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The Longform

A deep dive into a single topic.
The latest issue of The Longform is available to everyone. Time Travelers have access to back issues.

  • Page ‘Em
    It’s a beautiful day in the woods. Far off the grid, away from stores, people, or even shelters more stable than a tent, Jeff Wilson is backpacking through deep woods. It’s a return to nature that brings him enjoyment and…
  • Nuggets and Noms
    A pizza box sits on a table. Moments later two curious faces enter the frame, excited by its contents. The two keep glancing at each other while building their anticipation for what lays inside. Each speaks in a gibberish only……
  • The Paid Social Network Nobody Wanted
    In the early 2010s there were two mighty giants in the social media landscape: Facebook and Twitter. One behemoth was scrapping its way in an attempt to be a third. This company was backed by lots of money, a thoughtful……
  • The Contest to Steal Your Art
    “Win an iPad!” the flyer said. Quite the prize and one that immediately enticed my kids to read on. In only a few paragraphs it was evident what was being proposed to school-aged children: they draw and design something that……
  • Dial I for Information
    It’s the top of the 5th inning and the NY Mets have a runner on first. I’m sitting with three of my closest friends at Yankee Stadium, enjoying a crisp summer evening when suddenly it hits me: I didn’t check……
  • Twenty One Years and Waiting: The Fans Keeping Sliders Alive
    “What do we do now?” Those were the final words uttered by a character in the final scene of the final episode, The Seer, of the final season of the 90’s sci-fi adventure show Sliders. The fate of humanity was……
  • The PC Game That Stalked You
    You log on and check your inbox. A new message has been sitting for a few hours and you anxiously click on it. It begins: Due to a fire at our Anim-X studios, we at Electronic Arts are forced to……
  • Streaming Movies at Home Will Always Be Better… and it’s Theater’s Fault
    Forget about COVID. This is the real reason I never go to the movies It’s the summer of 2008. I’m sitting in a packed theater waiting for The Dark Knight to begin. Knowing how awesome Batman Begins told the Batman……
  • Hello, Wrist
    Events happen during our lives shaping how we live from that moment on. Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone in 2007 changed everything we do. The Nintendo Entertainment System hitting the US in 1985 revived a dying industry and set off……

Newsletter Archive

Past issues sent to subscribers.
The most recent issue of The Longform and the latest five issues of The Stream.

The Stream

Interesting and quick reads about what’s going on. The latest 100 posts are below.
Use the search at the top of the page, or visit the deep archive to find older posts.

  • Five Times the Gigs
    In a country where internet service is awful in many areas and virtually no competition exists, AT&T decided it was time to offer more speed. Hot off the press release…
  • Empty Trains
    Working from home has not only been a welcome reprieve for overworked employees. It has also brought much-needed recuperation of all the time people commuted to and from work. As…
  • Mark Cuban’s Affordable Drugs
    Generally, the super-wealthy are obsessed with their own pet projects. One who has a pretty-positive perception is Mark Cuban. Best known for owning the Dallas Mavericks along with being the…
  • From the Terrible Ideas Department
    Twitter’s Twitter Blue premium (and paid) service posted this head-scratcher about a new ‘perk’ to paying the company money to use Twitter: gm! You asked (a lot), so we made…
  • Taxlog
    As of Monday, the ability to file taxes in the United States has begun. And the IRS has already stated there will be massive delays due to staff shortages and…
  • One Final Frontier
    On Friday Paramount dropped the trailer for the second season of Star Trek: Picard. After streaming the first season last year, I have been looking forward to the next season…
  • Prove It
    UPDATE: According to Mashable, Apple has removed the requirement. No statements have been made. It’s simply gone back to the way it used to be. Since the beginning of Apple’s…
  • His Name Was Robert Paulson
    The past few weeks have been a culling of well-loved celebs. At the too-young age of 74, Meat Loaf passed away. He was in a ton of movies and wrote…
  • The Continued Resignation
    Much has been made of The Great Resignation over the past year. This mass exodus of employees from their jobs has been of great concern to employers looking to retain…
  • Wordle Pays Wordle
    If you’re not addicted to Wordle yet, it’s a surprise. The game has gone viral over the past month with players all over the world enjoying this one-a-day guessing game.…
