Weekend Longreads 2018

Longread Links from The Ride Home Podcast

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Friday, December 28 2018

• The Devchat.tv podcasts
• The GPS wars have begun (TechCrunch)
• Amazon gets into health insurance — and more 2019 health-tech predictions from top experts (CNBC)
• The biggest technology failures of 2018 (MIT Technology Review)
• Why Your Next Home Might Not Need Any Energy at All (WSJ)
• THE ‘FUTURE BOOK’ IS HERE, BUT IT’S NOT WHAT WE EXPECTED (Wired)
• Bird Box Is the First Great Monster Movie About This Poisonous Invention (PaleoFuture)

Friday, December 21 2018

• Software Defined Talk (Podcast)
• Apple Computers Used to Be Built in the U.S. It Was a Mess (NYTimes)
• Inside Shenzhen’s race to outdo Silicon Valley (Bloomberg)
• The 2019 IPO class headlined by Uber will create a ton of new wealth. Will the billions go to mansions or missions? (Recode)
• Venture Capital Blind Spots: The Top 7 Reasons Why VCs Miss Billion-Dollar Outcomes (645 Ventures)
• Prime and Punishment (The Verge)
• 7 Modern BBSes Worth Calling Today (PCMag)

Friday, December 14 2018

• EV News Daily (Podcast)
• Evelyn Berezin, 93, Dies; Built the First True Word Processor (NYTimes)
• The State of Technology at the End of 2018 (Stratechery)
• The rise of the recommendation site (Vox)
• How the CIA Trains Spies to Hide in Plain Sight (Wired)

Friday, December 07 2018

• The Comics Canon (Podcast)
• Land of the “Super Founders“— A Data-Driven Approach to Uncover the Secrets of Billion Dollar Startups (Ali Tamaseb)
• YOUTUBE CREATORS BLINDSIDED BY MAJOR NETWORK’S COLLAPSE (The Verge)
• A 7-year-old boy is making $22 million a year on YouTube reviewing toys (MSN)
• Almost Every Electric Scooter in the World Comes From This Chinese Company (Bloomberg)
• Cryptopia In Crisis: Joe Lubin’s Ethereum Experiment Is A Mess. How Long Will He Prop It Up? (Forbes)
• How Robotics Maker Rethink Crashed and Burned (The Information)
• The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps are trying to reinvent our workday (GeekWire)

Friday, November 30 2018

• Python Bytes (Python Bytes)
• Microsoft Is Worth as Much as Apple. How Did That Happen? (NYTimes)
• How China’s Bytedance became the world’s most valuable startup (The Verge)
• China’s Video Craze Drives Growth for ByteDance (The Information)
• How Amazon Web Services Reinvented the Internet and Became a Cash Cow (NYMag)
• The legacy of PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi, in 24 stories (Polygon)
• This Is the Way the Paper Crumples (NYTimes)

Tuesday, November 20 2018

• How The Wall Street Journal is preparing its journalists to detect deepfakes (NiemanLab)
• Self-driving trucks in US offer window into where machines may replace humans (Christian Science Monitor)
• When Elon Musk Tunnels Under Your Home (The Atlantic)
• The Case Against Quantum Computing (IEEE Spectrum)
• HOW GOOGLE AND AMAZON GOT AWAY WITH NOT BEING REGULATED (Wired)
• How to Use an iPod Touch as a Secure Device Instead of a Phone (Motherboard)
• Scientists say goodbye to physical definition of the kilogram (The Verge)

Friday, November 16 2018

• THE GENIUS NEUROSCIENTIST WHO MIGHT HOLD THE KEY TO TRUE AI (Wired)
• Are Killer Robots the Future of War? Parsing the Facts on Autonomous Weapons (NYTimes Magazine)
• The Internet Has a Huge C/C++ Problem and Developers Don’t Want to Deal With It (Motherboard)
• How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit (First Round Review)
• THE HAIL MARY PLAN TO RESTART A HACKED US ELECTRIC GRID (Wired)
• Space Camp grows up (Mashable)

