The Public Access Weekly: Island in the sun

Hey there fantastic Public Access Weekly readers! This week we celebrated May the 4th Be With You, one of everyone's favorite geek holidays, as well as the holiday that falls on the day after -- Revenge of the 5th. We are also just days away from the very first anniversary of Public Access' launch which we are really excited about. In order to celebrate that holiday, we'll be planning some exclusive assignments, some highlight stories and...maybe some prizes or account upgrades. Anything could happen, and you can stay up-to-date by reading the Public Access Weekly posts every Friday.

Over on the Public Access page, members are just killing it by posting some really exceptional stories. Here is the breakdown on Public Access stats from April:

• 74 total articles went live in April (that's up from 57 in March, and almost double February's total of 39!)

• 39 different Public Access members published posts -- including 20 first-timers! (March's numbers were 27 and 12, respectively)

• The Public Access member with the most posts published in April was a tie between Kevin Nouse and Maheshwor Bhattarai who each had 5 posts.

And the top 10 most read Public Access posts for April (not counting the Public Access Weekly posts) were:

1. Double Play: How sports games reach deeper into gamers' pockets by Richard Starr

2. We're shutting down our comments... See you next week by Amber Bouman

3. DJI Phantom 4 Markets to Novice Users: Is this safe? by Eric Lancheres

4. The Top 5 Favorites List: Movies Based On Video Games by Lovisa Alvin

5. IKEA is my favorite live action game by Kris Naudus

6. Q&A with Ashley Dickinson from Kinda Kind by Amber Bouman

7. Top 7 Search Engines That Can Help When Google Cannot by Amit Sen

8. Cross platform gaming: Are we getting there? by Neal Cotton

9. 5 Things I Wish To See in FIFA 17 by Naman Nepal

10. Capturing the Imagination by Cultivating Trust by Ale Resnik

Here's to you Public Access members! Keep up the good work!

Looking for something to read? Check out:

While seeing my Twitter feed fill up with offers to buy some cosmetic product from What's-Her-Name Jenner never fails to make me roll my eyes, other folks are seeing the opportunity and cashing in big by using Instagram to resell a variety of highly in-demand items which is an interesting turn of events for the social sharing service.

Flattr Plus is a new service from the ever-popular Adblock Plus that aims to help publications monetize their content by allowing readers to donate to the sites they spend the most time reading. It's a little bit like Spotify, but for news sites.

The dek to this story about government officials and tech knowledge says it all: At this point, it's unacceptable to not understand how technology works... Especially if you're creating legislation about technology.

Looking for something to write on? Mull over:

FreshTeam is a messaging app that will tell your boss where your location is (via GPS), what you're doing and even how much battery life your phone has left (because, hey, nothing fosters trust like having someone track your every movement?). As tracking technology advances, what should workplace policies be for mobile or remote employees? Write an employees bill of technology rights to address the roll of personal technology in a workplace. Or, alternatively, write a dystopian fan fiction style story on invasive technology used to police employees.

Over in the Vatican, the 'cool' Pope told a crowd of young people that happiness has no price: "It cannot be bought and sold: It is not an application you download on a mobile phone." To which many of our intrepid commenters countered with "Uh...Porn?" Other responses included 'RAM' and "That Daft Punk album that I downloaded made me pretty happy..." It would seem that our technology -- or at least our downloads -- do bring us happiness. Tell us about a tech item that you downloaded or bought that brought you sincere joy and happiness, and why.

In a Medium post that appeared last week, Uber declared that users of its ride-sharing service were not required to tip drivers: "Nothing has changed. As we've said for many years, being Uber means you don't need to tip." Readers had a lot of opinions about this -- on both sides -- in the comments section with some pointing out that Uber riders often don't carry cash and others mentioning that taxi drivers are traditionally tipped. Because the question of tipping is often a hotly debated topic, weigh in and tell us what the standards should be for tipping for sharing services: Should Uber drivers receive tips? Would you tip an Airbnb host? A TaskRabbit employee? Why or why not?