Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Probably the most important fact when it comes to analyzing Unilever’s purchase of Dollar Shave Club is the $1 billion price: in the world of consumer packaged goods (CPG) it is shockingly low. After all, only eleven years ago Procter & Gamble (P&G) bought Gillette, the market leader in shaving, for a staggering $57 billion….
Although live streaming capabilities have been around for more than five years, the ubiquity of the livestream has only really taken flight with the advent of “Facebook Live”. This week at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the largest broadcaster by some measures will be Facebook. There will be a Facebook Live facility where…
I’ve been meaning to write about this all week, but the weirdness of Brogan BamBrogan got in the way. A week or so ago, a judge ordered the release of documents that show beyond all reasonable doubt that Uber hired a CIA-linked private investigation firm to investigate the personal and professional life of Portland attorney Andrew…
An app to locate rentable driveways for parking. An app to locate rentable yachts. An app to help you understand “cause and effect in your life.” An app that guides mindful meditation. An app that imparts wisdom. And a new proposal to create an app designed to stop police killings. We are overloaded daily with…
Photo Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and chief executive of Theranos, has seen her personal wealth fall from $4.5 billion to zero. Credit Brendan McDermid/Reuters United States regulators have banned Elizabeth Holmes, the chief executive of Theranos, from owning or operating a medical laboratory for at least two years, in a major setback for the embattled…
“Just by a quick show of hands, has anyone heard of a D.A.O. or an agent before?” asked Jonathan Mohan. He was in his mid-twenties and wore a beige Bitcoin T-shirt. As if to scratch my head, I halfway raised my right arm. A dozen others raced up past mine. Forty or fifty of us…
It may be difficult to imagine, but just a few decades ago there was a time when citizens felt there wasn’t much to choose from when it came to politics in the US. Almost all politicians were seen to hover somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. In that environment, it did not seem…
Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, wants to radically overhaul public parking and transportation in American cities, emails and documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. Its high-tech services, which it calls “new superpowers to extend access and mobility”, could make it easier to drive and park in cities and create hybrid public/private transit options…
Photo Credit Bianca Bagnarelli ACCORDING to some prominent voices in the tech world, artificial intelligence presents a looming existential threat to humanity: Warnings by luminaries like Elon Musk and Nick Bostrom about “the singularity” — when machines become smarter than humans — have attracted millions of dollars and spawned a multitude of conferences. But this…
The worst thing I read this year, and what it taught me… or Can we design sociotechnical systems that don’t suck I found Shane Snow’s essay on prison reform — “How Soylent and Oculus Could Fix the Prison System” — through hatelinking. Friends of mine hated the piece so much that normally articulate people were at a loss for…