Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
You’re in a rush. Weaving through the maze of slowpokes on the sidewalk, you’re bypassing everyone—sluggish seniors, torpid tourists, short-legged schoolchildren—launching over them like an Olympic hurdler. Today, there are no pedestrians. There are only obstacles to be overcome. And—look at you, Speedy Gonzalez—you arrive just in time. You’re no Urban Olympian, however. You were…
Federal lawmakers eased decades-old U.S. securities regulations in 2012 in the name of eliminating red tape for young startups. But now another breed of business is angling to take advantage of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act: publicly traded companies, some of which have been in business for many years. Salon Media Group Inc., a 19-year-old…
BuzzFeed isn’t just for listicles anymore, and whoever says otherwise is regurgitating outdated folk wisdom. Or, at least, that’s the prevailing meme ping-ponging around media circles (read: people I follow on Twitter). It’s true, BuzzFeed has changed. The company has displayed the kind of hockey-stick growth that tempted investors to cut checks for $50 million…
I just finished reading “More Awesome Than Money” by Jim Dwyer about the rise and “fall” of Diaspora as a viable alternative to Facebook. I’ve often thought of Diaspora* as something that “came and went”; much of the story had passed when I heard about it, but while the project started in 2010, the story…
This weekend, a man wearing a skull mask posted a video on YouTube outlining his plans to murder me. I know his real name. I documented it and sent it to law enforcement, praying something is finally done. I have received these death threats and 43 others in the last five months. This experience is the basis of a Law & Order episode…
Women using Uber just can’t catch a break—even if they’re behind the wheel. An unsettling new BuzzFeed report discovered that some predatory Uber riders are abusing the company’s lost-and-found system to track down and harass female drivers after their rides have ended. As BuzzFeed reports, the Twilio contact numbers generated by Uber’s lost-and-found system are supposed to expire shortly after a ride,…
This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com By Nolan Feeney, TIME Scribd, an e-book and audiobook subscription service that has been likened to a “Netflix NFLX for books,” is now expanding to comic books. Subscribers will have access to more than 10,000 comic books, in addition to…
For the past eight years, TechCrunch has hosted a bizarro tech world version of the Oscars called the Crunchies. The industry gets all dolled up, walks the “green carpet,” and watches Silicon Valley insiders present trophies for categories like “Best On-Demand Service” and “Best Overall Startup.” At the eighth annual Crunchies last Thursday, the best startup…
If you have been a regular reader of mine, you are probably familiar with several things about me: First, you know I have been a steadfast bull during the entire rise in the stock market. It isn’t that I am such a genius or especially lucky. I just would rather not guess when the bull…
Tom Wheeler was feeling the heat. It was August and the head of the Federal Communications Commission was sitting on the deck of his family’s vacation home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Sweat dripped onto the paperwork before him. For months, the tall, bespectacled Wheeler had been consumed by an arcane but important debate over how…