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Recommended Reading: Jawbone on the rise and the indie gaming bubble
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Jawbone Is Now the Startup Apple Should Fear Most (978 words) by Marcus Wohlson, Wired Pocket!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement("script");j.id=i;j.src="https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1";var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,"pocket-btn-js"); In case you hadn't heard, there are reports that Jawbone is securing a massive round of funding that would fuel the company's IPO. The Bluetooth gadget outfit has given us a range of wireless speakers and it's line of Up fitness trackers, but more capital could mean new product categories -- things like smart clothes and improved wrist gadgets. As Wired's Marcus Wohlson notes, those new categories are "a move Apple has struggled to make in recent years." And of course, there's always the chance Google could nab Jawbone up before Cupertino has a chance to.
Recommended Reading: The Internet of (insecure) Things and the fight for wearable disruption
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. The Internet of Things Is Wildly Insecure - And Often Unpatchable (1,218 words) by Bruce Schneier, Wired Pocket!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement("script");j.id=i;j.src="https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1";var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,"pocket-btn-js"); The race for the connected home has been on for sometime now, and with each passing month, it seems a new arsenal of gadgets pops up. Recently, issues surrounding the security of those internet-enabled devices have come to light -- including the ability to hack those units to shoot out a crop of spam emails. As Bruce Schneier writes, locking down that new washer or smart fridge is a lot easier said than done thanks to the lack of patching options for the exploited vulnerabilities. As you might expect, Schneier begins to lay out a worst-case scenario that he says is inevitable unless we force "embedded system vendors to design their systems better."
Recommended Reading: Spike Jonze predicts the future of UI, confronting tragedy through video games and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority Report (2,194 words) by Kyle Vanhemert, Wired Pocket!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement("script");j.id=i;j.src="https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1";var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,"pocket-btn-js"); For the better part of the last decade, Minority Report has been the go-to reference for futuristic UI design. But, lets be serious, nobody is clamoring for more gadgets to control by waving their hands like a lunatic. More likely, the future will see technology seamlessly integrated into our lives, the way it is in Spike Jonze's latest film, Her. In this "slight future" everything around the protagonist Theo Twombly is subtly smart, responding to his movements, words and even moods. And there in lies the true potential of artificial intelligence. As Vanhemert asserts in his article, "it [AI] doesn't have one fixed personality. Instead, its ability to figure out what a person needs at a given moment emerges as the killer app."
Recommended Reading: Google starts over, sculpture on the moon and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. The Day Google Had to 'Start Over' on Android (1,933 words) by Fred Vogelstein, The Atlantic Pocket!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement("script");j.id=i;j.src="https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1";var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,"pocket-btn-js"); Back in 2005, Google had tasked teams of engineers with developing a secret mobile product that would position it to better compete with Microsoft. When 2007 rolled around, teams had worked 40- to 80- hour weeks for almost a year in an effort to revolutionize mobile phones. However, Apple was first out of the gate, revealing the iPhone on January 9th and forcing Google to rethink all the work that had been done. Fred Vogelstein recounts the outfit's post-iPhone Android development and a touchscreen Dream device built to make up for iOS shortcomings.
Recommended Reading: inside a sexcam studio, the death of a content farm
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. I spent a month living in a Romanian sexcam studio (3,434 words) by Jack Davies, VICE Pocket When it comes to sexy cam shows, Romania is pretty much the undisputed capital of the world, with an estimated 2,000 studios. VICE's Jack Davies spent a month inside one such complex on a backstreet in Bucharest, where up to 11 "models" can stream themselves simultaneously to lonely viewers around the globe (but mostly in the US). While there is certainly some stigma still attached to the idea of taking your clothes off for money in America, in this Eastern European nation it's widely accepted. In fact, one of the two owners of this particular studio claims this is as an opportunity to better himself as a person, not just make a boat-load of money.
