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April 30, 2018: Corey Pein on his new book, "Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley"

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This week: Corey Pein, author of the new book Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

Pointers to Corey's work:

• Corey's homepage

• @coreypein on Twitter

• ‘Like Selling Crack to Children’: A Peek Inside the Silicon Valley Grift Machine, by Corey Pein (New York magazine, April 2018)

• Salon's review of Corey's book, by Keith Spencer

...but first, as usual, we'll start with...

Tech News

• Silicon Valley Can't Be Trusted With Our History, by Evan Hill. "We create almost everything on the internet, but we control almost none of it."

• Megan McArdle's thread explaining "just how bad the economics of the media industry are" (see also the unrolled thread). "Subtitle: why you can't have all the awesome free journalism you want and have come to expect."

• There will be little privacy in the workplace of the future, from The Economist’s March 2018 issue. Excerpt: “‘Every aspect of business is becoming more data-driven. There’s no reason the people side of business shouldn’t be the same,’ says Ben Waber, Humanyze’s boss. The company’s staff are treated much the same way as its clients. Data from their employees’ badges are integrated with information from their e-mail and calendars to form a full picture of how they spend their time at work. Clients get to see only team-level statistics, but Humanyze’s employees can look at their own data, which include metrics such as time spent with people of the same sex, activity levels and the ratio of time spent speaking versus listening.”

• Code Red: Organizing the tech sector, by Alex Press in the spring 2018 issue of n+1, surveying the state of union-organizing in the tech space.

• The Internet’s ‘Original Sin’ Endangers More Than Privacy, by Brendan Eich and Brian Brown (who run the privacy-minded Brave browser). "As much as half the data consumed on mobile plans goes to downloading ads and trackers, adding significantly to fixed mobile data plans. . . As much as 50% of mobile battery life is consumed by ads while browsing. . . The internet need not be characterized by predation and parasitism. It can once again be a place of infinite possibility. Innovation got us into this situation; it can get us out."

• ...oh, and Facebook had its earnings call. Here's the summary, below, from Jason Kint:



• More on that consent decree: NPR, March 2018: "The Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether Facebook violated a [2011] consent decree by enabling third parties to access users' information without their permission." ($40,000 per violation.)

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