Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
FRANKFURT — Uber is rapidly expanding its ride-hailing operations across the globe. But here in this city of 690,000 — less than the population of San Francisco, Uber’s hometown — the company recently did something unusual: It retreated. In early November, Uber shut its small office in Frankfurt’s centuries-old city center after just 18 months…
Last night, after nearly 5 hours of discussion and witness testimony, Austin’s City Council pulled the trigger on an amendment to the city’s code that has far-reaching implications for the future of mobility in American cities. Under pressure from those in favor of the ordinance, the Council chose to enact policy without the due diligence that thousands…
Along with the ability to hail a ride from our phones, the app era has pioneered a great cultural shift, a mass willingness to, say, let a stranger spend the night in our homes or meet up with a cute random guy after just a few texts. But our newfound propensity for trusting strangers from…
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., the owner of the most local TV stations in the country, has purchased and next spring will relaunch the defunct mobile news site Circa, the company announced Monday. Sinclair has hired John Solomon, formerly the vice president for content and business development for The Washington Times, to lead the effort as chief…
When James Kennicott, now 86, was young, he loved ice-skating on the river near his home in Waterloo, Iowa. One day, the ice cracked under his feet and he plunged into the water below. He didn’t have hot water at home. So he broke into his school to take a hot shower. “I think that…
A couple months ago, you may have seen a commercial for Apple Music floating around the internet, perhaps accompanied by a praise hands emoji or an all-caps “SLAY.” Unlike previous ads for the streaming service, it eschews the global “everyone listening to the same Pharrell song all the time” vibe and aims for the hyper-relatable: just a…
Sean Rad, the 29-year-old co-founder and CEO of Tinder, wants me to believe he’s a “romantic”, who is “ready to settle down” and have “lots of children”. In fact, the last woman he shared a bedroom with was his mother, Fariba, when he took her to Rome recently — although he nearly fled after seeing all her…
Pandora is the grandaddy of streaming music, with more than 15 years in business and more monthly listeners using it to hear tunes than anyone save for YouTube. But Pandora, a public company, has struggled to turn a profit, and has seen its user growth slow in recent years. Today it announced that it is acquiring “several…
This hasn’t been a good week for Snapchat. News that the startup got a 25% markdown from a big investor dominated the first half of the week. And on Friday, Snapchat released a new version of its app that makes people pay to keep using certain “Lenses,” a special type of photo filter. When users…
he rope swing looked inviting. Photos of it on Airbnb brought my family to the cottage in Texas. Hanging from a tree as casually as baggy jeans, the swing was the essence of leisure, of Southern hospitality, of escape. When my father decided to give it a try on Thanksgiving morning, the trunk it was tied…