  • Boomer.Gif
    Gifs are apparently going out of fashion. That’s according to Vice and their interviews with twentysomethings about the image format used all over the internet. The story explains that the…
  • Fiji Crypto
    Depending on whom you speak to, cryptocurrency is either the second-coming of money or it’s a complete waste of time. Leave it to people who have too much time on…
  • The Saga of Jorts
    A month ago on Reddit, a unique and quite funny story went viral. It is a tale of two cats at a workplace and their human owner asking if he’s…
  • Driving Fish
    Yes, a real story from NPR details how researchers in Israel are teaching goldfish to operate a fish tank on wheels. This team is looking to explore whether animals’ ability…
  • CDs Bounce Back
    Leave it to the constant march of time to give CDs a nostalgic resurgence. News out of Pitchfork, like it’s 1999, shows that 2021 was the first time CD’s have…
  • Cats Hold Blender Hostage
    From the slow-news pages of The Washington Post comes this tail of a Canadian couple whose cats have made a blender box their own. Back in November Jessica and Nikii…
  • Meta Breakup
    Facebook can only dodge legal ramifications for the way they run their business for so long. The more they acquire companies, the more they try to hoover up people’s data,…
  • Google Blaming Apple For Their Own Mistakes
    If there was a big eye-roll moment, it’s Google’s Android team bellyaching about iMessage. Apple’s advantage is obvious because it’s a form of lock-in for their ecosystem. When the iPhone…
  • Thundercats Redrawn
    Classic animation gets a modern take over on YouTube where user Xtremee_Ghost has done a phenomenal job with Thundercats. This person has hand drawn each frame of the original opening…
  • Goodbye Danny Tanner
    News broke late Sunday that Bob Saget had passed at the too-young-age of 65. It was a shock to me, and to most I’m sure. Of course Saget was known…
  • And We’re Calling it iPhone
    It’s been fifteen years since Steve Jobs spoke those words. A lot of grand claims were made at MacWorld 2007 at the iPhone’s unveiling. Some were seen as laughable. Some…
  • Chip Shortage Forces Canon to Call BS on Themselves
    Canon makes printers. Printers suck. They have been awful for so long, as I’ve mentioned before. Every company who makes them tries to pull some nonsense regarding price, lock-in and…
  • E3 Learns from CES’ Mistakes
    A full six months ahead of 2022’s E3 gaming convention, the Entertainment Software Association announced E3 will be virtual this year. “Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and…
  • NYT Remembers Sports Exists
    The NY Times is a fantastic publication, however if you’re a sports fan it’s not a place to go. The surprising hit since 2016 has been The Athletic. The Athletic…
  • Wordle: The Un-Game
    Games are insanely popular on mobile to the point where entire companies have been built around them. Many come and go, but some have a real impact. Angry Birds, Doodle…
  • A Rival Ecosystem
    When Apple rolls out new products or services, the hook is their ecosystem. People can make fun of “it just works” when things don’t work. However, many ways Apple devices…
  • Go, Ford Lightning
    We seem to be reaching an inflection point for car manufacturers’ embracing of electric vehicles. Whether it’s for financial reasons, a response to customer’s embracing of Tesla, or other reasons…
  • The Right Pucking Thing
    The NHL expanded into Seattle, Washington over the summer with a new team called the Kraken. For a trainer on the Vancouver Canucks, this business decision for the league has…
  • Blackberry: The End
    In less than 15 years, the gargantuan Blackberry went from “must-have” to “see ya later”. If it wasn’t the iPhone who did it, Android certainly would’ve been the one to…
  • Embracing The Ring
    Sometimes a company has a monumental screwup so big that they simply want to move on. Never look back and never talk about it again. For Microsoft, that is certainly…
  • YouTube TV Loses The Mouse
    For many cord-cutters out there, YouTube TV has been a good option as a replacement service. The Alphabet-owned streaming service carries a bunch of live channels for $65 a month.…
  • Verizon The Spy
    There are two types of companies most people can agree we all hate: cable / ISP companies and cell phone carriers. Verizon, being both, doubly-sucks when news broke of its…
  • Cooking Gasless
    Little by little, cities and towns across the US are enacting stricter regulations to help the environment. Sometimes they offer incentives to builders to construct better spaces. Rebates and tax…
  • Blinding Lights