Friday, November 09 2018

• Why Technology Favors Tyranny (The Atlantic)
• Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love With Their Principal Doomsayer (NYTimes)
• HQ Trivia was a blockbuster hit — but internal turmoil and a shrinking audience have pushed its company to the brink (ReCode)
• ‘It’s Giant and Has Like Five Million Buttons.’ The Office Desk Phone Won’t Die (WSJ)
• Why Doctors Hate Their Computers (The New Yorker)
• Here Comes ‘Smart Dust,’ the Tiny Computers That Pull Power from the Air (WSJ)
• ASTRONOMERS SEE MATERIAL ORBITING A BLACK HOLE RIGHT AT THE EDGE OF FOREVER (SyFy Wire)

Friday, November 02 2018

• The Facebook Dilemma, Part 1 (Frontline on YouTube)
• A Cryptocurrency Millionaire Wants to Build a Utopia in Nevada (NYTimes)
• The Man Behind the Scooter Revolution (CityLab)
• A Fork in the Road for Avis (Fortune)
• The Encyclopedia of the Missing (Longreads)

Friday, October 26 2018

• Inside Rockstar Games’ Culture Of Crunch (Kotaku)
• At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks (WSJ)
• Podcast on Netflix Culture (Planet Money Podcast)
• It Might Get Loud: Inside Silicon Valley’s Battle to Own Voice Tech (Fortune)
• How Dara Khosrowshahi’s Iranian heritage shapes how he leads Uber (Fast Company)
• AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF SILICON VALLEY DISRUPTION (Wired)

Friday, October 19 2018

• Craig Newmark, Newspaper Villain, Is Working to Save Journalism (NYTimes)
• How the West Was Digitized: The Making of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulture)
• Drone Journalism’s Battle for Airspace (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Mother Earth Mother Board (Wired)
• The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust (The New Yorker)

Friday, October 12 2018

• This Is How Amazon Loses (NewCo Shift)
• The Pentagon’s Push to Program Soldiers’ Brains (The Atlantic)
• Alexa, Should We Trust You? (The Atlantic)
• Fear and loathing in venture capital (Max Niederhofer)
• The First Rule of Microsoft Excel—Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It (WSJ)

Friday, October 05 2018

• The iPhone XS & XS Max Review: Unveiling the Silicon Secrets (AnAndTech)
• Sex Workers Pioneered the Early Internet—and It Screwed Them Over (Motherboard)
• Raised by YouTube (The Atlantic)
• Old Unicorn, New Tricks: Airbnb Has A Sky-High Valuation. Here’s Its Audacious Plan To Earn It (Forbes)
• EA announces ‘FIFA 19’ PS4 esports tournament (Engadget)

Friday, September 28 2018

• How Uber is getting flying cars off the ground (CNET)
• Coinbase Wants To Be Too Big To Fail (Fortune)
• The Apple Watch – Tipping Point Time for Healthcare (Steve Blank)
• Meet the Community Keeping Obsolete Supercomputers Alive (Motherboard)
• The first Android phone 10 years later: An annotated review (CNET)
• Hacker says he’ll livestream deletion of Zuckerberg’s Facebook page (Engadget)

Friday, September 21 2018

• Inside Facebook’s Election ‘War Room’ (NYTimes)
• Bitcoin Miners Flock to New York’s Remote Corners, but Get Chilly Reception (NYTimes)
• Living The Stream (ESPN The Magazine)
• A brief history of the numeric keypad (UX Collective)
• Inside the Dramatic, Painful–and Hugely Successful–Return of Reddit’s Founders (Inc)

Friday, September 14 2018

• Android 9 Pie, thoroughly reviewed (Ars Technica)
• Why a Leading Venture Capitalist Is Betting on a Decentralized Internet (Breaker)
• Olaf Carlson-Wee Rode the Bitcoin Boom to Silicon Valley Riches. Can He Survive the Crash? (WSJ)
• Memo to the Silicon Valley boys’ club: Arlan Hamilton has no time for your BS (Fast Company)
• Driverless Hype Collides With Merciless Reality (WSJ)

