Search Results for: Internet

Dissent Made Safer

Longreads Pick

How anonymity technology could save free speech on the Internet.

Published: Jun 1, 2009
Length: 12 minutes (3,217 words)

Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

Longreads Pick

Want to know how Google is about to change your life? Stop by the Ouagadougou conference room on a Thursday morning. It is here, at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the world’s most powerful Internet company, that a room filled with three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives figure out how to make their search engine even smarter. This year, Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm, and each will be determined at a gathering just like this one.

Source: Wired
Published: Feb 22, 2010
Length: 18 minutes (4,546 words)

A Crime of Shadows

Longreads Pick

After months of prowling Internet chat rooms, posing as the mother of two young daughters, Detective Michele Deery thought she had a live one: “parafling,” a married, middle-aged man who claimed he wanted to have sex with her kids. But was he just playing a twisted game of seduction?

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Dec 1, 2009
Length: 18 minutes (4,546 words)

Baltimore Sun: Stop the Presses

Longreads Pick

With layoffs, the encroaching Internet, and the recession, is Baltimore’s paper of record on the verge of collapse?

Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 42 minutes (10,520 words)

Killer@Craigslist

Longreads Pick

The “Craigslist Murder” was a crime made possible by the Internet, and the prime suspect was apprehended through online sleuthing. But the killing of Julissa Brisman allegedly by Boston University medical student Philip Markoff is still a very human mystery, with dark sexual overtones and surprising contradictions.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 1, 2009
Length: 30 minutes (7,583 words)

We Are All Writers Now

Longreads Pick

Go back 20, 30 years and you will find all of us doing more talking than writing. We rued literacy levels and worried over whether all this phone-yakking and television-watching spelled the end of writing. Few make that claim today. I would hazard that, with more than 200m people on Facebook, and even more with home internet access, we are all writing more than we would have ten years ago.

Source: Economist
Published: Jun 26, 2009
Length: 4 minutes (1,061 words)

Billions Registered

Longreads Pick

Right now, there are no rules to keep you from owning a bitchin’ corporate name as your own Internet address.

Source: Wired
Published: Nov 1, 1996
Length: 13 minutes (3,364 words)