    Have you noticed lately that every single time you’re driving at night, you can’t see behind you? No it’s not from fog or heavy rain or even someone moving your…
  • It’s Glitter Time
    December now can mean one sure thing on YouTube: Mark Rober puts out a Glitter Bomb video. This year has him iterating on his designs and rolling out version 4…
  • Targeting the Zelle
    An article that flew under my radar was this one over on Krebs on Security wherein Brian Krebs explains Zelle scams. It’s a fascinating breakdown of fraudsters anticipating how the…
  • Closing the Window
    A common theme lately is the fight between streaming services and movie theaters. COVID changed a lot with films coming out on Day 1 as a movie in the theatre.…
  • Pocketing the Games
    Console manufacturer Analogue is a well-known player in the retro-gaming scene. They make high-end gaming consoles that can play retro games. The machines emulate original hardware via fancy chips called…
  • It’s a Subscription… For Your Toyota
    Year after year we are being pushed into a culture of renting. We don’t own things like purchased movies, digital video games, Kindle books, and lots of software. Car manufacturers,…
  • Matrix Awakens: What Is Real
    Earlier this past week Epic dropped a ten minute demo of the upcoming game The Matrix Awakens. This uses the latest Unreal engine to render the gameplay on Xbox Series…
  • The Shell of Palm
    Palm was a trailblazer in the late 90’s and 2000’s with great hardware. They were THE company with their Pilot line of PDAs and the Pre will forever live in…
  • T2: The Modern Recut
    Storytelling for movies have come a long way over the decades. Specifically when you see movie trailers, you can tell how a studio’s methods change when enticing you to see…
  • SONOS to Ditch Glue
    SONOS makes really good speakers. They hook into a number of music services, come in a few different configurations, and (to me) sound great. They’ve had their ups and downs,…
  • PlutoGoogs
    Streaming TV service Pluto is coming to the Google TV platform. Pluto does something pretty revolutionary: they have liner TV channels that run commercials and doesn’t let you rewind, skip,…
  • NYT Breaks Down the Supply Chain Breakdown
    Leave it to The NY Times to come up with a simple and informative interactive flowchart as to why there is an insane problem with manufacturing everything right now. The…
  • Life360: You Are the Product
    Time and time again companies (admittedly Apple a lot) will beat the drum with a simple mantra. If a service is free, YOU are the product. Reporting from By Jon Keegan and Alfred…
  • I’ve never been out of cream cheese for 30 years
    “I’ve never been out of cream cheese for 30 years,” said Joseph Yemma, the owner of F&H Dairies in Brooklyn, a dairy product distributor for many of the city’s bagel…
  • The Spider-Verse Returns
    After the immense success of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse in 2018, it was inevitable that Sony would produce a sequel. Now Sony has finally released the first trailer for the…
  • Benn Jordan Reveals the Streaming Music Grift
    Benn Jordan, known for writing music under the name The Flashbulb, has uploaded a 20-minute video to YouTube in which he goes over how he’s been scammed. And not by…
  • Future Android Phones May Get Always On Camera
    No thanks. I don’t know how else to respond to this announcement by Qualcomm where they showed off the newest version of their Snapdragon Generation 8 processors. This chip supports…
  • UK Says Meta Must Sell Giphy
    It was only a matter of time before antitrust investigations landed on a negative ruling for Facebook Meta. The independent CMA panel reviewing the merger has concluded that Facebook would…
  • Wirecutter Goes On Strike
    I’ve talked about Wirecutter before and how it’s one of the three tools I use when doing any online shopping. The site has been around for years and does fantastic…
  • Streaming To The Bone
    Keza MacDonald has done exquisite work bringing to light the insane grind it takes to be a streamer on Twitch. “My sleep schedule shifted into the North American time zone…
  • Jack Dorsey Leaves Twitter
    From the “things I didn’t see coming” category is the announcement by Jack Dorsey (Twitter’s co-founder) that he is stepping down as Twitter’s CEO. He, of course, announced it in…
  • 8-Bit Christmas: The Ultimate 80’s Nostalgia
    Christmas movies are always tough to nail right. Sometimes they’re too cheesy or too serious. The timeless ones are timeless for unknown reasons because they can still be too serious…
  • Ridley Scott: Old Man Yells At Cloud
    Leave it to the old vanguard of Hollywood to blame their failures on anyone else but themselves. This time around it’s Ridley Scott, mastermind of amazing movies, who’s looking for…
