Last minute geek

1. Google shares its Street View air-quality data with scientists
(English/engadget)

Google is releasing air quality data it collected from California's Bay Area and Central Valley with its Street View cars, part of a larger effort by the company to track pollution around the world. ...

2. The sixth season of 'Silicon Valley' will be its last
(English/engadget)

Silicon Valley will return to HBO later this year for its sixth season. Unfortunately for its fans, it will also be the end of the show's run. Variety reported today that the upcoming season of Mike ...

3. Sex, lies, and surveillance: Something's wrong with the war on sex trafficking
(English/engadget)

Silicon Valley's biggest companies have partnered with a single organization to fight sex trafficking -- one that maintains a data collection pipeline, is partnered with Palantir, and helps law enforcement ...

4. Now that Uber and Lyft are public, their inevitable financial collapse is much clearer
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... than any Silicon Valley startup in history, and they have "none of the economic characteristics that allowed companies like Amazon or Facebook to quickly grow into profitability and drive strong public ...

5. To chase out low-waged workers, Mountain View is banning overnight RV and van parking
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Mountain View -- home to some of Silicon Valley's most profitable companies, including Google -- is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, thanks to the sky-high wages commanded by techies, ...

6. One of these models doesn't exist
(English/engadget)

Virtual humans are gradually scaling the uncanny valley, and like artificial intelligence, they're coming for our jobs. A case in point is Imma, a digital Instagram model who has garnered over 50,000 ...

7. Twitter co-founder Ev Williams says Fox News is "much, much more powerful and much more destructive than Twitter"
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... which is much, much more powerful and much more destructive than Twitter." A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. It's a view some others in Silicon Valley ...

8. Theranos but for poop
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

The founder of a Silicon Valley bio-testing startup stands accused of misleading investors, cutting scientific corners in the quest for growth, and even romancing a fellow executive. Theranos? Nope. uBiome, ...

9. Secret camera found in Starbucks bathroom
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Last week, an employee of a Starbucks in Mill Valley, California, just north of San Francisco, found a tiny digital camera hidden in a bathroom air freshener. At the time of the police statement below, ...

10. Woman lopes on all fours
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Behold "Karen of the Boreal Valley," whose adventures are made perfect by epic music played so loud it clips like a VHS sword-and-sandals movie at maximum volume on the cheapest television set of 1982. ...

11. Tomorrow's ‘general’ AI revolution will grow from today's technology
(English/engadget)

... Valley giant may soon pursue Artificial general intelligence... Read all  ...

12. Doris Day, 1922-2019
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

The Doris Day Foundation reports her death at 97. Doris Day passed away early this morning at her Carmel Valley home, having celebrated her 97th birthday on April 3 of this year. Nearly 300 fans gathered ...

13. Jack Dorsey, 'lifestyle guru,' touted as 'Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley'
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

“The lithe, 42-year-old tech founder has become a one-man Goop.” Oh yeah. It's that real. In the New York Times, a profile of Twitter and Square (yes both companies) CEO Jack Dorsey presents the man as ...

14. Magnificent photos from a psychedelic family's California trip
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... protests in Berkeley to the ancient redwoods of Big Sur and the wilds of Death Valley. Read the rest Read all  ...

15. Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

They've obviously refined the design since the suprisingly bad model sheet leaked. Now it is perfectly bad, launched on an orbital trajectory from the uncanny valley's curve. But perhaps that's the type ...

16. Here's your chance to buy the Kindle edition of Dan Simmon's essential science fiction novel Hyperion
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve ...

17. Don't look up childhood friends, unless you're sure you want to know
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... about a magical valley where the animals talked like people; Petey and I burying a treasure. It's better to know, because you never know who might not. Read the rest Read all  ...

18. Platform cooperativism (or, how to turn gig-economy jobs into $22.25/hour jobs)
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Frequent Boing Boing contributor Clive Thompson (previously) has a great short piece in this month's Wired about platform cooperativism: replacing parasitical Silicon Valley companies that sit between ...

19. Silicon Valley's techie uprisings reveal growing support for socialism in tech
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

As workers at companies from Kickstarter to Gimlet to Vox vote to unionize, and as traditional labor organizers call on game devs and others to organize, Silicon Valley is a lot more friendly to pro-labor ...

20. The Family Acid: California, a far-out photo album from a very unconventional family
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... unconventional family.  This is The Family Acid: California. Based in Los Angeles, the Steffens family traveled up and down the West Coast, from the wilds of Death Valley and reggae festivals in Humboldt ...

21. Michelin three-star restaurant French Laundry serves mushroom soup from a bong
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... in the Napa Valley serves their porcini mushroom broth out of a blue and green swirl glass bong. From a column by San Francisco Chronicle food critic Soleil Ho: After dinner, I emailed the French ...

22. Infinite Elizabeth Holmes
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Last night I saw HBO's The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her company/cult, Theranos. It's very good and surprisingly unsettling. UPDATE: I've ...

23. "Ayn Rand is a Dick" - excerpt from a new book by Mike Monteiro
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... about Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand's influence on Silicon Valley. He's a funny writer! Welcome to Silicon Valley. A libertarian stronghold at the very end of America. (Literally.) Silicon Valley, and ...

24. Ars Technica is looking for a "technology and society" reporter
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

If you've got 3+ years of experience and want to cover "the growing political and cultural Big Tech backlash,' copyright clashes, the culture of Silicon Valley firms, tech-policy battles, and important ...

25. Excellent prank featuring a creepy porcelain doll
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

From Drayton Valley, Alberta, Canada comes this devilish prank. A woman noticed that her sister was selling a porcelain doll through Facebook's marketplace so she secretly bought it and sneaked it back ...