tech reads

This week was all about CES 2014, the annual show where we get wowed by the hottest, newest, craziest tech products, and hope that we’ll actually be able to buy them someday. Still, it wasn’t all glitz and gadgets this week — there were plenty of smart tech reads to get us thinking beyond the…

Baby, it’s positively frigid outside. Whether you’re snowed in by a humongous storm or just being lazy out of solidarity, we’ve got the week’s best tech reads to occupy your time and ward off cabin fever. Kira Peikoff tested three consumer-market DNA tests using her own genes, with striking—and varying—results. [The New York Times] Mat…

Christmas shipping snafus, the black market of stolen credit card numbers, Snowden claims “mission accomplished,” and more: it’s this week’s Tech Reads. Laura Stevens, Serena Ng and Shelly Banjo do a post-mortem on UPS’s failure to deliver online shoppers’ gifts promised to arrive by Christmas Eve [The Wall St. Journal] Dustin Volz examines the underground…

In the run-up to the holidays, smart folks all around the internet were talking robot ethics, fake job references, bitcoin, comics, and how streaming music supported and squashed cover bands. It’s all in this week’s Tech Reads: The New Yorker has a great infographic on the data that social media networks get from you, and…

This week in tech reads, a deeper look at privacy, money, and the way that design affects how students learn. Ryan Lizza asks, “why won’t the president rein in the intelligence community?” [The New Yorker] Martin Austermuhle examines what Washington, D.C. does with the data from over 200 million license plate images snapped by plate…

This week in tech reads, we think more deeply about where we live, the ideas — both new and very old — we post online, and creepy insects. Ian Tattersall examines what we mean when we talk about home — and how that’s notion is continually changing. [Nautilus] Inspired by the Tumblr The Art of…

This week in tech reads, some bright minds took on the bigger questions that go beyond which apps to downloand and which devices to buy. Here’s a reading list of smart takes for your weekend. Kristen Taylor looks at what we’re saying, intentionally or subliminally, when we name tech after food [Medium] Nicholas Weaver points…