  • Atari XP Publishing New Atari 2600 Games
    If you’re a fan of the Atari 2600 and second generation console gaming, then you’re in for a treat. A company called AtariXP is gearing up to sell brand new…
  • Apple’s DIY Repair Cave In
    Sometimes an announcement out of Apple’s Cupertino newsroom comes from left field. Cue a press release that went out this morning informing of a “Self Service Repair” program. Apple today…
  • GTA Nope
    The much-awaited Grand Theft Auto compilation for Nintendo Switch is out and talk about a disappointment. After Rockstar released the game, people have been tearing it to shreds due to…
  • The Beatles Are Coming
    Disney+, best known for endless Star Wars and Marvel stuff these days, is dropping an amazing docuseries on November 25th with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of The Beatles. It’s produced by…
  • Tesla Thinks Their Customers Are Stupid
    People have praised Tesla’s buying experience for years. It’s unconventional and one the company isn’t even legally allowed to offer in every state. No dealerships, no haggling, no nonsense. You…
  • The Uber Shortage
    It’s no secret that Uber upended the taxi industry and have caused real hardship. The price of NYC taxi medallions plummeted because of ridesharing. Getting around went from standing at…
  • Connor McDavid Is A Cheat Code
    I rarely post about sports, but even as a hockey fan I can recognize this goal would excite anyone. Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers scored this amazing beauty against…
  • Thieves Steal Truckload of Graphics Cards
    Something I never thought would be reality in 2021: graphics cards being so desirable that people are stealing them. That is exactly what happened last week though. Thieves made off…
  • Amazon Thought Keeping Flex Drivers’ Tips Was Okay
    Amazon, a company worth $1.75 TRILLION, uses normal people to deliver goods from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. Amazon calls their program Amazon Flex. It’s a near-identical setup to DoorDash…
  • Pixel 6 Gets a Waitlist
    An funny thing happened on the way to getting Pixel 6 phones out the door: Google has no inventory. The phone, which was announced only a couple weeks ago, seems…
  • Netflix Gets in the Game
    A sort-of curveball announcement from Netflix (if you didn’t hear about their upcoming plans) is the launch of their new gaming service. Yes, Netflix who is known for streaming movies…
  • Animal Crossing Gets Its Only DLC
    Nintendo’s big Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct in October announced that two big updates would happen. The first being general updates to the game would bring it to version 2.0.…
  • The Verge’s Worst of the Worst
    It’s hard to believe, but The Verge is celebrating 10 years this week. They’re posting a bunch of retrospectives that are great reads. One of them takes the cake. In…
  • Fun With Excel on TikTok
    Two things I never expected to find entertaining when put together are Microsoft Excel and TikTok. Those are two diametrically opposed things. One is fun and has whimsy, while the…
  • Apple Relents: Usable Tabs Return to Safari
    On Wednesday Apple released version 15.1 of Safari. This is momentous because it finally puts the tab disaster officially in the past. Since WWDC back in June, people have been…
  • Lightyear Set for 2022 Release
    Origin stories are a roll of the dice. They’re usually movies we never ask for. Some are innovative. Some are completely unnecessary. Today Disney released the trailer for Lightyear, an…
  • Zillow Pauses Being Stupid
    Lost in the bonanza of home buying was this fact: Zillow itself was buying homes. The speculation was the company did this to resell homes at a higher value, thus…
  • It’s a Sock for Your AirPods
    One of the silliest accessories Apple ever released were the iPod Socks. For $29 you could get a set of six socks for your iPod. It was weird but a…
  • Facebook Plans to be Not Facebook
    Interesting that a constant flow of crisis’ leads to “solutions” such as this: Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the…
  • Anker’s MagGo Bonanza
    Well, I stand corrected. Days after lamenting the fact that MagSafe accessories for the iPhone are a mess, Anker went ahead and dropped no less than SIX MagSafe products in…
  • MagSafe is a MagMess
    Last year with the iPhone 12, Apple announced MagSafe. The idea was simple: the back of an iPhone is now magnetic and you could attach accessories easily. Need to change…
  • It’s 2021 and Printers Still Suck
    The year is 2021. We don’t have flying cars. We barely have cars that drive themselves. No hoverboards either. And one thing we definitely don’t have are printers that don’t…
  • Nokia 6310 Steps Out of the Time Machine
