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Beware The Pretty People
The tech industry used to be home to a disproportionate number of misfits and weirdos. Geeks. Nerds. People who needed to know how machines worked; needed to take them apart, make them better, and put them back together again. People who existed a little apart from society’s established hierarchy … and often saw that hierarchy as another machine to be deconstructed and improved. Read More
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The Bitcoin Jet, Or, How Does Cryptocurrency Go Mainstream?
DIGITAL CURRENCIES ACCEPTED HERE proclaims the plaque at my local froyo place, emblazoned with the Bitcoin logo: but when I ask how I would pay with Bitcoin, the Australian woman behind the counter shrugs and says, “I think we have a tablet somewhere with instructions on the back? …Nobody’s ever tried to pay me with it.” Read More
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Diary Of A Cord Cutter In 2015 (Part 3: Using An Over-The-Air DVR)
This year, my New Year’s Resolution was to finally cut the cord. The timing is right, and the content selection available today on streaming services make the process much less painful than it was in years past. There’s plenty to watch – a glut of quality shows to keep me entertained for years, in fact. Meanwhile, my vastly reduced Verizon bill is the biggest payoff to… Read More
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Don’t Be Google
Dear Google: what happened? Android sales are falling. Chrome has become a bloated hog. Analysts are calling you “the new Microsoft,” or worse, “the new Yahoo!” And worst, most damning of all: you have squandered our trust. You used to be special, Google. Or at least we used to believe you were special. But you seem more and more like just another megacorporation. Read More
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Apple Streaming Music Service Not Necessarily A Slam Dunk
It seems clear that Apple wants to get into music streaming in a big way, and as Josh Constine reported yesterday, Apple could even be looking at buying Taylor Swift’s record label. With Dr. Dre and Beats in the fold, Apple looks to be setting itself up for a monster launch, one that could sweep existing players like Spotify by the wayside. There is a widely held belief that when… Read More
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What You Need To Know About Zero Knowledge
Anonymity? Privacy? How quaint. We live in a world bedecked with ever more cameras, ever more sensors, ever more drones, ever more data, ever fewer things that can be hidden. TLS and Tor can hide your activities online, true — but, realistically, everything important you do, online or off, can easily be audited and tracked by governments and/or corporations. Read More
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The Diary Of A Cord Cutter In 2015 (Part 2: Shaving The Cord And Cheating)
2015 is the year I finally cut the cord with cable TV. No more flipping through programs mindlessly, no more massive lineup of channels I never watch, no more DVR’ing. In doing so, I’ve been determined to rely on streaming-only services for access to TV and movies, and my current lineup today includes Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, and Hulu, with the occasional movie rental… Read More
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The Diary Of A Cord Cutter In 2015
I know I’m late to the party by some accounts. Early adopters cut the cord years ago and haven’t looked back. For me, turning off cable TV was an idea I flirted with, yet I just kept renewing my package deal for some reason. But there has been no better time to finally severe ties with big cable, and their pricey television packages that have you paying for hundreds of channels… Read More
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Three Reasons Why Your Software Is So Far Behind Schedule
When not opining here on TechCrunch I’m a software engineer for the fine folks at HappyFunCorp (1) and I’m occasionally called on to diagnose and fix projects that have gone horribly wrong (2). The more I do this, the more I notice commonalities among problem projects–“antipatterns,” if you will. Here I give you three more of my ongoing list of such. Names have… Read More
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This Industry Is Still Completely Ridiculous
Things are getting pretty strange out there. Roughly a year ago I wrote a post entitled “This Industry Is Completely Ridiculous.” Since then, as you probably already know, our world has gotten even more surreal. If anything the ridiculousness is accelerating. It’s like the tech industry is subject to a Moore’s Law of weird. Read More
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Uncle Sam Needs More Geeks
One of President Obama’s guests at this year’s State of the Union address was Kathy Pham, a health IT expert formerly of Google and IBM. Pham recently joined the federal government to make it easier for veterans to access the benefits they have earned – like her brother, who earned a Purple Heart for his service in Afghanistan. Kathy is exactly what this country needs. Uncle… Read More
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For Mobile Growth Pay Attention To Markets Beyond The US And China
In 2014, China-based Alibaba had a record-breaking IPO on the U.S. stock market, China surpassed the U.S. in terms of purchasing power, and the country earned itself a new position in the world economy. But China’s not the only emerging region we need to pay attention to. Other countries are quickly following China’s lead and solidifying their positions in the technology marketplace. Read More
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Foundation And Big Data
The Internet has become the world’s Sorting Hat: it identifies, and increasingly defines, the subculture(s) to which people belong. Does your Facebook feed feature Mother Jones or Fox News? The Guardian or The Telegraph? GamerGate vs Social Justice Warriors. Civil libertarians vs. terror-thumping authoritarians. r/parenting vs. r/childfree. Second Life vs. Digital Detox. Read More
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Decentralize All The Things!
They gave us a fully decentralized Internet and we used it to build web services–Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, iCloud–so massively centralized they verge on being quasi-medieval fiefdoms. Now we’re building the Internet of Someone Else’s Things, wherein every room of every home will contain devices controlled by servers the homeowners don’t know, control, or understand. Read More
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France Will Shine Again
For the last week, I’ve been away from France, covering CES in Las Vegas. When I woke up on Wednesday morning and looked at my phone, my lock screen was filled with an avalanche of notifications — French news apps, Twitter, Facebook, iMessage, Taptalk and Skype were all here to alert me about the massacre against Charlie Hebdo’s team… In many ways, the impact of the attack… Read More
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Smartphone Makers Need To Put An End To Distracted Driving
I’m cruising down the road at 45 mph when – ka-ching! – the sound of a cash register blares out from my iPhone. It’s one of now several deal-finding apps I have installed that alert me to nearby sales at local stores. I love the functionality they provide, but I’m not thrilled with the timing. The phone buzzes some more as the alerts roll in as I coast past the… Read More
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11 Ways Old Journalism Was The Worst
In October of last year, Brookings published an essay by Robert Kaiser entitled “The Bad News About The News,” which was probably well-intentioned, but was also — I’m sorry to say — hilariously bloviated, self-important, and wrongheaded. It did, however, accidentally raise a few quite interesting points. Read More
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The Patriot Act Is Cannibalizing America’s Economic Edge
Editor’s Note: Amit Patel is the chief financial officer of HighQ. You would think that when tech companies, the ACLU and the NRA unite for the same cause, the federal government would listen. That was not the case in this year’s USA FREEDOM Act vote where the Senate voted against reforms that would stop the NSA from collecting phone metadata. The majority opinion… Read More
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When Will Your Phone Replace Your Keys And Wallet?
When I leave my home, I check that I have three things: keys, wallet, phone. How long will it be until the first two are obsolete? My wallet has only three things I actually need: credit cards, cash, ID. Any American with an iPhone 6 has already obsoleted credit cards, courtesy Apple Pay. Any Kenyan, Senegalese, etc. with a phone has long obsoleted cash, courtesy M-Pesa, Orange Money, etc. Read More
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TC GameCast Episode 3: Open Worlds And Picking A Gaming PC
This week we’ve got a very special, very delayed episode of the TechCrunch GameCast. Darrell Etherington, Ed Zitron, and myself chatted about open-world games, noting the best of side quests, getting around, and keeping things from getting too stale. Read More
