Search Results for: Gizmodo

“Beat By Dre: The Exclusive Inside Story of How Monster Lost the World.” Sam Biddle, Gizmodo

A look at the women who work as “Internet cam girls,” and the criminal activity that may be occurring behind some of the cam networks:

‘Cam sites are ideal for laundering. The studios are being used to have girls online accepting a financed hand that uses ‘dirty’ money to buy the private time. The studio gets paid for the private session, the girl gets her (very small) part and so the money comes back clean,’ Mila says. As a result, ‘most Russian and Romanian studios are Mafia owned,’ a claim she extends to the wider developing world. The picture becomes clearer when you remember how scattered and obfuscated these networks’ financial structures are—it’d be easier to confusingly launder money through a company that’s somehow simultaneously based in both Hungary and Portugal.

The Eastern Bloc countries that so many cam girls call home are repeatedly mentioned in sex trafficking reports as both sources and conduits of illicit sex work—MyFreeCams has gone as far as banning all models from the Philippines, where conditions are said to be the most brutal.

The reasoning isn’t mentioned, but is easy to surmise. Moving the exploitation online, where girls are under ‘contract’ to stay in a room for half a day at a time with dubious legal recourse, makes criminal sense.

“Indentured Servitude, Money Laundering, and Piles of Money: The Crazy Secrets of Internet Cam Girls (NSFW).” — Sam Biddle, Gizmodo (with corrected link)

More from Gizmodo

A father recounts his family’s quest to diagnose a rare disease in their son:

We discovered that my son inherited two different (thus-far-unique) mutations in the same gene—the NGLY1 gene—which encodes the enzyme N-glycanase 1. Consequently, he cannot make this enzyme.

My son is the only human being known to lack this enzyme. Below, I’m documenting our journey to the unlikeliest of diagnoses. This is a story about the kind of hope that only science can provide. (An open access article in The Journal of Medical Genetics contains the detailed results from ground-breaking experiment that diagnosed him.)

“Hunting Down My Son’s Killer.” — Matt Might, Gizmodo

Why do startups struggle after being acquired by giant companies like Yahoo? They’re forced to focus on integration instead of innovation: 

When a new startup comes into an established company, the first wall it typically hits is CorpDev, or corporate development: the group within a business that manages change. CorpDev is usually charged with planning corporate strategy—where a business will grow or shrink, the markets it will enter or exit, and what kind of contracts and deals it may strike with other companies. It often oversees acquisitions. It plans them. Approves them. And then it sets the terms.

When a big company gobbles up a smaller one, only a fraction of the money is handed over up front. The rest comes later, based on the acquisition hitting a series of deliverables down the road. It’s similar to how incentives are built into the contracts of professional athletes, except with engineering benchmarks instead of home runs.

“How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet.” — Mat Honan, Gizmodo

An explainer on Google’s challenges with privacy, its competition with Facebook and Twitter, and two big questions: Is search no longer central to its mission? And are Google’s recent moves “evil” by its early company standards? 

It’s hard to understand how Google could screw up its core product like that. But there’s a remarkably simple explanation: Search is no longer Google’s core product.

One Googler authorized to speak for the company on background (meaning I could use the information he gave me, but not directly quote or attribute it) told me something that I found shocking. Google isn’t primarily about search anymore. Sure, search is still a core product, but it’s no longer the core product. The core product, he said, is simply Google.

“The Case Against Google.” — Mat Honan, Gizmodo

See also: “Confessions of Google Employee No. 59.” — Douglas Edwards, Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2011

Featured Longreader: Peter Axtman, public relations associate. See his story picks from Gizmodo, ESPN, The Village Voice, plus more on his #longreads page.

pegb: Longreads: new and old favorites

pegb:

Pirate’s Booty by Dave Gardetta

Technosexual: One Man’s Tale of Robot Love by Addy Dugdale

Et Tu, Brooklyn? by Allison Silverman

The Golden Suicides by Nancy Jo Sales

Addiction Files: Recovering From Drug Addiction, Without Abstinence by Maia Szalavitz

Addiction Files: How Do We Define Recovery? by Maia Szalavitz

Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works by Brendan Koerner