How did Johannes Vermeer manage to create such photo-realistic paintings in the 17th Century—and did he get help? A Texas tech company founder named Tim Jenison decided to try to find out if Vermeer could have used a camera-like contraption to create his art, by recreating one of the paintings himself: Jenison decided to construct […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Everpix Was Great. This Is How It Died.
When the math and business model don’t quite work out for a tech startup, even if the product is beloved: While its talented team obsessed over the look and features of its product, user growth failed to keep pace. Starting in June, Latour tried to raise $5 million to give Everpix more time to become […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Google Used a ‘Double Irish’ and ‘Dutch Sandwich’ to Shave $2.2 Billion from Its Tax Bill
The story of how Ireland became a global hub for tax avoidance, with companies including Google, Apple, Intel and others all taking advantage. Feargal O’Rourke is credited with helping create an environment where companies can come to Ireland to avoid taxes they’d face in their home countries: “Under no circumstances is Ireland a tax haven,” […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘An Island of Need in a Sea of Prosperity’: The Story of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Neighborhood
“It is a 40-square-block island of poverty and squalor.” The Tenderloin remains one of the seediest neighborhoods in San Francisco, mostly unchanged despite gentrification and an influx of tech money into the city. Can the neighborhood change—and just as importantly, should it? “If there is one ironclad rule that governs cities, it’s that money and […]
Posted inReading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Photo: Richard Barnes *** Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. *** 1. No Exit: ‘Your Feeling of Autonomy Is a Fantasy’ Gideon Lewis-Kraus | Wired | April 23, 2014 | 42 minutes […]
Posted inGuest Pick, Nonfiction
The Future of Online Education: A Longreads Guest Pick by Teddy Worcester
Above: Sebastian Thrun *** Teddy Worcester resides in San Francisco and helps to build products that support the free and open web. Max Chafkin’s Fast Company story covering Sebastian Thrun’s change of course for Udacity is a must-read for anyone interested in online education. The brilliant Thrun admits that MOOCs are not necessarily the right […]
Posted inUncategorized
Playlist: 5 Pioneering Computer Demos, featuring MIT, Stanford and Xerox
Mark Armstrong is the founder of Longreads and editorial director for Pocket. Last week we lost a pioneer of early computing, Doug Engelbart, and Tom Foremski has an excellent short backstory about the inventor of the mouse. It was Engelbart’s 1968 demo of computer graphical user interfaces that inspired everything we now use today—yet despite his […]
Posted inUncategorized
Longreads Guest Pick: Matthew Zeitlin on Mina Kimes's story about Sears
Matthew is a business reporter at BuzzFeed. My longread of the week is ‘At Sears, Eddie Lampert’s Warring Divisions Model Adds to the Troubles,’ by Mina Kimes in Bloomberg Businessweek. This is not a profile of Eddie Lampert, the hedge fund manager who masterminded Kmart’s acquisition of Sears and is now running the struggling retailer. […]
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The Secret History of Silicon Valley
‘Let’s enlist universities directly in the war effort.’ Our video pick of the day is this 2008 talk (1 hr.) by entrepreneur and Stanford professor Steve Blank about how the defense industry first shaped Silicon Valley—starting with Stanford, which after World War II “became a full partner in the military-industrial complex.” For a connection between […]
Posted inUncategorized
Reading List: Examining Technology
Emily Perper is a word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. The following four pieces resist cliches about social media and its impact. These authors do not shame nor condone; they do not preach. They take a deeper look at the tendency and luxury to share our lives with […]
