This piece, from Ed Zitron, is one of the best things I've read in a while. It puts into words what I've been feeling about tech recently better than I ever could. He's angry, but rightly so.
The people running the majority of internet services have used a combination of monopolies and a cartel-like commitment to growth-at-all-costs thinking to make war with the user, turning the customer into something between a lab rat and an unpaid intern, with the goal to juice as much value from the interaction as possible. To be clear, tech has always had an avaricious streak, and it would be naive to suggest otherwise, but this moment feels different. I’m stunned by the extremes tech companies are going to extract value from customers, but also by the insidious way they’ve gradually degraded their products.
A former Boston Globe reporter on his now homeless life. A tense and depressing read.
This is quite a story. I'm not surprised Hollywood wants to turn it into a film. Fugees founder Pras Michel faces up to 20 years in prison after being convicted of conducting an illegal foreign influence campaign with Malaysian financier Jho Low.
This is a fantastic idea: integrating tactile maps on pedestrian crossing buttons to help sight-impaired people get a lay of the land. These exact signal boxes are used here, but I don't think I've ever seen the map module on them. That's a shame.
A great little documentary about the history of breakdancing. It's in multiple parts, check out the channel for the full playlist.
A perfect summary of the current state of the internet and technology in general.
The first page of Google results are links to pages that have scraped other pages for information from other pages that have been scraped for information. All the sources seem to link back to one another. There is no origin. The photos on the page look weird. The hands are disfigured. There is no image credit.