Friday, September 07 2018

• Inside the World of Eddy Cue, Apple’s Services Chief (The Information)
• Bezos Unbound: Exclusive Interview With The Amazon Founder On What He Plans To Conquer Next (Forbes)
• The Super Rich of Silicon Valley Have a Doomsday Escape Plan (Bloomberg)
• What went wrong at Social Capital (Axios)
• How Android Pie’s Adaptive Battery and Adaptive Brightness work (Venture Beat)
• The man who won the lottery 14 times (The Hustle)

Friday, August 31 2018

• Franken-algorithms: the deadly consequences of unpredictable code (The Guardian)
• Logged off: meet the teens who refuse to use social media (The Guardian)
• How Big Tech Swallowed Seattle (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages (The New Yorker)

Friday, August 24 2018

• Late to the Driverless Revolution (WSJ)
• Posting Instagram Sponsored Content Is the New Summer Job (The Atlantic)
• THE UNTOLD STORY OF NOTPETYA, THE MOST DEVASTATING CYBERATTACK IN HISTORY (Wired)
• The Vanishing Idealism of Burning Man (The New Republic)
• Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism (The Atlantic)
• A monstrous primer on the works of H.P. Lovecraft (Polygon)

Friday, August 17 2018

• VIRGIN GALACTIC’S ROCKET MAN (The New Yorker)
• Inside Evernote’s brain (Fast Company)
• LET’S ALL GO BACK TO TUMBLR (The Outline)
• Why Can’t Europe Do Tech? (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• To Get Ready for Robot Driving, Some Want to Reprogram Pedestrians (Bloomberg)

Friday, August 10 2018

• Fintech Frenzy: Hype or Reality? A Closer Look at 6 Key Sectors (Fortune)
• HOW THE SHARED FAMILY COMPUTER PROTECTED US FROM OUR WORST SELVES (The Verge)
• “The Lean Startup” is an unproductive legend (Quartz)
• THE STRANGE DAVID AND GOLIATH SAGA OF RADIO FREQUENCIES (Wired)
• THE ULTRA-PURE, SUPER-SECRET SAND THAT MAKES YOUR PHONE POSSIBLE (Wired)

Friday, August 03 2018

• How Robot Hands Are Evolving to Do What Ours Can (NYTimes)
• Why the Next Silicon Valley Will Probably Be Outside the U.S. (Citylab)
• Masayoshi Son’s secret to running his $100 billion fund: Telling start-ups to treat each other like family (CNBC)
• What Happened to General Magic? (NYMag)
• Growing Up Jobs (Vanity Fair)

Friday, July 27 2018

• Brock Pierce: The Hippie King of Cryptocurrency (Rolling Stone)
• How Silicon Valley Has Disrupted Philanthropy (The Atlantic)
• THE ‘GUERRILLA’ WIKIPEDIA EDITORS WHO COMBAT CONSPIRACY THEORIES (Wired)
• Inside Google’s Shadow Workforce (Bloomberg)
• MySpace and the Coding Legacy it Left Behind (Code Academy)

Friday, July 13 2018

• Hell for Elon Musk Is a Midsize Sedan (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• How Twitter Became Home to the Teen Status Update (The Atlantic)
• Why Some of Instagram’s Biggest Memers Are Locking Their Accounts (The Atlantic)
• GEORGE HOTZ IS ON A HACKER CRUSADE AGAINST THE ‘SCAM’ OF SELF-DRIVING CARS (The Verge)
• THE ONLY GOOD ONLINE FANDOM LEFT IS DUNE (The Outline)
• Netflix Isn’t Being Reckless, It’s Just Playing a Game No One Else Dares (Netflix Misunderstandings, Pt. 3) (Matthew Ball)

