-to format for expressing longer and more nuanced…
A new study from Ghostery, an anti-tracking tool, shows that an overwhelming majority (79%) of websites globally are tracking visitors’ data — with 10% of these sites actually sending user data to 10 companies or more. Why it matters: Trackers can collect and sell visitor data in ways that aren’t always obvious to consumers. Too many…
Cloudflare’s network powers internet connections to millions of websites, but most of the 2.8 billion people who use its network every month have never heard of the company. That is, until last August, when Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince made the controversial decision to cut off its service to white supremacist website “The Daily Stormer” in…
Storify End-of-Life What changes are being made to Storify.com? Unfortunately, Storify will no longer be available after May 16, 2018. Can I still create a new account? As of December 12, 2017, no new Storify.com accounts can be created. What should customers using Storify.com expect? Existing Storify customers can continue to use all capabilities of…
Illustration: Jim Cooke/GMG For years, Uber systemically scraped data from competing ride-hailing companies all over the world, harvesting information about their technology, drivers, and executives. Uber gathered information from these firms using automated collection systems that ran constantly, amassing millions of records, and sometimes conducted physical surveillance to complement its data collection. Uber’s scraping efforts…
AI-Assisted Fake Porn Is Here and We’re All Fucked Someone used an algorithm to paste the face of ‘Wonder Woman’ star Gal Gadot onto a porn video, and the implications are terrifying. Image: Screenshot from SendVids There’s a video of Gal Gadot having sex with her stepbrother on the internet. But it’s not really Gadot’s body,…
Technology Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models Into This Year’s Holiday Parties “Ambiance and atmosphere models” contractually obligated to pretend they’re party guests are in record demand from local agencies. By December 7, 2017, 12:45 PM EST Photo Illustration by 731; Photos: Getty Images Along with a seemingly endless string of harassment and discrimination scandals, Silicon…
The Post’s Geoffrey A. Fowler tests Amazon Key, a new service that allows packages to be delivered right inside your door by allowing Amazon deliverers to open your door with a digital key. (Jhaan Elker,Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post) I gave Amazon.com a key to go into my house and drop off packages when I’m not…
Essential founder and CEO Andy Rubin has taken a leave of absence from his new company for “personal reasons” following a report on the circumstances of his 2014 departure from Google. According to The Information, Rubin left Google shortly after an investigation found that he had maintained an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman who worked…