Top Reads
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Facebook, One Year Later: What Really Happened in the Biggest IPO…
Uma Swaminathan tuned the television set in the living room of her ranch style home in the suburbs of East Brunswick, N.J. to CNBC. It was 9:00 a.m. on May 18, 2012, a day the retired schoolteacher thought might make her rich. She logged onto her Vanguard brokerage account on her computer and placed an order for 5,000 shares of Facebook at $42 a share. On TV, wearing his trademark hoodie, 28-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, creator of the world's largest social networking site, stood in the courtyard of Facebook headquarters in…
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Rolf Potts in Rishakesh
I. The Girl You spot The Girl on your first afternoon in Rishikesh. She is long-limbed and graceful, and she walks carefully along the path, as if not to disturb the dirt beneath her bare feet. She…
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Revenge, ego, and the corruption of Wikipedia
In the wee hours of the morning of January 27, 2013, a Wikipedia editor named “Qworty” made a series of 14 separate edits to the Wikipedia page for the late writer Barry Hannah, a well-regarded…
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This Land Is My Land
Just before 10 a.m. on September 7, 2009, residents of Mill Creek heard gunshots. Some heard one shot; others as many as three. At the time it did not seem important. The sound was not uncommon along Mill Creek Road, an unmarked ribbon…
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Jack London's Journalism:The Story of an…
Upon receipt of the first news of the earthquake, Collier's telegraphed to Mr. Jack London-who lives only forty miles from San Francisco-requesting him to go to the scene of the disaster and write the story of what he saw. Mr. London started at…
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The Air Travel Rights You Aren't Aware Of (and…
If you've ever sat in a plane on the tarmac only to have the flight cancelled, been bumped just before boarding, or landed at your destination only to be told your luggage will arrive sometime in the…
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The One-Person Product
In 2006, I moved to New York and started working for David Karp doing web development for various media companies. That fall, in a brief gap before starting a new client, David said that we were going to make a prototype of an idea he’d had…
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Daniel Dennett's seven tools for thinking
Daniel Dennett: 'Often the word "surely" is as good as a blinking light locating a weak point in the argument.' Photograph: Peter Yang/August 1 USE YOUR MISTAKESWe have all heard the forlorn refrain:…
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How Sunscreen Works (And Why You're Wrong About…
Your skin shouldn't look like a package of pork cracklins after spending the day outdoors; that's why we invented sunscreen. However, there's a right way and a wrong way to slather on your…
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The Design of Code: Organizing JavaScript
Great design is a product of care and attention applied to areas that matter, resulting in a useful, understandable, and hopefully beautiful user interface. But don’t be fooled into thinking…
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Survivors
Years ago, along the cacophonous roads leading from Ramses Train Station in Cairo, I came across a small girl with a bright red headscarf weaving her way in and out of the slow-moving traffic, her…
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Starters Guide to iOS Design
As someone who does work on both the development and design side of iOS apps I find that many designers struggle with the transition to UI work, or with the different processes involved in iPhone and…
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Slippery Business
“Fraud is so widespread that few growers can make an honest living,” one expert says. On August 10, 1991, a rusty tanker called the Mazal II docked at the industr
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Why Is Europe So Messed Up? An Illuminating…
The big news of the past week had nothing to do with the I.R.S. or Benghazi. It was the confirmation that, while the American economy continues to recover from the disastrous financial bust of 2008…
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Learning From Los Gatos — The Peer Society
It’s no surprise that George Packer—one of the most gifted writers in the business—has hit upon a fascinating topic in his latest New Yorker piece: the emerging politics of…
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Clipping Magic Removes Image Backgrounds in…
Cropping an object out of an photo in an image editor can be a tricky task, but Clipping Magic is a new webapp that does it for you in seconds. All you have to do is paint the foreground object one…
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The Awesome New Technology That You'll See on the…
The web becomes more and more capable each day, finding ways to replace what you do on your desktop. In the very near future you'll talk to your web apps, enjoy complex animation without the drain of…
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Crack Rock City
Hallie Bateman for The Morning News One afternoon, my friend Corine called to see if I felt like taking a walk. Corine was a Dutch photographer who’d been living in Detroit for nearly 10…
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First Australians
A finger across the throat and a glance seaward. That’s the signal. The two men grip their spears, hand-carved from stringybark trees, and walk barefoot over the red soil to the water’s edge. Then into the aluminum dinghy, engine…
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Novelty and the Brain: Why New Things Make Us…
We all like shiny new things, whether it's a new gadget, new city, or new job. In fact, our brains are made to be attracted to novelty—and it turns out that it could actually improve our…