Recommended Reading: Healthcare.gov, Edward Snowden and Square's struggles
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
The Billion Dollar Web Site You Paid For
by Larry Seltzer, ZDNet
By now, you've likely heard details surrounding the botched rollout of Healtchcare.gov meant to expedite the process of US citizens signing up for the Affordable Care Act. Well, the government has sunk a billion dollars into the site so far, and a recent Government Accountability Office report took an in-depth look to see exactly what went wrong. Of course, the project was slated to wrap up on launch day last October, but is now said to be in development until the end of the year.
Back to Square One Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey took the payments space by storm when Square launched back in 2010 with a reader capable of accepting credit or debit card payments on a phone or tablet. Despite reaching a $5 billion valuation this year, the company lost $100 million in the last 12 months, showing that processing those mobile payments didn't generate loads of income and forcing the CEO to rethink strategy. | The Internet's Original Sin Ah, web ads. They can be quite the nuisance, especially in pop-up form. In fact, the folks responsible for that revolutionary bit of internet advertising are offering an apology for creating the headache. But as frustrating as they may be, ads keep a lot of sites going. The Atlantic's Ethan Zuckerman dives into how we may be able to change up the narrative, and in turn, tidy up the web. |
The Most Wanted Man in the World You might've heard something about Edward Snowden at this point. The man responsible for blowing the lid off of the NSA's surveillance programs has been eluding the US government for months, and Wired had an in-depth profile and interview of the former contractor turned whistleblower who's holed up in Russia. | Corporate America Hasn't Been Disrupted You might think that the rise of startup culture has put pressure on larger companies to keep things fresh in order to maintain their market share. Well, as noted stats outfit FiveThirtyEight found out, that's far from the case and firmly rooted businesses have yet to be "disrupted." |
[Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images]
