Picks

By Andrew Carter

Donald Trump and the Craven Firing of Andrew McCabe
The New Yorker - Jeffrey Toobin
If you wanted to tell the story of an entire Presidency in a single tweet, you could try the one that President Trump posted after Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the deputy director
Stephen Hawking Dies at 76; His Mind Roamed the Cosmos
The New York Times - By DENNIS OVERBYE
Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem
Paul Newman's Rolex — with a telling message from his wife — fetches record $17.8 million
The Washington Post - By Travis M. Andrews
Steve McQueen had his motorcycle. James Dean had his red jacket. And Paul Newman had his Rolex. Fans of Newman began noticing the Rolex Daytona watch wrapped around his wrist in the late 1960s, just as
She’s 26, and Brought Down Uber’s C.E.O. What’s Next?
The New York Times - By MAUREEN DOWD
SAN FRANCISCO — Susan Fowler was, she recalls, “over the moon” in January 2016. At 24, she had just snagged her dream job as a site reliability engineer at Uber, which had recruited her by telling her
How Valuable Is a Unicorn? Maybe Not as Much as It Claims to Be
The New York Times - By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Uber is said to be worth $62.5 billion. Airbnb is valued at $31 billion. Elon Musk’s SpaceX Technologies is valued at $21 billion, and Pinterest at $12.3 billion. Those eye-popping valuations regularly
Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend
The New York Times
We are beginning to understand that tech companies don’t have our best interests at heart. Did they ever?
The Rules of the Gun Debate
The Atlantic - David Frum
The rules for discussing firearms in the United States obscure the obvious solutions. A parable: A village has been built in the deepest gully of a floodplain. At regular intervals, flash floods wipe houses,
The secret to Germany’s happiness and success: Its values are the opposite of Silicon Valley’s
Quartz
If Silicon Valley ever formed a political party, it might look a lot like the current iteration of Germany’s Free Democrats, or FDP. In the 2017 election cycle, the FDP offered a platform that reads like
A Week On The Wrist: The Apple Watch Series 3 Edition
hodinkee.com - Benjamin Clymer
In the fall of 2014, I was one of the very few watch industry insiders to be invited to the launch of the first Apple Watch. The ensuing story (which …
Sean Spicer Is Honored Because — As Bush Officials Have Shown — D.C. Elites Always Thrive
The Intercept - Glenn Greenwald
Sean Spicer’s playful, glamorous appearance at last night’s Emmy Awards and being honored as a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School (the …
John Lanchester: It Zucks!
lrb.co.uk
I am scared of Facebook. The company’s ambition, its ruthlessness, and its lack of a moral compass scare me. It goes back to that moment of its …
A Serf on Google’s Farm
Talking Points Memo - By Josh Marshall
An unintended effect of Google’s heavy-handed attempt to silence Barry Lynn and his Open Markets program at New America has been to shine a really …
Serfing on the Giants’ Farms
daringfireball.net - John Gruber
Josh Marshall has a great post describing in detail the control Google wields over the advertising industry, “A Serf on Google’s Farm”:But here’s …
President Obama, Where Are You?
The New York Times - By CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS
NASHVILLE — President Obama, now is the time to start talking. I appreciate the instinct to hold back, to follow the keep-quiet-about-the-new-guy tradition of former presidents. But these are not traditional
How Jony Ive Masterminded Apple’s New Headquarters
The Wall Street Journal. - Christina Passariello
With Apple Park, the company’s chief designer has once again brought Steve Jobs’s exacting design vision to life ON A SUNNY DAY in May, Jonathan Ive—Jony to anyone who knows him—first encounters a completed
Trickle-down workaholism in startups
signalvnoise.com - DHH
“And then I said anyone not willing to break their backs working for me was a tourist!”If you want to understand why so many startups become infected …
‘The Internet Is Broken’: @ev Is Trying to Salvage It
The New York Times - By DAVID STREITFELD
SAN FRANCISCO — Evan Williams is the guy who opened up Pandora’s box. Until he came along, people had few places to go with their overflowing emotions and wild opinions, other than writing a letter to
Apple’s New Campus: An Exclusive Look Inside the Mothership | WIRED
WIRED - Steven Levy
One More Thing Inside Apple’s Insanely Great (or Just Insane) New Mothership Inside Apple’s Insanely Great (or Just Insane) New Mothership by Steven Levy …
Edward Snowden and Cory Doctorow Talk Sci-Fi and Reality
The New York Times - By ALEXANDRA ALTER
About half an hour into Cory Doctorow’s discussion of his new science-fiction novel, “Walkaway,” at the New York Public Library on Wednesday, the man interviewing him suddenly froze in midsentence. The
At a Besieged White House, Tempers Flare and Confusion Swirls
The New York Times - By GLENN THRUSH and MAGGIE HABERMAN
WASHINGTON — The bad-news stories slammed into the White House in pitiless succession on Tuesday, leaving President Trump’s battle-scarred West Wing aides staring at their flat screens in glassy-eyed The
In Ransomware Attack, Where Does Microsoft’s Responsibility Lie?
The New York Times - By NICK WINGFIELD
SEATTLE — When malicious software first became a serious problem on the internet about 15 years ago, most people agreed that the biggest villain, after the authors of the damaging code, was Microsoft.
Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador
The Washington Post - By Greg Miller and
President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s
Hacking Attack Has Security Experts Scrambling to Contain Fallout
The New York Times - By MARK SCOTT and NICK WINGFIELD
Governments, companies and security experts from China to Britain raced on Saturday to contain the fallout from an audacious global cyberattack amid fears that if they did not succeed, companies would