How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet
gizmodo.comAt the time, the Web was rapidly becoming more social, and Flickr was at the forefront of that movement. It was all about groups and comments and identifying people as contacts, friends or family. To Yahoo, it was just a fucking database.
Estimated reading time: 23 min
Inside Instagram: How Slowing Its Roll Put the Little Startup in the Fast Lane
gizmodo.comBecause they don't want to revamp the system while its under load, that's meant doing things like calculating where likes-per-second will be in a month—or six months—and reconfiguring the app and back end to support it. There is no Fail Whale or Tumblrbeast of Instagram. There's just uptime. And they want to keep it that way, even as they continue to blow up.
Estimated reading time: 11 min
How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple's Secret Employee Training Manual
gizmodo.comIf someone walks in sobbing because their hard drive is fried, you'll receive no immediate consolation. "Do not apologize for the business [or] the technology," the manual commands. Instead, express regret that the person is expressing emotions. A little mind roundabout: "I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated," or "too bad about your soda-spill accident," the book suggests. This is, of course, the equivalent of telling your girlfriend "I'm sorry you feel that way" during a fight instead of just apologizing for what you did.
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Kodak Had a Secret Nuclear Reactor Loaded With Enriched Uranium Hidden In a Basement
gizmodo.comThe reactor was installed in a closely guarded, two-foot-thick concrete walled underground bunker in the company's headquarters, where it was fed tests using a pneumatic system. According to the company, no employees were ever in contact with the reactor. Apparently, it was operated by atomic fairies and unicorns.
Estimated reading time: 2 min
The Case Against Google
gizmodo.comGoogle is a fundamentally different company than it has been in the past. Its culture and direction have changed radically in the past 18 months. It is trying to maneuver into position to operate in a post-pc, post-Web world, reacting to what it perceives as threats, and moving to where it thinks the puck will be.
Estimated reading time: 17 min
The Case Against Google
gizmodo.comIt needs you to reveal your location, your friends, your history, your desires, your finances; nothing short of your essence. And it needs to combine all that knowledge together. That's Search Plus Your World. "Your World" is not just your friends, or your location. It's your everything.
Estimated reading time: 17 min
Apple, Microsoft Supplier Chief Calls His One Million Employees "Animals"
gizmodo.comTerry Gou is the chairman of Hon Hai Precision, the owners of Foxconn. He's also an insensitive asshat.
Estimated reading time: 1 min
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How to Destroy the Internet
gizmodo.comBefore we destroy mankind's greatest, vastest machine, let's get something polite out of the way: don't. Destroying the Internet's core infrastructure would constitute the greatest act of global terrorism in history and/or a declaration of war against every sovereign nation in existence—to say nothing of the danger it would put both you and others in. This is a thought exercise.
Estimated reading time: 11 min
Why You Have Bad Breath in the Morning
gizmodo.comThis off gassing in the mouth is a similar process to that occurring at a waste disposal site." No wonder people don't want to take a whiff. See, bacteria gain energy via amino acid and protein digestion. Some of the amino acids digested contain sulfur, which is released when the bacteria process it. (Sulfur is one cause of unpleasant smells coming out of both ends, so it seems.) But it's not just one smell that makes breath bad; it's a bunch of yucky gasses working together in concert. Again, from the Breath book: "cadaverine (corpse odor), hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg odor), isovaleric acid […]
Estimated reading time: 3 min
NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive
gizmodo.comIt took Magellan three years to circumnavigate around our home planet—from August 1519 to September 1522. A four year roundtrip to see a planet like Earth is completely doable. And there are even closer destinations where we can send robots or astronauts.
Estimated reading time: 4 min
Why We Yawn—And Why Yawning Is So Contagious
gizmodo.comThere's some research suggesting that yawning can hint at emotions ranging from interest and stress, to, um, the desire to get it on. The yawn as an indicator of arousal came up as a theory at the first annual International Conference of Yawning (yup), held in Paris (yup) in 2010, when a chasmologist (someone who studies yawning (yup)) pointed out that sexologists often get patients complaining about yawning in the lead up to—and during—sex.
Estimated reading time: 3 min
How Chris Hadfield Made Us Care About Astronauts Again
gizmodo.comHadfield’s channel served as something like a war correspondent, or better yet, dispatches from a good friend giving us the real skinny on what space life was like. Even the obvious stuff elicited shocks of whimsy, in that do it again, do it again sort of way that new toys always have. Outer freaking space should always feel like that, but for too long, it hasn’t really. Now it does again, and maybe everyday wonders stacked on top of each other will never add up to a moon landing, but it's enough to make some of the jaded dream again.
Estimated reading time: 6 min
Does Google Have Any Social Skills at All?
gizmodo.comThe keynote sounded one futuristic clarion call after another: Glass, the wearable computer; Google Now, a smartphone system that provides intricately tailored life information; the Nexus Q, a social media streamer; and a fancy new way to throw parties with Google+. But underneath each of these feats of technology you could see a hollow, lurching weirdness that makes you wonder: Who will use any of this stuff besides the actors in Google's promo videos?
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