Society

U.S. Digital Service Chief Mina Hsiang on how government’s IT has—and hasn’t changed since the Obamacare website mess

At Reason (“Did NYC Just Kneecap Airbnb?”), Liz Wolfe seems to be diversifying beyond her normal focus on tech platform apologetics and crowding onto the turf of resident landlord whisperer Christian Britschgi. I confess my first reading of the title brought a smile to my face — probably not the effect Wolfe intended — as...

Former president Donald Trump's infamous photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, June 1, 2020. The photo op wa...

According to the Bible, God punished the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah by obliterating the city. “Fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all,” so says the scripture. That…

Google exec said users get hooked on search engine like “cigarettes or drugs.”

This is the second post in a series on what Meta did in Myanmar and what the broader technology community can learn from it. It will make a lot more

Reconstruction-era opponents of racial equality popularized the charge that protecting civil rights would amount to the end of capitalism.

Former President Trump during a speech on Saturday depicted the U.S. as a “beloved nation” that is “teetering on the edge of tyranny” and painted his 2024 presidential campa…

Long time readers of the blog will remember that I have written, a couple of times, about the Holy Roman Empire in the past before. There’s a few reasons for this – first of all the HRE goes so har…

As I write this in mid-November 2020, there’s quite a stir over the new version of Apple’s Mac OS, the operating system that runs on its laptops. For more than a year, Apple has engaged…

Why Lina Khan and the F.T.C. must prevail in their long-awaited lawsuit against Amazon.

More and more Brits are being convinced to ‘become their own boss’ and monetise their personal interests, turning life into a 24/7 financial opportunity. Eloise Hendy meets the people who came to regret it

A few years ago I had some fellow Tulsans reach out to me and tell me about a tailor in town that I had to meet. His name is Sherman Ray, and though he’s 97 years old, he continues to work in his shop almost every day. Sherman’s had an interesting life: he learned the […]

The Atlantic has an adapted excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s new book, Democracy Awakening: The Origins of the Socialis

More propaganda, more moral gaslighting, more bullshit. Steal! Feed your children and yourself. Steal all you will! Just do not get caught.

Big tech has a track record of dismissing and discrediting technologies that they either don’t have the ability to create or missed the boat on.

Why is it that so many companies that rely on monetizing the data of their users seem to be extremely hot on AI? If you ask Signal president Meredith

In 1994, an independent producer made a short, earnest video featuring an eccentric cast of characters who were focused on a very specific paranoia. The tape was made to look like a TV news special. It opens with a cheap, Jerry Springer-era computer graphic of a gold pentagram set against a red brick wall. The

Here's my quick first-pass take on Privacy Pools , the heir apparent to privacy tool Tornado Cash. My comments are on the legal side, and le...

In his new book ‘The Internet Con,' the writer and activist Cory Doctorow makes a forceful case for cutting Big Tech down to size.

A relentless focus on economic growth has ushered in the climate crisis. We need a better definition of well-being.

Automation will turn us all into serfs

In his new book, the maverick Greek economist says we are witnessing an epochal shift. At his island home, he argues it’s now the ‘fiefdoms’ of tech firms that shape us