Yes, America is burning, and it has always been burning.
And then, in the middle of a pandemic and a financial crisis, with millions of people suddenly out of work and unable to so much as greet each other for fear of contracting a deadly illness, a Minneapolis Police Officer called ...
May 31, 2020
More and more technology companies are realizing that they're just as productive as a remote team, with lower overheads. Simultaneously, tech employees are realizing that they're better off in an environment where they don't need to commute, can eat their own food, and can spend more time with their families.
I ...
May 29, 2020
Dan Crenshaw, who represents Texas's second congressional district, published a pretty partisan op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week. In it, following a series of misrepresentations of liberal policy positions on the crisis, he offers:
It is time to reopen America in a smart and deliberate fashion and stop calling ...
May 22, 2020
In a business, and particularly in early-stage startups, there can be enormous pressure to go as fast as you can. In these environments, making fast decisions, and pushing code or building a design to get to the closest stated objective, is prioritized over a more contemplative process.
Famously, Facebook put it ...
May 21, 2020
Axios is reporting that Facebook has bought Giphy for $400M.
Giphy is the animated GIF database that powers functionality in most of the social apps you can think of. It makes money through behind-the-scenes deals to provide that functionality, although its APIs are available to anyone.
$400M sounds like a lot of ...
May 15, 2020
The PATRIOT Act has long been used to justify warrantless surveillance into ordinary Americans. It was a fast follow to the horrors of 9/11, but thanks to a renewal by President Bush, a four-year extension by President Obama, and an extension of important clauses in the USA Freedom Act, an ...
May 14, 2020
There was talk on Monday that Amazon wanted to puchase the struggling AMC theater chain, which also happens to be the world's largest, incorporating Odeon cinemas in the UK and across Europe.
Fortune posed a question about what an Amazon buy-out would be like, suggesting that tickets could be incorporated into ...
May 12, 2020
Like it or not, Google and Facebook are becoming the leading patrons of the news industry:
Over the next few months, Google and Facebook will, combined, spend close to a quarter billion dollars supporting local news. [...] Google said it expects its relief funds will reach at least 4,000 different publishers. ...
May 12, 2020
I wrote a piece for the ForUsAll blog on how and why we built tools to help ordinary people navigate the CARES Act. It encompasses why I joined the team, and how we were able to help during this moment:
With the pandemic came the looming shadow of a deep recession, ...
May 8, 2020
I'm dogfooding the set of questions developed for my recording life project.
1. What did you do today?
I've been spending a lot of time with my mother since the quarantine began. It happened to coincide with her beginning to feel quite a bit worse; being able to work from home, ...
May 4, 2020
Here's the media I consumed and found interesting in April.
Apps
Untitled Goose Game. I'm late to the party, but this is super-fun with exactly my level of silly.
Novlr. I'm writing this again, and for whatever reason, I find this a better environment than Scrivener. Maybe it's something about being a web-native ...
May 2, 2020