A visit to very cold New York left me a little cold and thus I took a weekend off and didn’t send you guys my weekend pics. Nevertheless, a whole week of sunshine and great weather has gone by here in the home office in San Francisco. So here I am making amends for the lost time, bringing you seven of my favorite must read stories.
- How a Snowdenista kept the NSA leaker hidden in a Moscow airport: This kind of story is not something I associate with Vogue magazine, but writer Sara Corbett has done a great job of profiling Wikileaks editor Sarah Harrison. Also to be clear, this isn’t really a New Yorker profile — but then what is!
- A reality TV retrospective: It has been 15 years since Survivor made its debut and it is still going strong. Reality TV is everywhere, and you can blame it for the growing popularity of Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO. I liked this critical socio-cultural study of the reality TV phenomenon by Lizzie Schiffman Tufano.
- The rocky road to the making of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie: Sometimes Vanity Fair proves that there is a reason for it to exist — high brow and tabloid in one nifty story.
- Blank screens aren’t going to save you: Navneet Alang delves into why resolutions tied to objects and tools don’t really work out. Especially those around blank screens!
- An interview with Facebook AI Director Yann LeCunn on deep learning & making machines smarter: Also, he has some doubts about Ray Kurzweil and Singularity. Put this IEEE Spectrum special on your must read this weekend list!
- Do robots love language? Is there bias in Google Translate. A great piece from almost a year ago that is worth a read.
- Why are we obsessed with what teens are doing on social media? Damn straight, why, indeed?
Bonus links: Data mining indian recipes and 140 years of menu design.
And this is what I wrote: Marie Kondo is right. Clean up is good for your soul.
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