Articles
February 22, 2017
The Letter: Susan Fowler and Uber
There is a letter that is being read across the industry this week, and the letter is the post: the account that Susan Fowler published on her blog on Sunday, the story of her year at Uber, the roughly two thousand nine hundred words that described the harassment and the indifference, the document that did more damage than any outage or any scandal so far. The letter arrived on February 19, and by Tuesday it was everywhere: the engineers sharing it, the press covering it, the executives responding to it, the board hiring the lawyers. The letter is the February 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the employee who spoke, the company that was exposed, the culture that is now under investigation.
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January 17, 2017
The Return to Flight: SpaceX Launches Again
There is a return that happened this week, and the return is the flight: the Falcon 9 that lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Saturday, the first launch for SpaceX since the pad explosion in September, the mission that carried ten Iridium NEXT satellites toward orbit, the company that came back from its worst failure. The launch happened on January 14, four months after the Amos-6 accident destroyed a satellite and grounded the fleet, and the landing followed minutes later: the first stage settling onto the droneship in the Pacific, the booster that came home. The return to flight is the January 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the failure that was investigated, the cause that was found, the fix that was proven in a single mission.
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December 13, 2016
The Store: Amazon and Just Walk Out
Amazon unveiled a cashierless store in Seattle on Monday, and the checkout line became a relic.
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November 23, 2016
The Translation: Google Goes Neural
Google Translate switched to neural networks this month, and the machines started to understand sentences instead of words.
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October 31, 2016
The Botnet: Mirai and the Day Dyn Fell
A botnet of hacked cameras and routers took down Twitter, Netflix, and half the internet on Friday, and the internet of things showed its dark side.
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September 5, 2016
The Recall: Samsung and the Galaxy Note 7
Samsung recalled every Galaxy Note 7 on Friday after battery fires, and the best phone of the year became the company's worst crisis.
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August 4, 2016
The Retreat: Uber Leaves China
Uber merged its China business into Didi Chuxing on Monday, ending a subsidy war that cost billions and creating a monopoly.
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July 8, 2016
The Phenomenon: Pokemon Go and Augmented Reality
Pokemon Go launched on Wednesday and became a phenomenon in days, putting augmented reality in the hands of millions.
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June 16, 2016
The Deal: Microsoft Buys LinkedIn
Microsoft agreed on Monday to buy LinkedIn for 26.2 billion dollars, the biggest deal in its history, and the professional cloud got a network.
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May 24, 2016
The Assistant: Google's AI at I/O
Google I/O announced the Assistant and a home speaker called Google Home, and the company's shift from mobile first to AI first became official.
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