This Is How Sexism Works in Silicon Valley
Ellen Pao recounts her own lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Ellen Pao recounts her own lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
A critique of Facebook.
John Lanchester London Review of Books Aug 2017 35min Permalink
“These documents show how Palantir applies Silicon Valley’s playbook to domestic law enforcement. New users are welcomed with discounted hardware and federal grants, sharing their own data in return for access to others’. When enough jurisdictions join Palantir’s interconnected web of police departments, government agencies, and databases, the resulting data trove resembles a pay-to-access social network—a Facebook of crime that’s both invisible and largely unaccountable to the citizens whose behavior it tracks.”
Mark Harris Wired Aug 2017 20min Permalink
As a father succumbs to lung cancer, his son tries to recreate his personality in the form of a chatbot.
James Vlahos Wired Jul 2017 30min Permalink
Satoshi Nakamoto was the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Facing bankruptcy and jail, Craig Wright fled Australia knowing that he would soon be outed as Satoshi by multiple publications. Backed by a business group that hoped to sell his patents, Wright was due to show the proof that he possessed the original keys for Bitcoin, but did he?
Andrew O'Hagan London Review of Books Jun 2016 2h20min Permalink
He hacked a hospital to protest their treatment of a sick child. Now he’s facing 15 years.
David Kushner Rolling Stone Jun 2017 25min Permalink
How a Russian-born Canadian 23-year-old invented Ethereum, the first cryptocurrency to seriously challenge Bitcoin.
Claire Brownell The Financial Post Jun 2017 Permalink
The life and death of Srinivas Kuchibhotla.
Lauren Smiley Wired Jun 2017 25min Permalink
How the best tennis player of all time fell in love with the guy who founded Reddit.
Buzz Bissinger Vanity Fair Jun 2017 20min Permalink
One of the most valuable cars in the world crashes going 200 mph on the Pacific Coast Highway. Its owner claims to be an anti-terrorism officer. In fact, he’s a former executive at a failed software company—and a career criminal. The unraveling of an epic con.
Randall Sullivan Wired Oct 2006 25min Permalink
A profile of Travis Kalanick, who resigned from the ride the ride-hailing company he built after leading it to the brink of implosion.
Mike Isaac New York Times Apr 2017 15min Permalink
The rise and fall of Suck.com, the web’s first daily-updated site.
Matt Sharkey Keep Going Jun 2005 1h Permalink
A talk from the re:publica conference in Berlin:
The good part about naming a talk in 2017 ‘Notes from an Emergency’ is that there are so many directions to take it. The emergency I want to talk about is the rise of a vigorous ethnic nationalism in Europe and America. This nationalism makes skillful use of online tools, tools that we believed inherently promoted freedom, to advance an authoritarian agenda.
Maciej Ceglowski Idle Words May 2017 20min Permalink
“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”
James Somers The Atlantic Apr 2017 25min Permalink
Harmony smiles, blinks and frowns. She can hold a conversation, tell jokes and quote Shakespeare. She’ll remember your birthday, McMullen told me, what you like to eat, and the names of your brothers and sisters. She can hold a conversation about music, movies and books. And of course, Harmony will have sex with you whenever you want.
Jenny Kleeman The Guardian Apr 2017 25min Permalink
How life on four wheels became a brand.
Rachel Monroe New Yorker Apr 2017 20min Permalink
Making sense of the CEO’s very public tour of America, which feels like a political campaign minus the politics.
Nitasha Tiku Buzzfeed Apr 2017 20min Permalink
Investigating the world of “belly torture.”
Laura Yan The Outline Mar 2017 Permalink
Computer scientist tycoon Robert Mercer is at the heart of a shockingly well-funded propaganda network.
Carole Cadwalladr The Guardian Feb 2017 20min Permalink
A team of researchers has a controversial plan to root fake data out of science.
Stephen Buranyi The Guardian Feb 2017 20min Permalink
It was a genius piece of technology. But that didn’t mean it was a business.
Jessi Hempel Backchannel Jan 2017 15min Permalink
A trip to Râmnicu Vâlcea, a town of 120,000 where the primary (and lucrative) industry is Internet scams.
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee Wired Feb 2011 10min Permalink
On the story we tell ourselves about artificial intelligence.
Maciej Ceglowski Idle Words Oct 2016 30min Permalink
How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus New York Times Magazine Dec 2016 1h Permalink
The psychology of trolling.
Richard Seymour London Review of Books Dec 2016 15min Permalink