The Long Sunday Read

Articles and long-form tech-based stories that make you think.

By Ken Yeung

Long-form Journalism
Inside Airbnb’s ‘Guerrilla War’ Against Local Governments
WIRED - Paris Martineau
"Read my lips: We want to pay taxes,” Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s global head of public policy, told the nation’s mayors in 2016. In the years since, the …
Long-form Journalism
Facebook's About-Face
Fortune - Michal Lev-Ram
Mark Zuckerberg wants to talk about how Facebook is changing. It is early February, and the 34-year-old CEO sits on a couch in his glass-walled …
Photos
To build the cities of the future, we must get out of our cars
National Geographic - Robert Kunzig
MagazineThe Cities Issue Remaking healthy urban areas means repairing damage done to communities once blown apart to serve the automobile. 20 Minute Read By Robert Kunzig Photographs by Andrew Moore The
Apple
Inside Garageband, the Little App Ruling the Sound of Modern Music
Rolling Stone - Amy X. Wang
Patrick Stump was livid. On a lurching tour bus rigged with a wobbly Jenga tower of recording equipment, the singer and Fall Out Boy frontman had …
Long-form Journalism
How the tragic death of Do Not Track ruined the web for everyone
Fast Company - Glenn Fleishman
A decade ago, a simple browser setting promised to make it easy to protect your online privacy from nosy advertisers. Too bad it never came anywhere near to living up to its promise. A decade ago–long
Long-form Journalism
Facebook’s Crisis Management Algorithm Runs on Outrage
Bloomberg - By Sarah Frier
One year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mark Zuckerberg says the company really cares. Then why is there an endless cycle of fury and apology? …
Long-form Journalism
DeepMind and Google: the battle to control artificial intelligence
1843 Magazine - Hal Hodson
Demis Hassabis founded a company to build the world’s most powerful AI. Then Google bought him out. Hal Hodson asks who is in charge One afternoon in …
Long-form Journalism
When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower
Bloomberg
By the larger-than-life standards of Elon Musk, the story was far from a blockbuster. On June 4, 2018, Business Insider reported that Tesla Inc. was …
Long-form Journalism
The World Wide Web turns 30: our favorite memories from A to Z
The Verge - Verge Staff
On this day 30 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal with the dreary title “Information Management” to his superior at the European physics laboratory CERN. It began by asking how future scientists
Long-form Journalism
How YouTube Made a Star Out of This Super-Smart Film Critic
WIRED - Brian Raftery
Lindsay Ellis is just about ready to start shooting a video in her personal studio—aka a tiny second-floor room in Ellis’ western Los Angeles …
Long-form Journalism
The Sharing Economy Was Always a Scam
medium.com
‘Sharing’ was supposed to save us. Instead, it became a Trojan horse for a precarious economic future. Susie CagleBlockedUnblockFollowFollowing Mar …
Long-form Journalism
Here are the data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information
Fast Company - Alex Pasternack
You’ve probably never heard of many of the data firms registered under a new law, but they’ve heard a lot about you. A list, and tips for opting out. It’s no secret that your personal data is routinely
Technology
How Disney Built Star Wars, in real life
TechCrunch - Matthew Panzarino
From the moment that Disney announced its acquisition of Lucasfilm, the question on every fan’s mind was “when will they build Star Wars in real life?” While most assumed that they would do it eventually,
Technology
How Cloudflare straddles its role as privacy champion and hate speech enabler
Fast Company - Sean Captain
The biggest tech company you’ve never heard of is praised for its privacy and security initiatives, but condemned for serving hate and terror groups. When it comes to the debate over online content, Facebook,
Technology
The House That ‘Design Home’ (and Millennial Anxiety) Built
theringer.com - Alyssa Bereznak
A wildly popular mobile game allows users to decorate virtual spaces with real-life (and easily purchasable) furniture. It’s the future of …
Technology
The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America
The Verge - Casey Newton
Content warning: This story contains discussion of serious mental health issues and racism. The panic attacks started after Chloe watched a man die. She spent the past three and a half weeks in training,
Long-form Journalism
The Forgotten Legend of Silicon Valley’s Flying Saucer Man
Bloomberg - Ashlee Vance
An idyllic ease permeates California’s Carmel Valley. Wealthy people have built ranch-style houses into the mountains, giving them views of the …
Long-form Journalism
Google’s Hope and Dreams In India
Fortune - Vivienne Walt
It is already dark in the New Delhi suburb of Noida on a night in December when I arrive at the home of one of the biggest YouTube stars in all of …
Business
Inside the Rise and Fall of a Multimillion-Dollar Airbnb Scheme
The New York Times - By LUIS FERRÉ-SADURNÍ
[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] From the outside, there was nothing especially notable about the small white building on the corner of a cobblestone street TriBeCa.
Apps
How Apple’s enterprise app program became the new Wild West of mobile apps
The Verge - Nick Statt
Apple dug a tunnel beneath the App Store, and the rats are getting through Apple’s iOS platform has a seedy underbelly that, for years, has been lurking largely unseen, letting both app makers and iPhone
The Hatebook: Inside Facebook’s thriving subculture of racism
Daily Dot - Claire Goforth
This article contains examples of racist memes. In August 2017, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted in deadly violence, …
Long-form Journalism
The Tech Whiz Behind Vine and HQ Trivia Made Millions in His 20s. He Was Dead by 34 - WSJ
The Wall Street Journal. - Shalini Ramachandran, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Yoree Koh
Colin Kroll, a college dropout turned startup millionaire, drifted through his company’s holiday party at Gran Morsi, a cozy Italian restaurant in downtown Manhattan. Dressed in a gray sweater and jeans,
Long-form Journalism
What Happens When Techno-Utopians Actually Run a Country
WIRED - Darren Loucaides
On the night of Italy’s 2013 parliamentary elections, Paola Nugnes decided to stay late at her office and catch up on work. She skipped the rolling …
Long-form Journalism
The dodgy, vulnerable fame of YouTube's child ASMR stars
Wired UK - Amelia Tait
On June 3 2018, Makenna Kelly, a 13-year old from Fort Collins, Colorado, uploaded the video that propelled her to internet stardom. Entitled “Eating …
Long-form Journalism
Zillow Wants to Flip Your House
Bloomberg
With its tan stucco exterior and red tile roof, the Rittenhouse home on South Star Canyon Drive looks a lot like the other houses in Power Ranch, a …
Long-form Journalism
This is Microsoft’s AI pipeline, from research to reality
Fast Company - By Harry McCracken
It’s not enough to have brilliant researchers and a bunch of popular products. You’ve got to have a system–or several systems–for melding raw technology into experiences that make a difference for businesses
Long-form Journalism
How Facebook Screwed Us All
motherjones.com - Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery
This essay is the cover story for our March/April issue. (Subscribe here!) Portions of it appeared earlier here and here. A country riven by ethnic …
Long-form Journalism
AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld
WIRED - Kevin Kelly
Every December, Adam Savage—star of the TV show MythBusters—releases a video reviewing his “favorite things” from the previous year. In 2018, one of …
Rage Drove the Google Walkout. Can It Bring About Real Change at Tech Companies?
New York Magazine - Alex Morris
Thursday, October 25 This revolution started, like so many others, with a lot of moral outrage and a little bit of wine. On Thursday, October 25, …