Recommended Reading: Cool Tools review, drone delivery and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities by Kevin Kelly This may well be the greatest catalog of all-time -- and given its Boing Boing connection (Cool Tools was cofounded by Boing Boing creator Mark Frauenfelder), you can be assured it's full of wonderful things. Want to draw a graphic novel, design a fabric, shoot a film on the cheap or survive in the woods during the coming apocalypse? There's a cool tool for each of those activities -- several, in fact. Each tool sports a quick description (from one to four paragraphs), the price and a URL where you can buy it. There's also a QR code by each, to save you precious seconds of typing time. Cool Tools doesn't actually sell any of the gadgets itself, so the massive tome comes with a fairly lofty $40 price tag, but for the person who thinks he has everything, here's nearly 500 pages to show them just how wrong they are. -- Brian Heater, Director of Media
Recommended Reading: Stuxnet's more dangerous precursor, fake memories and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Stuxnet's Secret Twin (4,176 words) by Ralph Langner, Foreign Policy Pocket Stuxnet is a pretty nasty nasty customer, especially if you happen to be a centrifuge used in the enrichment of uranium. Amazingly, the story of the first publicly acknowledged cyber weapon keeps getting more and more interesting. Ralph Langner has spent the last several years poring over code and other details of Stuxnet's history and discovered there was an earlier version of the virus, that was even more destructive than the one unleashed on Iran's nuclear facilities. Instead of putting the centrifuge's motors in overdrive, it over pressurized them by closing valves designed to allow gas out. It sounds like a perfectly logical avenue of attack, until you realize that the potential for truly catastrophic failure would have quickly blown Stuxnet's cover.
Recommended Reading: AI pioneer Douglas Hofstadter profiled, the NSA files decoded and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think by James Somers, The Atlantic Artificial intelligence has been in the public consciousness for decades now, due in no small part to fictional incarnations like 2001's HAL 9000, but it's been getting more attention than ever due to IBM's Watson, Apple's Siri and other recent developments. One constant figure throughout much of that time is AI pioneer Douglas Hofstadter, who's profiled at length in this piece by James Somers for The Atlantic. In it, Somers talks to Hofstadter and other key figures from the likes of IBM and Google, while examining his approach to the field, which is as much about studying the human mind as replicating it. [Image credit: null0/Flickr]
Recommended Reading: the decline of Wikipedia, safecracking the brain and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. The Decline of Wikipedia by Tom Simonite, Technology Review Wikipedia is still far and away one of the world's biggest websites but, as Tom Simonite explains in this piece for MIT's Technology Review, it's not without its share of problems -- problems that have been holding it back from becoming the trusted, authoritative source it's strived to be. Simonite looks at the roots of those problems and what they've meant for the site, and also what it's doing to address them, including a new initiative that promises to bring some of the biggest changes yet to a site that has tended to steer clear of change over the years.
Recommended Reading: Chris Hadfield's view from space, the coming robot barista invasion and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Chris Hadfield on the view from above and his fear of heights by Charlie Gillis, Macleans Back on Earth after his five-month stay on the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has written a book and sat down for this wide-ranging interview (and appropriately adventurous cover shoot) with Macleans in advance of its publication. In it, Hadfield discusses the life of a retired astronaut, his affinity for Russia, his own plans for the future and his somewhat surprising fear of heights. For more, see the lengthy excerpt from Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth that Macleans has also published, in which he recounts a crisis that arose just two days before he was set to leave the ISS.
Recommended Reading: Jeff Bezos' Everything Store, Twitter's tumultuous history and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store by Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek Brad Stone's book on Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos is set to be published next week, but Bloomberg Businessweek has offered an extensive look at what's in store with this cover story/excerpt from the author, including one of his biggest revelations. Drawn from interviews with hundreds of those who know or have worked with Bezos, the piece offers the most in-depth look yet at Amazon and its evolution into what Stone describes as the "Everything Store," as well as what Bezos himself is like to work for.
Recommended Reading: the legacy of Myst, the fall of BlackBerry and more
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books dealing with the subject of technology that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Lost to the Ages by Emily Yoshida, Grantland Twenty years after its release, Emily Yoshida looks back at the legacy of the landmark game Myst, which has sold some 6 million copies and spawned sequels and countless ports to various platforms over the years. That includes a firsthand account of the making of the game from co-creators Rand and Robyn Miller, who discuss whether they were trying to make "Art with a capital A," and what they'd still like to see more of from video games today.