    If there was a perfect example of news that hit the TimeMachiner trifecta (Tech, Culture, and Nostalgia) it’s this. Last week Nokia announced they’re bringing back one of their most…
  • Mac in the Spotlight
    After September’s annual Apple event for the iPhone and iPad, the focus turned to October and what usually is a Mac update event. Apple was true to form with the…
  • Working for Instacart is a Sucker’s Game
    The concept of shopping for groceries online to have them delivered to your house is a great one. In theory. You shop like you’re buying anything else and hours later…
  • The Real Reason the Supply Chain is Broken
    Recently there was a fantastic segment by David Pogue for CBS Sunday Morning wherein he goes over the current supply chain problems. It’s been a royal pain in the ass…
  • Grand Theft Auto: On The Go
    It seems Rockstar is busy remastering some of their best work. They’re focusing on a pinnacle of early-aughts gaming: Grand Theft Auto III and the immediate follow-ups Vice City and…
  • Ads in Firefox address bar proves no place is safe
    Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, has worked wonders with resurrecting the browser out of obscurity. They left it to whither on the vine for years while Chrome took over the…
  • Scarlett Johansson Gets Paid
    Variety reports Scarlett Johansson and Disney have settled their lawsuit wherein Johansson claimed she was not being paid properly. The suit began with Black Widow’s simultaneous release on Disney+ and…
  • Damnit, Gruber was right: Safari 15 is a mess
    I don’t even know where to start. First I was skeptical. Then I was hopeful. I was warned. I let my MacBook Pro update anyway. And now I have to…
  • Ted Lasso is Exactly What We Need
    You’ve heard about it. Maybe you’ve watched it. But one fact is clear: you cannot escape seeing some acknowledgement about Ted Lasso. The show that has finally given Apple a…
  • Echo Show 15 is Too Amazon-ey
    Amazon dropped a deluge of new tech and among them is the cool-looking Echo Show 15. It’s a framed display that mounts to the wall and shows you information you…
  • Doctor Who Goes Back to the Beginning
    Huge news coming from the Hollywood Reporter regarding the Doctor Who universe. The BBC has announced that Russell T. Davies, Who’s show runner for the first few seasons, is returning…
  • Apple Card Gets Creative Security Feature
    Rolled into all of Monday’s iOS updates was this unannounced Apple Card security feature: rolling CVN (3-digit) codes for Apple Card. When enabled, Advanced Fraud Protection will cause the three…
  • Kindle Paperwhite’s Oasis
    Finally, finally, finally. Amazon has decided to give the Kindle Paperwhite one hell of an update. Amazon announced a new Paperwhite with three features that were a long time coming:…
  • Back in the Day, Video Games Were Hard
    Video games should always be fun (it’s my only rule when playing) but oh man, old NES games could be brutal. Weird ways to make them more difficult or lack…
  • Live Text is THE Feature of iOS 15
    Each year, hidden in the deluge of new iOS features, is one that becomes the breakout star. Last year was the ability to customize your home screen with widgets. Along…
  • Raising All Ships By Sacrificing The CEO Lifestyle
    Lots has been written about Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments. Price made headlines six years ago by setting the company’s minimum pay to $70,000 per year. Part of…
  • Bluetooth Audio Comes to Nintendo Switch: Four Years Later
    Nintendo does some great things. Hell, they relaunched the video game industry here in the US all on their own. They’ve also done some head-scratching things. The Switch falls into…
  • iPhone Ho Hum
    Another September is upon us and that means another Apple event where they inevitably say “This is the best iPhone yet” and “Today we’re making the iPhone even better.” Today…
  • Netflix’s DeLorean Documentary Series
    Leave it to Netflix to get in on the action with a plethora of new DeLorean movies / documentaries recently coming out. There were no less than three DeLorean Movies…
  • The Return of The Drive-In
    It’s 2021 and one thing I’ve found to be really fun is seeing a movie in my car. Talk about an unforeseen plot twist! Due to all the lockdowns last…
  • NVM Opens Virtual Animal Crossing: New Horizons Exhibit
    This week the National Video Game Museum (NVM) has opened an exciting virtual exhibit showcasing Animal Crossing: New Horizons islands. Many of us took refuge on a deserted island in…
  • Getting the Apple Watch Bands Back Together
    Ahead of Tuesday’s “California Streaming” event from Apple, comes news that certain watch bands for Apple Watch are no longer available. This isn’t surprising, since Apple refreshes their watch bands…