Friday, July 06 2018

• Xiaomi founder Lei Jun’s tech empire goes way beyond smartphones (Quartz)
• SELF-DRIVING CARS ARE HEADED TOWARD AN AI ROADBLOCK (The Verge)
• How to Make Piles of Money Using Instagram (Bloomberg)
• Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer (The New Yorker)

Friday, June 29 2018

• I Delivered Packages for Amazon and It Was a Nightmare (The Atlantic)
• HOW THE STARTUP MENTALITY FAILED KIDS IN SAN FRANCISCO (Wired)
• Despite Caution Over Cryptocurrency, Investors Are Bullish (NYTimes)
• The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet (Bloomberg)

Friday, June 22 2018

• How Twitter Made The Tech World’s Most Unlikely Comeback (BuzzFeed)
• The Legend of Nintendo (Bloomberg)
• Intel now faces a fight for its future (The Verge)
• INSIDE THE CRYPTO WORLD’S BIGGEST SCANDAL (Wired)

Friday, June 15 2018

• The Time Canada Wanted Its Own Internet Because It Thought the US Would Mess It Up (Motherboard)
• Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy (The Atlantic)
• HOW THE TRENDIEST GRILLED-CHEESE VENTURE GOT BURNT (Wired)
• THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE RACY MODULE THAT ALMOST RUINED D&D (Wired)

Friday, June 08 2018

• ‘I can understand about 50 percent of the things you say’: How Congress is struggling to get smart on tech (Washington Post)
• The Twitter crime mystery that gripped Spain (BBC)
• Meet the people who still use Myspace: ‘It’s given me so much joy’ (The Guardian)
• Exploring The Digital Ruins Of ‘Second Life’ (Digg)
• Why Aren’t We All Buying Houses on the Internet? (Slate)

Friday, June 01 2018

• Obama’s US Digital Service Survives Trump—Quietly (Wired)
• he Search for Women Who Want Cybersecurity Careers (WSJ)
• How Futures Trading Changed Bitcoin Prices (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
• The Growing Emptiness of the “Star Wars” Universe (The New Yorker)

Friday, May 18 2018

• Death in the alpine (High Country News)
• How Evan Spiegel Fumbled Snap’s Redesign (The Information)
• Apple and Its Rivals Bet Their Futures on These Men’s Dreams (Bloomberg)
• I Tried to Get an AI to Write This Story (Bloomberg)

Friday, May 11 2018

• Don’t Skype Me: How Microsoft Turned Consumers Against a Beloved Brand (Bloomberg)
• How to Make Your Open Office Less Annoying (The Atlantic)
• The 15 People Who Keep Wikipedia’s Editors From Killing Each Other (WSJ)
• The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10 Billion of Bitcoin in Bunkers (Bloomberg)
• Supercomputers are driving a revolution in hurricane forecasting (Ars Technica)

Friday, May 04 2018

• ‘Hi, It’s Amazon Calling. Here’s What We Don’t Like in Your City.’ (WSJ)
• Over 400 Startups Are Trying to Become the Next Warby Parker. Inside the Wild Race to Overthrow Every Consumer Category (Inc)
• All We Want to Do Is Watch Each Other Play Video Games (NYTimes)
• CoinTalk (podcast)

Friday, April 27 2018

• Inside Jeff Bezos’s DC Life (Washingtonian)
• Hulu Beyond ‘Handmaid’s Tale’: Execs and Stars on a Promising Yet Uncertain Future (The Hollywood Reporter)
• Can Silicon Valley Get You Pregnant? (Fast Company)
• You could be flirting on dating apps with paid impersonators (Quartz)

Friday, April 06 2018

• Lawyer bots take the hassle out of fighting parking tickets and property taxes — and could cost local governments real revenue (Recode)
• How Europe’s new privacy rule is reshaping the internet (The Verge)
• Checking in with the Facebook fact-checking partnership (Columbia Journalism Review)
• A 200-Year-Old Idea Offers A New Way to Trace Stolen Bitcoins (Wired)
• South Korean millennials are reeling from the Bitcoin bust (The Verge)